Are you prepared for tomorrow’s sermon? (this isn’t for pastors)

David Murray reminds us that not only pastors need to prepare for the sermon every Sunday morning, so does every hearer:

This kind of pre-sermon preparation is part of what Ken Ramey has called Expository Listening. We are used to talking about Expository Preaching,the kind of preaching that explains or exposits verses of Scripture. But Ken’s point is that Expository Preaching requires a special kind of listening,Expository Listening, which, like Expository Preaching, requires work before, during, and after the sermon. Ramey says:

Preaching is a joint venture in which the listener partners with the pastor so that the Word of God accomplishes its intended purpose of transforming your life. Nothing creates a more explosive, electrifying, life-changing atmosphere than when the lightning bolts from a Spirit-empowered preacher hit the lightning rods of a Spirit-illuminated listener.

Christopher Ash put it like this in Listen Up! his booklet on listening to sermons:

Preaching that makes a church Christ-like under grace takes a double miracle: the sinful preacher must be shaped by grace to preach; and sinful listeners must be awakened by grace to listen together week by week in humble expectancy.

Read more of  What is Expository Listening?

Read Full Post »

A Sunday charge from Spurgeon to preachers

“Brethren, speak because you believe the gospel of Jesus, speak because you feel its power, speak under the influence of the truth which you are delivering, speak with the Holy Ghost sent down from Heaven, and the result will not be doubtful.

Burn because you have been in solemn fellowship with the Lord our God. . . .we must be consumed with fire, or else be rejected. For us to turn aside from our life-work, and to seek distinction elsewhere, is absolute folly; a blight will be upon us, we shall not succeed in anything but the pursuit of God’s glory through the teaching of the Word. “This people have I formed for Myself,” saith God; “they shall shew forth My praise;” and if we will not do this, we shall do less than nothing. For this one thing we are created; and if we miss this, we shall live in vain.”

Charles Spurgeon, An All Round Ministry, Chapter 6.

Read Full Post »

It’s Wednesday. . . are you preparing for Sunday?

A word for all you who attend a church this week where the Bible will be preached:

It’s Wednesday, and Sunday is coming.

Many preachers are still recovering from this last Sunday, where they poured out their hearts and souls to present the Sacred Writings – and Jesus in them (Luke 24:27) – for their church families. And now they are preparing for yet another Sunday. They are digging in, pondering the text, writing notes and scribbling pictures, praying for the Spirit to illumine their minds and apply the text to their own hearts and lives. They are looking for Jesus, and his Gospel. They are thinking of how it might apply to their people. They are assembling potential illustrations. They are doing it all in the midst of a dizzying array of other demands upon their time and office.

I wonder, how are you preparing?

So often I think people walk into the meeting place on Sunday morning, thinking that the responsibility for hearing from God in the Sacred Text is the job of the preacher. While there is some truth to that (he must study to show himself approved unto God, a workman that must not be ashamed, rightly handling the Word of Truth), the listener has a grave responsibility.

Now click over to read the rest of Matthew Molesky’s “Let the Word Dwell In You.”

Read Full Post »

Why listen to your preacher this Sunday?

”There is just one reason why I may possibly expect you to listen to me. I may expect you to listen to me if I can bring to you a message from God. If I can do that, then the very insignificance of the speaker may in a certain sense be an added inducement to you to listen to him, since it may help you to forget the speaker and attend only to the message.

It is just that I am trying to do. I am asking you to turn away from me and my opinions; I am asking you to turn away from yourself and your opinions and your troubles; and I am asking you to turn instead that you may listen to a word from God.

Where can I find that word?….Not in myself and not in you, but in an old Book that has been sealed by the seals of prejudice and unbelief but that will, if it is rediscovered again set the world aflame and that will show you, be you wise or unwise, rich or poor, the way by which you can come into communion with the living God.”

The Christian Faith in the Modern World, Gresham Machen, p12

Read Full Post »

Ten ways to enhance learning during preaching

A good list from Dan Phillips:

1. Pray in advance.  Pray for your preacher, for yourself, and for others including unbelievers.
2. Read the passage in advance.
3. Use the rest room before the service.
4. Absolutely do pick up the outline if there is one, and absolutely do use it.
5. If there is no outline, try to make one of your own.
6. Pray as your pastor preaches. . .for him, for yourself, and for those present.
7. Attempt to look up every verse.
8. After the sermon, read the passage yourself without your notes. See what leaps out, and what you remember.
9. Then look at the notes to reinforce.
10. Tell someone what you learned.

Dan comments on each point and gives Scriptural backing for most of his points here.

Can you think of any more to add?  Leave a comment!

Read Full Post »

When your pastor preaches!

“When your pastors step up to the pulpit this weekend, pray for him to have power.”–Stephen Altrogge

Read how to do this at  “How To Pray for Your Pastor As He Steps into the Pulpit.”

Read Full Post »

Come, starved, this Sunday!

This excerpt was taken from the recent sermon, “God Is Most Glorified in Us When We Are Most Satisfied in Him.”

Read Full Post »

How prepared are you for this Sunday

Clint Archer:

On Sunday morning when the band stops playing, the congregation doesn’t want excuses, they want preaching. They (rightly) expect the preacher to be prepared. The sermon should be well-researched, well-illustrated, well-delivered, and well-worth-getting-up-so-darn-early-for. I’ve got no problem with that. But I do have a question for the congregation: How prepared are you for the Sunday sermon?

It is not only the preacher who has preparation to do for the sermon. When you know you are going to an all-you-can-eat buffet restaurant, you don’t gorge yourself on the leftover lasagna in the fridge a half-hour before dining out. Yes, the chef is the one with the most urgent preparation, but the customer comes ready to enjoy the meal. Sermons are best devoured by the hungry. This takes some spiritual preparation.

Ken Ramey has an excellent book called Expository Listening in which he gives a dozen tips on how to prepare for receiving the sermon at church.

Read three of these to be better prepared this Sunday.

Read Full Post »

Take care in your listening to God’s Word

Tomorrow many of us will gather in local churches to hear the preaching of God’s word from faithful ministers. So what is the proper spiritual posture we should take for listening to the sermon? In our recently released ebook, Take Care How You Listen, John Piper offers us help in preparing our hearts on Sundays. At one point Pastor John writes this:

Come in a spirit of meek teachability. Not gullibility. You have your Bible and you have your head. But James says, “In meekness receive the implanted word” (1:21). If we come with a chip on our shoulder that there is nothing we can learn or no benefit we can get, we will prove ourselves infallible on both counts. But if we humble ourselves before the Word of God, we will hear and grow and bear fruit. (24)

And a little later he writes:

As you sit quietly and pray and meditate on the text and the songs, remind yourself of what Psalm 19:10–11 says about the words of God: “More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb. Moreover by them is thy servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward.” So because the Word of God is greater than all riches and sweeter than all honey, take heed how you hear. Desire it more than you desire all these things.

As Proverbs 2:3–5 says, “If you cry out for insight and raise your voice for understanding, if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures; then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God.” May God make us a people who hear the Word of God and bear fruit a hundredfold so that the lamp of our lives will be on a lampstand giving light to all who enter the kingdom of God. Take heed how you hear! (26)

For more on this topic, download the entire ebook, Take Care How You Listen, for free here.

HT:  Tony

Read Full Post »

Wanted: men of God for a new reformation!

We now stand in the twenty-first century, almost five hundred years removed from John Calvin’s time, but we find ourselves in an equally critical hour of redemptive history. As the organized church was spiritually bankrupt at the outset of Calvin’s day, so it is again in our time. Certainly, to judge by outward appearances, the evangelical church in this hour seems to be flourishing. Megachurches are springing up everywhere. Christian contemporary music and publishing houses seem to be booming. Men’s rallies are packing large coliseums. Christian political groups are heard all the way to the White House. Yet the evangelical church is largely a whitewashed tomb. Tragically, her outward facade masks her true internal condition.

What are we to do? We must do what Calvin and the Reformers did so long ago. There are no new remedies for old problems. We must come back to old paths. We must capture the centrality and pungency of biblical preaching once again. There must be a decisive return to preaching that is Word-driven, God-exalting, Christ-centered, and Spirit-empowered. We desperately need a new generation of expositors, men cut from the same bolt of cloth as Calvin. Pastors marked by compassion, humility, and kindness must once again “preach the Word.” In short, we need Calvins again to stand in pulpits and boldly proclaim the Word of God.

Charles H. Spurgeon shall have the final word here. This great man witnessed firsthand the decline of dynamic preaching and issued this plea:

We want again Luthers, Calvins, Bunyans, Whitefields, men fit to mark eras, whose names breathe terror in our foemen’s ears. We have dire need of such. Whence will they come to us? They are the gifts of Jesus Christ to the church, and will come in due time. He has power to give us back again a golden age of preachers, and when the good old truth is once more preached by men whose lips are touched as with a live coal from off the altar, this shall be the instrument in the hand of the Spirit for bringing about a great and thorough revival of religion in the land…

I do not look for any other means of converting men beyond the simple preaching of the gospel and the opening of men’s ears to hear it. The moment the church of God shall despise the pulpit, God will despise her. It has been through the ministry that the Lord has always been pleased to revive and bless His churches.

May Spurgeon’s heartfelt prayer be answered once again in this day. We do want Calvins again. We must have Calvins again. And, by God’s grace, we shall see them raised up again in this hour. May the Head of the church give us again an army of biblical expositors, men of God sold out for a new reformation.”

Excerpt from Steven Lawson’s The Expository Genius of John Calvin.Available from ReformationTrust.com as seen at Ligonier Blog

Read Full Post »