Wake the living fires

No one is immune from the deadly vice of dullness. As a congregation member I find it very difficult to listen to a dull sermon. It is hard to keep from drifting mentally while one’s eyes take on a certain sort of fixed stare. And when I catch myself my immediate reaction is to blame the sermon–rather than, rightly, working harder as a listener.

Two preachers, Phil Ryken and John Piper, give some very helpful advice on how best to listen to a sermon. In summary, they wisely urge us to listen:

    with a soul that is prepared
    with a mind that is alert,
    with a Bible that is open,
    with a heart that is receptive, and
    with a life that is ready to spring into action.

I also recommend Thabiti Anyabwile’s article “Expositional Listening.”

But setting aside how best to listen to a sermon, let me reflect a bit–with an eye to preaching–on what makes a sermon come alive for me.

  • Less shop-talk. Please, no more about discourse analysis or narratival criticism or meta-narratival frameworks or indicative modes. The Biblical writers did indeed use those tools to make their points come alive–but they rarely talk about their rhetorical skills or techniques. Let us not explain every joke. Nor make every poetic beauty prosaic.

    A good example of this, I think, is Charlie Skrine’s talk on Psalm 110, “The Return of the King.” The poetic picture he evokes of verse 3 in particular is beautiful and perfectly in keeping with the poetry of the original.

  • More theology. That is, more about God! “Sir, we would see Jesus,” is engraved on my chapel’s pulpit. Our imaginations are waiting to be filled and illumined with a glorious vision of God. The most exciting and uplifting part of a sermon must be the part that shows us God’s glory and majesty–if it isn’t, I wonder if we aren’t just legalists.
  • Less meandering. Have you ever encountered the random metaphor? The metaphor that may be perceptive but illustrates such a minor point in the sermon that actually becomes unhelpful? Perhaps the preacher’s hobby-horse brought out for just a moment–long enough to bemuse the listener and blunt the sermon? I fear this danger.
  • More application. The Puritans spent entire books meditating on the applications of one verse of the Bible. Thomas Boston, for example, in his The Crook in the Lot, meditates over and over again on the one verse, “Consider the work of God: for who can make that straight which He has made crooked?” (Ecclesiastes 7:13). It leads the reader in meditation on God. It provides motive after motive after motive for rejoicing in God and glorifying him in the face of suffering. I have found it personally immensely helpful.

    Of course, at no point does Boston leave God behind, or spring-board away from theology as such. His application is as deep rooted as it is because he remains so focused on God.

    • These things, I am thinking on.

    This entry was posted by Daniel on 18:32, Nov 11th 2008 and filed in Preaching,Sermons.

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