Category: Random

Weightless Sermons

Albert Mohler on preaching:

The sheer weightlessness of much contemporary preaching is a severe indictment of our superficial Christianity. When the pulpit ministry lacks substance, the church is severed from the word of God, and its health and faithfulness are immediately diminished.

Many evangelicals are seduced by the proponents of topical and narrative preaching. The declarative force of Scripture is blunted by a demand for story, and the textual shape of the Bible is supplanted by topical considerations. In many pulpits, the Bible, if referenced at all, becomes merely a source for pithy aphorisms or convenient narratives.

The therapeutic concerns of the culture too often set the agenda for evangelical preaching. Issues of the self predominate, and the congregation expects to hear simple answers to complex problems. Furthermore, postmodernism claims intellectual primacy in the culture, and even if they do not surrender entirely to doctrinal relativism, the average congregant expects to make his or her own final decisions about all important issues of life, from worldview to lifestyle. Continue reading Weightless Sermons

Ten Commandments for Preaching

Sinclair B. Ferguson’s Ten Commandments for Preaching:

1. Know your Bible Better. Be a homo unius libri– a man with One Book. [If there’s ever a book that you need to master, it’s going to be the Bible, not the latest Patrick Lencioni or Larry Osborne bestsellers, as useful as they are.]

“As an observer as well as a practitioner of preaching, I am troubled and perplexed by hearing men with wonderful equipment, humanly speaking (ability to speak, charismatic personality, and so on), who seem to be incapable of simply preaching the Scriptures. Somehow they have not first invaded and gripped them.” Continue reading Ten Commandments for Preaching

Worship and Bible Reading

Worship is our heartfelt response to a revelation of God. It is not us stirring up our hearts to feel something for God. It is not us trying very hard to say the right words and feel the right feelings for Jesus. Biblical worship happens when God reveals Himself to us through His word and our hearts have no other recourse but to fall down in reverence to His glory. In other words, the depth of our worship largely depends on the amount of our Bible reading. The more we know our Bibles, the more powerful our worship becomes.

Christianity and Guilt

Victory Group Lesson for Today:

Christianity is the only religion in the whole world that sufficiently deals with the issue of guilt. All the other religions either ignore, deny or dismiss guilt as if it is not important. Christianity alone teaches that guilt is real and serious but Christianity also offers the ultimate solution: the blood of Jesus that washes away the sins of the world so that those who repent can walk free from the weight of the burden of condemnation.