Adrian Warnock has been pumping out a whole host of great posts on expositional preaching over the last several weeks. I happened upon them, and basically read them all in reverse order. May the following excerpts and links awaken a hunger for God’s presence in your life. And I pray God meets you this Sunday in a glorious way.
I’ll begin by an especially challenging quote for a Sunday, then I’ll arrange the links and excerpts in chronological order. They are all really good, so take a little bit of time and have your zeal increased through the reading of these posts!
There is nothing vital in the religion and in the worship of such people. They expect nothing, and they get nothing, and nothing happens to them. They go to God’s house, not with the idea of meeting with God, not with the idea of waiting upon him; it never crosses their minds or enters into their hearts that something may happen in a service. No, we always do this on Sunday morning. It is our custom. It is our habit. It is a right thing to do. But the idea that God may suddenly visit his people and descend upon them, the whole thrill of being in the presence of God, and sensing his nearness, and his power, never even enters their imaginations …
Do we go to God’s house expecting something to happen? Or do we go just to listen to a sermon, and to sing our hymns, and to meet with one another? How often does this vital idea enter into our minds that we are in the presence of the living God, that the Holy Spirit is in the Church, that we may feel the touch of his power? How much do we think in terms of coming together to meet with God, and to worship him, and to stand before him, and to listen to him? Is there not this appalling danger that we are just content because we have correct beliefs? And we have lost the life, the vital thing, the power, the thing that really makes worship worship, which is in Spirit and truth.
(quote by D. Martyn Lloyd Jones — read the whole post)
…the Word of God is written primarily to produce worship. This means that if that Word is handled like a hot-dish recipe or a repair manual, it is mishandled. And the people will suffer. The Truth of God begs to be handled with exultation. And our hearts yearn for this and need it. Something in us starts to die when precious and infinitely valuable realities are handled without feelings and words of wonder and exultation.
(quote by John Piper– read the whole post)
I can forgive the preacher almost anything if he gives me a sense of God, if he gives me something for my soul, if he gives me the sense that, though he is inadequate himself, he is handling something which is very great and very glorious, if he gives me some dim glimpse of the majesty and the glory of God, the love of Christ my Saviour, and the magnificence of the Gospel. If he does that I am his debtor, and I am profoundly grateful to him.
(quote by D. Martyn Lloyd Jones — read the whole post)
Adrian Warnock reflects on the pitfalls of long and slow expositional sermon series.
Dispassionate preaching is a lie. If the preacher is not consumed with [the] passage for the message, how can those who hear it believe it? This is what must be recaptured by the men at this conference who are not in danger of giving up the pulpit to entertainment, but who can become listless and lifeless in expositing the Scriptures.
(quote by Steve Lawson — read the whole post)
Adrian Warnock writes an excellent article on Technology in Preaching.
Think yourself Empty….Read youself Full….Write Yourself Clear….Pray Yourself Hot….Be Yourself, But Don’t Preach Yourself….
(quote by Alistair Begg — read the whole post)
Begin to tell the people what you have felt in your own heart, and beseech the Holy Spirit to make your heart as hot as a furnace for zeal.
(quote by Charles Spurgeon — read the whole post)
The practical effect of maintaining this human cultural distinctive where preaching is concerned is that large segments of the family of God are cut off from significant aspects to good preaching. Some are shaped into emotionally boisterous and doctrinally shallow Christians, while others are doctrinally heady and emotionally paralyzed. In the culture of God, we need truth set on fire so that we might be both rooted and grounded in the truth and stirred to compassion, love, and zeal . . .
(quote by Thabiti Anyabwile — read the whole post)
Warren ends by explaining that, in his view, the application of a sermon should aim to answer two questions: So What? (and) What now? He provocatively ends the article by saying, “If your preaching doesn’t ever answer these two questions, you haven’t applied the Bible to the lives of your listeners.”
(Adrian Warnock quoting Rick Warren — read the whole post)
Haven’t read it all yet, but Stott’s outline was good. Saved it, hoping to need it for future reference.
Thanks for these links, Bob. There’s enough here to keep me busy for awhile.
Thanks guys. I know there’s a lot there, but it was all so good!