How I File Sermon Notes

I'm a little obsessive when it comes to organising things on my computer. That's in complete contrast to organising things on my desk, but that's another story...
Here's a system I've found easy to use and helpful for filing sermon notes on the computer.

1. Have a computer folder for upcoming talks, with a subfolder for each talk and event. Here's mine:

Note that the subfolder names have the date of the event first, in yymmdd format. It used to be yyyymmdd, but I figure I'm not going to be preaching still in the year 2100, so I don't need the first two digits.

That means that if I sort the folders alphabetically, they sort into chronological order, and I can see what's coming up.

I create this folder about once a term, and clear out the old one into my filing system. I find it much easier to keep this folder on a cloud drive, so I can access it from anywhere. I keep all the files related to each talk in the appropriate folder.

2. Have a folder for each book of the Bible. I find a list of 66 quite hard to work with, so I subdivide into genres, then by books, putting a number in front of the book name so that sorting by name also sorts by book order.

For example, the book of Psalms is at Bible/3. Poetry-Wisdom/2. Psalms

3. File notes in the appropriate folder, with a title that looks like this:
Matthew 05v01-16 140621

Having a file title like that means that sorting by name sorts by order within the book, and lets you see immediately when the talk was done as well. Note the importance of trailing zeros – otherwise it would sort Matthew 1, Matthew 15, Matthew 2. In Psalms you need more trailing zeros – so it's Psalm 008 or Psalm 037 because there are more than 100 chapters.

I file notes from sermons that I've preached (still in folders with appropriate files); interesting articles that I've read online; notes I took in lectures in college; notes from talks I've listened to (scanned in), and so on. Here's an example from my folder on John.

4. Show cross-references with shortcuts
One of the beauties of an electronic filing system is that shortcuts are easy to create. If I preached a sermon on Acts 2, for example, that strongly referred to the Tower of Babel, I could create a shortcut to the Acts 2 folder and rename the shortcut as Genesis 11, and file it appropriately.

It makes things really easy to file and to find again. I guess it took a couple of hours to set up in the first place, but it didn't take long to more than recover that time back!

More Book Reviews - Center Church / Preaching and Preachers / And the Lamb Wins

I don't post book reviews here often enough. So here are some quick reviews of three good books I've read recently.

Center Church - Timothy Keller

Keller (senior pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian, New York) is one of the most influential writers on theology and church at the moment, certainly in the Reformed world. And this is the closest he has come to a magnum opus. It's essentially a 400-odd page textbook on what it means to be and do church in the specific context of city-centre ministry in a global city. I'm not there, and I don't agree with Keller on everything, but if this was a course when I was at theological college, it would have been one of the best and most helpful courses on offer. He outlines different views on just about everything, shows where the tensions are, and usually shows how to plot a third way (or a fifth way) between them.

Genuinely helpful on big-picture stuff; really clearly laid out; genuinely brilliant. There's quite a bit of stuff that can't really be put into practice when you don't have a congregation of at least hundreds including talented artists (and there's not much on how to deal with having enthusiastic but not-talented amateurs), but there's lots of stuff that is helpful in my context and at painting a vision for why and how Redeemer has done what it's done, it's great.

Preaching and Preachers - Martyn Lloyd-Jones

The way I remember it, a few years ago someone did a survey of which books on preaching today's most respected preachers valued, and this one came top despite having been out of print for 20 years. So now it's back in print, sprinkled with essay-length commendations and appreciations from the likes of John Piper.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones's book was originally a series of lectures he gave on preaching in the late 60s, and the only book it really compares to is Spurgeon's Lectures to my Students. (For what it's worth, I'd rate Spurgeon slightly above P&P, but only slightly). Preachers & Preaching is like having a brilliant but utterly eccentric tutor. If you listen to him, you'll learn a lot, but some of what he says is quite batty. He has strong opinions on almost every imaginable topic, some of which are just odd (views on the shape of the roof of buildings and how it affects spiritual health of the congregation) and some of which are challenging and thought-provoking but probably wrong (why it is wrong to debate atheists).

I can see why so many great preachers value this book so highly though. It's really good, despite the quirky bits, and I've really been encouraged, challenged and built up by reading it! Strongly recommended...

And the Lamb Wins - Simon Ponsonby

This is a book-length version of Simon's St Aldate's School of Theology sessions on eschatology and the end times. It's clearly aimed at a bright undergraduate-level audience - he gives the histories of different theories on the millennium, for example. But if you can cope with that, it's very readable and a clear overview of a number of different aspects of end-times debate. He interacts with most of the main schools of thought, gives his own opinions and backs them up well. He probably succeeded in slightly changing my opinion on Israel, for example.

There are a couple of other areas I'd like to have seen him interact with - the nature of the final judgement for example, whether there is just one or two (works & faith?). But overall this is just about the best, sanest, most Biblically faithful handling of the end times I've read. I recently compared it with Randy Alcorn's Heaven, for example, and Alcorn is better on Heaven itself, but Ponsonby is clearer, more detailed and more rigorous in just about every other respect.

How conscious were the Old Testament authors of Christ?

There's a bit of a debate about preaching the Old Testament as Christian Scripture (which of course it is) - specifically whether we should preach as though the Old Testament authors knew they were writing about Jesus.

Here's an example of what I mean from the frequently excellent Glen Scrivener:

So how do we keep those two things together: Christ-focus and authorial intent? Only by saying that the OT in its own context is consciously a proclamation of Christ – His sufferings and glories. Without an insistence that the Hebrew Scriptures are already and intentionally Christian – without maintaining that ‘the lights are already on’ – then the “true and better” typology stuff will be good for a sermon or two, but it won’t transform our preaching or our churches.

Are "the Hebrew Scriptures already and intentionally Christian"? I don't think it's as simple as yes or no, and I'd like to illustrate it from three passages I've preached on in the last few months.

Psalm 44 - they can't be!

Psalm 44 is one of the darkest passages in the Old Testament. I don't think that the human author of Ps 44 can have been conscious of Christ when he was writing, otherwise he was being unfaithful.

In v1-8 the Psalmist looks back at God's past action in history, and praises him for it. It's centred on v4 - “You are my king and my God, who decrees victories for Jacob.”
v9-16 are then a series of accusations levelled at God – that it feels and looks like he has taken them to a charity shop and dumped them there.
v17-21 are the Psalmist pointing out that they had not done anything to deserve this punishment.
v23-26 are the Psalmist therefore asking God to wake up and help them because of his unfailing covenant love.

v22 is really interesting. “Yet for your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” There are definite echoes of all sorts of things, but the core idea is that the people are suffering and dying for God's sake – because of him. Perhaps it is opposition to them because they follow God faithfully, and he does not seem to be protecting them.

In Romans 8, Paul takes v22 and quotes it. He treats it as an example of the kind of sufferings which Christians experience in this life, and then goes on to say “No, in all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”

My point is this. I do not doubt that Psalm 44, rightly understood is about Jesus. It is really helpful to see it as a song that Jesus sings, speaking of his undeserved suffering for the sake of following God. It is wonderful to notice in v22 that even when we suffer like sheep to be slaughtered, we are following in the steps of the one who became like a sheep to be slaughtered for us. But a Christian take on it requires a stronger vision of God's final victory. All that Psalm 44 has is confidence in God's character on the basis of past action; it is a backward-looking faith rather than the resurrection faith which looks forwards to God's final victory and restoration of all things. That's why the way Paul uses Ps 44 in Romans 8 is so significant – Paul shows how the wonderful truths he has been writing about transform even the darkness of Psalm 44.

Psalm 45 – they must be!

The very next Psalm is a complete contrast in lots of ways. It is a wedding Psalm, which transforms the darkness and despondency of Ps 42-44 into the triumph and security of Ps 46-48. The first half of the Psalm (v2-9) are praising the king, and his language gets more and more exalted, famously reaching the heights of v6-7.

Your throne, O God, will last for ever and ever; a sceptre of justice will be the sceptre of your kingdom. You love righteousness and hate wickedness, therefore God, your God, has set you above your companions by anointing you with the oil of joy.

Some people try to weasel out of the king being called “God” here, generally unsuccessfully. Perhaps the best such suggestion is that v3-6 are a prayer to God, which happens to be in the middle of v2-9 addressing the king. But there's no textual evidence for it, and in any case Hebrews 1:8-9 treats it as a continuous section addressing Jesus.

At the very least, you end up with something like G.H. Wilson's position in the NIVAC commentary, where he argues that this Psalm was kept even in the exile because Israel were holding onto God's kingship and marriage to his people even after earthly kings and royal weddings had ceased. In any case, it looks very much as if the Psalmist sees through the earthly royal wedding he is writing for to the wedding of God and his people – of Christ and the Church.

Are "the Hebrew Scriptures already and intentionally Christian"?

I think the best way to answer this question is to recognise the dual authorship of the Scriptures. There is the human author (and sometimes editor too!), and there is the divine author. The same passage can be rightly attributed to both David and God, as with Psalm 110.

Given that, it makes perfect sense to say that for the divine author, the Hebrew Scriptures are already and intentionally Christian, since the author of them is God the Holy Trinity. Certainly to preach them in a way which does not point to Christ is to ignore their significance, and is a fundamentally non-Christian hermeneutic.

But are the Hebrew Scriptures already and intentionally Christian in the mind of the human author? I'd want to say “sometimes, but not always”. What does that mean for preaching? It means we have to work at it!

The third passage is Joshua 2, and I'll try to cover that next time...

Everything you know (about preaching) is wrong...

Looking back, I should have realised the first time I heard Charlie speak. Charlie is the minister of a large charismatic church near where I used to live. I've heard him preach half a dozen or so times. Charlie isn't the best preacher in the world. I mean, he's not a bad preacher but he doesn't do most of the things that I learned to do in preaching training. His structure is often unclear; it's sometimes hard to tell what his main point is, and so on. On a technical level, I know lots of people who are "better" preachers than Charlie, many of them not in full-time Christian work.

But when Charlie speaks, God really moves in the hearts and minds of the people who are listening. And I'll bet it's because Charlie prays, and prays a lot. On the level that actually matters, rather than the level we're taught to preach and evaluate sermons on, he's one of the best preachers I know.

I've been through theological college. I've been on conferences about how to preach. I've read quite a few books on the topic, and yet prayer is hardly mentioned. Just about the most recent book on preaching I've read which spent anywhere near enough time on prayer is Spurgeon's Lectures to My Students. Perhaps that is why we now see God moving so little through preaching.

It matters far more that we spend much time in prayer than that we spend much time in preparation, or in alliteration, sharpening or making our points memorable. As Andrew Murray wrote, there is no record of Jesus teaching his apostles to preach, but he did teach them to pray. Preaching is ultimately about God's work in the hearts of the hearers rather than our work in the mind of the preacher, so prayer must be the key.

This is Baxter's advice to preachers:

Above all, be much in secret prayer and meditation. Thence you must fetch the heavenly fire that must kindle your sacrifices... Therefore [before preaching] go then specially to God for life: read some rousing, awakening book, or meditate on the weight of the subject of which you are to speak, and on the great necessity of your people's souls, that you may go in the zeal of the Lord into his house... that every one who comes cold into the assembly may have some warmth imparted to him before he depart.
Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor, p.62-63

and Spurgeon's

Prayer is the best studying.
C.H. Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, p.90

And here's R.C. Sproul Jr on what we can tell about how to preach from Scripture:

The Bible is clear that there is power to change us in the preaching of the Word. We know we are to preach the Word, and not our own wisdom. We know we are to preach Christ, and Him crucified. That, however, doesn’t tell us everything. I confess that I could preach for days on how to preach a proper sermon, but I would run out of proof-texts the first hour.
from here

Why, oh why do we so often try to make preaching a human work? I am not doing down the importance of preparation and much skilful preparation, or of God's work through our work in preparation. But I suspect that we treat it far more as our work than God's, and should pray accordingly.

Spurgeon - Lectures to My Students - Quotes on Preaching

Here are some more excellent quotes from Spurgeon's Lectures to My Students, this time on the subject of preachers and preaching, but also including evangelism and apologetics...

Painfully do I call to mind hearing one Sabbath evening a deliverance called a sermon, of which the theme was a clever enquiry as to whether an angel did actually descend, and stir the pool at Bethesda, or whether it was an intermitting spring, concerning which Jewish superstition had invented a legend. Dying men and women were assembled to hear the way of salvation, and they were put off with such vanity as this! They came for bread, and received a stone ; the sheep looked up to the shepherd, and were not fed.
p.79

Some ministers need to be told that they are of the same species as their hearers.
p.183

But if you are drawn into controversy, use very hard arguments and very soft words.
p.188

Is religion to be tabooed the best and noblest of all themes forbidden? If this be the rule of any society, we will not comply with it. If we cannot break it down, we will leave the society to itself, as men desert a house smitten with leprosy. We cannot consent to be gagged. There is no reason why we should be. We will go to no place where we cannot take our Master with us.
p.189

It is to be hoped that we shall never, in our ordinary talk, any more than in the pulpit, be looked upon as nice sort of persons, whose business it is to make things agreeable all round, and who never by any possibility cause uneasiness to any one, however ungodly their lives may be.
p.189

The Importance of Prayer

I'm being really challenged at the moment about the importance of prayer. Just this morning, I was reminded from Ephesians 2 that by nature we are dead and objects of wrath. What hope therefore can there be for us to act in our own strength? What hope can there be that people will respond to preaching or to evangelism unless the Holy Spirit of God moves them. And if he moves us, how can we resist?

It is frequently a disappointment to me that so few books on preaching speak much about prayer. A great exception, of course is Spurgeon's Lectures to my Students.

If you can dip your pens into your hearts, appealing in earnestness to the Lord, you will write well ; and if you can gather your matter on your knees at the gate of heaven, you will not fail to speak well. Prayer, as a mental exercise, will bring many subjects before the mind, and so help in the selection of a topic, while as a high spiritual engage ment it will cleanse your inner eye that you may see truth in the light of God. Texts will often refuse to reveal their treasures till you open them with the key of prayer.

...

The minister who does not earnestly pray over his work must surely be a vain and conceited man. He acts as if he thought him self sufficient of himself, and therefore needed not to appeal to God. Yet what a baseless pride to conceive that our preaching can ever be in itself so powerful that it can turn men from their sins, and bring them to God without the working of the Holy Ghost. If we are truly humble-minded we shall not venture down to the fight until the Lord of Hosts has clothed us with all power, and said to us, " Go in this thy might." The preacher who neglects to pray much must be very careless about his ministry. He cannot have comprehended his calling. He cannot have computed the value of a soul, or estimated the meaning of eternity.

...

How much of blessing we may have missed through remissness in supplication we can scarcely guess, and none of us can know how poor we are in comparison with what we might have been if we had lived habitually nearer to God in prayer.

C.H. Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, chapter 3

Spurgeon Quotes on Ministry

I've just finished reading a biography of the great Victorian preacher CH Spurgeon, of which more to follow.

But here are a few quotes from the great man:

Whatever "call" a man may pretend to have, if he has not been called to holiness, he certainly has not been called to the ministry.
Lectures to my students, p.3

Better abolish pulpits than fill them with men who have no experimental knowledge of what they teach... He who presides over a system which aims at nothing higher than formalism, is far more a servant of the devil than a minister of God.
Lectures to my students, p.5

A man who has really within him the inspiration of the Holy Ghost calling him to preach, cannot help it - he must preach. As fire within his bones, so will that influence be, until it blazes forth...
Autobiography

Are churches in a right condition when they have only one meeting for prayer in a week, and that a mere skeleton?The Sword and the Trowel, August 1887

"Do not enter the ministry if you can help it," was the deeply sage advice of a divine to one who sought his judgment. If any student in this room could be content to be a newspaper editor, or a grocer, or a farmer, or a doctor, or a lawyer, or a senator, or a king, in the name of heaven and earth let him go his way...
Lectures to my students, p.23

True preaching is an acceptable adoration of God by the manifestation of his gracious attributes : the testimony of his gospel, which pre-eminently glorifies him, and the obedient hearing of revealed truth, are an acceptable form of worship to the Most High, and perhaps one of the most spiritual in which the human mind can be engaged.
Lectures to my students, p.54

Haddon Robinson - Expository Preaching

I read this book because a good friend who is also a good preacher strongly recommended it to me. And he was right to do so.

It is just about the best book I've read on how practically to prepare a sermon on a passage of the Bible. It's aimed at an introductory level, but so that it's thought-provoking and challenging for people who are used to it as well. If I was teaching someone to preach, or helping someone to preach better (unless there was a specific issue to deal with), this is just about the number 1 book I'd want them to read. When I was at theological college, I attended several lectures on preaching, and used to wonder how they could be done in such a way that would be accessible to people with a variety of different levels of experience and skill. This is how.

It allows for a variety of styles and outcomes, and acknowledges that good preachers often do things radically differently from the method he recommends for preparation, but it's good to hear how he'd do it, and I've found his method helpful for dealing with the task of writing a sermon when I don't feel in the mood to do so.

I might do a post in the future on how he recommends a sermon should be prepared...

The one thing I thought was a huge and dangerous omission is that he talks remarkably little about the importance of prayer for the preacher. Preaching is not something that is fundamentally our work - it is God's work through us, and while it is of course important to understand the passage and explain and expound it in a way that is relevant to the hearers, it is useless unless God speaks to their hearts by his Holy Spirit. Prayer should permeate the process of sermon preparation through and through. But if you assume that from the start, this gives you a good way to prepare a sermon which will proclaim God's Word faithfully, relevantly and hopefully challengingly.

Video Preachers

Krish Kandiah has started an interesting discussion about preachers at megachurches who video their sermons for use in other congregations.

It's long been something I've been uncomfortable with, but not been able to put my finger on precisely why not. Krish suggests 4 problems with the approach:

1. Cult of personality
2. Lack of feedback / communication
3. Lack of relationship
4. Consumer Church

I think I'd agree that all of those are definite dangers, but I'd push the "personality cult" point further than Krish does. Having video sermons seems to say that not only is the Main Preacher unusually gifted (which may well be true), but it makes it harder to raise up good secondary leaders, or even good primary leaders for other churches / to succeed the main leader.

Consider the following scenario:

A church has 4 main congregations on a Sunday, meeting in different venues. For the sake of unity, the church leader decides that they will all have the same passage on the same day. Main Preacher does 2 of them, and upcoming leaders do the other two. Main Preacher's job is then not only preparing the sermon, but also mentoring the two upcoming leaders in preaching. They do a significant fraction of their preparation together or in discussion with each other, but end up with finished products which are their own. This doesn't add significantly to the workload of Main Preacher, and means that the upcoming leaders get the benefit of being mentored by Main Preacher, improve quicker. After a few years, if they were already fairly gifted and worked hard, they would likely be able to preach at a similar standard to Main Preacher, and probably taking a style of their own, albeit one heavily influenced by Main Preacher, and the result is greater multiplication of the ministry.

If these upcoming leaders are (for example) people who already know how to preach and are fairly gifted in it, that looks like a much better way of doing it in the long term.

I should add that I've got a lot of respect for John Piper, Mark Driscoll et al, and I'm sure they've got good reasons for doing it. I just don't see what those reasons are, and would be interested to know...

On the other hand, I'm aware that the church I'm a minister at does use video sermons from time to time as a way to give staff a month or so off preaching. That seems like a good idea, as long as it isn't regular...

Kent & Barbara Hughes Liberating Ministry from the Success Syndrome

This book was given to me as a Christmas present, and I've greatly enjoyed reading it over the last few weeks. It's basically about how the most important thing in ministry is staying close to God rather than growth in numbers and so on. I've found it very good for devotional reading.

The book itself is very good - some of the quotes from other writers are outstanding.

Someone once asked George MacDonald why, if God loves us so much and knows everything we need before we ask, must we pray. MacDonald's magnificent answer remains wonderfully instructive.

What if he knows prayer to be the thing we need first and most? What if the main object in God's idea of prayer be the supplying of our great, our endless need - the need of himself? What if the good of all our smaller and lower needs lies in this, that they help drive us to God? Communion with God is the one need of the soul beyond all other needs; prayer is the beginning of that communion.

(p.72)

(quoting Malcolm Muggeridge)

If it were ever possible to eliminate affliction from our earthly existence by means of some drug or other medical mumbo-jumbo, as Aldous Huxley envisaged in Brave New World, the result would not be to make life delectable but to make it too banal and trivial to be endurable.

(p.121)

GK Chesterton once described a paradox as "truth standing on its head crying for attention."

(p.138)

(quoting Bruce Thieleman)

The pulpit calls those anointed to it as the sea calls its sailors; and like the sea it batters and bruises, and does not rest... To preach, to really preach, is to die naked a little at a time, and to know each time that you must do it again.

(p.183)

Roy Clements

By my own reckoning, I reckon I've preached about 50 times now. And on Sunday, I did something I'd never done before. I reworked someone else's sermon and preached it. Now I reworked it and reapplied it so it was clearly in my own style, and I was quite open about what I was doing.

In this case, the passage in question was Psalm 42-43, and the preacher whose sermon I reworked was Roy Clements. (Of course, he was largely reworking a sermon on the same passage by D.M. Lloyd-Jones.) I'd been doing work on the passage, and realised I couldn't do better than Roy's exegesis, which had really helped me in the past. And lots of people found the sermon helpful, just as I thought and prayed they would.

And this got me thinking a bit. Roy was an uncommonly gifted preacher - he was a Baptist, but when I was at Anglican theological college nearly 10 years after his fall from grace, three Anglican ordinands cited him as the best preacher they'd ever heard. But after he left his wife for another man, he fell massively out of favour overnight, and all his books stopped being printed. For a while he maintained a web presence as a gay evangelical Christian (which I checked on occasionally), but in the last few years, he seems to have dropped off the radar even more.

[For what it's worth, I think it was wrong of publishers to stop printing his books - the books themselves weren't changed by any later mistakes made by the man. And I think him leaving his wife for another woman would have been just as bad.]

God gives his people gifts, to be used for the building up of the church. And they aren't earned, they are gifts, though they can be improved by hard work and prayer. And God can use those gifts for the building up of his kingdom, whoever he gives them to.

But in terms of ministry, we need godliness. We need to watch ourselves and guard ourselves carefully. Because God doesn't need us - he can give our gifts to others, and he can use our gifts without us. And his gifts don't protect us from falling away.

Becoming Like Little Children

Then people brought little children to Jesus for him to place his hands on them and pray for them. But the disciples rebuked them.

Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these." When he had placed his hands on them, he went on from there.

Matthew 19:13-15, TNIV

Many preachers I know tend to ignore these verses. Possibly that is because they do not see many resemblances between themselves - rushed off their feet, always trying to stir others into action, wanting to see God's church grow – and little children. And these really are very little. The word used - paidion - really means “infant”, but can be used of bigger dependent children. Here, they are brought to Jesus, which suggests they aren't really mobile yet. In a description of the same event, Luke uses the word brephos which clearly means “baby”.

Probably the majority of sermons I have heard on these verses (and on the parallel passages – Mark 10:13-16 and Luke 18:15-17) tend to focus not on what Jesus meant when he said this, but on what the preacher would have meant if they had said it. So they look at what babies mean to them, and from that examine what it means to receive the kingdom of heaven as a little child. (It's pretty much the same as happens when they speak about people being the salt of the earth – they don't look at what salt means in the Bible and what it would have meant to the hearers; they just think about what it means to them or used to mean to people 500 years ago. Incidentally, salt in the Bible tends to either represent the covenant or be about God bringing judgement.)

Some people do a good job at looking at the context, particularly in Mark and Luke, and get the idea that it's about holding onto God and not seeking to get into heaven on the basis of what we do. And that's certainly true, but I think we can do better.

So what did Jesus mean?

We get a very big hint because Matthew 19:13-15 isn't the first time Matthew has mentioned little children. A chapter earlier, we get this...

At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, "Who, then, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?"

He called a little child, whom he placed among them. And he said: "Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes a humble place — becoming like this child — is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.

"If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them if a large millstone were hung around their neck and they were drowned in the depths of the sea..."

Matthew 18:1-6, TNIV

Jesus uses talking about little children as a springboard for discussing “kingdom ethics”. But what he says first is that we need to repent and become like children, and that what matters specifically is humbling oneself like the child. Now I don't tend to think of children as especially humble. I certainly wasn't especially humble as a child. But in a culture where children had a lower status, it means more. Specifically, I think what Jesus is talking about here is becoming like a child in terms of rejection of status, and rejection of trusting in ourselves.

We see that in the way that the becoming like a child stories in Matthew 19, Mark 10 and Luke 18 are all linked to the Rich Young Ruler, whose problem was that he was holding onto his wealth and his status. Jesus applies the need to become like a little child by telling the rich young man that he needed to give all his money away. That was what it meant for him.

Strikingly, and this was what got me thinking about this question originally, we see the same sort of thing in Psalm 131.

My heart is not proud, O LORD,
my eyes are not haughty;
I do not concern myself with great matters
or things too wonderful for me.
But I have stilled and quieted my soul;
like a weaned child with its mother,
like a weaned child is my soul within me.

O Israel, put your hope in the LORD
both now and forevermore.

Psalm 131, TNIV

Once again, the being like a child (this is a different word, specifically to do with being weaned) is connected to humility. But also to contentment. The weaned child is calm, and does not have any ambitions beyond being with its mother. Likewise, becoming like a child for us means rejection of ambitions, rejection of status, and simply being content to be with God. And actually, isn't that what Jesus did? He laid down all of his status, to the point of dying on a cross, and was content merely to do his Father's will.

Sadly, with the busyness of life, that is a place that many preachers find it hard to be. We have too many ambitions and plans, even if they are ambitions for God's church, and not enough contentment and becoming like little children.

I suggest reading through Psalm 131 slowly a few times, and praying through it, as a good start to a remedy.

Fernando - Radical Preaching

In my visits to the west, the most common response I hear to sermons is something to the effect: "I enjoyed that sermon." Sermons should disturb, convict, and motivate to radical and costly obedience. I have wondered whether people's desired result from sermons is to enjoy themselves rather than to be changed into radical disciples who will turn the world upside down. If this is so, the church has assimilated the postmodern mood that considers inner feelings more important than commitment to principles... Such a church may grow numerically, but it would not be able to produce the type of missionaries that the world needs - men and women who will pay the price of identification with the people they serve and endure the frustrations that involves.
Ajith Fernando, Jesus Driven Ministry, p.23

I think it's important to point out though, that our ultimate enjoyment is most found in the sort of radical discipleship Fernando talks about. The real distinction is between short-term pleasure in wordly comfort and delight in God, both long-term and short-term (as Piper). The distinction is one of faith.

Links for Preachers

There are some useful links here for preachers...

Theological Accuracy and Authenticity

Often, what we look for in sung worship is "authenticity" - we want it to be genuine and to sound as if it is emotionally consonant with the sentiments expressed and what we should be feeling. And what we look for in preaching is often theological accuracy and soundness.

 

But it occurs to me that actually, the reverse is probably more important. Songs and hymns are the best way to learn theology, because the words stick in our minds in a way that just doesn't happen with sermons (well, usually - I can think of a few exceptions). The things we believe are heavily affected by the words we sing, so it is important for them to be theologically accurate. And (as Jonathan Edwards said) the key thing about preaching is the response it produces in the hearer at the time, and the transformation it effects in their life by the power of the Holy Spirit. So authenticity in preachers is essential too.

 

Of course, what is really needed is both theological accuracy and authenticity in both spoken word and song...

J.C. Ryle on Preaching

Some quotes from "Christian Leaders of the 18th Century by J.C. Ryle.

No-one can be a good preacher to the people who is not willing to preach in a manner that seems childish and vulgar to some.
(Attributed to Martin Luther)

You must speak from the heart if you wish to speak to the heart.

Redirecting the Message of the Gospel

As long as I can discover no connection between the Gospel and the problems of my life, then it has nothing to say to me and I am not interested. And that is precisely why the Gospel must be preached afresh and told anew in every generation, since every generation has its own unique questions. This is why the Gospel must constantly be forwarded to a new address, because the recipient is repeatedly changing his place of residence... In short, if the basic questions of life have shifted, then I must redirect the message of the Gospel. Otherwise I am answering questions that have never been asked. And, upon hearing such answers, my opposite number will just shake his head and say 'that's no concern of mine. It has nothing to do with me.
Thielecke, How Modern Should Theology Be?

Jesus and Amos 8

I was preaching on Amos 8 the other day. At first sight, it's a really dark and bleak passage, with lots of judgement and not much else. What really struck me, although this doesn't appear heavily in any of the commentaries I looked at, is that the chapter is all about Jesus. Here's the big judgement section from Amos 8.

The LORD has sworn by the Pride of Jacob: "I will never forget anything they have done.

"Will not the land tremble for this,
and all who live in it mourn?
The whole land will rise like the Nile;
it will be stirred up and then sink
like the river of Egypt.

"In that day," declares the Sovereign LORD,
"I will make the sun go down at noon
and darken the earth in broad daylight.

I will turn your religious feasts into mourning
and all your singing into weeping.
I will make all of you wear sackcloth
and shave your heads.
I will make that time like mourning for an only son
and the end of it like a bitter day.

"The days are coming," declares the Sovereign LORD,
"when I will send a famine through the land—
not a famine of food or a thirst for water,
but a famine of hearing the words of the LORD.

Men will stagger from sea to sea
and wander from north to east,
searching for the word of the LORD,
but they will not find it.

"In that day
"the lovely young women and strong young men
will faint because of thirst.
They who swear by the shame of Samaria,
or say, 'As surely as your god lives, O Dan,'
or, 'As surely as the god of Beersheba lives'—
they will fall,
never to rise again."

Amos 8:8-14, NIV

Several things strike me. On a minor theology note, for example, according to most liberal scholars this is one of the earliest written passages in the entire Bible, but it still has a lot of features of the apocalyptic prophecy which isn't meant to be invented for another few hundred years...

But more importantly, here are the main features of God's judgement in the passage:

• Earth shaking
• Sky going dark at midday
• Religious feasts turned into mourning for an only son
• Famine of hearing the words of the Lord
• Strong young people fainting because of thirst

All of those happened when Jesus was on the cross. Jesus truly is the one who bears God's judgement for us.

More Quotes

We must not talk to our congregations as if we were half asleep. Our preaching must not be articulate snoring.
C.H. Spurgeon

So right! If we are not interested and engaged in what we are saying, how can we expect our congregations to be? (And why is that so rarely taught?)

The task of every generation is to discover in which direction the Sovereign Redeemer is moving, then move in that direction.
Jonathan Edwards

Edwards sounding remarkably charismatic there...

Quotes on Preaching

To expound a Scripture is to bring out of a text what is there and expose it to view... The opposite of exposition is imposition, which is to impose on the text what is not there.
Stott, I Believe in Preaching.

My endeavour is to bring out of Scripture what is there and not to thrust in what I think might be there. I have a great jealousy on this head: never to speak more or less than I believe to be the mind of the Spirit in the passage I am expounding.
Charles Simeon.

Jesus taught profound truths in very simple ways, sadly today we do the exact opposite. We teach simple truths in profound ways, and a lot of the time we think we are being deep but we are just being muddy. Spurgeon wrote, 'A sermon is like a well. If there is anything in it, it appears bright and reflecting and luminous. But if there is nothing in it, it's deep and dark and mysterious...
J. John, Preach the Word

Preaching is not the proclamation of a theory, or the discussion of a doubt. A man has a perfect right to proclaim a theory of any sort, or to discuss his doubts. But that is not preaching. “Give me the benefit of your convictions, if you have any” said Goethe. We are never preaching when we are hazarding speculations. Of course we do so. We are bound to speculate sometimes. (but) ... Preaching is the proclamation of the Word, the truth and the truth has been revealed.
Campbell Morgan