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- our father, we thank you that you'vegathered so many people here to learn how to understand your word and learn of yourword, learn how to communicate your word here at this gospel coalition conferencethis year. thanks for bringing us here safely. thanks for the innumerableinteractions that strengthen our hearts, strengthen our relationships, strengthenour ties with you and with each other. thanks for the instruction that's going onright now, especially. i pray not only for us here, but for all the workshops, thatyou would help us to stir each other up to love and good works, iron sharpening iron,learning, having the word of god dwell on us richly. we pray that this would happenin all these various workshops and
classes. we ask it in jesus' name. amen. okay. i'm glad to be with you. this issupposed to be a workshop. isn't that a laugh, with this many people? however, i'mgoing to do this. i'm going to give you a talk, a lecture, and then, even thoughonly a very tiny percentage and probably the most pathologically extroverted of youwill have an opportunity to ask questions. we will have some mics up front. there'squite a lot of you, and the ones who want to ask questions should, because it's justso boring to listen to somebody talk for an hour. i want you to be able to drilldown on some things that you hear and get a little more information.
so preaching to the heart, the subject.alec motyer, in his great little book, "preaching?" alec motyer is an oldtestament scholar and an expository preacher. he's british or irish, i think.he's, i think, in his 90s now and written a great little book on expositorypreaching. in the book, he says this. he says that"preachers have not one, but two responsibilities, first to the truth, andsecondly to the particular group of people in front of you. how will they best hearthe truth? how are we to shape and phrase it, so it comes home to them in a way thatis palatable, that gains the most receptive hearing and avoidsneedless hurt?"
so what motyer says is if you want tobe- if you're a communicator of the bible, you've got two responsibilities.you've got a responsibility to the truth, to hold it up, to present it accurately,to make sure you're expanding the text, but you also have a responsibility to thepeople. you need to give them the truth in a way that changes them, that, as he putsit, that you give them the truth in a way they can best hear it, in a way that itcan most shape and phrase. you can shape and phrase it so that it comeshome to them. now, if this is the case, and i think itis, most of our teaching and most of our books on preaching and exposition arefairly unbalanced. almost always, the
books give almost all the time isdedicated to how do you expound the text, how do you understand the truth. there might be a chapter on application ora chapter on preaching to the heart, but even though alec motyer rightly says youbasically have two tasks, be true to the truth and be true to the people that arein front of you, we actually don't spend that much time talking about how do youbring the truth home in a way that actually changes lives. it's one of the reasons why an awful lotof our expository preaching isn't very life-changing. there's not a great dealof- there really isn't a lot of great
stuff written about how to preachto the heart. sinclair ferguson has a chapter in thebook, "feed my sheep." there's a book called "feed my sheep: passionate plea forpreaching." it's an older book, good book. sinclair's got a chapter in therecalled "preaching to the heart." sam logan has a book, pardon me, has achapter in the book, "the preacher and preaching." this is very confusing, bythe way. lloyd jones wrote a book called "preaching and preachers," but there wasalso a book put together by westminster seminary faculty, back in the 1980s,called "the preacher and preaching." in that book, sam logan wrote a chaptercalled "the phenomenology of preaching,"
which is basically on preachingto the heart. there's a new book by josh moody and robinweeks, called "preaching to the heart, " i think, or "preaching to the affections,"i think it's called. but by and large, we haven't spent much time on it. now, so i would like to give you anoverview of why it's important to preach to the heart and how you do it. i'm gonnaprobably constantly be thinking about, because i am, i'm gonna be constantlythinking about working preachers who are preaching every sunday, but this is-what i'm about to tell you, i hope, is gonna fit anybody who communicates thebible, whether you teach the bible, lead
bible studies, teach, preach. i think thisshould be broadly applicable in many ways. so just a couple ideas on why it'simportant to preach to the heart. the biblical understanding of heart is justunique in human thought. the greeks and the romans, the ancients, understood thatthe passions were connected to the body, but the mind, the reason, and the willwere connected to the soul. basically they believed that virtue was amatter of, literally, mind over matter. that is, if you wanted to be a person ofloyalty, if you wanted to be a person of courage, if you wanted to have any virtueat all, what it meant was you stifled the emotions. the reason needed to control theemotions, and that was a virtuous person.
so the ancients always pitted the thinkingand the feelings against each other, and the thinking needed to squelch and keepdown the feelings. that's what produced a virtuous person. however, on the otherhand, modern thought has reversed that. we live in what charles taylor calls the ageof authenticity, and we believe that the most important thing is that you look intoyour heart and see what your deepest feelings are and your deepest desires anddreams, and you fulfill them. so we do the same thing today, in ourmodern society. we now, however, have reversed things. it's your feelings thatare the true you. the ancient greeks and the romans thought your feelings was thefalse you. they had to do with your body.
they weren't the true you. they weren'tpart of the spirit. so they pitted mind versus the feelings.modern people do that too, except they reverse it. you have to let it go. youcan't hold it back anymore. i've been told all my life, i mustn't feel. i have toconceal. all right. right? that would be a great song. wouldn't it? three billionpeople would hear me sing that on youtube. in other words, we have always pitted, youmight say, the mind and the emotions. it used to be the mind was more importantthan emotions. today, the emotions are more important than the mind. the bible'sunderstanding of the heart is completely different, and it's not halfway in themiddle. it's off the charts.
why? as you have often heard, and imentioned this yesterday, the biblical understanding of the heart is that theheart is the seat, not so much of the emotions, but it is the seat of what youtrust the most, what you are committed to the most. trust in the lord with all yourheart. proverbs 3. where your treasure is, there is your heart. matthew 6. what we're talking about is the thing orthe things that you most trust in, hope in, the things that most capture yourimagination, that you face, the center of your attention, the center of yourcommitments, your main commitments. whatever those things are affect yourmind, your will, and your emotions. so
whatever your heart trusts in the mostaffects not only your emotions. it also affects your thinking. so in some ways, the heart is the seat ofthe mind, the will, and the emotions because it's coming from the trusts. thisis the reason why, when st. augustine wrote "the confessions," it was like abomb dropped. no one in history had ever seen anything like the book of "theconfessions." the reason is because st. augustine wasspending his time looking at his past and figuring out his emotions. so in the past,in ancient times, nobody ever spent any kind of time thinking about your emotions.emotions were things to be ignored or to
be squelched. here's augustine, siftingthem. now many people have said augustine, therefore, was the first modern person,but yes and no. there's a long story there.because today, we don't do what augustine was doing either. augustine was beingbiblical because he was saying, "no, you don't squelch the emotions or ignore them.on the other hand, you don't just vent the emotions and express them. you sift theemotions. you evaluate the emotions, and then you redirect the emotionstoward god." it's not like the emotions and the heart.because obviously, by the way, the heart does include emotions. it's not less thanthe emotions. it's more, but it's not
less. emotions are not great, and they'renot terrible. they're not unimportant. they're not all important. they need to bedirected toward god. what that means is what you really are isbasically what you love the most. using the word love here is not just an emotion.essentially it's not your beliefs, at least not the beliefs you subscribe to,that actually makes you what you are. it's what your heart trusts in, what your heartloves the most. you can say, "i believe in god. god isthis, and god is this, and god is this." yeah, your heart is basically based inyour career. we all know how that works. your heart is actually trusting in career.your mind is saying, "no, no, no. i trust
in jesus for my salvation. i trust injesus for this and that and all. " but where is your heart? jonathan edwards, who was a greataugustinian, therefore, said that if you're gonna be thoroughly biblical, youmust not pit knowledge and feeling against each other. if you say, "i know i shouldbe generous with my money, but i'm just not doing it," he would say, "well,there's a sense in which you know what you should do, but you're not doing it, butthere's another sense in which you don't really know what you should do."let me give you an example. excuse me. i'm better than i was yesterday, but not asbetter as i'd like it to be. when i was a
pastor in virginia, many years ago, i hada young girl in my church. she was about 15 years old, i guess. she was discouraged. she was depressed,often. at one point, the family was a prominent family in the church. i tried tohelp the family with her. at one point, she came into my study, and we weretalking. being a young minister, i was a little bit naive, and i said, "how areyou?" she was downcast. i said, "well, you're a christian. aren'tyou?" "oh, yes. i'm a christian." "christians have many blessings. don'tthey?" "oh, yes. we do." so we counted the blessings a little bit, about thegreat things that, as a christian, she
could count on and she knew was happeningthere and all those great things in her life. but at one point, i said, "so you're stilldepressed." she said... i tried to encourage her, but here's what she said,almost literally, "yes. i know that jesus loves me. i know he saved me, and i knowhe's gonna take me to heaven. but what good is all that when not a single boy atschool will even look at you?" i don't know why more of you aren'tlaughing at that. what she was saying was, "yeah, i'm saved. yes, i'm going to heavenforever. yes, i'm a daughter of the king. yes, i'm gonna be glorified. i'mjustified, sanctified, glorified, and all
that. but you know what? i'm in ninthgrade, tenth grade, and there's not a single boy will ask me out." now, here's what jonathan edwards wouldsay. he would say she had the opinion that god loved her, but she had no realknowledge that god loved her, because the love of boys was more real to her heartthan the love of god, or she wouldn't have been depressed.so in one sense, you could say what she just needed to be told... well, what didshe need to be told? see, what edwards would say is she needed to be shown thelove of god in such a way that it began to get more real to her heart, and it beganto balance out how popular
she was or unpopular she was. some years ago . . . one more before italk about how to do it. some years ago, i had a relative who neverwould wear a seat belt. every time i talked to him, he would get in the car,and he wouldn't wear his seat belt, and we all would nag him about wearing a seatbelt. all right. he put his seat belt on. one day, we went to see him. he got in thecar and put his seat belt on right away. we said, "what happened to you?" he said,"well, " he said, "i went to a friend of mine. a couple weeks ago, i went to see afriend of mine in the hospital. he was in a car crash, and he went through thewindshield. he had like 200 stitches in
his face. for some strange reason, eversince then, i've been having no problem buckling up." i talked to him a little bit about that.what was interesting going on was i said, "well, did you get new information? whatchanged you? did you not know that people go through the windshield? what happenedwas an abstract proposition became connected to an actual sensory experience,that is something he saw. there's some place where jonathan edwards,the whole idea behind preaching to the heart. at some point, where jonathanedwards says, "it's only when you attach. it's only when you actually attach anabstract truth to some kind of sensory
experience that you've had, or at leastthe memory of a sensory experience that you've had" i'm gonna show you how to dothis in a second. something that you know is true becomesreal to you. the point of preaching to the heart is to take abstract truth and tomake it real to people's heart, so that they are changed. a lot of us would like it if people tooknotes from our sermons or our talks, and then went out into the world and startedto change their life. but what i'm telling you is, jonathan edwards never spoke thatmuch about preaching. but in one of his books, "thoughts on revival," he actuallysays about preaching that preaching does
not change you by giving peopleinformation, that then they go out and practice as much as. it changes youthrough the impression it's made during the sermon. what he means is this. if that girl issitting under preaching, that 16-year-old girl who's, by the way, probably in her50s now, but anyway, that 16-year-old girl is sitting under preaching, and the loveof god, through jesus christ, in a sermon, becomes so vividly real to her and startsto affect her. we're talking about the affections. it starts to penetrate to theheart. she starts to say, "why am i all thatupset about whether this or that stupid
boy like me or not, when i've got thiskind of love?" when that sort of thing starts happening in her heart, she's beingchanged on the spot. she's being changed during the sermon. she's being changedbecause the preaching has reached her heart. so as alec motyer said- i started the talkthis way. what alec motyer is trying to say, it's not enough for you to take atext and say, "okay. i need to show that this text teaches that jesus christsacrificed for us and loved us with a costly love." that's the text.it's not enough just to say, "i need to expound that accurately. "i need to bring that home to people's
hearts in such a way that it changes themin the seats. so their hearts are affected by it, and the other things that are morereal to their heart than the love of jesus become. jesus' love starts at this place. so that's what i mean by preaching to theheart. how do you do it? let me suggest, believe it or not - oh, boy.i'm gonna be fast. you can ask questions. in fact, you're gonna complainafterwards because you need more information about everything i'm about totell you, but we only have an hour. this is the best we can do. but i would say, in order to preach to theheart, you need to preach culturally,
affectionately, imaginatively,practically, wondrously, and christocentrically. okay. so there's twoways to go from here. one is to do an hour on each of these, but probably i can't. sothe other is to do just a few minutes on each of these. okay. what do i mean by culturally? let's just say if you'reevangelical parents, and you've got a 14 or 15-year-old boy orgirl, and one day, you're talking to them, and suddenly the 15-year-old girls says toyou this, says, "you know, i'm not really sure there's anything really wrong withtwo people having sex if they really love
each other. i wouldn't do it, of course,mom or dad, but i just don't think there's anything wrong with two people having sexif they love each other." now what are you gonna do? you're probably- your response is gonnabe, "that's not what the bible says, " and go after them, go after the girl, alsoknowing that when she says, "i wouldn't do it, but i don't think there's anythingwrong with it," you know she's gonna do it. if she says that,"i wouldn't do it, but there's nothing wrong with it," she'sgonna do it. so how do you do that? how do you go after that? now, if you say, :i'mgonna show you what the bible says. "
okay. absolutely. totally. must do that. but i can tell you, almost certainly, that15-year-old girl will start to experience, as you're talking about what the biblesays... the 15-year-old girl will start to experience mego. do you know what mego is?m-e-g-o? my eyes glaze over. no? mego is, "my eyes glaze over." you can tell, asyou're talking to her, she's tuning out. you know why? because there are culturalnarratives that are deeply imbedded. they have come into her life actually throughsongs and advertising. those cultural narratives are the reasonwhy the statement, "if two people love each other, they should be able to havesex. " why does that statement make sense?
it makes sense because of the deepernarratives. i'll give you three. there's the identity narrative. theidentity narrative is you've got to be yourself. in traditional cultures,identity is formed like this. you are a good person if you sublimate yourindividual desires for the good of the family. but in our society, identity is formedexactly the opposite. you're not an authentic person unless you look into yourheart and decide what you want to be and what you want to do, and you assert yourindividual interests over against what anybody else says. that's the only heroicnarrative left. that's in virtually every
single sitcom. it's every single movie.it's every cartoon. in other words, the only heroic narrative left is you figureout who you want to be, and then you don't let anybody tell you not to be that.unless you go after that, unless you show that christianity has a better thing tooffer than that, unless you show that that's incoherent and unstable and a shamand doesn't really work, unless you do that regularly in your preaching, thenthey are gonna think, "hey, what's wrong with actually two people loving each otherand having sex?" another narrative.that's the identitynarrative. the second narrative is the truth narrative. only i have the right todecide what is right or wrong for me and
what is true for me. a lot of, by the way,college students who are strong evangelical college students are stillgonna tell me, "well, i believe in christianity. i believe in jesus, but ihave no right to tell anybody else what they should believe." now when you say that, what is that? youwant to look at them and say, "you just said something to me that makes no senseat all, and yet you're saying it as if it's a given, as if it's an unassailable,unquestionable truth." no one has the right to tell anybody else howthey should live. first of all, you just did that to me, youhypocrite. you just did it to me, which
shows the very idea is self-contradictory.it doesn't work at all. you use it selectively. in other words, unless youknow how to go after these baseline cultural narratives, these deeper culturalnarratives, with the scripture, as well as with common sense, in many cases, unlessyou know how to go after the cultural narratives regularly, people's heartsaren't gonna be reached. to a great degree, our hearts are shapedby what the culture tells us, and we don't understand that. a thousand years ago, ifyou're an anglo-saxon warrior, and you walk around, and you see, deep in yourheart, an impulse, you know what that impulse is? let's just say1000 years, ago, there's
this anglo-saxon warrior. he's walkingaround, and he notices, in his heart, a really deep impulse. you know what theimpulse is? he just likes to kill people. if they get in his way, he just likes tosmash them. okay. he looks at that, and he says, "that's great," because he's livingin a shame-and-honor culture. he's living in a warrior culture. but if you're walking around orlando, ifyou're a young man and walking around orlando, and you look in your heart, andyou happen to see this desire to kill people, you go to therapy. you go to angermanagement, or you go to prison. basically your culture tells you that's abad feeling. whereas 1000 years ago, the
culture told you that was a good feeling.so we tend to think we're looking at our feelings, and we're just expressing ourfeelings. no, no, no. we're taking grids that our culture tells us that we have tobring down on our hearts, through which we're evaluating our feelings asgood or bad. you have to show people. let the bible dothat. otherwise, you're a slave to your culture, and you think you're free. that'show this culture operates. it makes you a slave to its ideals, under the headingthat you're free. do you know how to do that? in your preaching, you have to dothat, or you're not gonna reach hearts. they're just gonna go mego. my eyes aregonna glaze over. that's culturally.
secondly, affectionately. if you want topreach to the heart, you have to preach from the heart. if you want to preach tothe heart, you have to preach from the heart. that's not as easy as you think.what i mean by that is to reach the heart, to preach from the heart, means - i'llcall it this. there needs to be a non-deliberate transparency about you.people need to be able to see, as you're speaking, that somehow the very trues thatyou're talking about have repaired you, have mended you, mean the world to you.now one of the problems i see is the alternatives to non-deliberatetransparency are three. one is flat affect. some people just speak with flataffect. they're just going through their
notes, and that's certainly not gonnareach anybody's heart. we all know that. but there's a lot of other people who arejust excitable. you know? they're just excitable. they start off talking likethis, and all the way through, they're just like this. they're just passionateabout everything, and it's not transparent. it is. it literally is. it'sexcitability. it's like you're psyching yourself up. you're putting onyour game face. people do not sense they're looking intoyour heart and seeing a person who's a trophy of grace, someone who's beenrepaired by grace, someone who's been wounded and humbled and no longer has anyneed to put on a show. that's what people
are. that's what moves people. i'm afraid a lot of us are too, frankly,too afraid, too aware of what kind of impression we're making, working too hardat trying to really be good, in fact, working too hard at trying to bepassionate. if you're trying to be passionate, almost always, that means thatthrough the whole sermon, you're just like, it's the same level of excitability.you're just like this the whole way through. i remember some years ago. i remember thefirst time i went to visit a friend of mine. he became an elder of my church. helived in a house that literally was 10
feet from the railroad track, literally. iknew that, but it didn't occur to me. anyway, we went, and we were sitting inthe living room. all of a sudden, the train came by. it really, literally, feltlike it was coming through the roof. it was just scary. i remember i went likethis. he laughed, and he said, "we've lived here for 20 years, and we don't evenhear the train anymore. we don't even hear it." well, that's what'sgonna happen. if you try to be passionate, whenever you speak,you're passionate. from the beginning, from the opening bell to the end, you'repassionate. maybe at the end, you get a little more passionate. it's just gonna belike a train coming through. they're just-
if every single time, you're passionateall the way through, basically people have got to see that when you get to certainplaces, where the text is saying things that have really, really, really changedyour life, i don't know. you slow down. you just show it. that's non-deliberatetransparency. well, i've spent too much time on this. if you're gonna preach to the heart, yougot to preach from the heart. by the way, there's two things you need if you'regonna preach like that. number one, you got to know your material. one of thereasons why we aren't able to be transparent is that we're worried aboutwhat's coming next. you got to know your
material cold, so that you can haveemotional transparency. otherwise, you are excitable, because you're just trying tokeep the ball rolling. you're trying to remember what comes next. you need to know your material cold, andyou need to have incredibly good prayer life, and you need to actually have thegospel repair you. a lot of you are gonna say, "well, this is no good. i was hopingfor something practical, something i could put into practice this week." you can putthis into practice, this lifetime, but not this week. second, imaginatively. no, third. are wethird? yes, third, imaginatively. now,
i've already referred to this, but i'lljust give you some quick examples. jonathan edwards is the master here.jonathan edwards believed in the importance of what he would call theimage. that's what you and i call illustration. see, a story is anillustration, and many people say, "use stories in your sermon. that'll help."by the way, stories are good, but a story is only one version of an illustration.let me give you another example of an illustration. i'll give you four,actually, real quick. when jonathan edwards says, in "sinners inthe hands of an angry god," when he says, "all your righteousness would have noinfluence to uphold you and keep you out
of hell." let me say that again. all ofyour righteousness has no influence to uphold you or keep you out of hell. what is he saying? that's a very importantdoctrinal statement. he is saying, basically, there's no salvation throughworks. he says all of your righteousness could not uphold you or keep you out ofhell, no matter how hard you try. your best deeds will not keep you out of hell.right? but it's an abstraction, but it doesn't stop there. this is what he says. "all yourrighteousness would have no influence to keep you out of hell, anymore than aspider's web could stop a falling rock."
that's how he ends the sentence, "anymore than a spider webcan stop a falling rock." now the point is we all know somethingabout a spider web. if a rock comes down and hits a spider web, it doesn't bounce.you know? here's a spider web. the rock comes through. it doesn't go- no. it goes,it's as if the spider web is not there. if a rock is coming down through a spiderweb, it's like the spider web is not even there. the rock doesn't stop at all. whata very interesting illustration. it's a sensory experience. that is, it'ssomething we've actually seen and felt, connected to the abstract doctrine. sowhat it does is it gets across very
vividly, the fact that your good deedswill in no way keep you out of hell. what he's doing is he's bringing two fields ofdiscourse together, or he's connecting an abstract doctrine with something that youexperience through your body, through your senses, through your eyes or your fingers.basically that's what an illustration does. it takes something that you may knowis true, but by connecting it to the memory of a sense experience, it makes itfeel more real. god himself- i won't give you four examples, but godhimself gives us an example when he says, for example, in genesis 4:7. he comes tocain. god comes to cain, and he says- well, basically in chapter four, god comesto cain because he sees cain depressed.
his face has fallen, and he sees themurderous thoughts in his heart toward abel. he comes to him, and he basically issaying to cain, "sin is gonna get you into trouble." that's not what god says.here's what god says. "sin is crouching at your door. it desires to have you, but youmust master it." interesting? what god is doing is he's likening sin toa crouching tiger, hidden dragon. he's likening sin to an animal. he says, "sinis crouching at your door. it's desires to have you." it's very interesting. what he's trying to say is sin is a darkreality in our lives. if you sin, it means
that you bring something that's going toeat you, into your life. it's gonna distort your emotions. it's gonna darkenyour eyes. it's gonna create patterns of habit that you can't break. it's remarkable because, of course, whatgod is doing is he's taking- the idea of a crouching panther or a leopard or apredatory animal. have you ever seen- we all probably, at certain points in ourlives, have seen a predatory animal pounce on a little bird or something like thatand destroy it. god is saying sin is like that. you give sin aninch in your life, and that's what- that's god doing it. god'susing a sermon illustration.
so you better do it. see, unless you do that, the heart is notreached. what's important here is, yeah, stories are important, but word picturesare just as important. to say, "your good deeds cannot keep you out of hell, anymore than a spider web can stop a falling rock," that's not a story, but it is apowerful illustration. if you read edwards, you'll see thatedwards actually, at least when he was in north hampton, didn't do much in the wayof stories, but his word pictures are astounding. go read "heaven is a world oflove, " by jonathan edwards. the way he uses the images of light and offountains and of water, it gives you-
essentially the love of god is not anabstraction. when you're done reading that sermon, he's drawing you back into allkinds of other experiences, sensory experiences you've had, and connecting godand his love and his grace to those experiences. you sense the reality of it.that's preaching to the heart. fourth, preaching specifically, i meanpractically. i'm not gonna say much on this because i really would like to get toquestions and answers. this is the one area where most books- i've done a lot ofreading of preaching books recently, and i've been very unhappy with preachingbooks on the subject of preaching to the heart.
however, when it comes to application,there are books out there, talking about application. that's important. the mainpoint is application should be very, very specific. you need to try very hard not toget to the end of the sermon and say, "well, you can think of some practicalimplications. " no, help the people think about practical implications.application should, in some ways, be dialogical. you should look to people andsay, "look. maybe you agree that pride is a problem, that pride is good, bad, andhumility is good, but maybe you think you don't got a problem with pride." but if you don't have a problem withpride, let me ask you a question,
christians. do you have any problemtalking to your non-christian neighbors about jesus? oh, you do. why? what are youafraid of? maybe that is pride. so what am i doing at that point? you needto not only be specific, but you need to give people questions. you need todialogue with them. you need to enter into conversation with them. you need to givethem some tests. it's extraordinarily important. you almostneed to turn some parts of the sermon into counseling, where you say, "look. i knowthat this hasn't been easy. but if you understand this..." get very- talkdirectly to them about how, imagine you're in a pastoral setting, and the person issaying, "how do i apply this to my life?"
just do it. do it right there in thesermon, to everybody. okay. i said wondrously andchristocentrically. then we're done. i think i can do this quick. we have 20minutes for questions. wondrously just means this. i think i can dothis in one minute. j. r. r. tolken, in his famous essay onfairy stories, says that fairy tales continue to be popular because fairy talesgive you stories in which people escape time, escape death, hold communion withnon-human beings, find perfect love from which they are never parted, and triumphover evil. fairy tales. escape from time, get outside of time,escape from death, hold communion with
non-human beings, find perfect love fromwhich you're never parted, and triumph finally over evil. right? people buy fairy tales and read them, andwe're making them into blockbuster movies all the time. why? because it's a deepdesire of the human heart. well, you say, "that's not reality." but if jesus christhas been raised from the dead, if he really has been raised from the dead, andyou believe in him, all those things are gonna come true for you. you will step outside of time. you willescape death. you will communicate with non-human beings, at least angels. whoknows? maybe there are elves. you will
have a love that never parts. you're neverparted from it, and you will triumph over evil. look. do you preach- isn't that amazing?do you preach like that? is there that note of wonder in your preaching? do youever lift that up and let people know? do you have any idea? if christianity istrue, all this stuff that most of you just, you pay all this money. wouldn't itbe great if all these things were true? no, it's not. let's go home. yet, you keepspending the money to go see. why do you watch the movie? why do youread the fairy tale? because it lifts you up. frankly because deep in your heart,you know that that's how human beings were
supposed to live, and it's a memory traceof the garden of eden, i guess. but the point is do you preach with that kind ofwonder? here's the last thing. i don't think ineed to talk. i've talked to many other places of what it means to preach christfrom every text, but what my wife used to say- what cathy said, in the first five or10 years in which i was trying to learn how to preach . . . she used to put itlike this. she says, "you know, in the first part of your sermon, in which you'relaying out the biblical truth, you're laying out how people should be living andall this sort of thing," she says, "it's really good. it's like a really, really,really, really good sunday school lesson.
but she says, "until you get to jesus, it's not a sermon." she says, "everybodyis taking notes. they're learning, and they're saying, 'oh, that's good theology,and that's good practical, and that's good this" she says, "when you get to jesus,suddenly everybody puts their pencils down, and they start to- " she said,"suddenly the sunday school lesson becomes a sermon. suddenly, instead of feelinglike we're walking, sometimes we're flying." she says, "it's really- because when youget to jesus, and when you say, 'this is really about jesus, ' people start toworship. before that, they're just
thinking. " another way to put it nowwould be, "before that, in a sense, you were working on the head. but when you getto jesus, it goes to the heart. " okay. we got 19 minutes to answer somequestions if you got them. so i just took 40 out of the 60 minutes. so we got acouple of people who are gonna be living mic stands. right? don't we have a coupleof- yeah, okay. so we've got a couple of volunteers who are going to stand wherethey are, and you got to come to them. if you've got a question, go to them. ask thequestion. i promise to give you a response. okay.- could you speak a little bit about the difference between good andgreat preaching?
- the difference between good and greatpreaching? = good and great preaching, rts lecture isaw online. - oh, you mean you'd like me to say whatyou heard me say before. - well, a little bit. yeah. now that i'min person. - yeah, no, no. i hope this is what youremember. i don't know. anyway. this is an oversimplification, honestly. it's anoversimplification. but to me, the difference between a bad sermon and a goodsermon has, largely speaking, got to do with you, the speaker.have you done your job? have you studied the passage? a minute ago, i tried to sayhave you mastered the material, so you
know the material well enough that you- ifi don't know my material, when i get up there, i won't have the freedom, a kind ofspiritual and emotional freedom to think about the wonderful truth. i'll bethinking about what's coming next, and i don't want to be having to say, "okay.that was point two. now what's point three again? what's point 3a? what's point 3b?" i want the emotional freedom. so i need toknow my material. i need to have done all the study. i need all that stuff. so thedifference between a bad sermon and a good sermon, generally speaking, has got to dowith you. the difference between a good sermon and agreat sermon is almost completely the holy
spirit. that's probably what you heard mesay. i have often put together- i've often preached sermons that were just okay, butseemed to have changed a heck of a lot of lives because god just decided touse it that way. i've preached other sermons that wereactually fairly good, really tight. i liked it, and it didn't have the sameimpact. see. so you can get in the realm of good/okay sermon. that's up to you.this is an oversimplification. obviously god helps you in this study too, but i'mtrying to say. to get yourself up to the good or okay sermon, it's got mainly to dowith you. but that which gets you into the realmwhere the revival breaks out, that's just
the holy spirit. one last thing. there wasan older man who heard both daniel roland and george woodfield preach. daniel rolandwas a welsh preacher. george woodfield, of course, is the famous anglican preacher.they both preached a lot in the 1730s, '40s, '50s. many years later, there was aguy who was interviewed, who had heard both of them preach.he was asked, "which preacher was the better preacher?" he said that both ofthem were equally- their sermons were equally powerful, but with daniel roland,you always got a good sermon, whereas with george woodfield, you didn't always get agood sermon, but sermons were always equally as powerful.
that makes no sense unless you understandwhat i just said. woodfield always, for whatever reason, whether woodfield'ssermons were well-written or not, god always seemed to work through them. soanyway, the difference between bad and good is mainly you. the difference betweengood and great is mainly that god's working and deciding to work sovereignlyat the moment. okay. let's go back and forth until time is up. - thank you for your laboring love for us.my question has a bit of overlap with the previous one. what are some things you cangive to help hold the tension, on the one hand, in preaching, that we are standinglike ezekiel in a valley of dry bones,
unable to do anything, and on the otherhand, being like paul, becoming all things to all man, pleading with men to be saved,that tension of the impossible, but the responsibility to labor for whatwe can't do? - that's actually pretty easy, believe itor not. you're absolutely right. those are the two things. the one is, on the onehand, you're supposed to be becoming all things to all people that, by all means, imight win some, which means paul clearly is trying to be as ingenious as possiblein the way which he preaches. you can see it in the book of acts. everysingle time he preaches, he preaches to jews who believe the bible, uneducatedpagans, educated pagans. he changes it up.
yet, it's all up to god because they'reall dry bones. right? the answer is how you respond to whathappens after you preach. in other words, you work like crazy to preach the bestsermon possible. but then when you find you're not getting much in the way ofresponse, that should not bother you the way it does, because we . . . to reallysay, "i'm trusting god's sovereignty," means that when you don't see a lot offruit, it doesn't eat you alive. when you don't see people showing up and yourchurch growing, it just doesn't totally eat you alive. now you got to be careful here, because onthe one hand, you have to be careful that
you are- you should be open to thepossibility that maybe you haven't preached as well as you could, and youdon't want to say, "well, nobody is coming because god is just not working." so youhave to be careful about that. by and large, the way that you show thatyou believe in god's sovereignty is you work like crazy to preach the best sermonpossible, and then you really do leave it up to god, and you don't judge yourself.you don't judge. you don't judge yourself, frankly, by the results. we just get eatenup by whether people tell us we're good, whether it's a good buzz, whether we seeconversions, whether we see the church growing, whether we see the attendancegrowing. it just shouldn't eat you up if
you believe in the sovereignty of god.let's go back and forth, over here. - any thoughts on the length of a sermon? - any thoughts on the length of thesermon? i think i'm all for adapting to your audience. that does mean, i think,for example i found- well, i'll give you one example. okay. by and large, i would say that if you havean audience that are pretty mature christians, and they expect robustteaching, you can go longer if you're good enough. even with a mature audience, youhave to be pretty good to be able to get past about 35 minutes and not be tedious,i would say, today.
but by and large, it depends on theaudience. some people- the shorter, it's better for people with shorter attentionspans. i do see people's attention spans getting shorter. social media and theinternet is part of that. so no, i'm not real doctrinaire about it.generally if i'm actually evaluating preachers, today, most places in america,in america, and generally i'm thinking also about multiethnic or anglo churches,in america, multiethnic or anglo churches. see, with multiethnic churches, you got tosplit the difference a bit. people have very different ideas about what is a longsermon. generally you have to- the people who will think it's going on too long haveto be not tested or taxed. so generally
speaking, i say 30 minutes. i'm notdoctrinaire about that, but an awful lot of people think that they're betterpreachers than they are. i would say that when i was a younger man,i needed to preach 20 to 25 minutes because i wasn't good enough to keeppeople's attention any longer. as i've gotten older, and i've gotten better, ican stretch that a little bit, not a lot, but i can stretch that a bit. here. - yeah, what are some ways you canpractically grow in preaching imaginatively? - it does help to read fiction, and that'sa shame because i'm not a real good
fiction reader. my wife is better. we arevery gender-stereotyped. i read nonfiction. she reads fiction. i said,"come on. " you know? but anyway. neil plantinga, cornelius planting, has abook on reading for preachers. i would say- remember, don't forget what i saidabout culturally. i would say that, generally, most expository preachers readtoo much in just bible and theology. they don't read philosophy.they don't read cultural analysis. they don't read history. they don't readbiography. they don't read novels. they don't read poetry. to preachimaginatively, you need to read very, very, very widely.
if somebody says to me, "you read an awfullot. why do you read?" i think i did this also at the rts at jackson lectures thisyear. somebody says, "you read so much. why do you read so much?" my answer is i'mdesperate. i'm desperate to reach people. if you're desperate to reach people, youwill read very, very widely and not just bible and theology. you just got to readacross the spectrum. we only got 10 minutes left. sorry these are kind ofshort answers, but it's better than three or four really long ones. go ahead. - i tend to be a pretty passionate person.when i do preach or get to teach, i can preach affectionately, if you will. butwhere do you draw the line between
preaching affectionately and then justshameless emotionalism? because that's also my fear, is that people will bemoved, not by what is being said, not by certain truths, but just by my demeanor. - well, you know what? that's actuallygood. i guess what i most want to see is variation. i guess i didn't quite saythat. did i? so thank you for giving me the opportunity to say it this way. if i see a person who is preaching andcathy, my wife, does say to me, "i know when you're trying to be the holy spirit."she says, "i feel like you're trying- you see the people out there. they seem tobe kind of impassive. so you start to do
what you can. you get louder. you canstart to show more emotion." she feels like, at some points, you'reforcing it. you're pushing. you're trying to get a rise out of them. that's alwaysbeen very convicting to me. so by and large, i guess, i want to make sure thatthe emotion i show is not planned, certainly not planned. it's not real,real, real regular. if it happens a lot or all the time or the same point at everysingle sermon . . . in other words, if the pastor breaks downinto tears every week at 18 minutes after he starts, i actually know there's peoplelike that, that are actually pretty genuine. they still probably shouldn't doit, because it doesn't feel genuine.
so i guess i would say if i see variation,if i see it doesn't happen all the time, if i see it happens- also, if it seems tofit the shape of the truth itself. sometimes some texts are not particularly-some texts are what my wife would call meat-and-potatoes texts. they're meat andpotatoes. they're good, solid stuff. there's nothing particularly interestingor unusual, just good to remind us. at that point, you probably shouldn't havesome emotional experience. it's not appropriate. there are other texts thatare remarkable, that are insightful. so as long as i think that the expression ofemotion is not constant, it's varied, it seems to fit the truth you've got outthere, that you're talking about,
that's all right. what worries me the most are people thatare constantly always emotional, all the time. i do know in my- i think, insome ways, it may be sincere, but it is a way of actually trying to manipulatepeople. my own wife has called me on it over the years, at various times. okay.over here. - you mentioned preaching dialogically, interms of the application. how do you choose what to dialogue with in such adiverse congregation, like you have? - well, that's a good question. of course,the text itself sometimes is giving you- sometimes the text- this is anothersubject. there's too much stuff in the
text to ever bring out. i know that it'straditional to say, and i would say this too, that an expository sermon is one inwhich the point of the text is the point of the sermon. you've heard that. that's a way of trying to make sure youmajor in the majors. that is, you find the main point of the text. you don't readinto the- you don't use the text as a way of talking about whatever you feel liketalking about. make sure you understand the author of the text, what the biblicalauthor's main point is, and you preach that. having said that, the reality is that it'snot always that easy to just find one
point in a text. what's the point of jacobwrestling with the angel of the lord in genesis 32? what's the point of that text?the point? there's a number of points, a number of implications. or what's the point of the text where theythrow the man, the dead man, into the grave? they throw him into the tomb, andhe touches the bones of elijah and he comes to life and leaves. rememberthat? what's the point of that text, everybody? i don't know. but i guess when you- narratives are very-it's very hard to identify one single point that the narrative is about. usuallythere's a number of implications. so what
you can do is you can keep a record.if you've got diverse groups of people in your church, if you've got five or sixmain groups, different racial groups, different age groups, that sort of thing,you can keep a record. sometimes even though there's four or five things youcould bring out of a text, you can just choose the one for the group that youhaven't really spoken to recently. just keep a record. so in other words, there's more dimensionsin almost every bible passage than you can ever bring out in a single sermon. so keepa record and say, "well, i could hit those people again with this text, but i'm notgoing to. i haven't talked to this group
over here." that's how. just keep arecord. be a good pastor. over here. - aside from yourself, who else would yousay characterizes these characteristics in preaching? - oh, my goodness. any good preacherpreaches to the heart. i'm glad you think i'm a good preacher. i appreciate that. - well, i meant more like who uses thosecharacteristics and preaching christ at the end. - who uses which? - so who goes through, speaks culturally,affectionately,
passionately, and embodies all of them. - look. i would say everybody. i do thinkthat the culturally thing is a place where we're not very good. i would say almostall the preachers you hear at a gospel coalition conference know how to preach tothe heart. most of them do. some of them aren't necessarily ss you know, sometimesthey're not preachers. sometimes they're professors or something like that, andthey're not ordinarily preachers. so when they give you their exposition, it's alittle more like a lecture than a sermon, which is fine. but by and large, i would say thatpreaching to the heart is not- preaching
to the heart is instinctive. the reasoni'm trying to break it out is i feel like people who are trying to learn how topreach don't know how to do it. the instinctively gifted preachers just do it.my job was to try to break it out a little bit for you, so you had some way oftesting yourself and also avoiding the danger of putting all your time on theexit jesus and not thinking about how to preach to the heart.having said that, of all the things i mentioned, the culturally, learning how topreach to the culture is something that we're mainly behind on, and i don't see alot of good models out there. i am trying to- the book on preaching, that's comingout, at least has a chapter on this, which
i do think is very unusual for preachingbooks. i'm trying to write another book, in whichi show people how to do that. so in that sense, i might be- i would say i'm tryingto be a little more of a pioneer. in all the other areas, lots of people are quitegood. all good preachers know how to preach to the heart. i got time for one ortwo more, at the most. - so i thought the panel discussion wasactually the most enriching session, and part of that was just because there's acommunity. even you asking for people to ask questions is another reflection of thedialogue. in our church, we've actually tried- when i preach, i try to actuallyask the questions of the people while the
preaching is going on, to get somefeedback, to hear what people are thinking, to try to even maybe nuancewhile i'm preaching. but also, i realized there's grace in the congregation. maybeeven having a faith story that lines up with the point of the text or maybe amanifestation. so i kind of want to hear maybe your thoughts on the differentvariations of doing that. then also, since so many preachers can bebad, or they're maybe not aware of how they could get better, what do you do inyour church, besides maybe the plurality of elders to open up your preaching tofeedback from the congregation or other
people?- okay. that's great. by the way, you're gonna have to sit down because i've gotlike 30 seconds. i have to answer this, and then i'm gonna dismiss everybody.sorry, those of you in line. good question. let me tell you something i didoriginally. for 10 years, at the end of every service, i said, the minute thepostlude is over, the minute that the music is over, just come down front. i'mstanding down there, and you can ask me questions about the sermon or anythingthat happened in the worship service. so my wife still thinks, cathy stillthinks that was crucial to the success of
redeemer because, probably, anywhere from50 to 200 people stayed every single week and pushed questions to me about thesermon. i was able to not only give people a lot more information than i could justin the sermon. you're absolutely right in saying that,very often, the questions help- the questions are wonderful because they giveme an opportunity to bring out things that i didn't have a chance to bring out in thesermon or even think about as i was preaching. it also gave me an opportunity to modelfor people. how do you pastorally deal with people who are hurting or who areangry at you? that was really, really,
really good. we do something right nowcalled "questioning christianity, " where non-christians are invited with theirchristian friends. i speak for 30 minutes. they ask questions for 30 minutes. then wehave refreshments, and people can come up and talk to me about it. so i've always felt that the idea ofhaving questions and answers very, very closely connected to the preaching isreally helpful. however, by the way, in a small setting, i actually think that thedialogical approach is a perfectly fine way to do a sermon. if you're a housechurch, it's really a great idea. i think if it gets big, it's difficult,even here. you did a really good job, but
there's over 1000 of you or something likethat. so i couldn't do it. there is also something about a sermon, in which thereis no ability to answer back. in other words, the sermon is also authoritative. idon't mind the dialogue stuff. i don't mind the question-and-answer stuff, butit's also true that the sermon is from the word of god. if it's done well, it's veryauthoritative. you also want to guard that as well. that's why i alwaysliked the idea of not doing the q&a inside the service, but todo it immediately afterwards. i did that for a good 10 years, until i was forced tostop doing it because we started having services at another site, and i had toleave after finishing the sermon at one
site to go preach at another site. ialways missed that loss. the q&a after the sermons was extremelyimportant. okay. i'm two minutes over. so i'm gonna just say time's up. you need togo to your next workshop. bye.
