Tag: Sermon

Worst Sermon Ever

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On Saturday night I was struck with a feeling that I have from time to time: that my sermon for Sunday was not good. I was convinced it was one of my worst sermons ever.

As I looked it over I thought: My exegesis and hermeneutics are good, I’m presenting the Gospel and talking about how the Gospel speaks to all of life…  The essential elements were in place, so what was I worried about?

Maybe I was just tired from the long drive back from California, maybe I was just feeling that the final draft wasn’t like the way I originally envisioned the message. But I went to church on Sunday morning asking God more than usual to speak through me, even through this message.

This isn’t the first time I’ve felt this way. But here’s the irony: it seems that every time I feel this way, convinced that my sermon – although it has all the right elements – is not my best, God seems to use it in an extra special way.

This Sunday, through this message, I had more than one person respond to my invitation to give their life to Jesus and make a decision for him. Another person told my wife that it was the best sermon I had ever preached. I got several emails and text messages after church about the message from people saying they were encouraged and blessed by it.  Here’s the audio of that message.

On a previous occasion, where I specifically remember telling my wife that my sermon was going to be my worst ever, I preached a message which again someone afterwards told me was my best ever, and now has also become one of my favorite sermons as well. When it recently aired on our radio program on GraceFM, we had several people contact our church asking for copies of it. A newer member of our church ran across that message a week or so ago and shared it on Facebook, and then wrote me that if I preached that message every Sunday, he would come – it was the best sermon he’d ever heard in his life. Here’s the audio of that message.

What should I make of this?

I heard Timothy Keller say once in a lecture to pastors about preaching, that we should always seek to prepare “Good Sermons” – meaning that we should make sure all the essential elements are in there: good exegesis and hermeneutics, good presentation of the Gospel and of Jesus as the answer to all the riddles, that they are “Good”. Our job is to prepare “Good Sermons” – because only God can make a sermon “Great” – and that happens, when the Holy Spirit takes our “Good Sermons” and makes them “Great” in the hearts and minds of our hearers. If we try to make “Great Sermons” we will be trying too hard to do something that only God can do.

When I heard him say that, I agreed in theory that he was right, but more and more I am experiencing the reality myself. God likes to glorify Himself, and it’s less about me that I am inclined to think. Praise God for that.

What Makes for Good Preaching?

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What differentiates good preaching from mediocre preaching?

Surely you know it when you hear it, but it can’t be just a subjective thing – there must be some criteria that differentiate good preaching from not-as-good preaching.

I recently heard Timothy Keller differentiate between good preaching and great preaching. He said that “good preaching” is the altar and that “great preaching” is when God brings the fire upon the altar. In other words: preachers shouldn’t strive to preach “great” sermons, but should work to preach “good” sermons – because only God can take a “good” sermon and by the power of the Holy Spirit make it a “great” sermon within the hearer.

So what makes for good preaching?

Here are some thoughts:

  • A good sermon, no matter what text it is preached from, has to preach the Gospel. Just as every town in England has a road which leads from it to London, every text in the Bible has a road from it which leads to Christ. If all the Scriptures ultimately point to Him, a good sermon must preach the Good News of Jesus Christ.
  • Yet, a good sermon must be faithful to the text. It must not manipulate the text to simply be a “proof text” to back up the point that the speaker wants to make; it must be true exegesis, which determines what the author, and God through the author, intended to communicate through that text.
  • Furthermore, good preaching is an art form – it must be informative, it must be touching emotionally, and it must be moving inspirationally.  I heard Timothy Keller say that when you are preaching, people should be taking notes, but when you get to the part of your sermon that is about Jesus, you should seek to portray him as so captivating that people can’t help but stop taking notes when you talk about Him, and when they leave, they should leave wanting to do something because of what they’ve heard.
  • Another friend of mine – and an elder at White Fields Church – put it this way:

    • In our conversation he even put it this way: “A good sermon takes you to a place you’ve never been before, or it takes you to a place that is so intimate that you are emotionally moved”

What do you think?  What are other essential elements of “good” preaching? Let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

When God Says “No”

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One of the things we’ve been doing at White Fields Church is giving people the opportunity to text or tweet us questions during the sermon.

Yesterday morning I taught 2 Samuel ch 7, which is the time when David had a desire to build a house for the Lord, but God said “No!”  That has some interesting implications, because what David wanted to do was a good thing, and it was a biblical thing – yet God said “no”.

This question was texted in during that sermon:

This morning in the sermon, you discussed having a desire to be a missionary, pastor, etc. If we have that desire in our hearts, didn’t God put that there? So why would He close The door if He put that desire there?

That is a great question!  The first question is a particularly important one: Did God put that desire there?  I believe that as we get closer to the heart of God – delighting ourselves in the Lord, as David said (Psalm 37:4) – that our desires are changed and become more aligned with His desires. 

In the story we studied yesterday in 2 Samuel 7: David had a desire. It was a good, noble desire – it was even a Biblical desire. Did God put that desire there? Maybe! Or maybe not. We don’t know for sure. There is a way in which we could argue that God did put that desire in David’s heart – but that David’s role in fulfilling that was not to be directly involved in the building of the temple, but indirectly – as we saw, how David got the ball rolling with the building of the temple and had all of the items made which would be used in the temple.

Let me share an example from my own life: I gave my life to the Lord when I was 16, and almost immediately I developed a desire to minister to the people of the former Soviet Union, specifically Ukraine, where my family had immigrated from. When I was 18, I was invited to go on a ministry trip to Budapest, Hungary – to a conference for Calvary Chapel churches from Hungary and Ukraine. It was the Ukrainian part which I was interested in, and I went there with the hope that I could connect with some ministries in Ukraine. I was able to do that, but interestingly all of the “doors of opportunity” for me to serve in Ukraine seemed closed, however there was an incredible open door and an invitation for me to serve in Debrecen, Hungary – the pastor there told me he had been praying for someone exactly like me to come and work with them. I had no real desire to go to Hungary, my desire was to serve the Lord in Ukraine – but I prayed about it and came to the conviction that this is what God had for me at that point, and after serving there for a little while I could move to Ukraine, where I really desired to be. I committed to go to Debrecen, Hungary for 8 months. During those 8 months, I prayed for Ukraine constantly, I even tried to go to Ukraine to work with some of the people I had met the year before at the conference in Budapest, but once again all the doors of opportunity were closed!  My feeling was: God, why did you give me this desire to serve you in Ukraine, and then close all the doors before me?!  Yet, in the meantime, I had become very proficient in Hungarian and was involved in some very exciting and fruitful ministry in Hungary. I came to see that perhaps God had given me that desire to serve Him in Ukraine in order to get me to pray and to get me to Hungary – which hadn’t even been on my radar, but which ended up being the “land of blessing” for me, where I met my future wife, where I became a pastor, where my 3 kids were born, where I was involved in years of fruitful and wonderful ministry. Was it God who put that desire to serve Him in Ukraine in my heart? I’m not sure. But He certainly used that desire in my life to lead me to where He wanted me to be.

My desire to serve the Lord in Ukraine never went away; I still have it. But I have come to rest in believing that God gave me that desire not in order to move me to Ukraine, but so that I would carry the people of that country on my heart and pray for them, and support what God is doing through other people there – which is exactly what I strive to do! This desire to serve the Lord in Ukraine led me to start taking teams from our church in Eger up to a Hungarian-speaking region of Ukraine, where we would do evangelism and support ministries in that region. I also had the opportunity to take extended trips to Ukraine and teach in a Bible school there. Who knows what God has for the future, but I very much can relate to David – who, although he was not allowed to be directly involved in the building of the temple, found a way to still be involved in it in a signifiant and meaningful way, indirectly.

So, to the question: If you have a desire to be a pastor, missionary, etc. – did God put it there? If so, why would he then shut the door?    I think that 2 Samuel 7 shows us that even if God is the one who put that noble desire in your heart to serve the Lord in a particular way, perhaps the fulfillment of that desire is not found in you fulfilling the role you specifically have in mind – perhaps the fulfillment of that desire will come in a way that is completely from God, and has a greater impact, even in your own life, than you could have ever imagined.

Every Single Day

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There are certain messages that you hear, which you never forget. I remember hearing Jon Courson speak at a missions conference in Austria in the early 2000’s. I don’t remember much of what he said, but I do remember this phrase, which he repeated several times:

Read your Bible and pray,
every single day.

Novel concept for a group of missionaries and pastors, right? 

Well, it is actually. Because one rut that preachers and Bible teachers in particular tend to fall into is that of only reading your Bible to look for something to preach on or teach about: “sermon material” if you will. 

What I have found is that when I read the Bible purely to hear from the Lord and delight in His Word, it keeps me so fresh and alive as a Christian, that it makes me a better minister.

For example, yesterday I was reading through 2 Chronicles, and I read chapters 20-23. That’s one of those sections of the Bible that people like to skip over, because it’s full of hard to pronounce names and stories that are downright confusing – because it’s never clear who the “good guy” really is (hint: the only “good guy” in the story is GOD himself!).

After reading those passages, I went to meet with a brother from our church, and it just so happened that the very chapters I had read spoke directly to what he was going through in his life – in a way that was actually quite moving. And it wasn’t just one thing – it was several things from various stories in those 4 chapters. If I hadn’t been reading through the Word consistently, I’m sure I would have had something to share with this brother, but it wouldn’t have been so alive and prophetic as this was.

Another thing I remember Jon Courson saying: 

Wherever you are in the Word, that’s where you are.

That was basically Jon’s way of saying that in the providence of God, the scriptures you will read as you read through the Bible will often apply directly to the situation you are in. I have found that to be very true. 

May we never be people who only look to God’s word for “material” that we can USE in speaking to others. May we come to it always as the fountain of life.  But if you do that, you will also find that when you hide His Word in your heart, you will have plenty of “material” to share with others. 

The fear of the LORD is a fountain of life, turning a person from the snares of death. – Proverbs 14:27

The Interactive Sermon

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The past 2 Sundays at White Fields we’ve been trying something new, where our background slide invites people to text or tweet their questions in during the sermon. Once we get these questions, I will answer some during the service if we have time, or I will answer them on The City – our church’s in-house social network.

The response we’ve gotten to this has been really good! I’ve really enjoyed engaging with people and answering their questions. You can read some of those discussions here. Look for the posts titled “Sermon Follow-Up”.

I think that in this day and age, with the proliferation of the internet especially, sermons need to be more interactive. Finding the right way to do this though, is what is hard.

Timothy Keller, at his Sunday night services in NYC, has had a question and answer time for years. It’s a main part of the service – and it invites skeptics to come and do what New Yorkers do best: be skeptical and inquisitive. Tim Keller has said that the average young adult in New York is a thinker and thinkers have questions, and if you want them to really consider Christianity, you have to give them a chance to have their questions answered.

Nowadays, any news article you read online gives readers the option to engage in a comments section, where they can have a discussion about the content of the article. Any attitude in churches of “don’t question anything” is completely disconnected from where our culture is at today, especially with young people. Furthermore, I feel that if pastors are not answering the real questions that people are asking and struggling with, if we are not addressing the issues that people are really wondering about and discussing, then we have become irrelevant talking heads. If everywhere in the world there is transparency and discussion is encouraged, but at church we have smokescreens and we don’t like questions, what does that communicate to people? Perhaps that we lack the confidence that is required to allow people to ask questions? That shouldn’t be the case.

However, the danger in opening up to engagement like this, is that it inevitably gives a platform to haters – people who don’t have sincere questions, but who ask questions in order to be critical or in an attempt to trip others up. This is something that Jesus dealt with a lot from the Pharisees and Sadducees, who put a lot of effort into tripping him up. I’m sure that Timothy Keller gets tons of people like this as well, but it doesn’t deter him from encouraging people to ask questions and give him the chance to offer a biblical answer.

What are your thoughts on encouraging engagement with sermons? How have you seen it done effectively – or ineffectively?

Already…But Not Yet

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On Sunday mornings at White Fields I have been teaching through 1 Samuel; this past Sunday I taught the second half of chapter 16, in which David has already been anointed king of Israel, but it will be another 15-20 years of hardship before David will sit on the throne of Israel as king.

David is king already, but not yet.

And this phrase, “already, but not yet” sums up so much of the Christian life. In Christ we are justified, glorified, made holy, seated with Christ in the heavenly places – already! But not yet.

Yesterday a great lady woman from church sent me this poem she wrote, inspired by Sunday’s message:

Sometimes life just seems to drag on
And sometimes we grow weary of the wait 
We want it all, we want it now
We shout out in whispered pleas 
Begging for speed, hurry please
But He answers not yet, He asks us to wait
Discouraged and let down we struggle on 
Don’t struggle on 
Don’t falter when you can run 
Don’t struggle when you have won
He has already won
It’s already done
We are waiting for an end that is already won
So hold on
Hold on to His promises 
Hold onto His love 
Hold onto the Hope that it’s already ready
It’s already done
But not yet

– Ryane Salazar

The Fat Belongs to the Lord

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This Sunday at White Fields I taught 1 Samuel 2 and the story of Hophni and Phineas, the priests who were doing shameful things in the Tabernacle. (Click here for audio of that sermon: “Messed-Up Ministry”). There was a detail of that story that at first seems a bit odd and obscure, but is worth serious consideration.

In 1 Samuel 2:15-17 we read about how the Law required that the fat be burned off the meat before it was eaten. The law about this is found in the Book of Leviticus – and as I mentioned on Sunday, the reason for this is because at that time, the fat of the meat was considered the best, most luxurious part. But God required that when a sacrifice was made as an act of worship, the fat be burned, which would create a lot of smoke and it would be a “fragrant offering” unto the Lord.  Any of you who like the smell of bacon cooking know what I’m talking about. Those of you who are vegans, well, you can eat your tofu bacon and pretend you know what I’m talking about!  

The fat belongs to the Lord

But the idea that the fat belonged to the Lord represented a fundamental belief that we should give the best to God. Many people are in the habit of doing just the opposite – keeping the best for themselves, and giving the rest (the left-overs) to God. Rather than making their offering check the first check they write every month, they wait until the end of the month to see if they have anything left over. God asks that we give him the best, not the rest.

But there’s something else worth taking note of here: when the people in those days gave the fat of the meat to the Lord, they thought they were really giving up a lot – they were really “sacrificing” something, in obedience to God. They were giving up luxury and “the good life”. However, what we now know is that fat kills. At our last men’s prayer breakfast, one man brought a creation called the “bacon explosion” made of various lard extracts which I am convinced reduced my life span by 2 months per bite!
But here’s the point: by telling them to sacrifice the fat on the altar, not only was God teaching them an important values lesson, but he was also sparing them from something which was bad for them, even though they couldn’t possibly know that yet! It would only be thousands of years later that people would realize that God wasn’t only asking them to give something up, he was actually protecting them – even though they didn’t understand it yet, much like all of us parents do with our children.

God is good and all his ordinances – the things he tells you to do and what he tells you to steer clear of – each and every one flows out of his love and care for you.

“I never made a sacrifice”

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This past Sunday at White Fields church I spoke about how when we give everything over to God, although we often fear what we will lose, the reality is that we always get more than we bargained for. Like Jesus said, it is when we give our life fully over to him that we find true life and really start living. (you can listen to the audio of that sermon here)

One example of this that came to my mind, but I didn’t share on Sunday was a quote by David Livingstone – the 19th century British missionary who gave his entire life in service to Christ, exploring and evangelizing the interior of Africa. Today, as a direct result of his work, sub-Saharan Africa has become a place where Christianity thrives, where 200 years ago it was almost non-existent.

David Livingstone – Missionary and Explorer of the interior of Africa

Livingstone made several trips back to England during his time as a missionary in Africa, in which he would go on speaking tours. He was considered a national hero in England, and was invited to speak at universities and to dignitaries.

One of the questions most frequently asked of Livingstone was how he was able to make such a great sacrifice, as to give his life in service as a missionary. He was an educated man who could have had a comfortable, upper-class life in England, but instead he chose to spend the prime of his life in the bush of Africa.

Here is what Livingstone said in response to this question in a speech he gave at Cambridge University in 1857:

For my own part, I have never ceased to rejoice that God has appointed me to such an office. People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa. . . . Is that a sacrifice which brings its own blest reward in healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter? Away with the word in such a view, and with such a thought! It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege. Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger, now and then, with a foregoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life, may make us pause, and cause the spirit to waver, and the soul to sink; but let this only be for a moment. All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall be revealed in and for us. I never made a sacrifice.