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Randal Pelton, Ph.D., D.Min., Th.M.

Senior Pastor, Professor

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Preaching Two Kinds of Faith

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Recently, I was preaching on Psalm 112 and emphasizing the aspect of fearlessness in verses 7-8, “He is not afraid of bad news; his heart is firm, trusting in the Lord. His heart is steady; he will not be afraid.” In my search for images for that Sunday’s slides, I came across this saying:

 

“Let your faith be bigger than your fear.”

 

After thinking about this for a moment or two, I realized that this kind of thinking betrays a lack of understanding of biblical faith. What struck me harder was the fact that the saying seemed to preach so well. I could hear myself saying something like this in an attempt to apply our lives to this Psalm.

At the risk of nit-picking, let me suggest that genuine faith in Christ is, by nature, stronger than fear. To tell someone to let their faith be bigger than their fear is actually telling them to exchange less-than-saving/sanctifying faith for genuine faith. So, it’s actually not about letting faith be bigger; it’s about explaining how faith in Christ conquers fear. That exercise in theological exegesis will help our congregants be the kind of person described in Psalm 112, which is what the Psalm is intended to do.

This post was originally published on July 29, 2013.

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Preaching Repentance from Judges 10

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One of the benefits of preaching through the book of Judges is that chapter 10 provides a glimpse into the doctrine of repentance. Repentance is not a doctrine that gets much press these days. You probably are aware that it is a critical doctrine that greatly affects one’s justification and sanctification. Judges, however, is not the place you would likely look to find teaching on repentance.

Actually two kinds of repentance are mentioned. The first one is readily acknowledge: the repentance of God’s people. The second one is hotly debated: the repentance of God.

First, after committing more idolatry, God’s people finally say in vv. 15-16 “‘We have sinned; do to us whatever seems good to you. Only please deliver us this day.’ So they put away the foreign gods from among them and served the Lord…” God’s people finally repent of their idolatry.

Notice two parts of their repentance: (1) they stopped worshiping “the foreign gods”; (2) they started (re-started?) serving “the Lord.” They stopped sinning and started serving. It’s a pretty simple definition of repentance.

Second, after severely judging His people, God finally responds to Israel’s repentance. The omniscient narrator tells us: “and [the Lord] became impatient over the misery of Israel” (v. 16). The Lord stopped punishing and started saving even though He said back in v. 13, “Yet you have forsaken me and served other gods; therefore I will save you no more.”

I don’t claim to understand what was happening in the mind of God. Neither arguments for or against God being able to repent have been completely satisfying.

I am convinced, however, that our congregants need to hear the importance of confessing their sins, turning from their sins, and replacing their sins with righteousness.

Preach repentance and our Lord will continue to receive glory in the church and in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:21).

Randal

This post was originally published on October 31, 2016.

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Preaching Jesus’ First Sermon in Luke 4:14-21

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One of the challenges of preaching in the Gospels is trying to apply to Christians what appears to be written/said to non-Christians. For instance, in Luke 4:18-19 Jesus reads from Isaiah 61:1-2. Isaiah’s message seems tailor made for an evangelistic sermon or as a call for social justice (i.e., the poor, captives, and oppressed are mentioned). Isaiah and Jesus certainly contain an evangelistic and social thrust. Primarily, however, Luke writes for the Church to bolster their faith (cf. Luke 1:4). If, as Jesus says in Luke 4:21, this Scripture from Isaiah was being fulfilled that day, Jesus’ short message is a time for us to challenge believers to be sure they are experiencing the reversal of fortune described initially by Isaiah. All who profess faith in Christ move from poverty to spiritual wealth/power, from captivity to spiritual freedom/power, from blindness to spiritual perspective/vision, and from oppression to spiritual courage and hope.  According to Luke 4:22-30, the church-going folks in Jesus’ hometown did not believe Him. They did not believe they were needy. Believers, by definition, need to believe that Jesus does what He says He’ll do and receive His gracious gift of salvation/sanctification.

I’m not saying evangelism or social justice have no place. It’s just that Luke intends to say something to the Church about their response to Jesus’ person and work.

For those who are interested in preaching Christ from such a seemingly-already-Christ-centered text, remember, Jesus would later face rejection greater than that recorded in Luke 4:28-29. On the cross He would experience the deepest and darkest forms of human distress described in Luke 4:18. And He would do so so that those of us who believe His Word would never have to experience them.

This post was originally published on April 10, 2013.

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Helping Guard Your Congregants Against the Rarely Confessed Sin of Greed

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In over 20 years of pastoral ministry, no one has ever entered my study to confess their sin of greed or covetousness. They’ve confessed other sins, but not that one. Is that true of your ministry too? If it is true of your ministry context, then preaching Jesus’ teaching in Luke 12:13-21 is extremely important.

In verse 15 Jesus commands, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness…” He follows that up with a frightening parable. I realized that if I was going to be faithful to this Text, I needed to do what God was doing. God was putting the fear of God in us.

Last week I had the privilege of conducting a preaching workshop at Lancaster Bible College. One of the segments included observations about how Jonathan Edwards motivated his listeners to apply the Scriptures by moving back and forth between fear and love (fear of God and love for God). Jesus clearly employs a scare tactic (you might decide that term needs an adjustment) when He says in v. 20, “Fool! This night your soul is required of you…”

I doubt that many, if any, of our parishioners realize the power and presence of this sin. But I know you won’t let them remain in that condition for long. Sooner or later, you’ll preach a Text and/or topic that will provide an opportunity to guard them against this rarely confessed sin.

Preach well for the reputation of Christ in the Church and in the world.

This post was originally published on March 13, 2014.

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Preaching As Reminding: A Guest Post From my Friend and Homiletics Colleague

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Dr. Jeffrey Arthurs is one of my favorite people. Michele and I have known Jeff since the early days of the Evangelical Homiletics Society. He is a brilliant homiletician, professor, and extremely capable preacher. Along with his professorial duties at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, he’s also a long-term interim pastor so he’s preaching every weekend. Enjoy his contribution and may our Lord continue to receive glory in the church and in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:21) because of our thoughts about what preachers do. Here’s Jeffrey:

“You know how pastors say the same things again and again? For example, God loves sinners; we are a family; and Jesus is coming back? In my 2017 book, Preaching As Reminding (IVP), I argue that this is not only inevitable for expository preachers, it is also beneficial for the listeners. Why? Because we need reminders. We forget. Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it! C. S. Lewis put it this way:

We have to be continually reminded of what we believe. Neither this belief [in Christian doctrine] nor any other will automatically remain alive in the mind. It must be fed. And as a matter of fact, if you examined a hundred people who had lost their faith in Christianity, I wonder how many of them would turn out to have been reasoned out of it by honest argument? Do not most people simply drift away?

Mere Christianity, 123-124.

So, preachers take their stance not only as teachers of new concepts, persuaders, and exhorters, but also as “the Lord’s remembrancers” That is a phrase from the court of Great Britain—the Queen’s (or King’s) remembrancer was a record keeper of official business who reminded noblemen of their duties. We are the “Lord’s remembrancers” who remind believers of God’s great covenant of grace and our duties to love and fear him in return.

So, the next time your text gives you a well-trodden truth, don’t be afraid to tell the old, old story one more time. Let fidelity, not novelty, be your motto.

 

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We’ve Got To Quit Rambling While We Preach!

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I remember well my mentor, Haddon Robinson, saying many years ago that the most common complaint of our listeners is that our sermons contain too many ideas. Evidently the problem hasn’t gone away.

In, Preaching That Matters: Reflective Practices For Transforming Sermons, Carrell writes, “Organization emerged as the number one listener-identified characteristic of a poor sermon…” (p. 72). The most common one-word description for the organization issue was

“rambling.”

Virtually every preaching portion you select looks like the slide above. And certainly every sermon we preach sounds like it too. Each Scripture, like each biblical sermon on that Scripture contains many ideas. Evidently, we’re not doing a good job showing how the ideas fit together to make meaning.

So, what we’re aiming at looks something like this:

In order to avoid what sounds like rambling, we have to organize the results of our exegesis according to the logic or arrangement of the ideas in a preaching portion.

I regularly teach that tracing the argument or flow of thought and allowing it to drive the sermon is the telltale sign of an expositor. For me, tracing the argument or discovering how the various ideas interrelate is the first thing I do on a Monday morning (after praying, “Open my eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of Your law.”).

Rambling is not just continuing to talk once your point is made. It is the word listeners used to describe a sermon that contained too many disconnected ideas. And that’s the key word, disconnected.

Carrell writes, “Wrote one listener, ‘I wonder if he even knows his main idea.'” (p. 73) Yikes!

I am going to give you and me the benefit of the doubt and say, “We do know the main idea.” Then, all that’s left for us to do before Sunday is to make sure we know how all the other ideas interrelate with the main idea and allow our congregants to follow that logic during the sermon.

And God will continue to receive glory in the church and in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:21),

Randal

 

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Aim The Sermon At Alteration, Not Information

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I am enjoying Carrell’s, Preaching That Matters, partly because of all the research she’s done that defines the preaching practices of so many. I didn’t enjoy learning about this:

“…remember that the vast majority of sermons (more than 95 percent) do not invite listeners to change.” (p. 66)

If pastors aren’t inviting their listeners to change, what are they doing? Carrell puts it like this:

“Preacher’s General Purpose: Let me tell you about something.

Listeners’ General Response: I agree with what you said.” (p. 66)

Let’s give ourselves the benefit of the doubt and say we’re telling our listeners about the Bible. And let’s give our listeners the benefit of the doubt and say they often agree with what we’re telling them about the Bible. I agree with Carrell that that’s not enough for what needs to happen on a Sunday morning.

So Carrell talks about not only identifying the subject of your sermon (which you know should come from your preaching portion), but also identifying the response to your sermon. In previous posts I’ve talked about how the intention for the sermon (what the sermon is intending to do to the listener) comes directly from the intention of the preaching portion (what the Scripture is intending to do to the listener).

I am often in the habit of wording it like this: After the public reading of Scripture, I’ll say, “This is God’s Word. We worship this morning by ___________.” I fill in the blank with whatever our Text is intending to do to the listeners. Right from the outset everyone in the house of the Lord knows how the Lord intends to change us.

That means every Sunday, like every New Year, should be an opportunity to make a fresh start.

Before Sunday, along with identifying the subject of your sermon, also identify the worship response so God receives glory in the church and in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:21).

Randal

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You Need To Read (with caution!)

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The title of this sporadic blog series, You Need To Read, is a bit of an overstatement. I do think these books are worth reading, though. So, as I wrote in an earlier post, every once in a while I’ll be telling you about books that are helping me preach. My reviews will be fairly brief compared to some and will focus on how the book/author has helped me. I will not spend hardly any words on my disagreements with the book. I don’t read these books in order to be able to state my disagreements. I read them to profit and realize I won’t agree with everything (we hardly ever read a book like that, right?).

Unapologetic: Why, despite everything, Christianity can still make surprising emotional sense by Francis Spufford (HarperOne, New York, 2013)

Unapologetic: Why, Despite Everything, Christianity Can Still Make Surprising Emotional Sense

Okay, this is a helpful book, but for two reasons, it may not be a book for everyone. First, Spufford is nowhere near being what I would call a conservative evangelical of the US variety. Second, he swears like an unsanctified sailor. I grew up in an extended family that was adept at swearing in both English and French, so I’m used to hearing profanity. But, at times, thankfully, it still jars me; and Spufford did jar me at time.
Spufford explains his approach: “Why do I swear so much in what you are about to read? To make a tonal point: to suggest that religious sensibilities are not made of glass. do not need to hide themselves nervously from whole dimensions of human experience.” (p. xiii) So, you have been warned.
However, the book helped me like I was hoping it would: by giving me new ways to explain life and the Christian faith to un-Christian attendees.
Reacting to a sign on the atheist bus in London (yes, that’s a real thing! “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life” p. 7). Spufford writes, “But enjoyment is one emotion. The only things in the world that are designed to elicit enjoyment and only enjoyment are products, and your life is not a product…” (p. 8). That’s such a good way to challenge the goal of non-Christians. Or, concerning the subject of science versus Christianity: “This world believes that it has science on its side. Indeed, by an act of oblivious metaphorical digestion, it tends to believe that it is science…” (p. 70).
Spufford also made me think about the Christian faith in new ways. For instance, “…it is…a mistake to suppose that it is assent to the propositions that makes you a believer. It is the feelings that are primary. I assent to the ideas because I have the feelings; I don’t have the feelings because I’ve assented to the ideas” (p. 19). I don’t know about you, but I never think about faith at the level of the affections. He actually frames his writing by saying, “This…is a defense of Christian emotions—of their intelligibility, of their grown-up dignity” (p. 23).
Spufford accurately captures the conundrum Jesus creates when He raises the morality bar extremely high in places like the Sermon on the Mount: “He talks as if virtue is almost unachievable, yet still compulsory” (p. 115).
I wished I would have read the book before preaching through all the “one another’s” in the NT. Spufford describes loving each other dearly as: “Our hearts are in our eyes as we look at each other” (p. 200).
I found the author’s definition of sin very insightful: “[sin] always refers to the pleasurable consumption of something….’indulgence’ or ‘enjoyable naughtiness’…. our active inclination to break stuff, ‘stuff’ here including moods, promises, relationships we care about, and our own well-being and other people’s, as well as material objects whose high gloss positively seems to invite a big fat scratch” (pp. 25, 26, 27). (as a huge bonus, the last part of this definition highlights Spufford’s excellent writing style; you will enjoy reading his sentences when he’s not swearing).
And how about his description of our broken world: “We do entirely agree that there’s a crack in everything. (That’s how the light gets in? Oh yes; that most of all) The vision is of an intrinsically imperfect cosmos, hairlined through and through with flaws, chipped and battered and patched” (p. 46).
I especially profited from chapter 4,  Hello, Cruel World. Spufford writes: “Every one of our voyages ends in disaster. Every ship of ours is the Titanic” (p. 92).
And Spufford doesn’t pull punches as it relates to attempting to come to grips with a sovereign God’s part in it all. After seeing a church newsletter where the “Almighty” is thanked for fixing the minister’s car via a miraculously cheap quote from a garage, “For if God was willing to exert Himself over the minister’s sparkplugs, but wouldn’t get out of bed to stop the Holocaust, what sort of picture would that draw?” (p. 94).
Jesus and miracles were never intended to stop the brokenness completely: “One man doing miracles in West Asia doesn’t even move the leprosy statistics. The cruelty of the cruel world reproduces itself far faster than his slow hands can move. He brings sight to blind eyes, and all the causes of blindness rage on” (p. 131).
 And, then, I loved this statement: “We don’t have an argument that solves the problem of the cruel world, but we have a story” (p. 106). That’s what we preach each Sunday: the Story of how our God is redeeming His world through our Lord Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit.
Preach the Story well for the sake of God’s reputation in the Church and in Christ Jesus.
Randal

This post was originally published on November 25th, 2014.

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Is Your Preaching Getting Better?

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A while ago the following sentence caught my eye. It’s from Pandora’s bio on the singing group, Hot Chocolate:

“An interracial English funk and soul group, Hot Chocolate scored a pair of huge hits in the 70’s but were otherwise more enthusiastic than skilled.”

Ouch!

This immediately made me think of what someone could say about me or any other preaching pastor.

I recognize that skill levels vary with individuals. It’s that way with athletes. There is LeBron James and there are other basketball players (older blog readers insert Michael Jordan). And it’s that way with preachers. I’m no Tony Evans or Tim Keller.

This week I begin teaching Advanced Homiletics to a class at LBC’s northern Virginia campus. I’m also in the middle of working with a Baltimore pastor in an independent study in Communicating Biblical Truth. So, I’m thinking a lot these days about how to teach hermeneutical and homiletical skills. As always, it forces me to think about how I’m doing. How skillful am I at…

  • fighting the good fight of faith? At fighting temptation? At displaying the fruit of the Spirit?
  • interpreting how Scripture functions for the Church? At theological exegesis? At understanding the human heart?
  • communicating God’s Word in church? At speaking, pace, movement, energy, urgency? At relating to the learners?

Take a look at those three broad categories. What does it take to become more skillful in these areas. It takes intentional, intense prayer. It takes purposeful reading. It takes consistent pastoral interaction (loving and listening).

God help us preach better so that He gets glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:21).

Randal

P.S. Preach a good sermon, will ya?!

 

This post was originally published on September 1st, 2015.

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If Edwards Preached Your Ordination Sermon: What I’m Learning From Reading Jonathan Edwards’ Early Sermons

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Kimnach writes,

“Edwards’ matured vision of the ideal preacher is most completely delineated in his ordination sermon on John 5:35, entitled The True Excellency of a Minister of the Gospel (1744)” (p. 25).

I am always looking for ways to guide my ongoing pastoral/preaching ministry and find Edwards’ approach very helpful. He identifies two necessary skills, heat and light; one is spiritual and the other mechanical.

The spiritual skill: “[the preacher’s] heart [must] burn with love to Christ, and fervent desires of the advancement of his kingdom and glory” (p. 25).

What I refer to as the mechanical skill: “his instructions [be] clear and plain, accommodating to the capacity of his hearers, and tending to convey light to their understandings” (p. 25).

If Edwards preached my ordination sermon I would come away with a burning desire for God. And that desire for God would be the foundation for my sermon development.

And what was clear about Edwards’ thoughts on clarity was that he was clear about the need for moving the affections of his listeners with his clarity. All his arguments and reasoning was designed to “move the affections” (Kimnach, p. 26 citing, Thoughts on the Revival of Religion in New England).

I would summarize the two aspects as passion for God and for His people. It means cultivating my love relationship with God. It means cultivating my understanding that His people’s lives are on the line each Sunday. I want to be used by God’s Spirit to move their affections so they love God supremely in the way Sunday’s Scripture presents Him and them.

Before Sunday, as you prepare for the first sermon in 2019, bring the heat and light so God receives glory in the church and in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:21).

Randal