Live your theology.

My sermon from Sunday evening is posted over at the Tacoma BPC site.

It’s an introductory sermon.  As far as introductory sermons go, they can be really good, or really bad.  The really bad ones are basically history lessons.  You get background information about the city, the economic conditions, what was happening elsewhere in the world at the time the letter was written.  Who was emperor, what their reign looked like, etc.  All this might be interesting, but if it’s the meat of your sermon, you missed the mark.  Widely.  After all, we’re called to preach Christ Jesus.

Here’s how I went about it.  First, who is Paul writing to?

Timothy, duh.  But not only Timothy.  His declaration of his apostleship is an indicator that this pastoral epistle was meant to be read by more than just Pastor Timothy, but by the churches in the region, as was customary or the apostolic epistles.  Timothy didn’t need the reminder that Paul was an apostle.  With that bit of info we’re able to look at who Timothy was (and shake the idea that he’s nothing mroe than a weak-stomached inexperienced Pastor unable to decide what he should do next).  We also get to look at the authority of Scripture every time we do a sermon on an epistles introduction.

The gospel meat of the message has to do with Paul’s specific decision to show Jesus as coequal with God the Father as well as his declaration that he’s working under marching orders from God  (both found in 1 Timothy 1:1).  Paul isn’t writing this epistle just because he loves Timothy as a true son, but because Christ has commanded him to do so according to the office he called Paul into.

Unbelievers have marching orders from God.  They are to turn away from sin via repentance and put their faith in Jesus Christ (Acts 2:38, Acts 3:19, 2 Peter 3:9, to name a few instances).

Believers have marching orders from God too, and 1 Timothy deals with a number of them.  So the message calls for repentance and obedience through the proclamation of the Gospel as well as an exhortation to serve Christ in love by remembering what the standing orders God has given us are (think Commission, Great).

Give it a listen. Let me know what you think, about this post or about the sermon in general.

If John Owen were to drop by your church gather this Sunday, inform you that he had been frozen in a block of ice and was only “mostly dead” but better now after his recent thaw. If he were then given permission to preach a sermon — would he do an adequate job?  I suspect that he would not.

I don’t mean to suggest that I have some question as to whether he’d preach sound doctrine.  I just wonder if anyone would understand the words that came from his mouth.

If a Pastor’s role is to present the gospel and expound the Word of God to the congregation — the whole congregation, mind you — is there any room for verbose or antiquated speech? I ask this because I’ll occasionally come across a churchman who absolutely adores the preaching of his or her pastor, but confesses that sometimes the words used or the manner of delivery soars ever so eloquently over their heads.  Us Reformed folk have a real love for Puritans and other Reformed types.  But sometimes that love is expressed by trying to sound like the Puritan Doc Brown put together a rudimentary flux capacitor capable of launching you into the future once your horse & buggy reaches a speed of 8.8 mph.

I love reading those old Puritans myself. I love reading Shakespeare.  I appreciate what those verbose pastors are going for.  I understand (mostly) what is being communicated by all three groups. But it took a college course or two coupled with hours upon hours re-reading the same sentence over-and-over-and-over again to get to that point.  This is something most people do not do, because they are not dorks, such as myself.

Most every Pastor I know cherishes the time they have in the pulpit to preach the Word.  They trim down content to fit whatever time window they might have.  But what good is all of that if the actual words spoken are shattered upon the rock of understanding (or not understanding, as it were)?

Jesus taught with authority and could have stumped everyone he taught in the same manner as God stopped up Job’s mouth (where were you when?). But instead, he uses language easily understood by those around him (consider the lilies of the field, birds of the air, etc.).  He taught hard things. Difficult things to follow, but what he taught was understood and accepted or rejected accordingly.

If Christ made a point to speak in a manner so that those he was teaching were able to understand his every word — we need to take care to be sure we’re doing the same.  Not through watering down or irreverence, but with a plain and direct language — free of unnecessary or archaic terminology, or awkward and outdated sentence structures.  We had a whole Reformation about a number of different things.  People being afforded the opportunity to understand in their own language the Word of God was one of them.  As brilliant as the English Puritans were, they were effectively speaking a different language than the English of today.

Cry for the state of education in our nation.  Push for a resurgence in the classical model of educating.  Just don’t insist that this is your congregation’s problem and continue on in speaking over their collective heads.  “I didn’t understand what the Pastor was saying” won’t be a sufficient excuse at judgment day.  But all the same, I don’t wish to be asked why I didn’t care enough to make sure my words were understood by those who came to hear them.

My most recent sermon on Ruth chapter 2, Enter Boaz,  is available for streaming or downloading on the TBPC website.  You’ll find themes of providence, faith, and godliness encompassed within the framework of the gospel. My seminary homiletics professor always stresses having a clear sentence that can sum up your sermon, for this sermon the sentence is: “God uses Ruth’s faithfulness & Boaz’s kindness to providentially bring the Messiah closer to incarnation.”

So give it a listen! Or, if you prefer, simply read a review of it!

Dreams & Instincts (Jude 6-8). I have a blog? Huh. Well, here’s the last sermon I preached…

Dreams & Instincts

Jude 5-10

5 But I want to remind you, though you once knew this, that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe. 6 And the angels who did not keep their proper domain, but left their own abode, He has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day; 7 as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities around them in a similar manner to these, having given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh, are set forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.
8 Likewise also these dreamers defile the flesh, reject authority, and speak evil of dignitaries. 9 Yet Michael the archangel, in contending with the devil, when he disputed about the body of Moses, dared not bring against him a reviling accusation, but said, “The Lord rebuke you!” 10 But these speak evil of whatever they do not know; and whatever they know naturally, like brute beasts, in these things they corrupt themselves.