Human Speech: "Response-Ability"

"Human communication was meant to be based on humans' "response-ability" to God's commandments. In fact, the Hebrew word for "listen" derives from "obedience." Good speakers must first be obedient listeners so they know what they are talking about" (Quentin Schultze, An Essential Guide to Public Speaking: Serving Your Audience with Faith, Skill, and Virtue, 27).

Listening to Sermons

"It is a mental exercise, when rightly performed, in which all the faculties of the spiritual man are called into devotional action. Reverent hearing the word [listening to sermons] exercises our humility, instructs our faith, irradiates us with joy, inflames us with love, inspires us with zeal, and lifts us up towards heaven" (C. H. Spurgeon, Lectures To My Students, 53).

Preaching Law and Gospel

"Through the preaching of the law, the Holy Spirit slays us, leaving us utterly destitute and helpless to save ourselves, and through the preaching of the gospel, he raises us up and seats us with Christ in heavenly places" (Michael Horton, A Better Way: Rediscovering the Drama of God-Centered Worship, 66).

Efficacious Preaching

On the efficacy of preaching, Michael Horton insists "It is effective because God has promised to dispense his saving grace then and there by the Spirit, and it grows organically out of the logic of the message itself because it is an announcement of something that has been accomplished by God, rather than an incentive to get sinners to save themselves by sheer force of will or effort. It is good news, not good advice, good production value, or good ideas."

Horton elaborates on this good news: ". . . we can always count on God being where he has promised to meet us . . . . The power of the Spirit is linked to a promise; namely, a promise that faith comes by hearing the gospel preached (Rom. 10:8, 17)" (A Better Way: Rediscovering the Drama of God-Centered Worship, 64-65).

Fishing for Men

Charles Spurgeon on fishing for men: "I sometimes hear of persons getting very angry after a gospel sermon, and I say to myself, "I am not sorry for it." Sometimes when we are fishing the fish gets the hook into its mouth. He pulls hard at the line; if he were dead, he would not; but he is a live fish, worth the getting; and though he runs away for a while, with the hook in his jaws, he cannot escape. His very wriggling and his anger show that he has got the hook, and the hook has got him. Have the landing-net ready; we shall land him by and by. Give him more line; let him spend his strength, and then we will land him, and he shall belong to Christ forever" (Spurgeon's Sermon Illustrations, 56).

Reminds me that we all go to Christ kicking and screaming, wriggling and flopping. There is no other way, for we are, after all, saved by grace. At first, we are angry, we don't like the gospel and we don't like gospel sermons. But then God regenerates us, he gives us a new heart and new desires. Thus, the gospel becomes sweet to us, gospel sermons become sweet to us. Our anger is changed to joy unspeakable.

Sermon Series: Habakkuk

This past Lord's Day I concluded sermon series on Habakkuk. Here is the bare bones summary.

Habakkuk 1:1-4

 

Habakkuk’s initial lament: Habakkuk is confronted with the appearance of the paralysis of God’s law and justice; Habakkuk is sick and tired of the wicked encircling the just (the righteous) and squelching God’s law and goodness. Habakkuk lifts his lament to the Lord because wrong (bad/crooked) judgment goes forth. Sadly, it is Israel who is the cause of this warped justice, and that is why the Prophet cries out to God.

 

We need to be like Habakkuk and cry out to God when we see injustice. We cry out to God with hope because we know that God has, by the victory of Christ, destroyed the crooked justice of the wicked.

 

Habakkuk 1:5-11

 

God’s response to Habakkuk’s initial lament to the Lord: God says he is sending the Chaldeans like a fierce wind-storm from the East to judge and punish the wicked, hypocritical Israelites. God’s plan is hard to swallow. Why? Because Israel is not as wicked as the Chaldeans, yet the Lord will use the Chaldeans like a tool in his hand with which to judge the hypocritical Israelites. The Chaldeans, however, will offend by imputing divine-like status to their own strength, and this implies that the Lord will in time pour out his judgment also upon the Chaldeans.

 

Text: Habakkuk 1:12 - 2:1

 

Habakkuk hears the Lord’s response to his first lament and he now comes to the Lord with a second lament. Habakkuk is a prophet of God, he has perplexed faith, yet it is a confident faith, so, even though he doesn’t understand how the Lord can use the Chaldeans as an implement for his divine judgment of rebellious Israel, the prophet still exclaims “we shall not die” . . . But why would he say that? Habakkuk has confidence in God’s word of mercy (see Deuteronomy 4:31). Therefore, the prophet’s confidence is built upon the foundation of God’s word of promise. Habakkuk’s declares with anticipation, “I will stand upon my watch, and set me upon the tower, and will watch to see what he will say unto me, and what I shall answer when I am reproved” (2:1).

 

We learn from Habakkuk that sometimes the straightforward answer is disturbing (e.g. God’s response to Habakkuk’s first lament). However, we still need to learn how to reside in and flourish on account of God’s promises. Habakkuk knew that his only hope for life was to cling to God’s promises. We too must live in God’s promises, as did Habakkuk: and because we live in God’s promises we can say with Habakkuk, “We shall not die!” We shall not die because our God is merciful! That God would reconcile any of us, that God would be merciful to any of us is a remarkable thing—so remarkable that we only dare to believe it because God specifically has told us that he is merciful.

 

Habakkuk 2:2-5

 

The Lord kicks-off his second response to Habakkuk with an imperative; God gives Habakkuk homework: “Hey, Habakkuk, write down this vision of revelation!” God gives Habakkuk something to document, in order that God’s message might be rehearsed in the ears of the remnant. God has a design and plan. He wants the righteous remnant to know the design and plan for his program of redemption—specifically, judgment is coming to Israel and then to the Chaldeans, but that the “just shall live by faith.”

 

“The just shall live by faith” means the righteous come before God naked. We cast off our old, sinful identities and our filthy-rag-righteous-deeds. The righteous come naked before God, and the Lord adorns them with the imputed merits and righteousness of Jesus Christ.

 

Habakkuk 2:6-20

 

The Lord then pours out his oracles of judgment upon the Chaldeans in a series of five Woes. The Woes follow a specific pattern: 1) God declares the Woe, 2) God describes the crime committed by the Chaldeans, and 3) God declares the prescribed judgment for their crime.

 

The house/kingdom of the wicked Chaldeans is contrasted with the house/kingdom of God; the Chaldeans house/kingdom will end, but God’s house/kingdom will not end, it is eternal. Therefore, the “knowledge of the glory of the Lord” is going to fill the earth.

 

The knowledge of the glory of the Lord is knowledge of Christ (2 Corinthians 4:6). Jesus Christ is Lord, therefore, slowly but surely Christ’s kingdom will be pushed into the shadows and corners of this earth, until the entire earth is filled with the “knowledge of the glory of the Lord,” that is, with the knowledge of Christ.

 

Habakkuk 3:1-2

 

Habakkuk has heard the Lord’s response to his second lament, so now he composes a prayer-psalm of praise declaring the deeds of the Lord. And what are the deeds of the Lord declared in this introduction to Habakkuk’s prayer-psalm? They are this: that God in wrath remembered mercy. With this prayer-psalm Habakkuk stirs up our collective memories of our Lord’s powerful and merciful deeds.

 

God’s word of mercy, the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, that word of mercy is the Word, it is, Jesus Christ. All of Scripture is about Jesus Christ. The Old Testament anticipated and prepared the way for Jesus Christ, and the New Testament celebrates and declares that Christ came. God tells us lots of stories, and he wants those stories to get in us: once the stories are in us they form and fashion us into the image of Jesus Christ. At back of every Christian’s memory is the same story: that God in wrath remembered mercy. Every Christian has the same memory of God ransoming sinners from the fall.

 

Text: Habakkuk 3:3-19

 

The outline of Habakkuk’s prayer-psalm is structured around three occurrences of liturgical term Selah, with each section concluding on the theme of the “salvation of the Lord.” Habakkuk’s prayer-psalm is recounting God’s deeds; in this prayer-psalm Habakkuk has taken the stories of God’s powerful and mighty deeds and abstracts them and puts them to verse to be accompanied with stringed instrument (3:19).

 

God’s power and salvation are proclaimed in this prayer-psalm. Habakkuk concludes the prayer-psalm with the demonstration of the optimism that is characteristic of those who live by faith: Habakkuk knows that God’s judgment is coming to Israel and the Chaldeans, yet he still declares that even if the fig and olive and livestock should wax away he will “rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation.” Habakkuk’s comfort is not tethered to material possessions or temporal blessing. Rather, Habakkuk knows that the Lord God is his strength and will make his feet like hinds feet. Christians, like Habakkuk, know that God is their strength; the just (righteous) who live by faith know that they shall not die.

 

"What is the purpose of preaching?"

"The story is told of a homiletics professor who, many years ago, asked his classes, "What is the purpose of preaching?" His students would struggle valiantly to make adequate reply, but they never succeeded. Then, triumphantly, the professor would sing out, Scottish brogue and all, so I am told, "Gentlemen" ... "the purpose of preaching is to raise the dead!" Perhaps the statement strikes us today as a bit florid and dramatic. Yet the professor was on to something that needs to be repeated again and again, I believe: When we preach, God registers his claim upon us. He breaks into the little kingdoms that we have built, in which we attempt to exercise our rule over people and things, and says, "Let God be God." He disturbs us in our comforts and presumptions, and -- for what cause save his own graciousness, none of us can guess -- quickens our dead future. He does so with his Word" (Charles L. Bartow, The Preaching Moment: A Guide to Sermon Delivery, 48-49).

On Writing

William Zinsser's priceless observation: "Like the minister's sermon that builds to a series of perfect conclusions that never conclude, an article that doesn't stop where it should stop becomes a drag and therefore a failure" (On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction, 63).

I have heard those sermons and read those articles. "A drag and therefore a failure," ouch.