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It deals with how listeners should view sermons. As such, it's a message every preacher wishes his people would read and take to heart. Anyone who has ever stood behind a pulpit, or lectern, or sought to convey the truth of God's Word to a group of people, understands exactly what Challis means and would want all who listen to their messages to understand it as well. So here it is... from one who preaches to many who listen. Enjoy!
Sermons Are Not For Liking
I did not set out to be a preacher. Ten years ago I would have laughed
out loud if someone had told me that a decade hence I would be a regular in the
pulpit. As I've slowly acclimated to preaching, I have found myself thinking
very differently about sermons. I've been listening to sermons all of my life,
but only now do I see preaching from the other side of the pulpit, so to speak.
It has been very good for me.
Today I want to share a lesson I've learned that applies primarily to
those of us who listen to preaching (as I do, most Sundays, since I am not an
every-Sunday kind of preacher). Here’s the lesson: Sermons are not for liking.
Sermons are for listening, they are for discerning, they are for
applying, but they are not for liking. You don’t get to like or dislike a
sermon. We tend to ask questions like, “So how did you enjoy the sermon today?”
It is just the wrong question to ask.
I guess that isn't always true. If a sermon is outright unbiblical—if
the preacher butchers his text, misses the point, teaches nonsense or outright
error, then I guess you are well within your rights to dislike it because God
dislikes it and is dishonored by it. And maybe if it is clear the preacher put
little or no thought into his text, if he is delivering a sermon only out of a
sense of duty or the overflow of pride, maybe then you can dislike it because,
again, it dishonors God. But I suspect few of us find ourselves in that
situation on a regular basis.
Back to my point: Sermons are not for liking. There are at least
two reasons for this: it dishonors preaching and it dishonors
the preacher.
1.) To ask, “How did you like the sermon?” dishonors preaching.
It dishonors the very form, the God-given medium. We trust that when the Word
is preached, the Spirit works. He is present in the preaching, present in the
speaker, and in the hearer, shaping words, molding hearts, applying truth. We
preach because God tells us to, and we preach trusting that God uses this form
of communication instead of another form. We preach even though preaching seems
so foolish. When we ask, “How did you like the sermon?” we make the sermon
something we consume rather than something that consumes us. We judge it like
we judge the custom-crafted latte at Starbucks or the new iDevice we saved
up for.
2.) To ask, “How did
you like the sermon?” dishonors the preacher. The sermon you hear on Sunday
morning may look like it just flows out of the preacher’s mouth. It may seem so
easy, so natural, that you think the preacher hardly had to work at it. Yet the
more effortless it appears, the more work it represents. When you see Albert
Pujols swing a bat or Phil Mickelson drive a ball, you are not seeing people
simply taking advantage of innate talent. You are seeing the result of practice
and preparation. These are people who have dedicated thousands of hours to
honing their craft; they have become so skilled that they make it appear easy.
This is true of preachers as well. The sermon that is smooth and easy,
that moves seamlessly from one point to the next, that delivers bang-on
application—this is the sermon that displays more practice, more skill, more
time in preparation.
Don’t confuse hard-earned skill with easy preparation. And then there is
the delivery, where a man has to stand before a hundred or two hundred or a
thousand people and deliver that sermon, hoping he connects with his listeners,
trusting his interpretation is sound, longing for the application to fit. It
dishonors the man to then ask, “How did you like it?”
Don’t like it! Instead, ponder it, meditate upon it, and apply it.
At the end of it all, “How did you enjoy the sermon?” is simply the
wrong question to ask. Far better is, “What did you learn from the sermon?” or
“How did the Holy Spirit speak to you through the sermon?” These are questions
that elevate the form or medium far above our preferences, and call upon us to
submit to the Spirit as he is present in preaching."
If we are caught up in some particular sin, the best sermon for us is
not one that we like, or one that makes us feel good, but one that cuts us
to the core and unsettles us so deeply that it moves us to repentance. If
we are struggling with doubt and feel like giving up, its the one that helps us
to see God's promises anew, infuses us with hope, and moves us
to a renewed determination to persevere. If we are filled with guilt and
despair of ever sensing God's affirmation and love, its the one that convinces
us no sin is beyond the reach of the grace and forgiveness Christ secured
for us on the cross.
A sermon is not to be measured by how it makes us feel, but by how it
reveals God, His redemptive will for our lives, and by what it moves us
to DO in response to the truth conveyed through it.
Michael Horton put it well in his book, "A Place
for Weakness." Discussing his wife's experience with "a severe
hormone-induced depression" related to her pregnancy
he states:
"Lisa realized that she could not preach the Word to herself; she
needed a herald sent from God himself to proclaim externally something
different from what she felt internally. In times of crisis, the most important
thing we can do is go to church. Chiefly, this is where God's herald (the
preacher) announces that 'external Word' that contradicts our private
judgments. Working against the tide of our inner experience and thoughts, this
announcement comes rushing toward us like water from the Himalayas: 'You are
forgiven, go in peace.'" (Luke 7:36-50)
The last two weeks of my vacation I was privileged to sit and
listen to two sermons by two of the gentlemen who filled my pulpit in
my absence. The first was Bob Moyer on, "Leaving
What's Behind, Behind," and Ted Rabenold
on, "Your Husband Is Your Maker". They were
sermons that instructed me, served as a good reminder, and moved me to do
something in response to them.
I didn't just "like" them (a dishonor to both
preaching and the preacher) I was challenged and changed by them. That's
preaching and I'm somehow different for having been there to hear it.
May we all, "submit to the Spirit as he is present in
preaching." Pastor Jeff
