Years ago my dad did a series of Bible studies which he called “An A-Z of Old Testament Characters.” I’m not sure if he managed to find someone for every letter, but there was certainly enough mileage to keep the series going for a good while. It’s no surprise that character studies have proved popular.… Continue reading How to listen to character study sermons
Category: Preaching and Teaching
How to listen to evangelistic sermons (when you already are a Christian)
At any one time in a gathering there will be Christians and non-Christians present. This presents the preacher with a challenge. Does he primarily focus on preaching to the Christians to edify and build them up or does he focus on evangelising the enquirers. Either way, he risks leaving part of the audience behind. Or… Continue reading How to listen to evangelistic sermons (when you already are a Christian)
How to listen to topical sermons
Instead of focusing on a specific Bible passage and drawing out the things it has to say, a topical sermon starts with an issue and tries to find out what the Bible says about it. For example, the sermon might deal with an issue in church life such as prayer, giving, worship or evangelism. A… Continue reading How to listen to topical sermons
How to listen to doctrinal sermons
Sometimes the aim of a sermon is to help us grasp a specific Biblical truth more clearly. This should not surprise us. We keep insisting that what we believe affects how we live. We may use a one off sermon or even a short series of sermons to teach on a particular doctrine. For example,… Continue reading How to listen to doctrinal sermons
How to listen to expository sermons
Are you sitting comfortably? The answer is “probably not” if you are in the typical church pew or crammed into a packed hall with little leg room. So hopefully the sermon will be short, sharp and snappy though you’ve got a feeling that it might not be. Expository sermons have a reputation for being long… Continue reading How to listen to expository sermons
Breaking it down and finding the flow
I’ve been writing a few posts about how I study a passage in the Bible in order to give you a feel for how to go about the close textual analysis involved in exegesis. This should be helpful to anyone who is planning to preach, lead a Bible study, teach a youth group or even… Continue reading Breaking it down and finding the flow
Going Deeper
We often talk about the need to go deeper into God’s Word. A few years back, Andrew Sach and Nigel Benyon wrote a helpful little book with the title “Dig Deeper” which was all about the tools we can use to get a better grasp on what God’s Word is saying to us. The risk… Continue reading Going Deeper
What your Bible translation does
In my previous article talking about how to slow down our reading of the Bible I mentioned that you might find it helpful to read from a different translation from time to time. I thought it might be helpful to talk a little about choosing Bible translations in terms of how they function. There are… Continue reading What your Bible translation does
Slow Down
If you take a preaching class, one of the first things you’ll start with is something called Exegesis. Exegesis is all about how we read the meaning out of (Ex) the text. This is contrasted with eisegesis, reading our own meaning and ideas into (eis) the text. The risk when preaching is that we will… Continue reading Slow Down
Why I started preaching longer sermons again
At the start of Coronavirus when we all moved church services online, the majority view was that we needed to preach shorter sermons (in fact our services overall were shorter). I agreed with this approach and followed it. I believe it was the right thing to do. You see, all the evidence seemed to point… Continue reading Why I started preaching longer sermons again
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