How to preach a sermon
A sermon the saints love to hear
How to preach such a sermon
David Smith once said, “A sermon is a word that concludes with action.” After all, if a sermon is to accomplish something, then the sermon must have a very clear purpose, and the preacher must answer this question accurately. You should be able to say, "Why am I preaching this sermon today?"
The above 38% statistical figure simply means that preaching is the most important factor in people choosing a church.
Then, what kind of sermon is a good sermon, and what kind of sermon can grow the church?
There is a sermon that the saints love to hear. Sometimes, some of the sermons that believers like to hear are not evangelical. But it's not even worth calling it a sermon. What kind of sermon do the saints want to hear in the truth?
in the context of the sermon
. a must-have sermon
. A sermon to experience the living gospel
Christian preaching began to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ. Therefore, the preaching of early Christianity was centered on the gospel. The gospel is God’s ultimate victory over sin, death, and all the forces of evil through Jesus Christ’s death on the cross and resurrection from the dead, and it can bring new life to individuals, societies, nations, and the entire universe. It is the good news that proclaims
Therefore, Christian preaching centers on the gospel of the blood of Jesus Christ, the gospel of forgiveness, the gospel of resurrection, and the gospel of new life. Christian preaching is the proclamation of this gospel.
Before delivering any message, the sermon must always meet with this gospel, and the message of this gospel must become the frame. Christian preaching was born with the resurrection of Jesus, and the early preachers were devoted to preaching the gospel of this resurrection of Jesus and risked their lives. So Richard Richer said that the fact that Jesus Christ was resurrected is the preacher's ability to continue to "preach" today.
As C. H. Dodd argued that the prototype of Christian preaching was kerygma, modern preaching should also focus on the news of life through the death and resurrection of Jesus. Just as the news of the resurrection of Jesus Christ was "good news" to the early church, so preaching should be a proclamation of good news and a gospel of healing for despair and life's problems.
However, there is a sense that there are many misunderstandings and errors in the concept of “good news” commonly understood in our Korean church today. In extreme cases, the "good news" is thought of as God's response to their human needs. Despite the fact that the essence of the "good news" is the Lord's atoning death and the resurrection of salvation, the added-value elements of the "good news", namely healing, healing, relief, and success, dare to take the place of the "good news". They are sitting and obscuring the true meaning of the "good news" and the power of the "good news" and diluting the joy of salvation from the "good news."
It can be said that the most direct cause of it is preaching. Therefore, it cannot but be pointed out that there were many non-evangelical elements in the preaching of the Korean church. The law must be preached, blessings must be preached, healing and life-giving guidelines must be preached, but legal sermons have a coercive element that is emerging as a problem in preaching, so the saints can receive the joy, comfort, and emotion of the gospel through sermons. If you go back with a sense of burden and repulsion rather than taking it with you, it can be said that the ministry has many problems. The same goes for the sermon of blessing. If the “good news,” the most important part of the sermon, has disappeared because the sermons are preaching by accepting their worldly desires and desires rather than the joy of salvation through the death and resurrection of Christ, it is no longer a sermon, but a world life. It will be nothing more than a teaching book.
Christian preaching is basically evangelical, and it must have the framework of the gospel. It was the gospel that changed Rome, which was on the cusp of pagan culture, and it could be changed because Rome heard the gospel. Even in the 21st century, the gospel of God must be preached, and the only power that can change the changing times is the gospel. Therefore, preaching theology aimed at the 21st century should pay deep attention to how to deliver the gospel more effectively, and preachers should restore the passion of the gospel.
. A sermon inspired by the Holy Spirit
At the most important point in understanding God's message, Calvin emphasized the help and working of the Holy Spirit, saying, "Only when the Holy Spirit gives us an understanding to understand the words set before the preacher and our hearts become the yoke of that teaching. The teachings of heaven are useful powers to us.” According to Calvin, our preachers should thoroughly seek to be accompanied by the teachings of the Holy Spirit. And since the knowledge that the preacher possesses is extremely limited, it is said that the way to see through all the truths of God accurately is possible only with the walk of the Holy Spirit.
“We can realize how weak all our sensory faculties are, for the eyes and ears cannot function properly unless the powers that come down from heaven continue to engage with our sensory functions.
He also says that all the power to recognize the glory of God in Christ and to grasp the meaning of the word accurately should never be the power of the preacher, but "power flowing from the illumination of the Holy Spirit." In addition, it is emphasized that by the work of the Holy Spirit, our ears must be pierced and our eyes opened so that we can hear and understand the Word of the Lord accurately. In practice, we need to acknowledge that human understanding is extremely finite. It should be noted that we are humans who live our lives contentedly with the best of our sensuous and intellectual functions, but in reality we have far more things we don't have than we have."
In this respect, Calvin's following argument has validity.
. Preaching with clear interpretation of the Word
If a preacher has the heaviest burden, it is he who knows what God is saying in the text he wants to deliver and delivers it to the believers. The most basic starting point for the preacher to understand the text is to understand what God intends in these words.
For Calvin, the primary conviction that carried out his ministry was his conviction of the Bible as the Word of God. For him, the Bible was the very word of God.
He said, "If I take the law as Moses' writing, the Psalms of David and other prophets, and grasp what is contained in all the Bible in this way, what will this work be? You could argue that no, and I could say something against the mortal ministers, but if God grants authority to the law and to all doctrines in the Bible, this is an excuse. Therefore, it is by no means an understatement to say that there is the Spirit of God speaking here, a term commonly used in the church."
"If I were to stand on this pulpit now and try to seduce people by forcing them to listen in the name of God, I would be more arrogant. I am not here to invent new laws or creeds." He said that the authority of the Bible rests entirely with God and that his sermons have equal authority because his sermons are proclaimed based on it.
Therefore, he focused on the interpretation and exposition of the Bible and did his best to find the true meaning of the text. He emphasized that it is the job of those entrusted with the task of communicating the Word of God, linking anything with “a true and pure exegesis of the written Word” to “applying the Word of God into the lives of the people.”