How to Listen to a Sermon

by | Jun 29, 2008 | Preaching

Every year I try to preach one sermon on how to listen to a sermon. Today is that day for this year. While every sermon should contain some rehearsal of the gospel, it is also true that the gospel should be that which causes us to listen effectively to a sermon. How the gospel should affect our listening to sermons is the content of my message this evening. Eventually you will be able to listen to it on our sermon audio site. In addition to my comments this evening, I found these suggestions from George Whitfield to be helpful: How to Listen to a Sermon by George Whitefield Keys for getting the most out of what the preacher says Jesus said, ‘Therefore consider carefully how you listen’ (Luke 8:18). Here are some cautions and directions, in order to help you hear sermons with profit and advantage. 1. Come to hear them, not out of curiosity, but from a sincere desire to know and do your duty. To enter His house merely to have our ears entertained, and not our hearts reformed, must certainly be highly displeasing to the Most High God, as well as unprofitable to ourselves. 2. Give diligent heed to the things that are spoken from the Word of God. If an earthly king were to issue a royal proclamation, and the life or death of his subjects entirely depended on performing or not performing its conditions, how eager would they be to hear what those conditions were! And shall we not pay the same respect to the King of kings, and Lord of lords, and lend...

Gates moves on

by | Jun 27, 2008 | Technology

Interesting article on Bill Gates final day as Microsoft’s head honcho – and the way Microsoft will work when he’s gone. Gates moves on, but Microsoft keeps ‘quests’ alive – Yahoo!...

Thoughts From Founding Brothers

by | Jun 26, 2008 | Presidential History

Recently I finished reading Joseph P. Ellis’ Founding Brothers. It is an excellent look into some of the most fundamental relationships and issues that shaped our country in its formative years. Here are a few excerpts I found interesting from the book: What in retrospect has the look of a foreordained unfolding of God’s will was in reality an improvisational affair in which sheer chance, pure luck – both good and bad – and specific decisions made in the crucible of specific military and political crises determined the outcome (5). So is Ellis’ attempt to rub deity out of the nation’s historic beginnings. Obviously, Ellis is not writing from a biblical perspective. Instead, he chastises the Founder’s religious outlook from a purely secular world-view. Here’s how I think this should be re-written: What in retrospect has the look of sheer chance, pure luck – both good and bad – and specific decisions made in the crucible of specific military and political crises was in reality a foreordained unfolding of God’s will that determined the outcome. Ah – the very look of God’s providence every time. Regarding Aaron Burr: His grandfather, the great theologian Jonathan Edwards, had once said that we were all depraved creatures, mere spiders hanging precariously over a never-ending fire. But Burr’s entire life had been a sermon on the capacity of the sagacious spider to lift himself out of hellish difficulties and spin webs that trapped others (21). Compare this to Ian Murray’s account from his biography of Jonathan Edwards: “In a career as a soldier, lawyer, and politician – becoming Vice President of the United...