A Neglected Essential from Southern Seminary on Vimeo.

Here is an outline of the whole exposition:

• The Ascension
  • Christ spent 40 days with His disciples before ascending answering their questions & teaching
  • The angels heralded His ascension just as they did His incarnation.
• Descriptive analysis of the passage:
  • He led them out
  • He lift up His hands (and blessed them, perhaps with the Aaronic blessing)
  • He left them
    • He was taken up into heaven in a cloud.
    • He had told his disciples: I am going to prepare a place for you that where I am you may be also.
    • Christ physically went and remains somewhere in the time-space universe.  That verse has to be held in the context of all the revelation of Scripture: Christ was Incarnated, died, buried, and rose again bodily.
    • The cloud here are not meant to make us think of the clouds of the sky but clouds in the Scriptures: The cloud that led the Israelites in the wilderness, the cloud on Sinai, the cloud that filled the Temple, the cloud on the mount of Transfiguration
    • He, as it were, ascended up into the folds of space (CS Lewis) – the realm of the 4^th dimension. This would make a good discussion over coffee!
• The Significance of the Ascension
  • The Ascension declares Mission Complete, the Work of Redemption is Finished.
  • The Ascension declares God’s mighty power.
  • The Ascension marked the return of Jesus to the Father, a return to the glory He had known before.
  • The Ascension inaugurated the giving of the Holy Spirit in a unique and unrepeatable way at Pentecost.
  • The Ascension guarantees our heavenly home.
• What is Jesus doing now that He has ascended?
  • Jesus is now presiding over the universe.
  • Jesus is now ruling His church.
  • Jesus is now with us in our weaknesses.
  • Jesus is now interceding for us.
• How His Disciples Reacted
  • They responded in adoration: “they worshipped him”
  • They responded in exultation: “returned to Jerusalem with great joy”
  • They resulted in preparation: “continually in the Temple”
    • Acts 1:8 – “wait until you be endued with with power from on high”
    • So the text leaves the disciples (in Luke 24:53) waiting, worshipping, and witnessing.
• Conclusion: Isn’t this what we are doing?
  • We are waiting
  • We are worshipping
  • We are witnessing

But I’ve heard some doozies as well.  Some real colossal failures (and that’s ok, I myself have preached some colossal failures) and a number of trite, silly ones too.  I’ve heard some things that were ridiculously off-base even while the congregation was shouting.  Oh, the things I’ve heard.

I’ve been told that when King Joash was smiting the ground with arrows at Elisha’s command (2 Kings 13:14-25) that it was a type of fighting the flesh.  Our bodies came from dirt, the ground, and the ground is the type of the flesh, and the smiting of the arrows is battling our flesh.  The way to victory, we were, told is to keep smiting the flesh.  It was the sort of biblical interpretation and preaching that the early Christian ascetics and self-flagellating medieval monks would have greatly enjoyed.

I’ve heard that a woman shaking her hair to God can bring victory over personal trials and the Devil.  And a number of other things have fallen out of bad approaches to 1 Corinthians 11:2-16.  I’m not sure how that all works.  If it has worked for some, I’m sure it has everything to do with the faith and worship of the woman, and not with the act of shaking the hair like a tribal dance.  One thing is for sure, the hair shake, is not in the text.

I’ve heard that we were right at the very end, the end of all things, just about every year since 1988, with a lot more of that thing during the first Gulf War, and a bunch just prior to 2000. Obviously, this hasn’t happened yet.  But it hasn’t kept preachers for trying to figure this out and creating all sorts of elaborate interpretations from parts of Scripture to account for the times.

I’ve heard a week-long exposition of the book of Esther as a blueprint for the endtime revival.  That was a long time ago, but I think by now the Church was already supposed to have been in control of the media for the spread of the Gospel.  Of course, that has not happened.  And let it be said: the book of Esther is categorically not a blueprint for endtime revival.

I’ve heard it said that the water of the sea of Galilee was a type of baptism.  That’s why the pigs of Gadara ran into the water after they were possessed by the demon(s) called Legion.  Evidently, the pigs were smart enough to know that water exorcised demons and therefore ran to the water to be free of them.

I’ve heard that everyone has “issues” of life just as the Samaritan woman had an “issue” of blood.  Ok, this is a serious equivocation of terms.  There are issues and then there are issues, the kind with blood, and they are not the same thing.

I once endured a re-telling of the Good Samaritan at a youth rally  as an elaborate allegory for the Christian life.  It would have made Origen proud.

More than a few times I’ve heard bible passages turned completely on their face.  Colossians 2 comes to mind.  Or Moses on the mountain determining the mountain’s boundaries as an example of a pastor setting standards (there are a number of reasons why that does not work).

I’ve heard numerous sermons where any mention of numbers leads to numbered lists of things we must do or know.  The four men who carried the lame man to Jesus and lowered him through the roof becomes “four for revival” or “four faithful foundations”, etc., etc., etc.  Any mention of three things in the text becomes: 1) repent, 2) be baptized, and 3) get the Holy Ghost.  (Of course, three things for Trinitarians becomes, yes, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost).

And sadly, there have been not a few times, when the text of Scripture read had nothing to do with the sermon preached.  Instead, the sermon was built on a poem, or a newspaper article, or an illustration, or a great story, or even a testimony.  And I must say, that if you are going to use newspaper articles please learn which papers are generally reliable and which ones are grocery-aisle rags.  The truth is that none of this is biblical preaching.  Granted biblical preaching can use poems, articles, illustrations, stories, and certainly testimonies, but biblical preaching must place the priority on the Bible’s contribution as the core of the sermon.

Whatever the results of the preaching, these are all failures of a sort.  Thank God, He can draw a straight line with a crooked stick.  Thank God, He can speak through donkeys.  And all we preachers and teachers are going to occasionally fail in this regard.  I myself have preached some real doozies.  I look back at my stack of sermons and a few of them still bring the color red to my cheeks and I want to burn the notes.  But with humility and an intense devotion to what the Scriptures actually say we can avoid the more spectacular kinds of hermeneutical and homiletical failures.

Looking at all of this, I am very, very thankful for the great number of times I’ve heard faithful preachers simply stick to the text and preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  The power of God does not reside in fanciful reconstructions of the text, or in traditions of interpretations we’ve added, or in elaborate illustrations, or in rhetorical flourishes.  The power of God resides in the simple Gospel of Jesus Christ (Rom 1:16, 1 Cor 2:1-4).

I may have offended some of you in the reading of this, let me assure you: no offense intended.  All preachers have failed in this regard including you, your favorite preachers, me, and my favorite preachers.  This does not change the point made here: We need a radical re-commitment to the Scriptures and what they actually say.  I hope that you are in this (the call to preach) to proclaim the Word and get it right, because at the end of the day, when it comes to knowing God’s mind, the text of Scripture is all we have and it is sufficient (2 Tim. 3:14-16).

Brothers, we must be committed to the actual text of Scripture and to the message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.    Sola Scriptura! Soli deo gloria!

Primal Scream Theology from Russell Moore on Vimeo.

Not long ago I did a post on How To Keep Hearing The Word, and focused on what we could do after we hear the word preached to keep it in our minds, live and apply it.  Now I want to ask, what should we be doing before we hear the word preached?

The following list is not my own but comes from John Piper’s seminar material on Gravity and Gladness on Sunday Morning.  You can read the notes here and listen to the seminar here, and Piper covers this material in Part 6 of this series, about 3/4 of the way through, though the whole session is quite good.  I commend it to you.

1. Pray that God will give you a good and honest heart.
2. Meditate on the word of God.
3. Purify your mind by turning away from worldly entertainment on Saturday night.
4. Trust in the truth you already have.
5. Rest long enough on Saturday night to be alert and hopeful on Sunday morning.
6. Forebear one another on Sunday morning without grumbling and criticism (i.e. Don’t fight with your spouse and kids before church!).
7. Be meek and teachable when you come.
8. Be still as you enter the room and focus your mind’s attention and heart’s affection on God.
9. Think earnestly about what is sung and prayed and preached.
10. Desire the truth of God’s word more than you desire riches or food.

That’s Piper’s list, to which I add:

11.  If you have pre-service prayer, be there, and pray, pray, pray with all you’ve got.
12.  During the singing, sing, sing, sing, with all you’ve got.

“But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.” – James 1:22-25

So how can we avoid this danger and what can we do to work against it? I have come up with this list of suggested strategies.

1. Intentionally meditate on the message the next day.
2. Write down the sermon title, text, and a one or two sentence summary in your planner.  It is likely that a small note such as this will bring much of the message back to you and will aid you in meditating on the message.
3. Write down the points made that “hit home” that convicted you and why.
4. Write down the main Scripture text and the other supporting passages used.
5. Use the notes and thoughts you’ve written down as basis for meditation and prayer.
6. Pray through the Scriptures from the message.
7. Memorize the most impacting Scripture from the message.
8. Write down 2-3 things you will do, that you know you must do, in response to the message.
9. Write down any questions that occurred to you in light of the message and seek the answers out in Scripture.
10. Keep a simple log of the sermons you hear through the year.
11. Get a copy (CD / DVD) of the most impacting messages and listen to them repeatedly.

These are just a few thoughts.  Are you a good sermon listener and doer?  Whatever you do I hope you become a better one.  If you have any thoughts or ideas please post them in the comments.

So I commend to you Harrelson’s discussion over at BarnabasBlog: How Expository Preaching Changed Me.

Readers, if you have the time I would be interested to know your honest opinion: as a person on the pew do you enjoy a preaching/teaching method that works through passages of Scripture in sequence, in a series?