It was such a joy to expound upon God’s word today. I have realized that exegetical sermons are the way to go for me. I was going to preach a topical sermon on the different ways Jesus teaches us to die; however topical sermons often make it more difficult to let the Word of God speak. For instance; I could make a decision on what I want to preach and find verses that match that lesson. When that process happens, it’s easy to find support (or to force support) for what i want to say. In an exegetical sermon the preacher must come to the Word and say, “What is this talking about?” and then ask “What is this saying about what it’s talking about?” With those questions, agonizing study, prayer, receptiveness to the Holy Spirit, Creativity, attention to the audience’s struggles, fears, and motivations, realization of my own inadequacies, realization that I’m a gift (tool, vessel, opportunity) for changed life and not responsible for changed life, that the most important teacher is the Holy Spirit, while balancing the whole message in a form conducive to adequate rhetoric. My preaching professor once said that we, as preachers, should not judge our sermons until we preach about 100-150. I am at about 20+. I feel like a high school kid batting in his first baseball game. He had several practices where no one taught him anything about how to hit a baseball. He made contact once in a while, but the night before this first game his coach taught him everything he could about batting. The day of the game the kid remembered everything he was taught, but he had to think too much to just hit for the sake of hitting. I long for the day i can preach for the sake of preaching. I am reminded of the boy who had a limited amount of bread and fish; yet Christ multiplied his limited supply for the sake of the hungry crowd. May the Lord forever bless my meager effort for the hungry listeners.
This has been a tough week. I didn’t decide on the passage until Friday night. I didn’t start on the passage until Saturday at 7:00pm. I finished my sermon outline at 1am. After that I went over to the church and diligently prayed that God would speak to us where we are at by Glorifying His son in the message. By 2:30 I was asleep. I woke up at 7:45 and started to write a transcript. I then proceeded to go over my outline. Though my time was limited this week; it was most joyous to engage in the sermon proposition; at least in part. The small time I had available this week I was able to offer up in order to preach the Word. Such an opportunity was a blessing and a privilege that I can not supply in words. Though to call such an action ‘dying to myself’ (as the Word of God taught us today) would be a mockery of the difficulty of the message today. It is the difficulty that Christ has exemplified that propels any such dying on our part.