Preaching to the Heart 1

Some notes I took at a Preaching Seminar a while back...
Preaching to the Heart – Tim Keller, Oak Hill College, 19/11/08

Tolkien noted that a good sermon involves:
ART / VIRTUE / KNOWLEDGE

Col 1:28-29
 Admonishing – preaching into lives & situations (SITUATIONAL)
 Labouring – aspect of personal experience and involvement (VIRTUE)
 Teaching – need knowledge / information / objective truth (NORMATIVE)

When you preach – people are assessing you personally
 Evangelicals don’t like that – tend to belittle the Situational & Virtue aspects
 i.e. it should just be about the truth I speak – but the reality is you can’t separate the message from yourself or your listeners

U.S. preaching – often excessively situational
 Big emphasis on performance / moving people emotionally / being anecdotal
 Big weakness is that it lacks knowledge
 Our weakness, on the other hand, is often we lack situational invlovement

NEW PREACHERS
 Main complaint – good exegesis but lacking in application
 The sermons are boney & lack flesh – their word hasn’t become flesh
 Can be due to lack of personal / pastoral experience

Jonathan Edwards: purpose of sermon not just to make truth clear but to make it real
 Purpose in preaching is to change people even as they listen

APPLICATION
 Shouldn’t be tacked on the end of our preparation
 But should be in our minds at the beginning of our preparation

Dt 29:29 - Revealed things are there to be obeyed / put into practise / followed
Therefore – there is no part of God’s revelation that is not practical
 Everything in the Bible is application
 Thus: if you don’t know how a text is to be applied then you haven’t understood it!
 Application & Meaning are not different.

Word / Act theory
 i.e. Knowing the definition of a word is not the same as understanding the intention behind its use
 e.g. Can study a Psalm and breakdown language / understand context – but then need to ask what is the Psalm designed to do?

First part of sermon – says what you need to do
 Second part – says this is how to do it (i.e. go to Jesus)