Sermon-Listening in the Bible - Summary

In A.D. 1541, the Ordinances of the Church of Geneva prescribed six sermons a week: Sundays at dawn, 9am, 12noon (catechism for children), and 3pm, plus three more sermons on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. They reasoned that this was the only way for light to return and darkness invaded. With that in mind, Walter Kaiser writes: “Should we not follow these Genevans in establishing, as they did, something more than the twenty-five minute homily or one ten-to-fifteen minute topical sermon given each Sunday morning as the total source for our Christian maturation for the whole week?”[1]

But Walter Kaiser wrote those words in 2003, and the preaching landscape has changed so much in the last ten years. Today, we are not so much fighting for longer sermons—we are fighting for sermons, period. Are you dedicated to listen to preaching? Is the practice essential to you? Take a look at the following discussion points and ask yourself: “Am I committed to listening to the voice of God, with humility, with discernment, and unto action in every sermon experience?”

Here are questions for discussion:

1.     Have you consistently prepared yourself to hear sermons with the understanding that God will speak to you in that sermon? Discuss how you might develop that anticipation. Discuss how you might encourage your pastor with that expectation.

2.     Do you have a humble and attentive heart when you listen to sermons? How is that seen by others? Discuss how you might encourage one another in areas of openness, transparency, and prayerfulness, before and after a sermon.

3.     Do you have the necessary skills and Bible knowledge to be a discerning sermon-listener? Do you engage with your pastor, asking questions about the content of his sermons? Discuss how you might increase your ability to discern biblical teaching from false teaching. Is there a local course in hermeneutics you can complete?

4.     Share with your study group how urgent you are about sermon-application. Are there ways you can increase that urgency? How can you encourage one another to practice God’s Word? Pray for one another, that you would become even more faithful listeners and doers of God’s Word.

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[1] Walter C. Kaiser Jr., Preaching and Teaching from the Old Testament: A Guide for the Church (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2003), 19.

Chapter 4: Listen unto Action

How many times have you eaten roast-preacher for Sunday lunch? These kinds of banal banquets tend to consume the preacher, not the sermon. Much like the crowd who listened to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and were amazed because He spoke with authority, but failed to heed His message (Matt 7:28–29), church-goers today focus on the style of preachers when they should be concerned about the content of their sermons.

Every sermon we hear increases our culpability because every sermon demands action. Ken Ramey provides a helpful insight: “Let’s say you came to Christ at age ten and you live to be seventy-five. If you average two sermons a week, you will listen to over seven thousand sermons during the course of your life. And at end of your life you will stand before God and give an account for every sermon you heard.”[1] That’s a sobering thought! On that day, our Lord will not be interested in our thoughts about our preacher’s preaching style. When we stand before Him, He’ll evaluate our actions, not our feelings about our pastor’s speaking abilities. He’ll look for appropriate responses to the preached Word of God. The claim to be a “Christian” will not suffice on that day, because Jesus Christ will be interested in the evidence that backs up that claim.

Most Christians are familiar with the parable of the wise man who built his house on solid rock and the foolish man who built his house on unstable sand, but not all take the time to consider the lesson of that parable. Here is what Christ said:

Not everyone who says to Me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven; but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven. Many will say to Me on that day, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?” And then I will declare to them, “I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.” Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine, and acts upon them, may be compared to a wise man, who built his house upon the rock. And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and burst against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded upon the rock. And everyone who hears these words of Mine, and does not act upon them, will be like a foolish man, who built his house upon the sand. And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and burst against that house; and it fell, and great was its fall (Matt 7:21–27).

The point of the parable is to say that a wise person will act upon God’s Word, putting it into practice. The consequences of listening without appropriate action are eternally dire.

This is the difference between Greek wisdom and Hebrew wisdom. To an ancient Greek, wisdom was the accumulation of knowledge. It was measured by a person’s intellect. Not so for an ancient Hebrew. To a Hebrew, the most foolish person in the world was the person who knew what to do, but didn’t do it. And the wisest person in the world, was the person who knew what to do, and did it. Wisdom was measured by action, not mere knowledge alone.[2] That is why Psalm 111:10 says, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom; A good understanding have all those who do His commandments. . .” The fear of God, wisdom, and obedience go hand-in-hand. Do you want to be wise? Don’t just listen and learn, but listen, learn, and be obedient. Listen to sermons in order to put into practice the things Scripture instructs you to do.

Scripture says, “By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments. The one who says, ‘I have come to know Him,’ and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him; but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him” (1 John 2:3–5).

We cannot afford to put off obedience till another day. There ought to be an urgency to our sermon-induced action. Psalm 95:7–8 says, “. . . Today, if you would hear His voice, do not harden your hearts . . .” If you listen to a sermon and identify some change of mind, some change of lifestyle, some change of action that needs to takes place in order to become more obedient to the gospel of Jesus Christ, tomorrow will not do. Today is when that change ought to be implemented. Sin is deceitful. If you put off obedience till another day it will result in the hardening of your heart (Heb 3:13). That’s why every sermon is urgent. That’s why we listen with eternity in mind.

James gives a very important instruction in this regard:

But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror; for once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was. But one who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty, and abides by it, not having become a forgetful hearer but an effectual doer, this man shall be blessed in what he does (Jas 1:22–25).

Do you want God’s blessing? The key to that blessing is to hear God’s Word and act on it. In his challenging little book, Stop Dating the Church, Josh Harris writes, “Don’t think that listening is enough. That’s a deception. . . . Hearing truth doesn’t change us. We have to take action.”[3] So ask yourself right now: How am I going to take my pastor’s sermons seriously? What routines will I put in place to ensure no sermon goes by without deliberate action?

Christopher Ash counsels us: “Every time the Bible is preached, we ought to repent again and trust in Christ again. The Bible doesn’t just call non-Christians to repent and believe. It calls Christians to repent and believe; and it does so today. . . . When we become Christians, we do not leave repentance and faith behind; on the contrary, we enter a life which consists of daily repentance and faith.”[4]

We’ll probably hear thousands of sermons in our lifetime. That just makes us more answerable before God. Christopher Ash explains it this way: “To hear a sermon and not respond is worse than not hearing it at all; it makes us more guilty than we were before. As Jesus said about the unbelieving Jews: ‘If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of sin’ (i.e.: not as guilty). ‘Now, however, they have no excuse for their sin’ (John 15:22).”[5]

Let’s determine today to listen to every single sermon with action in mind.

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[1] Ken Ramey, Expository Listening (The Woodlands, TX: Kress Biblical Resources, 2010), 5.

[2] John MacArthur, How to Study the Bible (Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2009), 80.

[3] Joshua Harris, Stop Dating the Church (Sisters, OR: Multnomah Publishers, 2004), 116.

[4] Christopher Ash, Listen Up!: A Practical Guide to Listening to Sermons (New Maiden, Surrey, England: The Good Book Company, 2009), 20–21.

[5] Ibid., 22.

Chapter 3: Listen with Discernment

We’ve all experienced it—when a preacher reads a passage of Scripture and then proceeds to teach any number of correct or erroneous things that have nothing to do with the passage he just read. Unfortunately, this happens more often than we think. Many churchgoers don’t even realize it’s going on. They have not learned to practice discernment. In some churches, the Bible is not even opened. But even if it is, man-centered preaching is too often supplied to gatherings of churchgoers who aren’t asking the right questions. They should be asking: Is that really the mind of God? Is that really what the Bible teaches? Is that what the passage actually says? Has that verse been understood in its surrounding context? Has the preacher’s interpretation and message been proven by the Bible?

Let’s be honest. If you visit a new church in order to determine whether it might be a good place for you and your family to attend, and you walk in and ask the question: “Does this church teach the Bible?” No church member or leader is going to reply: “Oh no, we don’t teach the Bible here!” My point is that every evangelical church believes it teaches—and listens to—the truths of Scripture. No church would claim otherwise. So it’s not enough to simply trust the testimony of those who are in the church. You must do your own evaluation. You must be discerning.

The Apostle John gave the following command: “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God” (1 John 4:1). Jay Adams explains:

In 1 John 4:1 there is an exhortation to ‘test [the word for proving something to be genuine by means of testing] the spirits.’ As the passage continues, the test is applied to heretics in the early church who denied that Jesus Christ came in the flesh (verse 2,3). The test is doctrinal. There is no direction to consult your feelings about these persons or to expect any subjective prompts or checks. It is their teaching that must be examined. . . . The general test . . . is found in verse 6; ‘Whoever knows God listens to us, but whoever isn’t of God doesn’t listen to us. From this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.’ There is no other test. Either someone’s teaching matches the teaching of the apostles and the prophets (now found only in Scriptures) or else it is false.[1]

One example of this kind of discernment is found in Acts 17, where those Berean Jews who listened to Paul’s and Silas’s sermons are described as being “more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily, to see whether these things were so” (Acts 17:11). The discernment the Berean Jews displayed tells us they wanted to hear from God alone. They knew God’s Word was the measure by which sermons should be judged. Simply stated, if the preacher claims to be God’s spokesman, but teaches something not supported by Scripture, then he should be questioned—and sometimes silenced (Titus 1:10–11).

This means our sermon-listening cannot be passive. Listening to a sermon is not like watching a movie or a game of rugby. It requires active involvement, participation, and discernment. In his very helpful booklet on sermon-listening, Christopher Ash warns: “Listening ought to be an activity rather than a ‘passivity’. Unless we want to be brainwashed, we ought never to hear or watch anything without engaging our critical faculties.”[2] He continues: “We need to check that the preacher is actually using the only available authority, which is a borrowed authority that only comes from teaching what the Bible passage teaches. So, we need to listen carefully to the passage and ask whether what the preacher says is what the passage says.”[3]

The question to ask is: “Where did he get that from?” If the preacher can show he got it from the Bible, then we must humbly submit to the authority of the Word of God. But if not, then it’s just the opinion of one human being against another.[4]

This is what makes preaching a community affair. Everyone is involved. There’s a mutual accountability that comes in listening to a sermon in the context of a church. We’re all responsible to maintain the integrity of the pulpit. We help the preacher in that regard—we must be modern-day Bereans.

Second Timothy 2:15 says, “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, handling accurately the word of truth.” Don’t treat this instruction as if it only applies to preachers. All believers are responsible to handle God’s Word correctly. Thabiti Anyabwile writes:

If churches are to be healthy, then pastors and teachers must be committed to discovering the meaning of Scripture and allowing that meaning to drive the agenda with their congregations. There is an important corollary for every member of a local church. Just as the pastor’s preaching agenda should be determined by the meaning of Scripture, so too should the Christian’s listening agenda be driven by the meaning of Scripture.[5]

Now don’t get me wrong—I am not advocating that an immature or unregenerate congregation should dictate what happens in the pulpit. Martyn Lloyd Jones saw this sad practice in his day and lamented that sermons were being dumbed down to make listeners more comfortable.[6] This is a big problem in the church today, but I am not advocating that. I am simply showing that genuinely converted Christians in mature congregations ought to expect (and demand) that the preacher preaches the Bible accurately.

We need to check to see the preacher says what the passage says. We must listen with discernment. If we find that the preacher has indeed proclaimed God’s will and has proven the source of his message is God’s Word, then we are obliged to respond with action. Next week, I’ll show you that faith and obedience go hand in hand.

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[1] Jay E. Adams, A Call for Discernment: Distinguishing Truth from Error in Today’s Church (Woodruff, SC: Timeless Texts, 1998), 65.

[2] Christopher Ash, Listen Up!: A Practical Guide to Listening to Sermons (New Maiden, Surrey, England: The Good Book Company, 2009), 9.

[3] Ibid., 9–10.

[4] Ibid., 10.

[5] Thabiti M. Anyabwile, What Is a Healthy Church Member? (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2008), 19.

[6] Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing, 1971), 122.

Chapter 2: Listen with Humility

David sat in the front row of church, directly in front of the pulpit, back straight, chin raised, arms crossed, smile inverted, and eyes defiant. He didn’t seem to enjoy church very much. His conversations never focused on the sermon. He never spoke of his personal walk with God. He didn’t engage in spiritual discussion.

Stephanie, on the other hand, was excited to get to church. She wanted to hear God speak. After the sermon, she always talked about what she had learned. She spoke of ways in which she could apply biblical principles. She asked her friends to pray for her and she offered to pray for them. There was a humility to her that allowed the preached Word of God to play a big part in her Christian experience.

Who are you more like—David or Stephanie?

The wonderful Welsh preacher, Martin Lloyd-Jones [1899–1981]—affectionately known as “The Doctor”—wrote, “If a man can listen to such a sermon without being touched or moved I take leave to query whether he is a Christian at all. It is inconceivable to me that a man who is a true believer can listen to a presentation of the exceeding sinfulness of sin and the glory of the Gospel, without being moved.”[1]

Humility is the trademark of a Christian. Since brokenness over sin is what drives a sinner to confession and to Christ for salvation, and since confession is the result of saying, “God you are right about my sin and I was wrong,” and since that attitude of self-correction and submission to God continues throughout a Christian’s life, then humility will be the heartbeat of every Christian. Humility means that we acknowledge we are not yet perfect—as Christ is perfect—and therefore we continually wash ourselves in God’s Word so that we may become more like Christ. That means that when we listen to a sermon, we do so wanting to be challenged—wanting to be transformed—wanting to be changed.

We don’t want to be like the lawyer who complained to Jesus saying, “Teacher, when You say this, You insult us too” (Luke 11:45). The lawyer’s words reveal a prideful heart that couldn’t stand the truth of Jesus’ message. He preferred an easier, less confrontational message. Paul also warned that a “time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth, and will turn aside to myths” (2 Tim 4:3–4). If we’re going to avoid this wrong response to preaching, then we need to cultivate a heart of humility—the same kind of humility that was required to become a believer in the first place.

James, the half-brother of Jesus, instructed believers: “Putting aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness, in humility receive the word implanted, which is able to save your souls” (Jas 1:21). How do you approach the sermon event in your context? Do you have an open heart that says, “I need correction. I need to learn God’s ways. I need to have my mind realigned to Christ’s mind. I am here to be changed”? That’s genuine humility.

There ought to be a longing for personal Christian growth—a willingness to say, “I’ve not yet arrived. I need to hear and heed this sermon in order to be more like Christ.” In doing so, we are living out the Apostle Peter’s instruction: “Like newborn babes, long for the pure milk of the word, that by it you may grow in respect to salvation” (1 Pet 2:2).

Martyn Lloyd-Jones wrote of the believer’s desire for the Word of God: “Wanting to listen to the Word is inevitable if men and women are born again and have become Christians. A babe does not understand, but he has an instinct for milk. He wants it! . . . He is alive and wants the mother’s milk, and rightly so.”[2] His point is clear: “One simply cannot be a Christian and have no desire for a knowledge of this truth—it is impossible.”[3]

Now, you may not listen to sermons like David does, with arms crossed or with an angry disposition, but maybe an indifference towards the sermon constitutes an equal amount of pride on your part. Indifference kills spiritual growth. That’s because genuine humility is not just the absence of anger toward the message or the preacher but also the presence of openness, transparency, and a willingness to engage in spiritual discussion after the sermon. Humility means that we will be attentive and responsive.

We ought to approach the sermon experience knowing that God's wisdom is infinitely better than ours. We admit that if left to ourselves, our minds become entangled with earthly concerns and worldly mindsets. We admit that our thinking often sinks to levels of foolishness, and we need God's wisdom to be preached to us, so that we can be reminded of God's will and design. The fact is that biblical preaching will assault our worldly passions and sinful practices and will challenge us to change.

Listening to that kind of preaching is hard, but we admit that God's Word is right.  It’s the best medicine for our souls. It’s what we need to hear. Don’t run away from biblical preaching. Run towards it. Run to that kind of preaching which calls you to repent and live in a counter-cultural way—a Christ-like way. Develop an insatiable appetite for preaching.

Next week I’ll explain how we must be careful listeners because not everything we hear from a pulpit is necessarily true. We need discernment.

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[1] D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing, 1971), 150.

[2] D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Authentic Christianity (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2000), 105.

[3] Ibid., 106.

Chapter 1: Listen to God

When a preacher preaches, he must preach the Word of God (2 Tim 4:1–4). Unfortunately, we know that’s not always the way it goes. From the beginning of time, false teachers have taught their own ideas instead of God’s. Jesus confronted the Pharisees and scribes of His day, quoting the prophet Isaiah, saying, “This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far away from Me. But in vain do they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.” And the Lord added, “Neglecting the commandment of God, you hold to the tradition of men" (Mark 7:6–8). False teachers are present throughout the entire New Testament. Sadly, in the book of Revelation, followers of Balaam, the Nicolaitans, and Jezebel were allowed by the churches in Pergamum and Thyatira to teach their false doctrine from inside the churches (Rev 2:14, 15, 20).

Today, there are so-called preachers who continue to neglect the Word of God and instead peddle self-help tips, moral lessons, ecstatic experiences, political and social agendas, pseudo-Christian practices, and health and wealth promises—none of which have anything to do with the gospel of Jesus Christ which is a message of reconciliation between man and God. At best, they are distracting, man-centered talks. At worst, they are damning heresies taught by wolves in sheep’s clothing.

There are of course many faithful preachers who have as their main goal the reading, interpretation, explanation, and application of the written Word of God. I trust you’ve settled into a gospel-centered church and submitted yourself to a pastor and church leadership who faithfully teach and preach the Scriptures each and every week. If your pastor is a faithful preacher of the Bible, your right response is to acknowledge that what you hear from his pulpit is in fact God’s Word, not just a man’s. In other words, when we listen to a sermon, we are not listening to the word of a man—we are listening to God Himself, through the agency of that man. Biblical preaching necessitates that we understand whose mind is actually being revealed—it is the “mind of Christ” (1 Cor 2:16).

Several months after preaching the gospel in Thessalonica, Paul wrote to the newly established church in that city. In that follow-up letter, the Apostle was constantly thanking God that when the Thessalonian believers received his message, they “accepted it not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the word of God” (1 Thess 2:13). They didn’t dismiss Paul’s message as if it was his own manmade conception. They accepted his words as God’s words. We need to be like this when we go to church. Assuming our preacher’s goal is to correctly interpret and explain Scripture, then when we hear his sermons, we are listening to God’s Word not a man’s. We need to acknowledge this reality every Sunday.

Martin Luther comments:

My dear friend, regard it as a real treasure that God speaks into your physical ear. The only thing that detracts from this gift is our deficient knowledge of it. To be sure, I do hear the sermon; however, I am wont to ask: ‘Who is speaker?’ The pastor? By no means! You do not hear the pastor. Of course, the voice is his, but the words he employs are really spoken by my God. Therefore, I must hold the Word of God in high esteem that I may become an apt pupil of the Word. If we looked upon it as the Word of God, we would be glad to go to church, to listen to the sermon, and to pay attention to the precious Word.[1]

To be sure, Christians can and should have a steady intake of God’s Word in their personal Bible reading. We have the privilege of owning our own copy of God’s written Word, and we do well to saturate ourselves with it. James calls it looking “intently at the perfect law” (Jas 1:25). But personal Bible reading does not replace the exercise of listening to God’s gifted representatives when they preach His Word. There’s a dynamic in the preaching event that God has determined to be necessary for every Christian. That’s why preachers must preach God’s Word, and listeners must humbly listen and respond to it.

The Apostle Peter makes the case that believers “have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and abiding word of God” (1 Pet 1:23). He then explains, “The word of the Lord abides forever. And this is the word which was preached to you” (1 Pet 1:25). It’s through the faithful preaching of the eternal Word of God that sinners are regenerated. Something supernatural happens when the Word of God is preached. God is at work in that moment. Submitting ourselves to that preaching will have a life-changing effect on us because “the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Heb 4:12).

So, to avoid preaching—to relegate the preaching event to an optional extra—to regard our pastor’s words as simply his own, and not God’s—is to undermine the purposes of God. We must approach the sermon event expecting God to speak.

Not only should we anticipate God’s voice in the preaching event, but we should demand it from our preachers. We must provide the context and support for our pastor to prepare a message from God. First Peter 4:11 says, “Whoever speaks, let him speak, as it were, the utterances of God . . . so that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ."

I graduated from a seminary that had one goal—to prepare men to preach God’s Word. For ten years, I was involved in a Bible college training program in New Zealand that did the same. We believed we were doing a good job of training preachers to minister the gospel to the unsaved and bring the Word of God to bear on the lives of Christians. But one thing we came to realize is that the supply of Bible preachers needs to be matched by a demand from listeners. If churches don’t want their pastors to preach God’s Word, those pastors will soon be out of a job. If a church doesn’t demand that their pastor preaches God’s Word then that pastor is not encouraged to do God’s will. Over time, that lack of support and accountability will bring about laziness in the pulpit. Instead, we must demand a message from God. The preaching event is the high point of our week. We need to hear from God. Our pastor must be encouraged to preach in this way. Oh, that more churches would say about their pastor:

Fling him into his office, tear the office sign from the door and nail on the sign: Study. Take him off the mailing list, lock him up with his books—get him all kinds of books—and his typewriter and his Bible. Slam him down on his knees before texts, broken hearts, the flippant lives of a superficial flock, and the Holy God. Force him to be the one man in our surfeited communities who knows about God. Throw him into the ring to box with God til he learns how short his arms are; engage him to wrestle with God all the night through. And let him come out only when he is bruised and beaten into being a blessing. . . . Shut his garrulous mouth forever spouting “remarks” and stop his tongue always tripping lightly over every nonessential. Require him to have something to say before he dares break silence. Bend his knees in the lonesome valley, fire him from the PTA and cancel his country club membership; burn his eyes with weary study, wreck his emotional poise with worry for God, and make him exchange his pious stance for a humble walk with God and man. Make him spend and be spent for the glory of God.

Rip out his telephone, burn up his ecclesiastical success sheets, refuse his glad hand, and put water in the gas tank of his community buggy. Give him a Bible and tie him to the pulpit and make him preach the Word of the living God. Test him, quiz him and examine him; humiliate him for his ignorance of things divine, and shame him for his glib comprehension of finances, batting averages, and political in-fighting. Laugh at his frustrated effort to play psychiatrist, scorn his insipid morality, refuse his supine intelligence, ignore his broadmindedness which is only flatheadedness and compel him to be a minister of the Word. . . .

Form a choir and raise a chant and haunt him with it night and day: “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” When at long last, he dares assay the pulpit, ask him if he has a word from God; if he does not, then dismiss him and tell him you can read the morning paper, digest the television commentaries, think through the day's superficial problems, manage the community's myriad drives, and bless assorted baked potatoes and green beans ad infinitum better than he can. Command him not to come back until he's read and re-read, written and re-written, until he can stand up, worn and forlorn, and say, “Thus saith the Lord.” Break him across the board of his ill-gotten popularity, smack him hard with his own prestige, corner him with questions about God, and cover him with demands for celestial wisdom, and give him no escape until he is backed against the wall of the Word; then sit down before him and listen to the only word he has left: God's Word. Let him be totally ignorant of the down-street gossip, but give him a chapter and order him to walk around it, camp on it, suffer with it, and come at last to speak it backwards and forwards until all he says about it rings with the truth of eternity. . . .

And when he is burned out by the flaming Word that coursed through him, when he is consumed at last by the fiery Grace blazing through him, and when he who was privileged to translate the truth of God to man is finally transferred from earth to heaven, then bear him away gently, blow a muted trumpet and lay him down softly, place a two-edged sword on his coffin and raise a tune triumphant, for he was a brave soldier of the Word and e’er he died he had become spokesman for his God.[2]

Encourage your pastor in this way. Develop this kind of appetite for the preaching of God’s Word in the church. The key is to anticipate that God’s voice would be heard from the pulpit. We must demand it both for ourselves and for our pastor’s sake.

But, as we will see next week, to be an effective listener, we also need to develop a humble heart.

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[1] Martin Luther, Sermons on the Gospel of St. John: Chapters 1–4, vol. 22 of Luther’s Works, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan (Saint Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 1957), 528.

[2] Floyd Doud Shafer, "And Preach as You Go!" Christianity Today 5, no. 13 (March 27, 1961): 8–9.