Studying Scripture with Dale Ralph Davis

(Taken from the first chapter of The Word Became Fresh: How to Preach from Old Testament Narrative Texts)

Deep into our study time the thought occurs to us that we have not looked - not did we think of looking - to the God who breathed out this Scripture to give us an understanding of the Scripture. He will likely give that understanding through the tools we use, but when we use tools while neglecting him the tools have become idols.

in facing Scripture one must take account of two realities: Spirit and Text. This fact forces me to one of my operating presuppositions: God has given his word in the form of literature, part of which is narrative; I should therefore use all available tools for understanding such literature. So I seek the Spirit's aid and use an approach suited to the form of his word. Hence, at the very least, I ask questions of the text.

It is safe to say that usually the writer's purpose is theocentric - he intends to communicate something about God.

Whenever we are at a loss as to what we should preach on a passage, we will never go wrong if we focus on God, his actions and his requirements.

I especially focus on what may be puzzling - it may be a word or phrase or idea which I feel I must understand in order to grasp the passage properly. I want to isolate the conundrums that keep me from understanding the text - and solve as many as possible.

Driscoll on Regeneration

For those who think Driscoll is a preaching comedian. This video clip is for you, and is a good example of his preaching. Notice his nouthetic tone and language, along with solid and clear explanation of a weighty subject in traditional reformed tongue.

How to reach the culture (by Tim Keller)

First, remember that post-everything people like narrative and story. They tend not to like the older kind of preaching that simply enunciated doctrinal principles. Neither are they excited about the newer user-friendly sermons of seeker-churches on how to handle fear, how to balance your life, and so on. So, do we throw overboard everything we have done? Absolutely not. We turn to Geerhardus Vos who says that every single part of the Bible is really about Jesus. If you know how to do Christ-centered preaching, then you turn every single sermon into a kind of story. The plot of the human dilemma thickens, and the hero that comes to the rescue is Jesus. Christ-centered preaching converts doctrinal lectures or little how-to talks into true sermons. Post-everythings who are interested in narrative are reached by such preaching that is deeply Reformed.

Second, remember that post-everythings are experientially oriented. They do not just want intellectual propositions. For them lifes meaning is grounded in what they experience. Of course, as Reformed Christians we are very word-centered, and we know that eternal truth is not based on our subjective experience of it. But Reformed preachers have a tremendous resource for an experience-oriented generation in Jonathan Edwards. Edwards taught that a sermon should not only make truth clear, but also should make truth real. In Edwards we find ways to preach that are Reformed, committed to objective truth and, at the same time, deeply experiential.

Third, remember that post-everythings are very much against moralism and self-righteousness. But Reformed preachers have Martin Luther to help with this concern. Traditional gospel presentations assume that the people want to be good. But our kids generation wants to be free. Luther said, "Look, you want to be free? Good. It's good to be free. But you are not. You are living for something and, whatever that something is, it enslaves you." If a person lives for reputation, then he is a slave to what people think. If a person lives for achievement, then he will be a workaholic. As did Luther, we should tell such people, You want to be free? Fine. But you are not going to be free unless Jesus is your salvation. When post-everythings rejected Christianity they thought moralism and Christianity were the same thing. But we can show post-everythings that the two are not the same, and that freedom really is in Jesus.

Fourth, take note of post-everythings concern for social justice. They innately sense that the church is not credible without care for mercy and justice. We can address these concerns with the wisdom of Hermann Ridderbos and other Reformed theologians who stress the coming of and the presence of the Kingdom. The Reformed understanding of salvation is not simply that God is rescuing individual souls out of the material world, but rather he is also redeeming all of creation. God is going to bring complete healing and shalom to the material world eventually. This makes Christianity (as C.S. Lewis says)a fighting religion against poverty, hunger, and illiteracy. We must bring this Kingdom message of Reformed theology to post-everythings.

Fifth, recognize that post-everythings love art because they love the material world. Abraham Kuyper's understanding of Reformed theology enables us to say to post-everythings, Christianity is not just a way for you as an individual to get peace, love and groovy vibes in Heaven. Christianity is a comprehensive worldview. You can be a Christian artist, dancer, manager, or minister and these are all ways of living out the gospel. When post-everythings hear that, they get extremely excited. They have never considered that Christianity embraces the whole of life.

Finally, remember that post-everythings are not strongly swayed by evidences and proofs. If you start to present evidence for the deity of Christ or the proofs of God, post-everything eyes will glaze over. But the
presuppositional apologetics of Cornelius Van Til can work with post-everythings. I think Reformed theology provides us with tools for our culture that Josh McDowell's kind of evidential apologetics does not.

read the whole thing here

The Accessible Word by Philip G. Ryken

[given by Isadore]
He began by saying that so many say that the Word of God is not clear. He gave 5 arguments against its clarity:
1. God is greater thant he human mind. He is a transcendent mystery which we cannot know.
2. We need the church to make the Scriptures clear to us.
3. Its a product of men and human language has ambiguity.
4. There are a variety of interpretations...how could we possibly know the correct one?
5. Doesn't the Bible say that its unclear (for instance, the Ethiopean unich)? But really, even the simplest can understand the Bible. Its central message is clear. It is able to make us wise for salvation (2 Tim. 3:15-17...notice how we keep coming back to the same passages...believe them!) This doesn't mean that we don't need teachers. Jesus taught us. But He taught from the Scriptures. Some parts of the Bible are easier to understand than others, but the basic message is clear. It has been said that in the Scriptures "the lamb may find a foot and the elephant may swim."

But some don't understand the Bible because they are not "of the truth". The problem is not with the Bible but with their understanding. Only those who know Christ can understand.

He concluded by giving us 2 reasons to believe in the clarity of Scripture:
1. The Character of God- Is God able to have us understand? Is He good at communicating? Why wouldn't He be? If Scripture is obscure, then what was the point in giving it? God is good and is able to communicate clearly. The Gospel couldn't be 'Gospel' (Good News) if it wasn't clear.
2. The Testimony of Scripture Itself- Deut.30:11-14, Psalm 119:105, Psalm 119:130, 2 Kings 22. 8-13, Nehemiah 8. Psalm 119:18 is a prayer that God loves to answer.

Doing Justice and Preaching Grace

One of the books I am reading this summer is Evangelism: Doing Justice and Preaching Grace by Harvie Conn. I had to buy the book used as it seemingly is no longer published. The author taught at Westminster in Philly for several years and went to be with the Lord in 1999. He covers a lot of ground fast, or rather concisely. Discussing barriers to our evangelism he writes....

Racism is a part of the mythology that inhibits our message. Not the white hooded kind that burns crosses on lawns, but the sophisticated variety that runs in culture shock from a changing neighborhood to the mission compound security of the suburbs....

Writing on pastoral care (aka Listening) he quotes Bonhoeffer....

The first service that one owes to others consists in listening to them. Many people are looking for an ear that will listen. They do not find it among Christians, because these Christians have forgotten the ministry that listening has been committed to them by Him who is Himself the great listener and whose work they would share. We would listen with teh ears of God that we may speak the Word of God.

This time his own words...

Without a pastoral dimension the offense of the gospel too easily is understood as the offensiveness of the church. The unchurched have no perception of a loving God who accepts persons while they are yet sinners.

How to Preach a Good Sermon by J. Ligon Duncan

Abstract from the PCRT (cheers to Isadore)
He gave us a list of 12 things and elaborated on them. It wasn't a 'how to' message but more like a 'what am I doing?' teaching session. The 12 points were these:
1. Know what a sermon is and what you are trying to do.
2. Have confidence in the word of God. Under this heading, he gave us
ten points.

a. The Bible is God's own word to us. It is more than a human book (1
Thess. 2:13).
b. The Bible is God-breathed, God's words exhaled to us.
It is like feeling
His very breath on our ears 2 Tim. 3:16).
c. The
Bible is written under the direction of God's Holy Spirit (2 Pet.
1:19-21;
John 14:25-26; John 16:12-13).
d. The Bible is God's instruction to us on
how we are to live this life
(Psalm 119:105). e. The Bible teaches the way
of salvation. f. The Bible is
indespensible (Matt. 4).
g. The Bible was
given to equip Christians to live the Christian life (2
Tim.3:16-17; John
17:17). h. The Bible is not a dead letter, but an active
living force in our
lives (Heb.4:12-13).
i. The Bible's message is clear because God is a good
communicator (Deut.
30:11-14).
j. The Bible's truth is eternally enduring.

3. Listen to great preaching.
4. Choose your models, but carefully.
5.Know the Bible better.
6. Be a man of prayer.
7. Preach Christ and the cross as you preach the whole counsel of God.
8. Be Trinitarian.
9. Use your imagination to get people into the Word, not to entertain.
10. Speak much of sin and grace.
11. Use the plain style.
12. Love your people.

How to Listen to a Bad Sermon

A beautiful abstract from my friend Dan Isadore, who is a CCO worker at Thiel College and a youth pastor at a PCUSA church there, on Ligon Duncan's sermon on listening to a poor sermon. Though I have some serious concerns with point 2 - is every preacher God's spokesperson? I am thinking of liberal pastors, women elders, priests and bad preaching (people who talk about their soap boxes and hobby horses instead of the gospel)

6 points for this one...
1.We need to take stock of our attitude when listening to sermons. We need to listen as if our lives depended on it, which they do.
2. Remember who is speaking to you. It is God talking.
3. Remember what the Bible and life are all about.
4. Remember who we are: simultaneously sinners and children of God.
5. Prepare to hear the word.
6. Commit yourself to self application by asking what the passage teaches you about the one true God, by constantly focusing on the person, power and work of Jesus Christ, by searching your own hearts and finding your own sin rather than others, and by recognizing how the word is to touch your wills, minds and desires.

A Note on Bible Translations

Recently in Hebrew class, a student asked Dr. Duguid on picking Bible translations to preach from and how to way in "word for word accuracy" like the New American Standard, and the dynamical translations of the 2oth and 21st century?

I have been wondering the same thing lately as I bought the Holman Christian Standard Version for $10, since then I am doing some sort of mild comparison to the ESV. Duguid said that when he was in Libya he preached from a Bible with an 850 word vocabulary, something that he would not do here. Because the Liberians do not know English well and he did not want to confuse them. His preaching style was similar in that context as well (a major proof that it is a huge plus if you know the indigenous language). But for biblical students, why not use the NASB as it captures the Hebrew and Greek idioms and captures the choppiness of a direct translation, it reveals that we need something more. What do you need in the context you are in? Are you in Libya, are you in the theological classroom? Or are you in the pulpit Sunday morning preaching to a crowd of infants and youth, college students, parents, singles, old saints, the unconverted - what version are you going to use there where people can understand what is going on in the Scriptures?

What should one use in their devotions? Are you a student of the Scriptures who knows the Hebrew and Geek idioms, why not use the New American Standard. Are you a new believer who is seeking to understand words like imputation and justification? Bit more tricky, but try the English Standard Version, clear, concise, readable yet keeping with the rich heritage of the reformation.

Trueman on authenticity

Some years ago I wrote a short editorial for the journal Themelios entitled `What do miserable Christians sing?’ It took me about thirty minutes to write, edit and email to head office; yet of all the things I have ever written, I have received more – and more positive – correspondence on that short piece than on anything else I have ever done. What was my basic thesis? That the typical Christian church offered the broken-hearted nothing whatsoever to sing in praise to God on a Sunday; and in so doing, the church was failing in her duty to care for the hurting, the downtrodden, the depressed. The answer I proposed was a recovery of psalm singing, not on the grounds that psalm singing is the only pure form of worship but because it offers a truly deep and authentic idiom for expressing the full range of human emotion and experience to God in the very act of praising him. No hymn book or collection of choruses of which I am aware even comes close to offering what the psalms offer in this regard; and for this reason alone I would personally be quite happy to sing nothing but the psalms.

You know you want to read more

tell them that again

I [Spurgeon] am led to remember this by the fact that a somewhat singular circumstance, recorded in my memory, connects this text [Eph. 2:8] with myself and my grandfather. It is now long years ago. I was announced to preach in a certain country town in the Eastern Counties. It does not often happen to me to be behind time, for I feel that punctuality is one of those little virtues which may prevent great sins. But we have no control over railway delays, and breakdowns; and so it happened that I reached the appointed place considerably behind the time.

Like sensible people, they had begun their worship, and had proceeded as far as the sermon. As I neared the chapel, I perceived that someone was in the pulpit preaching, and who should the preacher be but my dear and venerable grandfather! He saw me as I came in at the front door and made my way up the aisle, and at once he said, ‘Here comes my grandson! He may preach the gospel better than I can, but he cannot preach a better gospel; can you, Charles?’

As I made my way through the throng, I answered, ‘You can preach better than I can. Pray go on.’ But he would not agree to that. I must take the sermon, and so I did, going on with the subject there and then, just where he left off. ‘There,’ said he, ‘I was preaching on ‘For by grace are ye saved.’ I have been setting forth the source and fountainhead of salvation; and I am now showing them the channel of it, through faith. Now you take it up, and go on.’

I am so much at home with these glorious truths that I could not feel any difficulty in taking from my grandfather the thread of his discourse, and joining my thread to it, so as to continue without a break. Our agreement in the things of God made it easy for us to be joint-preachers of the same discourse. I went on with ‘through faith,’ and then I proceeded to the next point, ‘and that not of yourselves.’

Upon this I was explaining the weakness and inability of human nature, and the certainty that salvation could not be of ourselves, when I had my coat-tail pulled, and my well-beloved grandsire took his turn again. ‘When I spoke of our depraved human nature,’ the good old man said, ‘I know most about that, dear friends’; and so he took up the parable, and for the next five minutes set forth a solemn and humbling description of our lost estate, the depravity of our nature, and the spiritual death under which we were found.

When he had said his say in a very gracious manner, his grandson was allowed to go on again, to the dear old man’s great delight; for now and then he would say, in a gentle tone, ‘Good! Good!’ Once he said, ‘Tell them that again, Charles.’ and, of course, I did tell them that again. It was a happy exercise to me to take my share in bearing witness to truths of such vital importance, which are so deeply impressed upon my heart.

While announcing this text I seem to hear that dear voice, which has been so long lost to earth, saying to me, “TELL THEM THAT AGAIN.” I am not contradicting the testimony of forefathers who are now with God. If my grandfather could return to earth, he would find me where he left me, steadfast in the faith, and true to that form of doctrine which was once delivered to the saints.

[HT - Shepherd's Scrapbook]