Matt Chandler Luke 15
Tax collectors had purchased the right to tax their fellow Jews, from and for a Roman occupation that murdered and raped hundreds perhaps thousands of Jews. Sinners were a class of people...lepers, prostitutes, slave traders, and other grimy people. Jesus simultaneously will deconstructs their worldview and reconstruct it to God's. All good preaching must do this.
Three quick parables. Lost sheep. Lost coin, prodigal son.
Prodigal son. How do you think the grimy crowd heard it? How do you think Jesus knew that worldview of the sinners? Because he ate with them all the time. Don't live vicariously through other preachers. Experience the lost yourself.
Trust your Bible. Preaching is unbelievably mysterious. The Word is to be trusted...it transformed...we can't.
Trust the Holy Spirit...you are powerless.
Preach it like we believe it. We ought to be passionately on fire for what we are preaching.
James Meeks: Preaching the Announcements.
Whatever you want your people to do...preach that.
If it is bring your friend to church Sunday...preach on the friends digging open the roof to let their sick friend down to Jesus. If you have 30 minutes in front of people, use it to tell them what you want them to do.
Andy Stanley...preaching to unchurched and churched people together...double barreled preaching
Approach is everything. Content is important, but approach is more important. Imagine a difficult conversation with the wife..you know the big idea and the application, but if you have the wrong approach...you'll just end up apologizing.
If you don't care what people do with what you say...the truth is...you don't care about people.
Am I ready to change my approach?
1 Cor 9. Win as many as possible. Win win win its all about numbers to Paul.
Are you here to make a point or to make a difference?
His desire is to roll people around in a scripture so much and get such clear and helpful applications that even if they don't believe the scripture they leave saying Wow that was helpful, I think I will come back. That's success for him as a preacher.
In a biblically illiterate society, the approach we take to the bible is critically important.
So do this one tweak for unchurched people and help your churched people communicate to unchurched people.
Here it is: stop saying "the Bible says..." or "scripture says" or "the Word say" because when we do we communicate that the foundation of our faith is not the Bible. It is not. The foundation of our faith is an event...the resurrection. They were not expecting the resurrection. The first three chapters of the book of acts did not repeat the parables of Jesus but they talked about Jesus coming back to life.
The problem with 'The Bible says' is what else the Bible says...like stoning adulterers. We don't have a problem with this is that we have sorted all this out...we are Christians. They haven't.
We take the Bible seriously because we take Jesus seriously and Jesus took the Old Testament seriously.
Instead of saying 'the Bible says', cite an author.
James, the brother of Jesus writes...
Paul, who hated Christians and became one, writes...
Peter, who lost faith in the end writes...
See, everyone has dismisses the Bible, certainly the OT...but nobody says Jesus was a bad guy. Everyone wants a piece of Jesus.
Tee it up. What would you have to do to convince your brother than you are the son of God? Well James was invisible until after the resurrection and he says...
Talk about the Bible as a collection of inspired manuscripts and we are so happy someone put them together is a book. If you pull out one card from the Bible deck and find it a scientific problem and dismiss it all. No..you can't do that with the resurrection.
We did this with marriage ... Forget talking about biblical marriage...all the marriages discussed in the bible were bad marriages. Instead we can talk about NT marriage of mutual submission and service.
If anyone can predict their own death and resurrection, I will go with that guy and take whatever He says.
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