There is a great discussion that I am sure many of you have been keeping up with on the T4G blog. Here is a recent post from Mark Dever:
So, guys, for example, I recently heard a sermon on David’s great Psalm, “Lord, who may dwell in Your sanctuary” (Psalm 15). Everything in the sermon was true. In some ways it was a feast of truth. The preacher exhorted us to do good, speak well, keep our word, do business justly, not slander, etc. Everything he said was faithful to the text.
Now, how could that sermon have been made even more relevant?
One way would have been to update examples, or make the more edgy and catchy, to use some video clips. All of this would have been done to make the application even more powerfully evident to everyone present.A second way of making the sermon more relevant would have been to have spent more time showing us that none of us HAVE been good enough, spoken well enough, kept our word enough, etc. AND then to have shown us that Christ did all of this FOR US.
There’s not just the relevance of more effectively showing us how to live. There’s also the relevance of showing us how we’re not good enough, and how Christ has been good for us. Does the Law teach Christians how to live? Yes. Does it also teach us how we haven’t lived, and does it honor Christ by teaching us about the fullness of His obedience? Yes it does.
More of us need to spend more time in our sermons working on this second kind of relevance.
Tweet
Jason Robertson is a husband and a father and a pastor. He is dedicated to leading and equipping his the Church with God’s word and biblical theology for life ministry, using a combination of pastoral, church planting and evangelism experience. He holds a Master of Divinity from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. He is experienced in church planting, evangelism, missions, and the training of pastors and Bible teachers.
Jason has been preaching the gospel since 1985, serving the first ten years of ministry as a Southern Baptist itinerant evangelist out of Milldale Baptist Church in Zachary, LA which ordained him in 1993. He has preached in hundreds of churches in over 30 States and 4 countries. He planted churches in Siberia, Russia in the summers of 1993 and 1994. He founded Murrieta Valley Church in California, which he planted in cooperation with the SBC NAMB in 2001. He also teaches ministry students at California Baptist University.
You can hear his sermons and read his manuscripts on sermonaudio.com. Just follow the link to "sermons" at the top of this page.
Wonderful. It’s always seemed to me that I don’t see what the fuss is about with making Christianity “relevant”. It’s relevant enough: mankind is sinful and needs a savior, and there He is. It speaks directly to each of us. And I really liked Dever’s reference (intentional or not) to Calvin’s threefold uses of the Law.
amen, brother Dever!