Reimar Vetne - Smart Sermon: How to Preach Intelligent Biblical Sermons that Transform Lives

Smart Sermon

How to Preach Intelligent Biblical Sermons
that Transform Lives

Reimar Vetne

Bibloy Press

Copyright 2016 by

Bibloy Press

All rights reserved

http://www.bibloy.com

Ulefoss, Norway
Org.nr. NO 934 543 123

Unless otherwise noted, Bible texts in this book are from the New American Standard Bible (NASB). Copyright 1995 Lockman Foundation.

This book was e dited by Karen Engle

Cover design by Dyanne Brendalyn Cavero

Type: Adobe Bembo 12/14

Vetne, Reimar, 1971-

Smart Sermon: How to Preach Intelligent Biblical Sermons that Transform Lives / Reimar Vetne

ISBN 978-82-8302-004-5 (Hardcover)

ISBN 978-82-8302-005-2 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-82-8302-006-9 (Kindle)

1. Preaching -- Handbooks, manuals, etc.

2. Bible -- Homiletical use.

Contents

Preface

Welcome to Smart Sermon!

I assume that you are preaching sermons to Christian congregations either regularly or occasionally. How do you feel its going? Is your preaching as powerful and stimulating as you want it to be? Do your sermons change lives, inspire people emotionally, and feed the congregation intellectually?

More and more people are telling me that when they attend church each weekend, its getting increasingly boring. People feel like they are not learning anything new. It's the same old, same old every time they go to church.

Here is the number one problem that I see in Christian preaching today, and I see the problem around the world, and in all denominations: There is less and less preaching from the Word of God, with little or no actual learning going on.

More and more sermons are superficiallike weekly religious entertainment. That might feel nice for a while, but it soon becomes boring and shallow because it just keeps rephrasing and repackaging the basics of Christianity.

Yet the Bible is a huge book, filled page after page with exotic and exciting stories from a different time and culture. Profound theological nuggets are waiting to be unpacked, with spiritual and ethical challenges to keep even the most mature Christians on their toes and help them grow their personality and character. The Bible is a rich treasure chest waiting to be opened up and explored from the pulpit by anyone who takes the time and effort to do some research into its pages.

But tragically this seems to happen less and less. While people long to learn something new and interesting, to be intellectually and spiritually challenged when they set their foot in church, the preachers who enter the pulpit week after week fail to deliver.

The book you hold in your hand will transform your preaching from boring to exciting, from simplistic to substantial, from merely entertaining to thoroughly biblical. Together we will look at what it takes to prepare and to preach a smart sermon that feeds both the mind and the heart each time you step up in front of your church.

Chapter 1: A Call to Return to Biblical Preaching

I have not yet met a Christian pastor or lay preacher who does not agree with me that sermons need to be Bible based. Whenever I voice my concern for the lack of biblical content in many churches, I get plenty of yeses and amens. But when I listen to these same people preach some of them hardly open the Bible from the pulpit.

Whats going on? The only possible explanation for this phenomenon is that a lot of preachers must be self-deluded. Many are seriously overestimating how much they open and explain the Word of God in front of their congregations.

So we need to begin this first chapter with a manifesto about the need for biblical preaching and how dangerous the current trend away from the Bible is.

The Rapid Secularization of the World

Gods people have always faced a world hostile to their faith. Old Testament Israel was surrounded by people worshiping different gods and living immoral lives. The New Testament church had to deal with a pagan Greco-Roman society strongly at odds with its own convictions, sometimes even violently persecuting them. Biblical religion has always been a call to be different from the world.

A new and different challenge today, however, is that large portions of the world are nominally Christian (especially in North America, South America, Europe, and Africa), but biblical Christianity in these countries is rapidly being challenged by materialism, secularism, and unbiblical self-centered forms of spirituality.

It is an attack from behind, where we did not expect it. We live in a supposedly Christian culture and so we subconsciously lower our guards and let the surrounding culture influence us. Christians living in countries where, for instance, Islam or Hinduism or other non-Christian religions are in the majority, are a lot more self-conscious and aware of the danger of influence from the outside.

But when living in a Christian culture that on the surface is positive to Jesus and the Bible, it is easy to be influenced and shaped by society without noticing. Christians are increasingly prioritizing mammon over God, sexual and ethical freedom over holiness, and professional career over kingdom-work.

We are in a spiritual and ethical drift without realizing just how far we have moved our values. Its not until we study the Scriptures that we discover that God had different plans for us. The Holy Spirit is an active conscience in our lives, guiding us into the moral perspective of God. But we need to give the Holy Spirit something to work with. We need to meditate on the Word of God in order to transform and refine our moral instincts.

The point is this: With a world around us increasingly hostile to Gods values, Christians need to spend more time than ever in the Word of God. The Bible is the best antidote to the growing secularization and self-centeredness around us.

But when Christians come to church week after week, to get their dose of the effective medicine of the Word of God, many preachers are not dispensing it!

Or to borrow another metaphor from Scripture:

"For 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." Hebrews 4:12

We are in the midst of a spiritual war, and God has given us the sharp two-edged sword of Scripture, but most preachers seem to think that their own eloquent words are much more powerful and effective than reading and explaining Scripture. Its like bringing a plastic knife instead of a sharp sword into the life-and-death spiritual fight. It is bound to be ugly, and Christians lose their souls on a regular basis.

Dear fellow preachers, we cannot afford anymore not to use the best tool we have available. It is about time that we start making Scripture front and center in our personal lives, in our small groups, and in our sermons.

Paul gave the following charge to pastor Timothy:

I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom: Preach the Word. 2 Timothy 4:12

Paul did not say, Get up in the pulpit and entertain the audience, or Motivate them and make them feel good so they will come back next week. No, for the apostle Paul, the task of the preacher is to educate the members in the truths about God and challenge them to reform their lives:

Be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction. For the 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 Timothy 4:24