Theology That Bites Back
One of the mysteries of our relationship to God and our relationship to the world is the inverse demeanor that exists between humbling and boldness. When God is great and man is small, the result is humility before God and boldness before men. But when man is great and God is small, the thing goes …
The Twelfth Decade of Psalms: Introduction: This psalm is a wonderful testimony of praise, giving glory to God for all the things He did to undertake for the psalmist. The Lord delivered ...
“Wordy preachers can hide careless thinking with clever speech; it is much more difficult to get away with a cover-up on paper.”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 71
“We need to start where the people are, rather than where we hope to take them.”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 70
“A good introduction serves at least three purposes.First, it awakes interest, stimulates curiosity and makes us long to know God’s perspective on this matter. Secondly, it enables the listeners to sense that they are listening to someone who is qualified to speak for God from this text . . . Thirdly, it introduces the dominant idea and leads the hearers into it”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, pp. 69-70
“Some of us seem incapable of concluding anything, let alone our sermons! We circle around, like a plane without instruments on a foggy day, unable to land.”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 66
“Every preacher must be constantly on the lookout for illustrations. Not that we read books and listen to people only to collect sermon material!”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 65
The late public intellectual Roger Scruton once observed that the difference between the conservative and the progressive visions is that the conservative believes in unchosen obligations while the progressive believes that choice is the foundation for all obligations. We have seen in recent years that this dogma even extends down into one’s biological sex. If …
The Twelfth Decade of Psalms: Introduction: God alone is the God of all glory, and so we must turn to Him in order to bless Him alone. And when we give glory to Him, He in His divine grace has fashioned the world in such a way as to allow us to become a reflected …
“Illustrations transform the abstract into the concrete, the ancient into the present, the unfamiliar into the familiar, the general into the particular, the vague into the precise, the unreal into the real, and the invisible into the visible” ().
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 63
