“On the contrary, [Scripture] is a living word to living people from the living God, a contemporary message for each generation”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 18
And There Are Quite a Few of Those
“She wasn’t really going to church anywhere, but she remained a contemporary evangelical to the back teeth. She had lost her faith while still managing to hang on to all the platitudes.”
Not an Exercise in Wish Fulfillment
“We study each text as it is instead of as we might wish it to be”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 18
But Other Than That . . .
“Johnny’s eyes were round, like a couple of trash can lids, only a different color.”
Avoiding Homiletical Strip Mining
“Once we are convinced that the literary form of the Bible is important, we who preach it should look at it even more closely. We are not just miners extracting ore and leaving the landscape desolate.”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 17
Very Loosely Tied
“He could also tell that Johnny was not really a highly trained logician, and would simply go as he was directed, as long as the suggested direction did not conflict with the tangled bundle of platitudes, loosely tied with string, that made up his worldview.”
Making It Concrete
“Scripture aims to get the reader to share an experience, not just to grasp ideas. This may seem obvious, but many preachers need to be reminded of it for they treat the Bible as a mere storehouse of ideas.”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 17
Fundie Homiletics
“The point of these stories had been pressed home to him to him by the kind of preachers who rolled up their shirtsleeves, threw their necktie over the right shoulder, and hopped around while they preached. Many Americans have complained of too many hellfire and damnation sermons in their past, but Bradford was one of the 112 individuals in our generation who had actually heard one. He was thirteen at the time and was a pretty good boy for five days afterward. So Bradford was thoroughly conversant on the Achan thing.”
Two Sides
“If we are to be true to what the Bible says about itself, we must recognize both the human and the divine authorship. Yet we must not allow either the divine or the human factor to take away from the other. Divine inspiration did not override the human authorship. Human authorship did not override the divine inspiration. The Bible is equally God’s words and human words.”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 16
A Big Part, Actually
“’MPD, Bradford,’ came an authoritative voice. It was the voice of God’s minister of wrath, the avenging angel, coming to strike down all the firstborn. Johnny was firstborn, which was part of his problem, but pursuit of those issues would take us too far afield.”