Theology That Bites Back
“In other preachers, however, pride is more indirect, more deceptive, and more troublesome. It is possible to seem humble while constantly longing for praise. At the very moment we are glorifying Christ, we can actually be looking for our own glory. When we are pleading with the congregation to praise God, or even leading them in praise, we can be secretly hoping that they will spare a bit of praise for us”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 94.
“But let us just remember what Mark Twain said about how a lie can get halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on his shoes. The Internet has not changed this or made us smarter. It just moves our ignorance around the world at very high rates of speed.”
“For the health of the church, which lives and grows through the word of God, and for the sake of the preacher who needs this discipline, we must return to systematic exposition.”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 93
“Martin Malloy was right about the impact that his story would have. The flag story was already hot, and this took the whole thing up to a high summer afternoon on Mercury’s bright side, that being the side closest to the sun.”
“Because it takes courage to deal with certain issues, I recommend systematic exposition, working steadily through a book of the Bible or a section of a book, verse by verse or paragraph by paragraph. This approach forces us to discuss passages that we might otherwise overlook, or even deliberately avoid.”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 92
“The remaining twenty minutes crawled by like rapidly cooling magma.”
“Preachers, like prophets, believe they bring a word from God, and are not free to change it. Therefore all preachers have at various times to choose between truth with unpopularity and falsehood with popularity.”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 90
“The next morning, while brushing her perfect white teeth, the truth revealed by her manifest and palpable relief over the whole thing came crashing in on her, and so she sat down and acknowledged to herself what was in fact the case. She was a goner. And he was clueless. High-minded. An office full of thick books. Accreditation visits. Scholarly articles. All of that. Stupid man. Dear stupid, stupid man.”
“People-pleasers and time-fillers never make good preachers. We are . . . appointed to proclaim what God has said, not what people want to hear.”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 87
“For Maria was a beauty. And she had decided some years before that there was quite possibly an inverse relationship between feminine beauty and feminine happiness. When she first came to Choctaw Valley, it had taken her almost a year to make any friends at all. Most of the boys were terrified of her, and those who weren’t scared of her were terrified of what the other girls would do if they even talked to her. And needless to say, the girls were usually pretty sullen around her, although in a sweet southern way. All they ever wanted to do whenever they were with her was go to the restroom to check their makeup.”
