“When God speaks, he acts. His word does more than explain his action; it is active in itself. God achieves his purposes by his word (Is. 55:11).”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 19
So to Speak
“Michelle’s grandmother, a grand dame of the old school in Mississippi, would have said that Michelle was about to go stepping in high cotton.”
Permanent Word
“Grasping the truth that God still speaks through what he has spoken protects us from two opposite errors. The first is the belief that God’s voice is silent today. The second is the belief that what God is saying today has little or nothing to do with Scripture. The truth is that God speaks through what he spoke”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 19
And Probably Ponderosa Bark
“They were within walking distance of a number of upscale eateries and had no trouble picking out a little bistro with espresso and ferns, the kind of place that served exotic little art sandwiches with bark still in the bread”
No Museum Piece
“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.”