“This part of town had their crazy pastors too, but they mainly operated out of storefronts with names like Knee Deep in Glory Gospel Center. And some of their pastors had tattoos, but these were just tattoos that said, ‘I was in the Navy once, before I met Jesus,’ instead of the uptown ecclesiastical version that said, ‘I am desperate to accessorize my iPad.”
What Planet Is This Guy From?
“We must preach and defend the gospel, but we must also teach and defend biblical sexual ethics. They are essential to a society’s health; failure to keep to them destroys a nation and a community.”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 38
You Know, Like That
“‘And I know that if you have not yet done this this, it is not yet necessary.’ At this she bobbed her head perkily like a ponytailed girl in a biscuit commercial from 1957.”
And Try to Say “Bravely” Without the Voice Quavering
“We learn, for instance, that sexual intercourse belongs only in lifelong heterosexual marriage (Gen. 2:24; Mark 10:5-9; 1 Thess. 4:3-5). What is more, since marriage was established at creation, these divine standards apply to everybody, not just to believers. It is impossible, therefore, to limit the faithful teaching of biblical sex ethics to the congregation; we also have to be involved in public discussion about marriage, about divorce, about the remarriage of divorced persons and about homosexual partnerships. Christians should discuss these issues thoroughly and should use the pulpit to do so clearly and bravely.”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 38
Fine With Me
“And Bill used to play that role just fine. If Bill had been a local potentate centuries before, and his city was under siege, and he had been told by the randy and imperious besieger to ‘Surrender all your gold, and let us ravish all your women,’ Bill would have appeared above the city gates to say something along the lines of ‘Okay!’”
Holiness Not Legalism
“To teach the standards of moral conduct that adorn the gospel and insist that our hearers heed them is neither legalism nor pharisaism but plain apostolic Christianity.”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 35
How Could It Not?
“The controversy had gone national when he had achieved the high-water mark of two running jokes on Letterman. Here was a mega-bestselling evangelical author, caught up in a sex scandal. How could he not make it to Letterman? Then somebody took the AP wire, stretched it across the road and waited for Chad to come around the corner on a motorcycle like some nondescript Nazi in pursuit of somebody important in an old WWII movie. That had happened on Thursday.”
A Leaky Elder-Meeting Basement
“His moral authority was apparently stuck, like an oil-soaked T-shirt down in the sump pump, and this made it hard to control the flooding in this elder-meeting basement of his.”
Above All Else
“Jesus Christ . . . is the fulfillment of every human desire (Col. 2:3, 9-10). Therefore, above all else, we must preach Christ.”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 34
Because When You Do Both You Get Into Trouble
“We find that conservatives are biblical but not contemporary, while liberals and radicals are modern but not biblical.”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 32