Listening for the Word “I hope you will come (to the text) with receptive minds, and not with dictatorial minds... Dictatorial minds impose upon the text.

Listening for the Word

“I hope you will come (to the text) with receptive minds, and not with dictatorial minds . . . Dictatorial minds impose upon the text their own ideas. Let the

movement be from the passage to the people.”

Paul Scherer

“As the Lord lives, What the Lord says to me, that I will speak.”1

Kgs.22:14 (Micaiah)

• “the one who has stood in the council of the Lord” Jer. 23:18

• “The vision of God and the listening to God precede the speaking of the word of God.” Coggan

Insights from Marva Dawn

• The first way that “ I let my sermons degenerate is by not establishing time in daily life for God to speak to me.”

• Unfortunately the space for pastors in church buildings is no longer called a study but an office.

• I follow “the practice of immersing myself in the sermon’s text by memorizing it.”

A PRAYER FROM THE MTN PEOPLE OF HAITI

• Our Great Physician

• Your Word is like alcohol.

• When poured on an infected wound,

• It burns and stings,

• But only then can it kill germs.

• If it doesn’t burn, it doesn’t do any good

Important Strands from our Theology of Preaching

1. The Word stands behind the words

2. We listen for a “Voice from Beyond”

James Denney, Scottish theologian, once said of his friend

• “he never reads scripture as if he had written it; he always reads it as if listening for a voice.”

re Struthers of Grenoch

Exegesis in the Experience of Adolf Schlatter

• Not just mechanics, steps, but the act of “seeing what is there.”

• Exegesis of the Bible became for Schlatter a direct address to personal existence

• The Word of Scripture, truly apprehended, disclosed a spiritual force that place the hearer directly before God

The foundational act of listening

• “when we read the New Testament we turn our ears to them most content-rich and powerful Word . . . That has ever been uttered, to that Word that gives us the promise; here God reveals himself to us.”

• in Werner Neuer, Adolf Schlatter

ADVICE FOR THE STUDENT SERMON

• FOCUS ON PERSONAL RESPONSE TO THE BIBLICAL TEXT

• SHARE PERSONAL, EMOTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL RESPONSES

• SHARE RECOLLECTIONS, INCIDENTS RECALLED BY ASSOCIATION

From Thulin, The ”I” in the Sermon

More Thulin

• The student will be surprised what the text releases to your consciousness

• Events long forgotten are remembered

• Words long muffled are heard again

• Begin to comprehend your life as a place where God works

James Stewart, A Faith to Proclaim

• “Christian preaching begins only when ffaith in the message has reached such a pitch that the man or the community proclaiming it becomes part of the message proclaimed.”

Personal Word

Seize the Inspiration

• When listening for the Word grab it immediately whenever it shows up, don’t let it get away, write it down

• The Word may come fifteen minutes into your study or hours into it

“Set yourself before the Bible as thought you were a lost and humble traveler waiting for a

word of redirection.”John Killinger, The Fundamentals

of Preaching

Your preaching just may become the Word of God

Ask Questions of your Text

• What liberating word do I hear?

• What word of hope?

• What life giving Word do you hear?

Bonhoffer’s Questions

Two Questions

• 1. How is the Text against us?

• 2. How is the Text for us?

Note a Couple of Guiding Assumptions

• 1. the inspired character of scripture. “Persons they were but inspired by the Spirit they spoke the oracles of God.”

• 2. Spiritual intuition and inspired imagination play as well as cognitive analysis. Make room for the mystical and the right side of the brain.

Warning from Tom Torrance

• He warned against the current tendency to replace the human of Christ by the humanity of the minister

• Sermon then is no longer the exposition of the Word but the opinions of the preacher.

• The preacher becomes a psychological priest, the triumph of the therapeutic

A SENSATIONAL EXAMPLE

• MARTIN LUTHER

PEANUTS

• LISTENING FOR THE BASSOON