The Field's Musings

By Tim Keller As people adore Christ they will apply Christ. The best way to lead people to worship is to worship Christ yourself during the sermon. Whitefield agreed to having his sermons printed but said ‘you’ll never get the thunder’. The sermon is what you write Preaching is the active delivery of the preaching The spiritual quality and character of the person shines through during preaching more than the sermon itself. Keep in your mind the differences between graces and gifts. You can be using gifts without being godly. The fruit of the Spirit is character change. The gifts of the Spirit are skills or abilities. People often assume that skill or gifts indicates Spiritual gifts with spiritual fruit is like a tyre without air. When you’re far from God Traditions: Sacramental: meeting God in the sacraments and traditions Evangelical: meeting God in your quiet times Charismatic: emphasis on meeting God in corporate worship The Puritans were bigger on experiencing God compared with ot...

By Tim Keller The goal of the sermon is to get people to worship. A sermon isn’t a sermon until you call people to adore Christ. A sermon is a lecture when Christ is not adored. Willow Creek approach: ‘You can evangelise non-Christians or edify Christians’ Conservative approach: ‘All people need to worship through the same material’ If you preach Christ you’ll e evangelising and edifying at the same time. Post-modern people like to know how Christianity works. PM people try on Christianity as a dress. They’ll try it out to see if it works. You can only change a person’s life by changing what they worship and how they worship. Text, Context and Subtext Be clear about the text, context and subtext 1) The text: know what the text is saying. Be clear on theology 2) The context: know how to present the text to the people 3) The subtext: have the right heart for the text (Christ) and the right heart for the context (people) 4 types of subtext 1) Social Reinforcement The purpo...

By Tim Keller How do you argue for the authority of the Bible? Traditional way: Look at fulfilled prophecy of the OT. Better contemporary way: 1) Do you want a personal relationship with God? 2) You can’t have a personal with God unless you accept the authority of the Bible 3) Why? Because having a personal relationship with being outraged sometimes. You must expect the Bible to offend. Unless you accept the complete authority of the Bible God can’t contradict you or differ with you. The strategy used is presupposition apologetics. Affirm what they affirm and then show them that How do you argue for the reality Hell? Post-modernist: I don’t believe God would send anyone to Hell. Christian: What did it cost your God to love us and embrace us? It cost my God pain, agony and torment to bring me near to Him. In your effort to make God more loving you’ve actually made God less loving by removing Hell from your worldview. If punishment doesn’t exist as a result of God’s justic...