Wilken’s diagnostic

I'm sure Todd came up with this on his own. He probably has a file or page on his site somewhere with a nicer version, but I'll present it here, culled from one of his many sermon reviews.

This is a three part diagnostic questionnaire you can use to guide your evaluation of a Lord's Day sermon. The diagnostic works on the assumption that Christ crucified should be preached on every Sunday and that our problem (sin) be both diagnosed and treated in the same message.

Todd is the host of a Lutheran radio show called "Issues, Etc." – one of the worst names I can think of, but the content rises above the name. He uses this diagnostic every time he reviews a sermon on his radio show. Past subjects have been Joel Osteen, Robert Schuller, and John Hagee.

Three Part Sermon Diagnostic

1. How often is Jesus mentioned?

Keep a running tally of the total number.  Communication about Jesus is difficult without mentioning his name.

2. If Jesus is mentioned, is He the subject of the verbs?

Put your grammar hats on for this one. Is Christ acting or being acted upon?

3. What are those verbs?

What is the preacher saying Jesus is doing, has done, etc.? Does He "help", "empower" (verbs of therapy), or does He "live", "suffer", "die" (verbs of Scripture)?

Misunderstanding preaching

This link to a post at the Jolly Blogger is worth checking out. I'll include the relevant text below. The quote comes from D. Martin Lloyd-Jones' commentary on Romans Chapter 6. I have not put my hands on this commentary to verify every word, but I will soon.

First of all, let me make a comment, to me a very important and vital comment. The true preaching of the gospel of salvation by grace alone always leads to the possibility of this charge being brought against it. There is no better test as to whether a man is really preaching the New Testament gospel of salvation than this, that some people might misunderstand it and misinterpret it to mean that it really amounts to this, that because you are saved by grace alone it does not matter at all what you do; you can go on sinning as much as you like because it will redound all the more to the glory of grace. If my preaching and presentation of the gospel of salvation does not expose it to that misunderstanding, then it is not the gospel. Let me show you what I mean.

If a man preaches justification by works, no one would ever raise this question. If a man’s preaching is, ‘If you want to be Christians, and if you want to go to heaven, you must stop committing sins, you must take up good works, and if you do so regularly and constantly, and do not fail to keep on at it, you will make yourselves Christians, you will reconcile yourselves to God and you will go to heaven’. Obviously a man who preaches in that strain would never be liable to this misunderstanding. Nobody would say to such a man, ‘Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?’, because the man’s whole emphasis is just this, that if you go on sinning you are certain to be damned, and only if you stop sinning can you save yourselves. So that misunderstanding could never arise . . . . . .

Nobody has ever brought this charge against the Church of Rome, but it was brought frequently against Martin Luther; indeed that was precisely what the Church of Rome said about the preaching of Martin Luther. They said, ‘This man who was a priest has changed the doctrine in order to justify his own marriage and his own lust’, and so on. ‘This man’, they said, ‘is an antinomian; and that is heresy.’ That is the very charge they brought against him. It was also brought George Whitfield two hundred years ago. It is the charge that formal dead Christianity – if there is such a thing – has always brought against this startling, staggering message, that God ‘justifies the ungodly’ . . .

That is my comment and it is a very important comment for preachers. I would say to all preachers: If your preaching of salvation has not been misunderstood in that way, then you had better examine your sermons again, and you had better make sure that you are really preaching the salvation that is offered in the New Testament to the ungodly, the sinner, to those who are dead in trespasses and sins, to those who are enemies of God. There is this kind of dangerous element about the true presentation of the doctrine of salvation.

What is the gospel?

This question has been asked by members of my church. The following is a post from a blog associated with a conference called, "Together For the Gospel". I found it very succinct and accurate. Enjoy.

The following definition of the gospel, provided by Jeff Purswell , the Dean of our Pastors College, seeks to capture the substance of the gospel:

 

“The gospel is the good news of God’s saving activity in the person and work of Christ. This includes his incarnation in which he took to himself full (yet sinless) human nature; his sinless life which fulfilled the perfect law of God; his substitutionary death which paid the penalty for man’s sin and satisfied the righteous wrath of God; his resurrection demonstrating God’s satisfaction with his sacrifice; and his glorification and ascension to the right hand of the Father where he now reigns and intercedes for the church.

 

“Such news is specific: there is a defined ‘thatness’ to the gospel which sets forth the content of both our saving faith and our proclamation. It is objective, and not to be confused with our response. It is sufficient: we can add nothing to what Christ has accomplished for us–it falls to us simply to believe this news, turning from our sins and receiving by faith all that God has done for us in Christ.”

Here is a link to the page describing the conference speakers.

God in the Wasteland quote

From the book, God in the Wasteland: The Reality of Truth in a World of Fading Dreams, by David Wells

Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing

Come, Thou Fount of every blessing,
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;
Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
Sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I’m fixed upon it,
Mount of Thy redeeming love.

Here I raise my Ebenezer;
Here by Thy great help I’ve come;
And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,
Safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger,
Wandering from the fold of God;
He, to rescue me from danger,
Interposed His precious blood.

O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.

O that day when freed from sinning,
I shall see Thy lovely face;
Clothed then in blood washed linen
How I’ll sing Thy sovereign grace;
Come, my Lord, no longer tarry,
Take my ransomed soul away;
Send thine angels now to carry
Me to realms of endless day.

- Robert Robinson, 1758 

Eternally significant time

What a fresh reminder of the infinite value of the few minutes a father can spend with his son each day or night. Check out this post by Kim Riddlebarger about the importance of catechesis.

Galatia and Corinth

The following interchange takes place as part of a recent White Horse Inn broadcast called "Can Judeo-Christian Values Save Us?", aired on 3/12/06. The "cast of characters" who co-host the program were discussing the Apostle Paul's attitude and tone with the believers at Corinth and Galatia. They were careful to contrast the gross and rank "behavioral" sins of the Corinthians with the more subtle (from the world's perspective anyway) sin of misunderstanding/misapplying the gospel the Galatians had received.

Ken: "it wasn't that they [the Judaizers of Galatia] were excluding faith in Christ; they were including faith in Christ along with the keeping of the Mosaic law to the point of circumcision as the basis of salvation."

Rod: "in Corinth, men were sleeping with their mothers-in-law – it was a moral mess. Paul doesn't bawl them out – he opens both epistles in his standard way (to the saints at Corinth); not Galatians. The place he blew his cork was what Ken was describing – it was a theological thing that caused him to explode. 'You idiots! – who seduced you away from the gospel?'. "

Mike: "Yeah – he's a father disciplining his children in Corinth and he's wondering if they're even children in Galatia."

You might guess the more grevious error would belong to the Corinthians, but Paul saw a far darker evil at work amongst the Galatians and reserved his most scathing rebuke for their theological error.

Rick Warren told the Baptist World Congress that "we need a reformation of deeds, not creeds".

I suppose Paul had it reversed.