Martin Luther: "This Epistle is really the chief part of the New Testament and the very purest Gospel, and is worthy not only that every Christian should know it word for word, by heart, but occupy himself with it every day, as the daily bread of the soul. It can never be read or pondered too much, and the more it is dealt with the more precious it becomes, and the better it tastes."
John Calvin: "When anyone understands this Epistle, he has a passage opened to him to the understanding of the whole Scripture."
F. Godet: "Every great spiritual revival in the church will be connected as effect and cause with a deeper understanding of this book."
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6 comments:
Thats what Luther said about Galatians also.
Are you going to go with the 8 year plan like Piper or the 16 week plan like Dever?
re: the 16-week method or the 8-year method
My preaching method is certainly closer to Piper than Dever in this regard, but I should be able to finish the book in at least half the time of Piper since our church has a morning and evening preaching service. (It took Piper 8 years, but he really only preached about 25-30 sermons on Romans in a year.)
Since several pastors read this blog, let me ask you all, which method do you think is best and why? What are the pros and cons? And those of you who aren't pastors, which would you prefer from your pastor?
I have a hard time preaching more than a few verses at a time. I have thought about preaching chapters or longer passages, but I never have been successful. I am not opposed to the style of Dever, but my preference is more like Piper. However, I am not nearly as smart or experienced as either of them, so I take full advantage of learning from them both.
One of the important aspects of Dever's preaching that we need to think deeply about is his emphasis on communicating the main point of the passage.
When we take just a few verses each week, we may be missing the point of the entire text. In other words, we are in danger of missing the forest by focusing on individual trees.
Dever tries to break passages up so that the author's entire argument is communicated.
I think there has to be a balance. When we preach just a few verses at at time, we must labor to make the connections to the entire flow of thought.
Here is a question for pondering: Could we be mishandling the text when we take too few verses?
I love D. Martin Lloyd-Jones. However, I often find his preaching to be lacking. He would break a text apart and do an entire theological treatise on each word. His sermons are great for systematic theology, but not good if you want to know what Ephesians is all about.
With all that said, I lean toward smaller passages. I try to make sure I connect each message to the main point of the passage/book.
Justin C.
That is very true. I can say that I have found myself guilty of this on more than one occasion as I preach through books of the Bible. I think it is good to preach smaller portions of Scripture, but not at the expense of missing the forest. Thanks for the reminder brother.
I agree to a point. However, there is often as much glory to see by looking at a particular tree than at looking at the whole forest. Moreover, there are many wonderful truths in the Bible that never make an appearance as the a "main point".
For me, however, the main thing is helping my people to see how rich with truth the Bible is. When we spend a couple of weeks on a single verse, the congregation begins to realize just how much their is to learn and meditate on in the whole canon of Scripture. They are taught not to skip over words or phrases they don't understand, but to spend time meditating on them and trying to find answers.
Justin C. is right - it is possible to lose the forest for the trees. So those of us who choose to move slowly through a book need to always keep the main point central. But the good thing about moving slowly is that you get to hold up that main point for several weeks in a row, exploring it from several different angles. Since I tend to learn by repetition and hearing things more than once, this is attractive to me.
Just some thoughts
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