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It was November 15, 2006.  That was the day my friend Paul Martin, the Richard Baxter of Toronto, left a comment on a post about tipping.  His comment wasn’t about tipping, it was about something I’d written in the post:

But on the whole, the comments in the blogosphere remind me of a lot of evangelical preaching I hear (and perhaps my own, I need to go back and listen to some of my sermons). The preacher starts with a text (hopefully), offers an application, then insists on the binding authority of the application rather than the text.

Paul simply said, “What a danger! And how easily we slip into it!  You should write more about this, brother.”  For over three years now (you can see how quickly I get things done!), I’ve been thinking off and on about this passing statement and Paul’s encouragement. I’ve been thinking about preaching, slips in preaching, but also listening, and slips in listening.

In that time, I’ve even had the privilege of writing a little book that assigns first place to listening well to sermons. Others have written book length treatments of the topic.  See here for a couple.

And in that time, I’ve had tons of conversations that come back to these kinds of issues.  The thoughts also come up when I’m reading someone else’s material during my own sermon preparation.  The comments can be positive or critical, and both are helpful. The more I preach, the more convinced I am of two things.  First, preaching is really, really difficult.  Second, listening to preaching is really, really difficult.  Even the best of listeners struggle with poor preaching.  And the best preaching can’t cure the worst listening.  You want both.  Great preaching and great listening.  That combination best edifies preacher and people, strengthening the church in the most profound way.   But even good preaching and good listening should result in good growth by the grace of God.  So, the effort is well rewarded.

Beginning today, I want to take up one half of that equation.  That is, listening well.  I’m convinced that how we listen to a sermon makes tremendous and profound difference in our encounter with the word of God and the God of the word.  And that’s no revelation I just sat here and thought up.  It’s what the Bible itself teaches.  Ever wonder why the Bible so frequently exhorts us to listen, to pay attention, to heed?  Ever wonder why Jesus so often begins His teaching with, “Have you not heard?”  Or, take Solomon.  Breeze through the opening chapters of Proverbs and count the number of times he writes, “Listen, my son.”  And then there are all the biblical rebukes for not listening, for being stiff-necked, slow to hear, and the like.

God is a speaking God.  We must, then, be a listening people.  In fact, the difference between an eternity of enjoying God and an eternity of wrath comes down to whether we listen to the message preached.  “Faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of God.”  So, this is an issue of extremely vital importance.  Our spiritual health depends upon hearing God clearly, which depends upon knowing how to listen.

Filters

The other day, I had the privilege of serving my family by cleaning the air conditioning filters in our home.  It’s alarming to see how much dust those things collect!  My oldest daughter, who has mild asthma, helped with the cleaning.  She wasn’t pleased that we were breathing in such particles.  But she and I both were thankful for the filters.  Good filters catch the debris and filth floating around in the air so our lungs aren’t taxed by it.  But good filters also need to be cleaned or replaced to do the job effectively.  Breathing clean air requires a clean filter to let the air through and catch the gunk.

Likewise, listening to and benefiting from sermons requires good filters. 

True/False Filter

The first and most important filter for the listener is a “True or False” filter.  The listener must ask themselves: “Is what I’m hearing true or false?” A true/false filter is a clean listening filter for those wanting to grow by the word of God.

If it’s true, it should be embraced, believed, enjoyed.  All truth belongs to God.  He is the God of truth (Ps. 31:5; Is. 65:16).  He does not lie or deceive; in fact, it is impossible for God to lie (Titus 1:2; Heb. 6:18).  He is trustworthy because He is true (John 3:33).

Those who worship God must worship Him in spirit and in truth (John 4:24).  The worst thing in the world we can do is “exchange the truth of God for a lie” (Rom. 1:25).  That leads to idolatry.  Lies always come from the “father of lies,” Satan himself (John 8:44).

The preacher must “set forth the truth plainly” (2 Cor. 4:2), and preach “in truthful speech and in the power of God” (2 Cor. 6:7).  The preacher must “Do [his] best to present [himself] to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth” (2 Tim. 2:15).  Moreover, the “church of the living God” is “the pillar and foundation of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15).  By the truth of God’s grace and the gospel we are saved and sanctified in Christ (Col. 1:6; 2 Thess. 2:13; 1 Tim. 2:3-4).

The truth–the whole counsel of God–is good for us.  Falsehood misleads and destroys us.  So, we must first come to the word thinking and listening with the categories or filter of true and false.  Is the preacher giving me the truth here? Reject everything that is false.  But thankfully embrace the truth with both arms.  Hold it close to your bosom and love it.  Christians are truth people, and faithful servants of the word declare the truth.

Gunk in the Filter

Just as my daughter and I cleaned off a lot of dust bunnies and gunk from the air conditioning filter that day, we often need to clean gunk from our listening filters.  We may have wax in our ears that make it difficult to listen well to the word of God preached or read.

Most of us have a layer of gunk on our true/false filter that sometimes prevents the clean air of truth from coming through to us.  Specifically, we almost instinctively think in terms of Like/Dislike.  We listen to a sermon or read the word and our first reaction is often “I like this” or “I don’t like this.” A statement or a person either pleases us or it displeases us.

You can see the problem.  If a thing is true and we think about it instinctively in terms of “I like it” or “I don’t like it,” we run the risk of rejecting the truth because it displeases us.  In our sinful nature, we will no doubt come across good and true and right things that disagree with us, and we will be tempted to reject the truth because we don’t like it.  Often we fall under conviction from the word.  The word exposes us and makes us to feel our guilt.  But because of indwelling sin, we don’t really like to feel guilty.  We don’t like to think about our guilt and the truth that exposes us.  Sanctification hurts.  When Jesus takes out the pruning shears, it cuts and stings and burns–deeply sometimes.  That can be quite uncomfortable.

Now the thing to do is not to run from the pruning shears.  That’s what I used to do when I was a little boy and my father would announce it was time to go get a haircut.  He’d say, “Boy, you’re looking mighty woolly by the head.”  I hated those words!  I’d slide out the back door, run down the street to a friend’s house, or make my way home from school very slowly on scheduled haircut days.  I’d even get up early on a Saturday morning, trying to escape the house before my father remembered it was haircut time.  Running from conviction is a little like that.  We don’t want the trim and the cut, so we look for a way of escape.

The problem with doing that is that it cuts us off from the grace God intends us to receive from a full embrace of the truth.  For our growth and joy in the Lord, we really need to humble ourselves under the word (James 1:21) and let it grow us and sanctify us.  It’s what Jesus prays for us: “Sanctify them by the truth; they word is truth” (John 17:17).  We want to remove the gunk so that God’s sanctifying agenda in our lives is advanced by means of the truth.

Think About It

Perhaps we’ve caught ourselves thinking primarily in terms of Like/Dislike when it comes to preaching in general or an individual sermon in particular, or even of a preacher?  Has the Like/Dislike gunk clogged the True/False filter?  If so, I think the Lord would have us clean enough of the gunk off the filter so that the truth can pass through to our hearts?  That will be for our joy and progress in the faith.

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