“A sermon that fails to preach Christ has failed” (David Murray, How Sermons Work, 53).

Can I get an ‘Amen’?!?

“Preachers should learn to distinguish between what is of primary and what is of secondary importance in a text” (David Murray, How Sermons Work, 50).

“Also, each narrative must be seen as a link in an unbroken chain of redemptive history. In every narrative we trace conflict to the promise of Genesis 3:15 and the resolution to the fulfilment at Calvary and, ultimately, the new heavens and the new earth” (David Murray, How Sermons Work, 49).

“Instead of the gospel giving us new thoughts, experiences, and a motivation for grateful obedience, we lodge the power of the God in our own piety and programs” (Michael Horton, Christless Christianity: The Alternative Gospel of the American Church, 27).

“Narrative preaching, especially Old Testament narrative preaching, has the tendency to become merely moralistic and exemplary. Hebrews 11 helps us interpret many of these passages in a Christocentric way, by showing that it was faith in the Messiah that motivated the words and actions of Bible personalities” (David Murray, How Sermons Work, 49).

“Although professing Christians are in the majority, we often like to pretend we are persecuted flock being prepared for imminent slaughter through the combined energies of Hollywood and the Democratic Party. But if we ever were really persecuted, would it be because of our offensive posturing and self-righteousness or because we would not weaken the offense of the cross? … My concern is not that God is treated so lightly in American culture but that he is not taken seriously in our own faith and practice” (Michael Horton, Christless Christianity: The Alternative Gospel of the American Church, 23).

“Practical wisdom [like what is found in Proverbs, some of the Psalms, Job, and Ecclesiastes] gives general principles that commonly operate in an ideal world” (David Murray, How Sermons Work, 48).

“While we swim in a sea of “Christian” things, Christ is increasingly reduced to a mascot or symbol of a subculture and the industries that feed it. Just as you don’t really need Jesus Christ in order to have T-shirts and coffee mugs, it is unclear to me why he is necessary for most of the things I hear a lot of pastors and Christians talking about in church these days” (Michael Horton, Christless Christianity: The Alternative Gospel of the American Church, 22).

“Devotional material like the Psalms will usually have less exposition and more application than, say, a text from Ephesians chapter 1” (David Murray, How Sermons Work, 47).

“A major reason for seeking the purpose of the author is, therefore, consciously to shift attention away from ourselves to the Scriptures, away from our concerns to the author’s concerns, away from our purposes to the author’s purpose. In other words, asking for the author’s purpose is an attempt at genuine listening by cutting out all subjective interference” (David Murray quoting Sidney Greidanus in How Sermons Work, 47)