Lesson Goal
In this lesson I hope to present some elements of a doxology sermon which gives praise to God.
Lesson Intro
Augustine wrote about three kinds of sermon, the subdued sermon for teaching, the elegant sermon for praise and the majestic sermon for exhortation. We have already covered the didactic, teaching sermon in an early lesson. For the next two lessons, we will cover Augustine's other two styles, the praise sermon and what others have called preaching in grand style.
A lot of people who have studied how to preach will tell you that you must preach application, application, application. That is a fine principle as far as it goes, but it can tend to place the focus on us rather than on God. There is a style of sermon that focuses exclusively on God, the praise sermon, the doxology. We usually think of a doxology as the closing words of a church service, but a whole sermon can be a doxology, a sermon of praise, a laudatory discourse.
Lesson Plan
This chapter focuses on God as the entire subject matter for a sermon. It covers descriptions about God, praise of God, worship of God, and loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength (Mark 12:30) even while preaching.
Lesson Body
1. God, the Focus of Preaching
God is mentioned habitually in preaching, but the focus can easily tend to be on human personalities, theatrics, ritual, ceremony, gadgets, religious trappings, phenomena, religious experiences, music, singing, and not God. There is nothing wrong with any of those things, but when they take the limelight from God, so that our sense of awe is focused on people or things and not God, when we deceive ourselves into believing that the things of the flesh make us full of the Spirit, then something is wrong.
In his book called The Supremacy of God in Preaching, (1990, Baker Books) John Piper states that people are “starving for the greatness of God.” (p. 9) He writes that “God himself is the necessary subject matter of our preaching, in his majesty and truth and holiness and righteousness and wisdom and faithfulness and sovereignty and grace…most of our people have no one in the world to tell them, week in and week out, about the supreme beauty and majesty of God” (p. 12) Our churches need to enter “an atmosphere of the holiness of God which leaves its aroma on their lives all week long” (p. 22).
God is spirit, so we cannot observe him with our physical senses, except when he specially reveals himself. So the natural tendency is to focus on physical things that we can see with our eyes. The challenge is to focus on God, to acknowledge Jesus as head of the church while we preach, to allow the Holy Spirit to illuminate the Bible which we preach from. Catholics have a wonderful sense of awe which we Protestants sometimes lack. Catholics speak of not just "the Bible" but "the Holy Scriptures." They speak of heaven and heavenly personalities as if they are near, whereas we Protestants sometimes tend to see heaven as a far off place. Many people believe that God has gone afar off and is unreachable. They travel long distances to hear some guru because they believe that is the only way to find God. But God is not far. He is as near as a walk in the park, or a bedside prayer. He is as near as a heartbeat and a breath, because every heartbeat and every breath comes from him. An ancient prophet described God's nearness to us by saying that God fills heaven and earth (Jeremiah 23:24). Early Christians knew that God is not far (Acts 17:27-28).
We too can capture this sense of worshipful awe as we preach in an attitude of spiritual awareness, focusing on the personality of God rather than the personalities of fellow human beings. God alone is life, and only when he is the source of our preaching will our sermons contain life. God does not live in a church building. Walls cannot contain him. A focus on these things can tend to diminish him. God is spirit and not material, we cannot limit him to a material church environment. He inhabits eternity and our preaching must speak from that eternity. He is the same today as he always was and always will be, so our preaching must speak from his reliability and utter trustworthiness.
2. Praising God, the Heart of Preaching
What do we praise God for? Praising God is rejoicing in him, adoring God, thanking him, saluting, blessing, celebrating, confessing him, boasting about him, laudatory discourse, giving him glory, honor, approbation and commendation. Paul told the saints at Philippi to think on those things that are worthy of praise (Philippians 4:8).
Meditating on God's handiwork is but one area where we can see that he deserves our praise. Every atom in the entire universe is under his control. The Bible even says that he has a name for every star (Psalm 147:4). Mere mortals have only counted a little over 100 billion times 100 billion of them. He also knows the number of hairs on our heads (Matthew 10:30) perhaps well over 100,000. Nobody else deserves as much praise because nobody else matches his awesome supremacy.
A Greek word often translated as praise is doxa, from which we get the word doxology. A doxology is often seen as a short hymn or form of words such as "Praise God from whom all blessings flow." However, a whole sermon can also be a very effective doxology. A sermon can explain the rationale for rejoicing in God. A sermon can give dozens of reasons to be thankful to God. A sermon can boast about dozens of things that God has done. It can be a laudatory discourse.
3. Worshiping God, the Essence of Preaching
When we preach we need to have an attitude of worship. We bow down in our hearts as we speak, we give him reverence, even if others want to give it to us, or want us to give it to them. A Greek word frequently translated as worship is proskuneo and literally means to prostrate oneself. In ancient times it was a custom to prostrate oneself on the ground as an outward expression of profound reverence. Some Christians still practice this today. It probably comes from the idea of a dog licking his master's hand and symbolizes us kissing Jesus' hand. In the midst of an arrogant, self-important world, we preachers need to come to that humble attitude as we give our sermons, that in our mind's eye we kiss the hand of our maker.
We are not preaching for self-glory, ambition, notoriety, or even to be a men-pleaser. We are not preaching to groupies who we can use for our own pleasures or even to build our own empires. We are speaking to people who belong to someone else, God. We are encouraging those who we lead into the worship of the one who owns us all, who is the head of the Church. We are leading others into the attitude of prostrating ourselves before God.
A preacher is tempted by the twin evils of hollow flattery and unjust criticism, when he should ignore both. He is tempted to be either depressed or puffed up, if he pays too much attention to either. We are not worthy of any worship, only God is. Only God is holy and untainted by the evils that we so often experience on earth. Only he is completely righteous, always doing what is right. Only God is all loving and always loving. Only God is perfectly just and fair. Only God is genuine and does not have any pretentiousness. Only God is true and deals only in truth. Only God is completely faithful and will never let us down, even though it may seem that way from a human perspective at times. Only God is completely benevolent. Only God is totally gracious and forgiving. Only God is totally merciful and only God is persistent and will not give up on us.
4. Loving God, the Purpose of Preaching
Jesus encourages us to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength (Mark 12:30).
How do we love God with all our heart in preaching? We don't, not in the sense that it can be written into our sermon notes, if it isn't in our hearts in the first place. Our heart is the center of spiritual life. Loving God with all our hearts is something we must live first and then it will quite naturally fill our sermons. Jesus chided the Pharisees that out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks (Matthew 12:34). If we love God with all our hearts, all week long, it will come out of our mouths when we preach. If we don't, that too will come out of our mouths. It can't be faked. What's at the heart and center of our lives, what we give central priority to, will come out when we preach. If we want to become better preachers, we need to grow to have better hearts.
How do we love God with all our soul in preaching? The word soul in English is one of those awkward words. Sometimes it is translated from a Hebrew or Greek word simply meaning body or life, and at other times it most clearly refers to our spirit. In the passages where we are told to love God with all our souls, the Greek word is psyche meaning most literally the breath of life and figuratively that spiritual part of our being which is distinct from the body and is not dissolved by death. The English word psyche captures part of that meaning, if understood to be the inner self. We could say that we are to love God with all that's inside us. As with our hearts, so too what's inside of us will come out when we preach. If we want to be better preachers, we need to become better souls.
The Greek word for mind, dianoia can refer to intelligence, understanding, intention, purpose, thought and attitude. How do we love God with our entire mind in preaching? Today anti-intellectualism and mentally lazy Christianity seem to be the vogue. It's almost as if there is a sign on the church's entrance door saying, "Check your brains here." On the other hand, we don't know what we don't know, and any preacher can only teach what he understands. We do not have to have high IQ's and a great education in order to love God with all our minds. We love him with the mental faculties and understanding that we do have, whether that is small or great. No preacher's understanding of the Bible will ever be perfect. Yet, with what understanding we do have, we are encouraged to worship God with all of it.
The Greek word ischus means strength and is roughly synonymous with might. How do we love God with all our strength in preaching? It refers to energetic physical action. We cannot be couch potato Christians. Real Christianity involves doing good works as well as believing, as many passages assert.
In other words, Jesus expects us to love God totally using all our abilities to the fullest extent. When we do, our preaching will take off into the stratosphere.
Example Sermon
Title: "Praise in Jude"
Goal
Explore the praise passage, the doxology in Jude.
Intro
In the western world, we are not used to being spiritually aware. We don't consider the hand of God even in little things as he provides for us every day in many ways. When we open our eyes to the spiritual things going on around us, we can see just a glimpse of how often God has kept us from stumbling.
Plan
Let's look at the letter of Jude and why at the end of it the writer praises God, and why we can praise him for the same thing today.
Body:
Context (Jude 1-23)
Jude describes the saints as those who are "preserved" or "kept safe" for Jesus Christ. This phrase in verse 1 carries the same sense as that in the doxology in verse 24. James urges the brethren to contend for the faith that was delivered once and for all, warning them that ungodly people have infiltrated the church and perverted grace into immorality.
The phrase "once and for all" indicates that the gospel cannot change. Jude indicates that the faith was delivered to the saints, the common lay members of the church, not a church hierarchy. Jude teaches that the gospel contains a moral imperative. It is neither a legalistic gospel (Old Testament laws and lists of do's and don'ts) nor a licentious gospel (antinomianism, lawlessness, grace turned into license). These ungodly people reject God's authority over matters of morality.
Jude's concern is not about some doctrinal heresy, but about the moral demands of the gospel. The purpose of the gospel is to save sinners, not promote sin. These dreamers are people who rely on supposed revelations from God and false prophecies to excuse their immorality, claiming to be above any moral authority. Jude claims that their immoral behavior is proof enough that their claims of being spiritual are a lie and that they are really carnal people.
Then Jude gets to his main point, encouraging people to carry on in the faith by remembering that the gospel is the foundation, to pray with the help of the Holy Spirit, to obey God and hope in eternity.
God is Able to Protect Us (Jude 24)
We may be tempted to worry that we will be deceived by false religion and its immorality which would result in us losing salvation. Jude encouraged the early church that God is able to protect us from falling into the immoral ways of false teachers.
God's purpose is to present us without blemish before him with joy over and above any we have ever experienced. He cleanses us from all sin. He does not want us to be wallowing in it. God is holy and wants us to become that way too.
The Only God (Jude 25)
God is the only God. No intellect, no society, no human values, no morality comes before God. We will not worship the god of false values. Jesus is our Savior, but he is also our Lord. What he says goes, not what the popular media, or the educational system, or popular psychology, or political correctness, but what Jesus says.
We submit our morality to him, even when we may not understand why. We say that he alone is wise. To God be the glory ? all our praise for him and no immoral teachings. To God be the majesty ? the transcendence, above all else, above the morals of this world. To God be the power ? no other power is worthy to teach us righteousness. To God be the authority ? the only authority to decide right from wrong.
Both now and forever, amen. Our allegiance is to the kingdom of heaven now and not just in some far off distant future. We allow God to rule in our lives now. We acknowledge the greatness of God forever, when we say Amen to this short doxology.
Outro
We looked at the letter of Jude and why at the end of it the writer praises God. We saw that one counterfeit of Christianity is an immorality which cheapens the grace of God. Thank God that in his greatness, he leads us in the paths of righteousness.
Suggested Assignment
Choose a section of scripture that praises God, or use some other source material that reveals the majesty and greatness of God as it is revealed in the Bible.
Lesson Outro
We have covered two of Augustine's three kinds of sermon, the subdued sermon for teaching, and the elegant sermon for praise. Next lesson, we will cover the majestic sermon for exhortation.
This style of sermon focuses exclusively on God. It is a praise sermon, a doxology. We looked at descriptions about God, praise of God, worship of God, and loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength (Mark 12:30) even while preaching. The people of God need to understand the greatness of our awesome God.
