Resist ending your sermon with “live like this,” and rather end with some form of “You can’t live like this. End every sermon pointing the listeners to worship Christ Preaching can do so much more than just convey information.Ī sermon that just informs the mind can give people things to do after they go home, but a sermon that moves the heart from loving career or acclaim or one’s own independence to loving God and his Son changes listeners on the spot (165). It is all-important, then, that preaching move the heart to stop trusting and loving other things more than God….People, therefore, change not by merely changing their thinking but by changing what they love most (159-emphasis added). What the heart most wants the mind finds reasonable, the emotions find valuable, and the will finds doable. Preaching must reach and capture the heart. The philosophies of the world will come and go, rise and fall, but the wisdom we preach-The Word of God-will still be here (156). The gospel is “the right side of history.”

The process of sanctification, of growth into the likeness of Christ, is also, then, the process of becoming the true self God created us to be (139). We certainly are, and so when you unveil these narratives and interact with them in the ordinary course of preaching the Word, you help them see where they themselves may be more influenced by their society than by the Scripture, and you give them important ways of communicating their faith to others (118). It is a mistake to think that faithful believers in our time are not profoundly shaped by the narratives of modernity.

Culture shapes us more than we would care to admit. To preach the gospel every time is to preach Christ every time, from every passage (57). You cannot preach the gospel without preaching Christ. To leave Christ out of a sermon is to not finish the task of preaching.Įvery time you expound a Bible text, you are not finished unless you demonstrate how it shows us that we cannot save ourselves and that only Jesus can (48). To preach the text truly and the gospel every time, to engage the culture and reach the heart, to cooperate with the Spirit’s mission in the world-we must preach Christ from all of Scripture (23). True and effective preaching must center on Christ. …while the difference between a bad sermon and a good sermon is mainly the responsibility of the preacher, the difference between good preaching and great preaching lies mainly in the work of the Holy Spirit in the heart of the listener as well as the preacher (11). Here are ten quotes to give you a taste of Keller’s manifesto on preaching. “This book,” says Keller in the introduction, “aims to be a resource for all those who communicate their Christian faith in any way” (p. The chapter on “Preaching and the (Late) Modern Mind” and the bibliography of the best other books on preaching are each worth the price of the book alone!Īnd you don’t need to be a preacher to read it. While perhaps not as life-changing or spectacular as Prayer, this volume is filled with insights and wisdom from cover to cover. Tim Keller’s Preaching is another home-run.

Preaching tim keller