So, after hours of prayer and laboring, the Holy Spirit revealed the connection to me, namely that, no earthly darkness compares to the spiritual darkness that Jesus saved us from. In other words, no matter how big a financial, health, and relational trouble that we may experience on earth, it is nothing compared to being saved from God’s wrath.

So, here’s what I learned from preaching this sermon.

Preaching Tip: Use the cosmic perspective argument to preach the gospel.

The cosmic perspective argument shows how a larger reality or ultimate truth (e.g., the spiritual death that Jesus saved us from) puts our current struggles into proper perspective, making them appear small or manageable by comparison while, at the same time, acknowledging their reality.

So, whenever you are preaching and are stuck in making the connection to the gospel in your sermon, think about the cosmic perspective argument and it’ll put you on the right path to make that connection :)

To give you a little context of the season that our church is currently, we just finished 2 Kings, are approaching Christmas, and have our church retreat in the next two weeks. So, my biggest challenge this week was, which season should my preaching focus on?

The first draft of the sermon was geared towards ending 2 Kings and Christmas. Trying to address both seasons in one sermon ended up diluting the sermon to the point I, myself, didn’t know what the main point of my sermon was.

The second draft of the sermon was geared towards retreat. First, choosing just one season to focus on made the point of my preaching clear. Second, I felt that preaching about retreat was what the church needed.

To give you a little bit more context, our church was low in spirits due to changes in leadership, a death of a member (in August), and some members leaving our church recently. As much as Christmas is a big deal to churches and we’ve spent the last 3 months on 2 Kings, I didn’t think preaching to those seasons were what my church needed. What my church needed a spiritual revival.

Every time our church went to retreat, our church members came back revived . So, preaching to the church about retreat would move us in the direction of a spiritual revival. And I am very glad that I did. So, here’s the lesson that I was reminded of once again.

Preach to the need of the church. Though the current seasons of our church were, ending 2 Kings, retreat, and Christmas yet what the church needed was a spiritual revival. And what would move us in that direction? Preaching about retreat. So, reflecting on this week’s sermon, I was reminded of the importance of preaching to the need of the church.

Writing Tip #1: Write to the Need of Your Audience

One of the reasons why this week’s sermon was effective was because it spoke directly to the need of my church.

Dale Carnegie, the author of How to Win Friends and Influence People, said, “Talk in terms of the other person’s interest.” In other words, if you want to communicate effectively, you must communicate to the need of the other person.

Similarly, when writing on Substack, I want you to ask yourself this one question that will drastically help you in your writing: “What does my audience need at this time?”

The better you are able to answer this question, the better your writing will be.

An image that comes to mind is like a sail boat. The sail boat could be assembled flawlessly. However, with no wind, it has no power to move forward. The same applies to preaching. I could write a flawless gospel-centered sermon, but without the gospel-living behind it, it lacks power.

So, practically, I use the gospel-centered preaching on Sundays as a way to keep me accountable before God in terms of my gospel-centered living. For example, before I stand to preach on Sunday, I make sure to have reconciled with the people whom I might have had anger or bitterness towards. In the morning before our worship time, I meet with a brother who I confess my sins to, pray together with in repentance, and ask for the washing of our sins through the blood of Jesus together. In other words, preaching the gospel is one way to keep me accountable to living out the gospel.

If you are in church leadership and want to see the power of the gospel transform your church, it must start with your living out the gospel, yourself.

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And so, I applied a very similar approach that I did in last week’s sermon in preparation for this week’s sermon. I could tell at least from my perspective that I achieved the goal of preaching, which is the conviction of sin and our need for Jesus to save us.

There was a part of me that felt like I had broken down the correct preaching into a formula that when I followed these steps and procedures, the outcome is powerful preaching. However, that goes directly against this concept of grace that I was preaching in this sermon. That any good that I do, is not by my power, but God’s alone. And the same goes for preaching.

Now that doesn’t mean that it is prideful to say that I know what elements and parts are needed for powerful preaching, because they act as guidelines to help me prepare my sermons. And yet, what I have to recognize, is that the very procedures that I’ve discovered to preaching, that in of itself is by the grace of God.

So, moving forward, I am going to continue to apply the procedures that I have followed to prepare my sermons, while at the same time maintaining a view that powerful preaching is purely by God’s grace, and not by my procedures.

Thank you for reading my reflections about my sermons, and God bless you!

Though not my intention at all, I've preached many sermons without the gospel because, firstly, I didn't know how to, and secondly, because I needed to learn all the other elements of preaching such as exegesis, application, structure, and theology. Now that I feel like I have somewhat of a grasp on the different elements of a sermon, I was able to really focus on preaching the gospel—which some might argue should have come first. The only problem was, I didn’t know how to do it. But I was determined that I wouldn’t let another opportunity go by to preach the gospel in my sermon.

So, I spent several hours trying without much success. Then, I decided to reflect on who I’ve heard that preached the gospel with every sermon. The preacher that came to mind was Timothy Keller. So, I actually fast-forwarded to the latter part of Timothy Keller’s sermons where he presents the gospel and listened to about ten of them to try to find some pattern. And I did.

The pattern ultimately came down to substitutionary sacrifice, meaning Jesus taking our place of death so that we can be saved. And my hypothesis is that given that the sermon follows a general sermonic flow from the problem in the text to the grace in the text, there is always some character that faces a sort of death which reflects our spiritual death.

From there, the job of the preacher is to show how Jesus becomes this character and takes upon Himself the death the character should have died. And it is only when we see Jesus as the substitutionary sacrifice, our hearts melt to obedience.

Upon reflection, when I hear or preach sermons without the gospel, it just feels like moralistic teaching and looks like a beautiful exterior without real substance. I really hope that moving forward from here, I aim to preach the gospel in everysermon that I preach. Pray for me.

Here were his three recommendations:

1. Use a poignant imagery to start the sermon.

2. Have one short phrase that captures the heart of the entire sermon.

3. End the sermon with hope.

Furthermore, by Dr. Charles’ recommendation, I’ve been reading a book called, “The Four Pages of the Sermon” by Paul Scott Wilson. This book talks about how there are four pages to writing a sermon:

1. First page: Problem in the text.

2. Second page: Problem in the world.

3. Third page: Grace in the text.

4. Fourth page: Grace in the world.

So here’s how I applied my Charles’ recommendations:

1. I started with the imagery of the middle finger to paint the picture of Assyrians’ attitude toward God.

2. My short phrase was, “God in the Nook and Crannies: Inviting Him to sanctify every detail of our lives.”

3. I ended the sermon with the hope that even if, many times, we feel like enemies of God, “nothing could separate us from the love of Christ.”

So, here’s how I applied “The Four Pages of the Sermon”:

1. First page: The problem in the text was the Assyrians, being an enemy of God, trying to conquer the Kingdom of Judah.

2. Second page: We, too, are in many ways enemies of God due to our idolatry and self-sufficiency.

3. Third page: Hezekiah spread the letter by king Sennacherib in the presence of God, asking Him to not miss a single detail of the letter.

4. Fourth page: We, too, are to invite God into every little detail of our lives.

Though I was doing many of the things I’ve listed here for years, I was doing so unintentionally and could not put into words why I was doing so. However, I can finally articulate my decisions because what I have learned through “The Four Pages of the Sermon” and Dr. Charles’ recommendation. I felt much more clarity and flow when writing my sermons and much more relaxed when preaching this week.

Even if you are not a preacher but have to lead small groups, teach Bible study, or serving in any ministry context, I highly recommend going through “The Four Pages of the Sermon,” even if it is a summary, and keep Dr. Charles’ recommendations in the back of your mind. And I believe it will dramatically increase your effectiveness with the Word.

I am very much looking forward to write my next sermon with all of this in mind and will share it once I do :)

What was very interesting to me is that even if people were not able to necessarily articulate what I preached about, they left the service joyful and filled. I asked one member today about what he feels going home after service and he said, “I feel a lot better than when I came in.” And I can see that many shared this sentiment. After service, there was a lot of laughter, conversation, and fellowship that wasn’t always present when people didn’t understand what I preached on. I believe it was God’s grace that He still gave us a joyful hearts as we left the service.

Also, through my seminary class on preaching, Dr. Charles kept emphasizing the importance of presenting Jesus in every sermon. I’m not sure how to do that for every sermon and yet, that is something that I want to strive after. And at least for today’s sermon, I felt that I did present Jesus to whom we must look to, to save us from our sins.

Another observation that I made was that I spent as much time, effort, and prayer as I did with my previous sermon, which almost everybody understood. Yet, not many people understood this one. I still don’t really have an answer why that was the case. Perhaps, the lesson is that the movement of the Holy Spirit is not formulaic. Just because you do x doesn’t mean that God will do y.

Last observation that I made was, previously, when people didn’t connect with my message, I used to feel really defeated. In fact, there were many times, I felt like crawling into a hole and never coming out because it was so embarrassing. However, today, even if not many people connected with the message, I knew that I did everything that was within my power to preach the sermon God wanted me to preach.

In conclusion, I am grateful that I had an opportunity to preach the Word of God today. And as much as it is a challenge, I am looking forward to doing it again next week.

Also, if I can ask you for a favor, could you please listen to it and let me know in the comments if the sermon made sense? And whether it resonates with you or not? In fact, I would appreciate any kind of feedback. The more honest, the better. Thank you so much and God bless!

Today, I preached a sermon titled, “Spiritual Decay.” I have never been so scared of preaching a sermon in my life. In fact, for the first time in my life, I experienced the “fear and trembling” that Paul wrote about in 1 Corinthians 2:3-5 as it pertains to preaching. And if you listen to the sermon, you’ll see why.

Some of you might be a little bit shocked when you hear the sermon. Just know that this sermon is very much contextualized to my church. And the reason why I was able to speak so boldly is that I’ve built trust with them over the last four years.

At the end of the day, this sermon is a reminder to me that it only takes one sermon to leave an eternal impact on a person’s life.

Hope it blesses you :)

David, on the other hand, never consulted but rather inquired of God. Through seeing the difference between David and Rehoboam, I believe that God is teaching us that God is not a consultant, but rather God. Too many of us think of God as a consultant, someone whom we get advice that we can either choose to take or reject. However, God is not a consultant, He is God. Therefore, rather than picking and choosing, when God gives His word, we are called to obey wholeheartedly and fully.

Hope the sermon blesses you! :)

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In this sermon, I teach about:

* The biblical teaching on the older generation intervening and the younger generation inviting using the relationship between David and Adonijah as described in 1 Kings 1 & 2 as an example.

* The importance of integenerationality in a Korean church.

* How intervention and invitation is one blueprint for a unified, intergenerational Korean church.

Hope the sermon blesses you :)