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c jC ià te n D o ^
D ee r m o n
By Kenneth J. Foreman
T HERE are various ways of lis tening to a sermon, not all of them good. Don’t be a criticizing listener. Don’t listen with the English teacher’s ear, alert to all the mistakes, errors of gram mar, awkward gestures, slips of speech, poor illustrations, a clumsy tongue or errors of fact. Of course if you are a very good friend of the preacher and if he will take your suggestions kindly then he will be grateful when you call his attention to such things. But don’t load up with his mistakes, and unload them all at the family dinner table. Don’t be a heresy hound. The Phar isees were; they attended all Jesus’ preaching services faithfully but they were there only to catch Him “ in his talk.” To be sure, you should be on your guard against folly and falsehood from the pulpit no less than elsewhere. But to listen for heresy is to listen as the Pharisees did, in vain. Don’t be a sermon fitter, looking the congregation over in your mind to see the person for whom it must have been meant. Maybe it was meant for you. A seller of hats may say when a new ship ment comes in, “ That would look darling on Mrs. X ” , but a listener to sermons has no business trying to match them with different people. If the sermon does not fit you, don’t try to fit it to someone else. Don’t be a sermon-taster, a score- sheet listener, comparing one sermon with another, this minister with that, as if you were a judge in a sermon con test. Don’t listen with the dilettante’s mind, savoring chiefly the literary flavor of a sermon, rating sermons by their color and polish. Remember that the object of a sermon is not to sharpen your critical faculties nor even your powers of literary appre ciation. The aim is to leave you a better person, or at least on the road to be coming a better person. If you do not wish this, or insist that it is not possi ble, then of course no sermon is likely to do you any good at all. But if you do sincerely wish to be a better person, that is, if you wish to grow in the grace of God and in the knowledge and like ness of Jesus, then the sermon can help you if you help by listening. Listen with a mind prepared by prayer and expectation. If you have already been through a session of Bible study, if you have taken your part in the wor ship and the prayers, you will be the more ready for a sermon. Come with your mind “ at leisure from itself.” SEPTEMBER, 1 9 4 8
Listen with a sympathetic mind. Real ize what the minister is trying to do. If he has handicaps, don’t laugh at him. Pray for him. Think for a moment of the sermon as he thinks of it; this may be the high point in his week’s life and thought, and he hopes it will be yours. Listen with a humble mind. You may be the preacher’s superior in many ways, but in spiritual life, in insight into God’s will for men, he may well be your su perior. The aim of his sermon is not to shout at you from a lofty pedestal, but to speak in the name of God. Recognize your human need of God, your need of His forgiveness and His power. When the searchlight is thrown on your soul, don’t be a mirror instantly reflecting it off toward someone else’s eye. Let the light search your own heart. Listen with an open mind. Don’t in sist that the preacher always agree with you, and remember, too, that there is no rule in the church compelling any one to agree with the preacher. Still, it will be poor preaching which does not sometime blast the floor out from under your notion counter, crash into your prejudices, dare you to open your eyes. Don’t stiffen up and resist new ideas. If all a sermon did were to pat you gently on your pet prejudices, it would not be much good to you. To disturb your complacency is one of the functions of a true sermon, but it will not do this if you slam your mind’s door in the preacher’s face. One sure way of insuring that you will listen to a sermon is to help make it. If you are a faithful Bible student and a thoughtful Christian, you will often suggest to the minister ideas or prob lems which you would like to hear him deal with in sermons. Indeed it is by con tact with people as well as with the Word that the best sermons are born. When you listen to one of your seed- thoughts blossoming into a sermon, you will have a thrill all your own. Above all, listen with prayer. Begin the week before. It is well to pray for the minister at eleven o’clock Sunday morning, but he needs your prayers just as much on Monday when he begins his sermon for next week. Pray during the sermon, too—for him; for all who hear; for yourself. No sermon does quite what its preach er hoped. But a sermon conceived in prayer and hope, heard in an atmos phere of prayer, meeting open, sympa thetic, humble, co-operative minds, will be as seed sown on soil watered by the Spirit, springing up into life manifold. Reprinted from The Reaper.
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