The Best Sermon Ever
March 30, 2008
14But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. 15Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o”clock in the morning. 16No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: 17‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. 18Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. 19And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. 20The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day. 21Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’ 22“You that are Israelites, listen to what I have to say: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with deeds of power, wonders, and signs that God did through him among you, as you yourselves know— 23this man, handed over to you according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law. 24But God raised him up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power. 25For David says concerning him, ‘I saw the Lord always before me, for he is at my right hand so that I will not be shaken; 26therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced; moreover my flesh will live in hope. 27For you will not abandon my soul to Hades, or let your Holy One experience corruption. 28You have made known to me the ways of life; you will make me full of gladness with your presence.’ 29“Fellow Israelites, I may say to you confidently of our ancestor David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. 30Since he was a prophet, he knew that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would put one of his descendants on his throne. 31Foreseeing this, David spoke of the resurrection of the Messiah, saying, ‘He was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh experience corruption.’ 32This Jesus God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses. 33Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you both see and hear. 34For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, 35until I make your enemies your footstool.”’ 36Therefore let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.”37Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the other apostles, “Brothers, what should we do?” 38Peter said to them, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him.” 40And he testified with many other arguments and exhorted them, saying, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.” 41So those who welcomed his message were baptized, and that day about three thousand persons were added.
Acts 2:14-41
There's an old story about a Catholic priest, a Baptist pastor, and a rabbi. Their respective congregations were all complaining that preaching to people was easy. They said if they really wanted a challenge, the ministers should try preaching to a bear. So, the Catholic priest, the Baptist pastor, and the rabbi decided to take their congregations up on the challenge. They all agreed to go out into the woods, find a bear, preach to it, and try to convert it.
So, a week went by and the three ministers met up again to talk about how things went. The priest was on crutches and he had one arm in a sling. He said, "I went into the woods to find a bear. And when I found one, I began to read to him from the catechism. But the bear didn't want anything to do with me and he began to slap me around. So, I grabbed my holy water and I sprinkled him and, sure enough, the bear became as gentle a lamb. The bishop is coming out next week to give him first communion and confirmation."
The other two ministers were nodded that they were impressed. Then it was the Baptist pastor's turn to speak. He was in a wheelchair, with an arm and both legs in casts, and he had an IV drip. He said, "Well brothers, you know that we Baptists don't sprinkle! So, I went out and I found me a bear. And I began to read to him from God's holy word. But that bear didn't want anything to do with me. So, I took hold of him and we began to wrestle. We wrestled up one hill and down another until we came to a creek. And as quick as I could, I dunked the bear and baptized his hairy soul. And just like you said, he became as gentle as lamb. We spent the rest of the week fellowshipping together and praising Jesus."
The priest and the pastor looked over at the rabbi. The rabbi was lying in a hospital bed, with a full body cast and all sorts of tubes and wires running out of him. And looking up at the other two, with a weak voice, he said, "Looking back on it now, circumcision may not have been the best way to start things out."
That joke makes you appreciate being a Baptist, doesn't it? But as someone who makes their living as a Baptist pastor, I can tell you right now that preaching to people isn't easy. And I never cease to be amazed at the number of folks who think that it is. Every now and then, somebody will come up to me and say, "Must be nice to only work one hour a week." Mmmmm….Yeah, it must be. Apparently, some people are under the impression that all it takes to preach is to stand up and talk for about 20 minutes.
But a sermon is more than just talk. A sermon is a certain kind of talk. Most of us in here have probably heard hundreds of sermons over the course of our lives. Some of those sermons have been good and some of them have been….not as good. Usually, we dissect the sermon in the car on the way home. We have an idea in our minds of what a good sermon is supposed to be. The question is--Where did that idea come from? Because my guess is that very few of us in here have ever heard a sermon about sermons. We have a sermon every week as the central part of our worship service and yet, we never really talk very much in church about why we do that.
So this morning, I want us to spend some time thinking about just what a sermon really is. And in order to do that, we're going to look at one specific sermon, the one that I read just a few moments ago from the book of Acts. It's a good place to start, because it may very well have been the first sermon ever preached by a follower of Christ. The occasion was Pentecost. It had been fifty days since the resurrection. Jesus had ascended back to heaven. And Peter and the rest of the disciples had been left to carry on the message of Christ to the rest of the world. That's what Peter is trying to do in this passage. And I think there's a few things about Peter's sermon that can help us as we consider what a sermon really is.
For starters, I believe that a sermon should be under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. A sermon should be under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. In other words, it's not good enough for me to just stand up here and talk about whatever crosses my mind. You know, that's how some people define a sermon. I know a lot of folks who have never been to seminary, they've never been in a pulpit, and they may never even have been in a church. But they know how to preach. And they are happy to give you a piece of their mind on whatever topic is bugging them at the moment. Y'all ever know anybody like that? Molly will tell you that's she's heard lots of preaching at our house that had nothing whatsoever to do with God.
But that's just the point. Anybody can rant and rave about their pet peeves. Anybody can give a lecture. But that's not a sermon. A sermon is preaching under the guidance of the Spirit. It is less about giving something and more about receiving something. When we preachers are at our best, we're not just up here fussing about our own particular hang-ups. We're trying to relay something beyond ourselves. We become a conduit. In that sense, we're like an electrical outlet. The power doesn't really come from us. It comes from a generator somewhere a long way off. But if we're connected to that source of power, then we connect others to that power as well.
In the scene that immediately precedes the one in our passage, the Holy Spirit descends on the disciples like a violent wind and they are suddenly able to speak in other languages. They are gifted with an ability to communicate that they did not have before. Peter didn't get up and start preaching because he had a really bad week and he felt like giving the Pentecost crowd a piece of his mind. He started preaching because the Spirit led him to preach. A friend of mine from seminary once asked me an interesting question. He said, "What would happen if one week we got up behind the pulpit and said, 'Today, I have no word from the Lord?" That's a thought-provoking question, isn't it? I think the unfortunate reality is that we have manufactured worship today so that our preaching has gone from something Spirit-led to something consumer-driven. It's what I call "The God Show." It's the idea that the sermon is not so much a word from God as it is a performance.
Many preachers I know are very eloquent. Many preachers I know have mastered the art of public speaking. They can tell good stories, they can make people laugh and cry, they know to turn a phrase. But some of those very same preachers do not preach under the guidance of the Spirit. They are able to communicate well, but there's an emptiness to their sermons. They just aren't connecting people to God's presence. And in the end, that's what it's all about. If I'm only here to entertain you and you're only here to be entertained, then we're missing the point. A sermon is something much greater than entertainment. It's an opportunity for us to enter into the presence of God.
But that's not all. A good sermon should also be grounded in the words of Scripture. In this sermon alone, Peter cites one passage from Joel and two from Psalms. And that's not counting the words of Jesus he includes. So, obviously, it's important to Peter that his listeners connect with the truth of Scripture. Now, that may seem evident. But I know an awful lot of preachers today who have somehow missed this particular aspect of preaching. A lot of preachers I've heard read a text from the Bible and then never reference it again in their whole sermon. I'm not going to mention any names here, but y'all have seen some of these people on TV. They're more what I call motivational speakers than preachers. And that's because they're not really preaching the Bible; they're giving people positive and uplifting messages of empowerment. Don't get me wrong--I'm all for feeling good about your self. But that's not all a sermon should accomplish. In fact, I'm pretty sure that if you stick to preaching the Bible, sometimes you're going to come across some things you'd rather not hear. John Wesley used to send out young men to preach on a probationary basis. And when they came back, he would ask them two questions: "Was anyone converted?" and "Did anyone get mad?" If the answer was "No" to both questions, John Wesley told the men he didn't think the Lord had called them to preach.
Now, believe it or not, it's never my goal to intentionally anger you in the sermons I preach. I tend to consider that a pleasant perk of my job rather than an actual obligation. But I think John Wesley was on to something. If you walk out of here every single Sunday and you've never been challenged or uncomfortable or upset at least once, then I'm not doing my job. Preaching from the Scripture is unsettling. Sure, there's lots of positive, uplifting passages in the Bible. But a good sermon is not just telling people what they want to hear. It's about opening our ears to the voice of Scripture.
In this passage, Peter makes the point that you can't really understand Christ until you understand what the Bible says about him. And I think that's still true today. If we get away from preaching the Bible in our sermons and fall into motivational speaking, we'll wind up as very nice people who have no idea what it means to follow Christ. I don't know about you, but I'd rather hear the truth of the Scripture, even when it sometimes hits too close to home.
Speaking of home, there's one last thing I think this passage helps us understand about a good sermon. A good sermon should be connected to a community. Peter knew his audience. Peter spoke to their specific situation. He broke his message down into arguments that the people could grasp and it paid off. The text says that 3,000 converts were added to their number that day.
One major problem that I think many sermons have in common today is that they are not connected to a community. They may be important words with a good message. But it's just not the right message at the right time in the right place. There's a reason that I very rarely reference Greek and Hebrew words in my sermons. It's because they wouldn't go over very well. There's a reason I don't wear a robe every Sunday. It's because that's not who we are. There's a reason I use a lot of humor in my sermons, and by the way, humor is what I call it even when you don't laugh. I use humor because it's appropriate in this context. I do things with you that I wouldn't do in other places. I probably wouldn't blow an airhorn during a sermon at a church I'd never preached at before. But I do it here. Why? Because I know you. And you know me. We have a relationship. And that relationship allows the sermon to be something more than just pretty words. It allows it to have life.
I go and visit a lot of shut-ins and they say something like, "I watch preachers on TV on Sunday morning, but it's just not the same as when I'm at church." You know why it's not the same? Because the preachers on TV are preaching generalities, and we want specifics. A sermon that is disconnected from a specific community is lifeless. Yes, we want the Spirit to guide us and yes, we want to be rooted in the Scripture. But we also want the sermon to say something to our particular situation. You may or may not have noticed, but I say the words Park View Baptist Church in every sermon I preach. And that's not because I think you've forgotten who you are. It's because I want us to recognize that a sermon is a living thing. It's not just about one person. It's about a community.
Sometimes, we forget that. Some of you in here are under the impression that the sermon rises and falls on what I say. But this morning I want to share the blame a little bit. Because I believe that all of us play a part in the sermon. Listen to what Peter says in verses 17 and 18 of this passage--"In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy."
You know what that means? It means that you're a part of the sermon just as much as I am. It means that all of us who believe in Christ have been given a sermon to preach. I don't think that the sermon in Acts, Chapter 2 was the best sermon ever because it got the biggest response. I think it was the best because it established what a good sermon really is. And maybe this morning is a good time for us to remember. A sermon is an opportunity for all of us to enter the presence of God through the Scripture as we discern the movement of the Spirit within the community. And as we do, we can all say AMEN.