VIDEO

more video...
Leaders Conference Slideshow

AUDIO

Christmas Message 2011
by Archbishop Peter Jensen
Archbishop Peter Jensen's Christmas Message 2011 on the centrality of Jesus to human history
More audio files | podcast
life//Defence against the dark arts
Constructing a Doctrinal Series
Michael Jensen
June 15th, 2010

How do you go about constructing a series of sermons on doctrine? Many of the suggestions I have heard have been along the lines of following the statements of the creed, or some other confession.
While this isn't a bad idea, the shortcoming of it that creeds move quickly from one statement to the next without too much elaboration - so you may be sacrificing depth for breadth of coverage. What's more, the creeds and confessions tend to focus on matters of controversy for their time, rather than on what we need to say to our time. There are false teachings we need to repudiate today that aren't touched by the creeds. For example, I think we should teach more on Creation than perhaps we do, in the light of tensions on this subject in and outside the churches.

So: I would recommend setting aside three or four sermons on a single doctrine, and then attacking it from a number of angles. This also allows you to show how different Scriptural texts nuance and flavour the issue too. In the series I tend to move ‘from’ God ‘to’ us in focus (see below).

Here's a couple I prepared earlier, together with the advertising blurbs (why do I feel like a TV chef?).

I offer these to show what I mean rather than imagining anyone would want to copy them!

****

The Love of God -
1. The God who is Love -God is Love
Isn’t it obvious that God loves human beings? Well, not really - if you think about the suffering in the world and what human beings are like. How does God love, exactly? And how can he be a God who is righteous and loving?
2. The Love of the God who is Love -In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
One event in history showed the love of God - and it cost him dear. We will think about the day that God’s love tore him apart.
3. Loving the God who is Love -We love him because he first loved us
Jesus said that the greatest command of all was to “love God with all your heart and soul and mind”. Yes - but what does this mean? How can you love God, really?
4. Loving like the God who is Love -Those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.
God’s love - especially as we saw it in Jesus of Nazareth - is the model for us. How can we love our neighbours - and our enemies? Who is my neighbour, anyway? We go to the heart of the teaching and life of Jesus as it works out in human life.

****

The Holiness of God
The series asks whether we have really grasped how different from us God is. There is NO-ONE like him. But if that is true: how can we possibly know him?
1. The Holiness of God
2. The Holiness of the Church
3. The Holiness of the Christian

****

'UNSPEAKABLE COMFORT': The Sovereignty of God and the Christian Life
There is unspeakable comfort - the sort of comfort that energizes, be it said, not enervates - in knowing that God is constantly taking knowledge of me in love and watching over me for my good.  - JI Packer
While our neighbours talk about luck or destiny, the usual response of Christians to a significant crisis in life is to appeal to God's sovereignty. We respond to crisis or accident or disease with 'God is in control', as if that by itself were a comforting truth. It is important to know that life is not "just a bunch of stuff that happens", to use the immortal words of Homer J. Simpson. But if God is remorseless, or uncaring, or - worse - malevolent, then his being in control becomes anything but a comfort to us in affliction. After all, if God is in control, then how do we not blame him for my friend's depression, or the fatal car accident, or whatever it is? This series of talks will address one of the Bible's greatest themes: the sovereignty of God. It will show what it means for us to say 'God is in control'. We will think about how and where he has shown us this control; and we will see how it changes everything about the way we live.
1.    The Comfort of Sovereign Love
2.    The Grace of Sovereign Choice
3.    The Peace of Sovereign Power
4.    The Joy of Sovereign Hope

 

 

Anthony Douglas    15 June 2010 11:59pm
I've done a similar thing a few times, but reckon you can stretch it out to around 8 weeks, given the right topic.

#2 of 13 top
Sandy Grant    16 June 2010 7:11am
When I was at Moore College, Graham Cole always suggested an approach he called "contextualised affirmation" in doctrinal essays or sermons. The idea was rather than proof-texting (listing a series of references to establish each point of doctrine, without much explanations, as in Berkhoff for example); you would focus on a few key texts and try to unfold them in their context to make the point.

I also remember attending a series on doctrinal preaching from Peter Jensen at the College of Preachers, where I picked up the idea of seeing if your doctrine series could be drawn mainly from a single book of the Bible, so that you are working with your doctrinal texts within a single main local context, which people can follow more easily.

Sticking mainly to a limited number of texts stops you trying to say everything on the particular topic too!

Examples:
Just Jesus (The person and work of Christ in 1 Peter)
1. Christ Before Christmas - the pre-existence and deity of Christ - 1 Pet 1:10-12, 20
2. The Great Exchange - the death of Christ as substitute and example - 1 Pet 2:18-25; 3:18
3. The Comeback Kid - the resurrection and reign of Christ - 1 Pet 1:3-9, 21; 3:21-22
4. Rock of Ages - Jesus' building his church - 1 Pet 2:4-12

I have done a series on Church and Unity mainly from 1 Corinthians
Chapters 1-4 Church Unity in the Gospel, not personality
Chapter 5-6 Unity in Church Discipline,
Chapters 12-14, Unity in Using Gifts
One could easily imagine something on ch 8-11!

#3 of 13 top
Sandy Grant    16 June 2010 7:26am
At the risk of moving off 'core' doctrinal areas, one could also address topical/ethical matters like...

A series on wealth taking the verses as 1 Tim 6:17-19 as texts to expound:
v17 ~ Trust in God not wealth (God as provider, money as false god)
v18 ~ Rich in generosity (good deeds and uses of money)
v19 ~ Investing in real futures (heavenly rewards etc)

One could also add ethical series like "Life, Death and the Bits in Between" (as much or as little as you like), e.g.
Birth and Abortion (stem cells, IVF etc)
Marriage & divorce
Homosexuality
Place of government (taxation, punishment, just war?)
The Environment
Retirement & ageing
Depression & anxiety
Death and Euthanasia

Or what about a family series (could be a series within a series on Colossians)
The forgiving family - Col 3:12-15
The Word-centred family - Col 3:16-17
Wives - v18
Husbands - v19
Children - v20
Parents - v21

#4 of 13 top
Stephen Gibson    16 June 2010 8:56am
How about a Series of Studies on the Holy Spirit
Study 1 Who is the Holy Spirit? John 14:15-27

Study 2 Blasphemy against the HS Mark 3:20-35

Study 3 Baptism with the Holy Spirit Acts 2:1-41

Study 4 The Fruit of the Spirit Gal 5:16-25

Study 5 The Gifts of the Spirit 1 Cor 12:1-31

Study 6 Do not Grieve the Holy Spirit
but be Filled with the Spirit Eph 4:25-5:21

Study 7 Praying in the Spirit Rom 8:12-27

#5 of 13 top
Christopher James Ashton    17 June 2010 12:48pm
@ Michael Jensen - These are some helpful suggestions. I particularly like the inclusion of the church in the category of the "Holiness of God."

@ Sandy Grant - I really like your series on Christology from 1 Peter. In your second post, however, you move to more sermons of a more "topical" nature which, I guess, demonstrates one of the risks of doctrinal sermons: that the preacher would, out of desire to help and equip his flock, err on the side of apparent practicality over apparently dry, theoretical doctrine. #3 in Michael's earlier post:

Don’t count ‘issue’ sermons as ‘doctrinal’. A sermon on ‘money’, or on ‘love, sex and marriage’, while a good and worthy thing, is not a doctrinal sermon. A good doctrinal series will make your preaching on money and sex all the easier.

#6 of 13 top
Michael Kellahan    18 June 2010 2:35am
Inspired by the great little book, Heresies and how to avoid them we did a summer series looking at ancient heresies and their modern guises. We covered : What don’t Christians believe? Is Jesus really divine? Is Jesus really human? Can God suffer? Can people be saved by their own efforts?

#7 of 13 top
Robert Denham    23 June 2010 10:24pm
Sometimes we can be surprised by what we discover when we preach on doctrinal or theological issues. For example, I have been preaching on 5 major monastic groups & finding it difficult to have good applications, until it dawned on me after the 3rd one... It dawned on me that the 5 monastic groups modelled how people have wanted to do "church". The surprise was to find an unthought of joy in examining the Jesuits. They discipled people. The Dominicans preached & taught. The Franciscans cared for the sick & poor & environment. The Cistercians wanted to help in non-spiritual ways in the community while being the spiritual people themselves. & the Benedictines just wanted to withdraw from society & be by themselves. Each of those methods of being "church" are identifiable in churches today. & I have noticed that Sydney Anglicans have swung from just preaching/teaching into Discipling (copying the trend in history that went from Dominican to Jesuit... although without the awful aspects of Jesuit obedience and the Spiritual Exercises).

#8 of 13 top
Michael Bull    23 June 2010 11:03pm
My eyes glaze over when I see a list of titles like this. It's theodissection and it's really boring. The Bible doesn't give us a bunch of abstract nouns. Wouldn't it be better just to teach the Bible narratives and pick up on these things as you go through? Works really well in Scripture. Kids tend to remember the holiness of God when it's connected to His slaying of umpteen thousand Egyptians or Hebrews, or His destruction of all humanity with a flood. Teach the Bible like you are an elder sitting with your tribe around the fire and you can't go wrong. Teach the history of your spiritual ancestors and they will see their connection. Start with the text, not the abstractions.

#9 of 13 top
Christopher James Ashton    23 June 2010 11:18pm
@ Michael Bull - just so I understand, are you saying that we should only preach narrative texts of Scripture, making various theological points as we go along?

#10 of 13 top
Michael Bull    23 June 2010 11:25pm
Basically - so you cover the same facts about God, but in the context in which they were presented, not abstracted from it. And perhaps I should have used a looser term than "narrative." Just pick suitable texts.

#11 of 13 top
Anthony Douglas    23 June 2010 11:40pm
@Michael Bull again - aren't Jesus and his apostles guilty of cherry-picking verses to make doctrinal points? How are these doctrinal sermons different (beyond being inspired!)?

I guess I'm asking whether you're objecting more to
a) any doctrinal sermon that raids the whole of Scripture for proof texts or
b) the concept of constructing a series where the single passage being preached on comes from a different location each week. (Stephen's example above)

And I presume Sandy's stuff from 1 Cor and 1 Peter is ok by you?

#12 of 13 top
Michael Bull    24 June 2010 12:35am
Any of those can work. I'm against abstracting God's attributes from history.

Regarding the apostles, part of the reason we struggle with their 'hermeneutic' is that we fail to recognise they are not abstracting texts from history. A good example would be Jeremiah's description of a new covenant, referred to in Hebrews. Jeremiah wasn't talking about the first century at all. He was talking about the restoration from captivity in Babylon. The apostles could see the same death and resurrection going on in the first century. They weren't simply proof-texting at all:

http://www.bullartistry.com.au/wp/2009/04/08/jeremiah-was-a-bullfrog/

Abstracting God's attributes from history turns congregants into practical gnostics who are clueless about the consistent process which He actually uses in history.

#13 of 13 top
Michael Wells    24 June 2010 4:28pm
Hey various Mikes,
I wonder whether Bully is used to a preaching style that has far more cross-referencing (showing consistency throughout the scriptures) and deals with larger swathes of biblical text than seems to be usual in SydAng churches?

That said, how do you avoid absracting from history without either confining God to the biblical text or speculative theologizing about the last 2000 years?

#14 of 13 top
Commenting is not available in this channel entry.