“Yet this is where the glory of preaching and hearing the word of God comes into play. Preaching is proclamation, and proclaim we must, however inadequate we might think our words and our delivery are.  Preaching is not a carefully worked-out philosophical defence of what God must be like if the advent of Christ is to be true. Nor is it an attempt to make Christianity look sophisticated or moral as the world understand these things. Least of all is it stand-up comedy designed to entertain those who might otherwise seek their fun elsewhere. Its agenda, especially at Christmas, is not to be determined by unbelief or what the hipsters in the Village will tolerate or what the brain’s trust at MIT think is plausible.  Preaching at Christmas is akin to Lk. 2:8-12.  It is the announcement of what God has done, that he has come in Christ, and that thereby his grace has abounded and overflowed to those who deserve it not..  Our task as preachers is to do simply that: proclaim the advent of the Christ.  Can there be a greater privilege, a more awesome responsibility, or a greater delight?”

-Carl Trueman

Apostolic Christocentric preaching is big enough to encompass not only redemption accomplished but also redemption applied. Christ-centered preaching announces redemption accomplished: what Jesus did for us once-for-all in history, fulfilling all the Father’s promises as covenant Lord, and all our obligations as covenant servant—and, more than that, enduring the covenant curse that our treason so richly deserve! But it also announces the benefits of redemption applied, the death-to-life difference that Christ’s once-for-all accomplishment effects in those who are united to this new covenant mediator by faith, And those redemptive benefits applied to us by the Spirit of Christ are wide enough to embrace both his rectifying of our sordid record and the renovation of our corrupted hearts: regeneration, forgiveness, vindication, reconciliation, adoption, sanctification, and glorification.

-Dennis E. Johnson

I was reminded of being at a conference with a well-known preacher who is based in the US. He began his sermon by recounting an interview he had done on the radio. He was asked the question, ‘What would you like your legacy to be?’, to which he replied ‘I want to finish the race, and not disgrace my wife and not disgrace the church which I serve.’

I remember thinking as I heard this preacher, ‘What a cop out and lack of godly ambition! Doesn’t he want to leave a legacy? Build a dynasty? I want to change the world!’

The problem is as I’ve come to see it is that there is a very fine line between godly zeal and selfish ambition. A number of years later after having heard that speaker, 2011 has seen 2 of my good friends fall into sins which have disqualified them from the ministry; they’ve shipwrecked their life’s work. I have begun to understand something of what that preacher said.

-Paul Levy

What does all of this mean? Even as you do the work of the ministry, it is important to remember that accurate self-assessment is the product of grace. Only in the mirror of God’s Word and with the sight-giving help of the Holy Spirit are we able to see ourselves accurately. In those painful moments of accurate self-sight, we may not feel as if we are being loved, but that is exactly what is happening. God, who loves us enough to sacrifice his Son for our redemption, works so that we would see ourselves clearly, so that we would not buy into the delusion of our own righteousness. He gives us a humble sense of personal need so we’ll seek the resources of grace that can only be found in him.

In this way, your painful moments of sight, conviction, grief, and confession are both the saddest and most joyous of moments. It is sad that we yet need to confess what we must confess. At the same time, accurately seeing and fully acknowledging our sin is a cause for celebration. Only Jesus can open blind eyes. Whenever a sinner accurately assesses his sin, the angels in heaven rejoice, and so should we, even when that sinner is us.

-Paul Tripp

What Thielicke was doing was what all preachers do all the time: teaching theology in the face of death.  The difference is that most of us have comfortable enough lives and circumstances that we are able to pretend to ourselves that we are really doing something else, that death is not really real at all.  That is surely why so many churches become distracted by so many trendy ministries of trivia rather than the simple proclamation of truth.

This Christmas, the challenge of preaching is to bring people into the presence of Christ, not with the unattainable ambition that fear of death, the final enemy, will be taken away; but certainly with the desire to prepare people for death.  And if Thielicke, and Simeon, are right, this is not magic or clever or particularly sophisticated: it involves teaching people the simple, straightforward, unfathomable  truth of God Incarnate

-Carl Trueman

God’s beauty looks different than we might expect. While angels sung of his arrival, God again reached out to the dirty and despised. He invited shepherds to be the only visitors permitted to the labor and delivery unit. In time, men of stature and renown would come to worship, but even their fullness of joy demonstrated a poverty of spirit. For how else could these wise men bringing great riches bow the knee to a child who had not yet been potty-trained? They did not come in power and prestige, but in pursuit of the veiled beauty of the Christ child.

The beauty and glory of Jesus’ birth is seen in contrast Caesar Augustus. In the headlines he was counting heads to prove his power. Meanwhile, the God who knows the number of hairs on every head (without counting), was sending his Son into the world. The contrast could not be more stark: Men counted matches in the dark, unable to benefit from their potential light, while the God of infinite light hid himself in the dark flesh of Jewish boy, one who came into the darkness to show his light to world.

-David Schrock