When I read the Letters of John, particularly the Third Letter, I find him similarly outspoken about “the truth”. This truth is the truth about all that Jesus is and has done for us. In short, the truth is the gospel. When John writes we find that the gospel is everywhere and in everything.

He is almost obsessively preoccupied with the truth. In verse 1 he loves them in truth. In verse 3 he is overjoyed because he has heard of a testimony in the truth. Again in verse 3 he hears they are walking in the truth which causes him to overflow with great joy. He says he has no greater joy than to hear these things (v.4). At the core of John’s soul is his love for the truth of God (gospel). Everything he sees, feels, pursues, loves, and prays for is shaped by the gospel. For the Apostle John, the garlic is the gospel. It is in everything. It is all over his breath. It can’t be contained. It is that outspoken, gregarious spiritual seasoning that gets into every sentence like garlic in every Italian dish.

It is a terrific reminder for us that this type of gospel scent comes by means of intentional exposure and effort. We spend time thinking about, marinating in, praying through, and speaking about the gospel. It is in the fabric of our souls before it becomes the fabric of our conversations. To push the garlic word picture perhaps to its maximum, you can’t sweat out the garlic without eating the garlic. It has got to be in you before it comes out of you.

Whatever else you say about John you have to conclude that this guy was a gospel-manaic. He left the scent behind in his writings.

It hit me as I sat rubbing my head like I was attempting to coerse a migraine to leave. Jesus commented that “…out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.” (Lk. 6.45). What was coming out of my mouth in my sermons was precisely what was filling my mind and heart throughout the week.

Think about it for a second. In sermon prep the preacher works hard to get the text into his soul. He pounds it in via reading, meditation, prayer, study, and thinking. What comes out is how the text has been received, processed, integrated, and applied personally. To put it another way, it is like the preacher drops a fishing line into his mind. Attached to it is the meat of the text. As he drags the line through the water of the mind he attracts some objects. You only pull out what is in there. If you go fishing and your hook gets caught on old boots, tires, coke bottles and weeds, it is because that is what is in the water. If your sermons consistently pull out illustrations about sports, your family, running or blowing things up it is because that is what is in there. In my case I was constantly referring to sports, my family, and (strangely) things that detonate. This works for awhile but eventually it becomes a tired old boot on the line.

So how do you spice up bland sermons? If we may apply Jesus’ logic here, then we need to fill our hearts and minds with more stuff. In particular we need to fill it with more homiletically helpful stuff.

Here are my suggestions that I have found personally helpful:

1) Read the Bible Devotionally. You are very efficient as a preacher when you are using a narrative to explain a command or a command to explain a narrative. It was said of Jonathan Edwards, “His illustrations were doctrinal and his doctrine was illustrated.” Along these lines, if you are able to bring in a redemptive story from another time period it shows that God’s work has been singular and consistent. You are probably not going to quote 2 Kings or Lamentations or 2 Thessalonians unless you are spending some time in those books. Devotionally Bible reading helps greatly.

2) Read the Classics. About this same time I was reading Tony Reinke’s book Lit! In it he basically said you need to read strategically and recreationally. He makes the case that there is a lot of very helpful material out there (particularly for preachers) we just need to go and get it. Shortly thereafter a book was published Pastors in The Classics (Ryken, Ryken, & Wilson). This book helps to show how many of the classics provide helpful lessons and antidotes for pastors. These two books help to turn me on to a whole new aisle of thought. Because many people who love and read the classics go to our churches, this helps pastors connect with them. And because many of the classics are steeped in a worldview that was largely Christian (pre-secularized) the storylines are helpful connection points for everyone. Since reading Tony’s book I have read several books from authors like Dostoevsky, Dickens, Tolkein, Tolstey, and Hugo. They have truly helped spice up otherwise bland sermons.

3) Read the Newspaper. Bottom line: the people who listen to you preach probably read the paper so you should too. If you can hang some gospel banners on news articles then do it! It helps you to teach your people to think in a gospel-fluent, gospelicious way.

4) Read Biographies. Real life stories are good for your soul. I enjoy non-Christian biographies quite a bit. However, stories of faithfulness are even better for your soul, and for your sermons. Whenever I read a biography it finds its way into a sermon somewhere.

5) Talk to Members.  I am always illustration-baiting. I like to drop my main point for Sunday in a conversation on a Monday or Tuesday with friends. I always get good and helpful input. I have also dropped in on my kids during the week. There is nothing like trying to explain your main point to your kids. If they give you the cock-eyed dog look then you can be sure you need to open a window or two to let some light in. Trying to explain the point via a story or illustration always helps.

These are just some ways that I have seen some movement from painfully predictable and redundant illustrations to surprising, fresh, and (hopefully) illuminating illustrations. Like adding some garlic or fresh basil to your meal, I can personally guarantee improvement if you strategically and intentionally fill your mind with things that are geared to spicing up your sermon.

Christian men need the same type of help. Whether you are fouling the ball off your foot, doubling in the gap, or in a slump, you need a spiritual coach to come alongside of you. You (we) need someone to periodically remind us of the fundamentals and explain things in a fresh way. These relationships often come via the local church but they also come via the universal church in the form of writers. Tim Witmer has been one of those guys for me and our church. I don’t know Tim but he has had a profound impact on the shape and life of Emmaus Bible Church.

In his book Shepherd Leader Witmer lays out a biblical plan for pastoral ministry. In my view it is the first thing pastors and aspiring pastors need to read (my review here).

As a follow-up Witmer has written Shepherd Leader in the Home. This book is to help men (not exclusively elders) to be the leaders they are called to be in their homes. In our church about 20 of us have just finished reading and discussing this book together. The feedback I got from the guys was that it was tremendously practical. There was a simple application of biblical truth. Also, there was many memorable nuanced approaches to leading your family. Like the coach who tells stories Witmer opens up the curtain to let us into his world. It’s great.

The basic overlay is:

The Shepherd Knows his Family: In order to lead and love your family you need to know them. Get to work; learn who you love and lead.

The Shepherd Leads his Family: You have got to proactively (not passively) lead your wife and children.

The Shepherd Provides for his Family: Get to work, literally. We have to provide spiritually and materially.

The Shepherd Protects his Family: The leaders cherishes his wife and so he protects his marriage and his children. (This is a very practical and somewhat in your face chapter dealing with sin and temptation. Very good stuff.)

As I asked the guys this morning what they give it for a rating, the consensus was 4.5 / 5 stars. I’d have to agree.

You can purchase Shepherd Leader in the Home via Amazon or Westminster.

*Note: if you make purchases at Amazon, consider entering their site through this blog. It’s kind of like a tip that costs you nothing. (I get a small amount of $ for such Amazon purchases) Thanks!

As Christians we have the unique privilege and responsibility of testifying to God’s love for us in the gospel. We understand what this sounds like; it is the content of the gospel–all that Jesus has done for us. But what does it look like? How does the church uniquely communicate the love of God to the world and to one another?

This is an important question that Jonathan Leeman has endeavored to answer. Jonathan is the editorial director of 9Marks and the author of 4 books that shed light on this topic. Leeman contends that it is through church membership that the world knows who represents Jesus and it is through church discipline that the church protects the name of Jesus.

Jonathan will be teaching at a Saturday conference at Emmaus on the 29th of June. The event is open to all in our city and region who would like to attend.

Cost: $5 person and $10 family.

More information here

To our imaginations, it’s probably strange (at the least) or gross (at the worst) to envision anyone perpetually exalting himself. We live in a world full of bluster and bragging, where Nicki Minaj boasts “I’m the best,” LeBron James tattoos “Chosen 1” across his shoulders, and everyone from pastors to porn stars are self-celebrating on Twitter and Facebook. The idea that God would be associated with anything like that behavior is disconcerting.

But God’s own self-adoration is nothing like ours. Unlike our own self-congratulatory spirit, God’s view of himself is unmistaken and unexaggerated.

As hymn writer Fredrick Lehman said:

Could we with ink the ocean fill, And were the skies of parchment made, Were every stalk on earth a quill, And every man a scribe by trade, To write the love of God above, Would drain the ocean dry. Nor could the scroll contain the whole, Though stretched from sky to sky. God’s glory and perfection are inexhaustible. We can’t say enough about how glorious he truly is. The greatest gift he can give us is a revelation of himself. Exalting anything else would be cruel.

My suggestion is to deconstruct things a little bit first before diving in too deep.

The widely popular, progressive worldview operates out of the red. There is a lack. In other words, you don’t have something and therefore you need to obtain it. The argument is that people, particularly women need to be liberated. There needs to be freedom. This is the talk of captivity. It’s bondage. The pursuit of self-discovery, progressiveness, and a redefinition of thinking is the cry for freedom, but it is not freedom. It is an acknowledgement of captivity. The striving is a striving for freedom.

In contrast the Christian worldview, and in particular the complementation view of genders, operates out of the black. There is an abundance. Instead of bondage there is already liberation. Christians have already been set free from bondage. Because the Christian woman has already been liberated from the futile pursuit of self-discovery she is free to rest. Instead of operating out of an evaporated self-sufficiency she lives out of Christ’s eternal-sufficiency. Jesus is the basis for identity, joy, acceptance, hope, and consolation. She is free to lovingly put herself under her husband’s leadership because she is already resting under the care of her true and greater husband, Jesus. As a Christian, particularly a Christian woman here, her whole experience pivots out of the black, a net positive!

At the end of the month the colors black and red make a big difference in your business or your home checking account. At the end of the day the same is true for the Christian man and woman. The Christian woman is working out of the black. Instead of being defensive and defeated about this issue Christians should highlight the bounty and bankruptcy of the opposing views here. One is striving and the other is resting. One is wanting and the other is delighting. One is blindly walking after human flourishing and the other is actually flourishing. One is crying out for liberation and the other is singing the songs of deliverance.

Those who say, ‘That blackguard of a Javert!’ would be in the right. Mr. Mayor, I do not desire that you should treat me kindly; your kindness roused sufficient bad blood in me when it was directed to others. I want none of it for myself. The kindness which consists in upholding a woman of the town against a citizen, the police agent against the mayor, the man who is down against the man who is up in the world, is what I call false kindness. That is the sort of kindness which disorganizes society. Good God! it is very easy to be kind; the difficulty lies in being just. Come! if you had been what I thought you, I should not have been kind to you, not I! You would have seen! Mr. Mayor, I must treat myself as I would treat any other man. When I have subdued malefactors, when I have proceeded with vigor against rascals, I have often said to myself, ‘If you flinch, if I ever catch you in fault, you may rest at your ease!’ I have flinched, I have caught myself in a fault. So much the worse! Come, discharged, cashiered, expelled! That is well. I have arms. I will till the soil; it makes no difference to me. Mr. Mayor, the good of the service demands an example.

It is only in and through the gospel where God can be the just and the justifier (Rom. 3.26). These two truths are not at war but at peace. As Psalm 85 rejoices, “Steadfast love and faithfulness meet; righteousness and peace kiss each other. (Ps. 85.10)