Notes on *The Preacher’s Catechism*
The Preacher’s Catechism, Lewis Allen (Crossway, 2018)
Main Idea/Takeaway
The single most important thing for preachers is to be overcome by the gospel they proclaim.
"Our first calling is not to preach him, but to love him and to walk with him." (13)
Table of Contents
Preaching, above All
Enjoying God
The One We Preach
By the Book
Preaching Christ
All Our Days
Confident of This
Called to Preach
For God, for People
Not a Square Inch
Sin
Weakness
Knowing Jesus
For His Name's Sake
Rewarded
This Solid Ground
Lavish Love
Holiness
Journey's End
The Grace of Law
Obedience
Love's Choice
Image Rights?
Our Honor or His?
Stop!
Respect
Servant-Hearted Servants
Faithful Attraction
Give
True to His Word
Resist
The Heart of the Law
Trusting Ministry
At the Cross
The Courage of Our Convictions
Ministering Sacraments
Take Them to the Water
To Supper
Seek First
Praying, for His Glory
Trust Issues
Confession Time
All for the King
Favorite Quotes by Chapter
Introduction
"Skills have an essential place, but more essential to our calling are a heart and mind captivated by God and his gospel." (17)
"A fruitful ministry comes from the heart of a contented preacher. It's not about getting your life circumstances right (be that church, salary, peer recognition, or work-life balance). Some of the most impacting ministries have been carried out through truly wretched situations, filled with years of stress and opposition. So many preachers have stood firm and persevered with fruit owing to their deep heart contentment in the God of the gospel. Christ must be a treasure of ever-deepening worth to us." (18)
"A preacher whose pulpit freshness comes from a living relationship with Jesus is a great blessing to the church."(19)
"The Devil love a discouraged preacher, and his infernal crosshairs are always trained on us." (20)
"Those who keep going in their preaching ministry do so only as they learn to nurture their own souls. Even the strongest of us are fragile men. It's not enough to preach grace; we need it ourselves." (20)
Preaching, above All
"Above everything else, those of us who are called to preach need to know that God is love (1 John 4:8)." (27)
"God loves, and shows that love, because he is love. Love is of God's essence. And so the source of all reality is a God of ardent, consuming, and delighting love. This is who he is." (28)
"Our infinite happiness, as saved sinners, consists in enjoying the Son of God. Delight in Jesus is distinctly godlike, and is God's redemption purpose for the world. The Father is redeeming sinners to be delighters in his Son." (29)
"What is your heartbeat? Do you love to preach, or do you love the One you preach? Do you love to prep your sermons, enjoying the hard mental and spiritual work, or do you love the One you are discovering more about." (30)
"We must teach others that God is love, and that life on earth is an invitation from heaven to know that love and to live in the light of it." (30)
"You can only preach what you love. You can only truly love if you know and are daily fed by the love of God. God is always preaching himself, as the God of love. He has no greater message, no other gospel, and no greater purpose. Neither do we."(30)
Enjoying God
“God loves a cheerful preacher. Our ever-blessed, ever-joyful God wants to be proclaimed by those who are brimful of the joy his grace in Christ brings. He calls us to delight in him and, out of that joy,
to call others to the feast. Preacher and sermon must be filled with gospel joy.” (31)
“Why single out joy when joy is so often crowded out by almost anything else? The reason is that joy, like nothing else, shows whether we really believe the gospel. Joy is gospel authenticity. Joy is not an emotional buzz, an escape from the difficulties we face. To know Jesus Christ means to taste, and to want to taste more, the delights of peace with God the Father, who cares for and smiles on us, the Son, who journeys with us, and the Spirit, who empowers us.” (32)
“Life in Christ is not, above all, a set
of commands to obey externally but the inward work of the Holy Spirit to remake our minds and hearts.” (32)
“The Christian life begins with hearing the Word of God in the power of the Spirit and responding to Jesus Christ in repentance and faith. Christian maturity is an ongoing experience of the same:
we see Christ in his Word, and we worship him, gladly giving our hearts to his lordship.” (33)
“God designs that his church be served by Word-soaked, joy-seeking, and joy-sharing
preachers of his delightful gospel.” (34)
The One We Preach
“Preachers have a single calling, to express who and what God is. This is our mandate, to declare what God has revealed about himself.” (35)
“The preacher must teach people of God so that they can worship him with all their might. He must preach God so that they learn to adore the God who loves lost people because he chooses to, with no compulsion whatsoever, except the compulsion of the overflowing love of the Trinity.” (37)
By the Book
“Why is the Bible such a thrilling and powerful book? Simply because it is all about Jesus Christ.” (40)
“The Bible is Jesus's book, all that God has to show us about his Son, and all that we need to come to his Son and to be transformed by him. Make the Bible anything less than the discovery of Jesus, and no wonder we can so easily be dull preachers and disciples.“ (40)
Preaching Christ
“Preaching, though, is ultimately divine activity. J. I. Packer says that it is "the event of God himself bringing to an audience a Bible-based, Christ-related, life-impacting message of instruction and direction through the words of a spokesperson.” (44)
“The Emmaus road gives us a vital principle (Luke 24:25-27, 45): hearts that hear Christ in his Word and are opened to him are burning hearts.” (44)
All Our Days
“Self-pity is as much out of place in Christian ministry as self-promotion is. Worship him because of who he is, the Lord of heaven and earth.” (49)
“The life of a Christian, and of a Christian preacher, is a moment-by-moment giving of all his heart to God and God's grace, in the power of the Holy Spirit.” (50)
“Get your heart pulled in its deepest impulses to God in Jesus Christ, and your preaching ministry, however difficult, will be a fitting expression of your life's worship.” (50)
Confident of This
“The question we must face, and which our post-sermon activities betray, is this: can we find heart peace as we trust that God is at work? Whether we're jogging off our adrenaline or collapsed on the sofa, is there trust in our hearts? Do we really believe that
our preaching will achieve God’s work?” (54)
Called to Preach
“John Calvin identified the two aspects of a call of God to ministry: the individual's inner compulsion ("I have to do this") and the church's recognition of the man's necessary godliness and gifts in handling God's Word.” (56)
“Only the servant-hearted are called to be servants of the Word.” (59)
For God, for People
“You cannot honor God unless you are ministering the fullness of the gospel with gospel love for the good of the lost and the saved. Preaching to the glory of God is all about helping others to grasp and delight in the truth of the gospel. God's glory revealed in the cross of Christ and declared in preaching is the good of grace-hungry people. "The eternal salvation of the human soul, through the presentation of divine truth, is the end of preaching," William Shedd wrote. That is what God wants from you, and that is what your hearers need from you, regardless of whether they currently understand that or actually want it. Anything less is just bad preaching.” (62)
“Preaching must always be an exercise in self-effacement, not self-promotion, or even self-fulfillment. Jesus says, "Feed my sheep,"not "Feed your ego." People must be led to Christ, and led on with Christ through preaching.”(62)
“Our goal is to deepen the joy of our hearers in Jesus Christ.” (64)
“Ministry is the battle against mistrust and misapplied confidence, in our own lives as well as in the lives of those we preach to.” (64)
“God has invested his glory in his children seeing and delighting in the saving grace of his Son in his proclaimed Word.” (64)
Not a Square Inch
“It's no good being convinced that the Lord wants you in the pulpit if you're not really sure about his involvement in the world beyond your allotted few square feet of activity each Sunday.” (65)
“You are preaching into a universe ruled by King Jesus. This life-changing truth must be the solid ground for all your preaching. Believe it, and preach it.” (66)
“Our calling is to speak gospel words in what often appears to be the chaos of our lives and the lives of our congregations. “Our God reigns" must never sound trite. It must always be heard for what it is, a uniquely hope-filled and peace-bringing claim.” (66)
“Preachers are, by most measurements, believers with a good deal of faith. Because of that, it's
all too easy to fail to appreciate the struggles many of our hearers have in believing. There again, time spent with fellow Christians who suffer, or time spent in our own trials, brings home the fact that faith is anything but natural or straightforward.” (67)
Sin
The last Adam was a preacher as fearless as he was sinless. He always spoke God's Word in obedience to his Father and in the service of his listeners. His loyalty to God's Word took him to another tree, the cross, to die there as our Sin-Bearer (1 Per. 2:24).” (73)
Weakness
“Perhaps we feel so low on Mondays precisely because we are low. Mondays have lessons of grace to teach us. We need the Monday gospel. Left to ourselves, we are all without hope.” (77)
Knowing Jesus
“So if we want to find our strength again, we need to go back to Jesus, look to him, and live.” (80)
“With a daily walk with Jesus those fears don’t vanish, but they are brought under his control.” (82)
“So, put Christ before you. Study him and speak to him. Give him your heart.” (82)
For His Name's Sake
“Endure hardship" is the motto of apostolic ministry (see 2 Tim. 2:3; 4:5). Endure hardship. Not because it is good for you, like a diet or exercise, but because Jesus did, and our calling is to be transformed in the image of his holiness.” (84)
“Self-sacrifice brought Christ into the world.
And self-sacrifice will lead us, his followers, not away from but into the midst of men. Wherever men suffer, there will we be to comfort.” (85)
Rewarded
“The gospel makes no sense and has no power unless judgment is real and heaven’s reward is eternal.” (88)
“The Lord of the harvest alone can give the increase; but he has given us the mandate of wielding prayer and the Word in order to see people brought to Christ and built up in him.”(90)
This Solid Ground
"Because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption." We preachers can never get enough of this truth. It must master us, subduing our pride in success, and lifting and comforting us in disaster.” (92)
“We shall never find happiness by looking at our prayers, our doings, or our feelings; it is what Jesus is, not what we are, that gives rest to the soul." (94)
Lavish Love
“Most of us who preach lurch between pride and despait, often in the same day. We puff ourselves up, delighted to be preachers. Says Spurgeon, «The pride of knowing replaces the humility of being known." And then, we fail in our task and are in the depths.
The remedy is never that we should seek some stoic resignation in the highs and lows of ministry--never too up, never too down. The remedy is in the gospel, and especially in the gospel truth that in Christ we are adopted into God's family. The doctrine of adoption is vital for the preacher. We are not preachers first; we are not primarily servants, called to a round of preaching and teaching. Those things are secondary at best. Above everything else, we are sons, the adopted sons of God. We are children, with all of God's people. The Father has lavished his great
love upon us to make us the children of God (1 John 3:1). The Son has given us the right to become those children John 1:12), and declares his delight in us as his brothers (Heb. 2:12-13).” (96)
“Hard work for his sake is the privilege we get to do as
an act of worship. It is the natural activity of children who know their Father's smile.” (97)
Holiness
“In the light of God's Word we must identify
our sins and repent of them; in their place we must think through new habits of godliness; we must pray specific prayers with discipline; we must put ourselves right into the fellowship of God's
people, serving, sharing, and learning; we must learn to live out our baptism, take the Lord's Supper, and sit under good preaching.” (100)
”Preaching is the commitment to showing our hearers from the Word that Jesus is powerfully real. Our growth in grace must not only back up our words; it must also display the real and powerful Jesus in our lives.” (100)
“We must be holy. If we neglect this calling, we may well end up preaching ourselves, or getting in the way of our Master. If so, our unholiness will actually obscure the glory of Christ. If we are dull, if we are unmoved by the truths we handle in the pulpit, if
an illustration we use is self-promoting or inappropriate for some other reason, if our words aren't conveying love and tenderness
(the list could go on), then we are getting in the way of the beauty of Jesus.” (101)
“The Lord might not give us crowds, but as M'Cheyne himself prayed, our longing should be to be as holy as a pardoned sinner can be. Only as we grow to be like Jesus are we effective in showing him to others in our lives and through our proclamation.” (101)
Journey's End
“Even if we have sixty years of preaching behind us and have led thousands to a closer walk with Christ, it will be Christ alone who acquits us. We will never earn our salvation.” (105)
The Grace of Law
“Preachers of Jesus must be like Jesus. No one will listen to a man to learn Christ if they cannot look at him and see Christ.” (109)
Obedience
“Christ alone keeps the law for us in his obe-
dience for our sakes, and he alone dies for us under the penal sentence of God for our lawbreaking. Slaves are redeemed and adopted into God's family, and a new nature is given to us.” (115)
Love's Choice
“Will you really believe that your God can and will
meet all your needs, so that you will bring him all of the love and trust he is so very worthy of? He wants all of your heart, preacher, and unless he has that, he is satisfied by none of your ministry.” (122)
Image Rights?
“The opposite of love is not hatred; it's indifference-
"I don't care." But love does care. God will have us for himself. And that is the call, and the power,
of the gospel?” (125)
Stop!
“We are to enjoy our Sundays, not as anxious performers but as Christ-satisfied disciples.
We give ourselves to God in worship and to our church families in fellowship. And we refuse to try to justify ourselves by our preaching. We yield to Jesus, surrender to his righteousness, and rest in his love.” (135)
Respect
“Church members live in a secular environment of disrespect. Backbiting, disloyalty, and worse are the everyday hazards of their workplace. When they come to church, they must discover the freedom and peace of being in an utterly different culture. Respect
and honor must be the tone of all relationships in the body of Christ. So it is with the preacher.” (139)
Faithful Attraction
“Keep yourselves in the love of God" (Jude 1:21). If you are this loved through Christ, then explore it, stay in it, allow it to satisfy you. ‘Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life. (Prov. 4:23).” (147)
Give
“Giving suffcient time each week to preparing sermons is an act of will. It is a commitment to self-discipline, and when we decide to do it, it will put pressure on the rest of our schedules. It is,
though, supremely an act of love.” (151)
True to His Word
“Obedience to the commandment "Do not lie
does not mean "tell the truth regardless of whom you crush under it," but it means "tell the truth in order to serve others in love.” (154)
“The truth of God, the whole truth, with Jesus at the center, will become a chore, because it doesn't achieve your appointed goals. The Word preached faithfully deeply inconveniences you as well as your hearers with its demands. Your pride won't allow that
for very many years. In time, you'll preach less of the Word and more of yourself.” (156)
“If your ministry is a journey in self-love, then no one gets served, you least of all. If by grace you lay your heart and work before the King of kings, then your words will be filled with truth and love. Only then do preachers truly serve the King.” (156)
“If your ministry is a journey in self-love, then no one gets served, you least of all. If by grace you lay your heart and work before the King of kings, then your words will be filled with truth and love. Only then do preachers truly serve the King.” (156)
Resist
“One of the greatest psychological pressures for any preacher is being content with our current experience of God's grace and managing our longings for so much more blessing.” (157)
“Coveting, at root, is a refusal to recognize God as God.” (158)
The Heart of the Law
“Preachers are ambitious. At least, we should be. If we don't long that people will meet the risen Christ through our ministry, then what do we want to achieve through preaching?” (163)
“You and I must strive for excellence as we preach, without ever losing sight of the excellence the Lord calls for: ultimately, loving him and our neighbors is all that counts. That's our highest calling, in the pulpit and out of it.” (163)
Trusting Ministry
“Salvation is of the Lord, and that includes the gift of faith in order to receive the saving work of Christ (Eph. 2:8; cf. 1:19). True saving faith is nothing less than the work of the Spirit of Christ in our hearts.” (169)
“And the more you grow in the Spirit's power in response to the Word, the deeper your confidence in this Word will be, whether privately read or
publicly preached.” (170)
“Jesus offers himself through his Word in the gospel. Stand on the rock of this truth.” (170)
At the Cross
“The gospel we preach must be the gospel we consciously rely on. And what we rely on, we love. Our greatest need, then, is a sight of our sins, and serious repentance at the cross for them. As we bring both our sin and our sorrow for it to the cross, we discover again the life Jesus died to bring us. There worship flows as we see our Savior in his life-bringing glory?” (172)
“Repentance isn't the soul wallowing in its muck (leave that to the pigs), it is the soul forsaking everything to find forgiveness and life in Jesus?” (174)
“Commenting on Galatians 3:1, John Calvin said,
‘Let those who would discharge aright the ministry of the Gospel learn not merely to speak and declaim, but to penetrate into the consciences of men, to make them see Christ crucified, and feel the shedding
of his blood.’ Preachers who know their own need of Jesus can do so, and will?” (174)
The Courage of Our Convictions
“Would you lose your sorrows? Would you drown your cares? Then go, plunge yourself in the Godhead's deepest sea; be lost in his immensity; and you shall come forth as from a couch of rest, refreshed and invigorated. I know nothing
which can so comfort the soul; so calm the swelling billows of grief and sorrow; so speak peace to the winds of trial, as a devout musing upon the subject of the Godhead.” (178)
Ministering Sacraments
“We must also recover our belief, then, that the pulpit needs to share its message with the baptistery and the Table, and that they must be given their rightful places in the drama of redeeming grace.” (181)
“If your preaching is mediocre at times, or worse than that, don't indulge in despair: the Lord is
near in his sacraments.” (181)
“The sacraments are to show us the gospel and to strengthen our gospel faith, as we've seen. They teach us who belongs to Christ and who doesn't. And so, they call us to renewed trust in Christ and to enduring obedience to him, by his grace. We have
been washed by Christ, and we are feeding on him. Could we need anything else? So finish your sermon on time, preacher. Don't weary your hearers. They've heard the gospel from you. And now, in water, bread, and wine, let them see it and celebrate it.” (182)
Seek First
“If you wait until your day is less busy, your heart is less burdened, your moods make it feel exciting, or your sin takes wings and flies away, you will never pray.” (192)
“The Westminster Shorter Catechism states that prayer is "an offering up of our desires unto God for things agreeable to his will, in the name of Christ, with confession of our sins, and thankful acknowledgment of his mercies." (193)
“Only a living, honest relationship with God nurtured and expressed in prayer, will keep us from hellish hypocrisy and fill us with the life of Christ.” (193)
“Prayer is recapturing a Christ-centered worldview,
in which we celebrate again his loving rule. Problems might not go away, but they regain their God-ordained perspective.“ (195)
Praying, for His Glory
“Preaching easily falls into a default setting of "Yours be the glory, O Lord; and a little to me, too, please." We need to root out that spirit of pride, that clawing, grasping, insecure longing for the praise of men. We do so with prayer. Pray that the Father would set a delight in his glory in Christ deep in your affections
so that the thought of even trying to snatch a hint of the glory due God alone would disgust you.” (199)
“You are praying and working not to grow a big church but to serve a church so that people will increasingly yield their lives to Jesus Christ.” (200)
Trust Issues
“His presence can still racing thoughts, give hope
for despairing preachers, and bring back restless, wandering desires to him. You believe that for your congregation, don't you? Believe it for yourself. And experience it as the gift of God to his praying children, including his preachers.” (203)
Confession Time
“The preacher who repents will live and thrive. Try it. And the ministry that is bathed in repentance and enjoying renewing grace will be a truly gospel one, and will bear the hallmarks of authenticity.” (208)
All for the King
“When our hearts bow joyfully to the King, then, and only then, will our preaching have any integrity and impact.” (210)
“Love only the work, and the work will crush us. Of course it will; the needs of a struggling church and a broken world are completely overwhelming. And while we effectively forget who God is in his gospel love, we will think that he achieves some satisfaction
(some glory, even) in our being overworked and beaten down.”(210)
“Preaching is the declaration of the God we know. Preaching is one broken sinner saying to others with exactly the same struggles, "This is the grace I'm discovering, which I long for you to know with me." (210)
“You can see and you can hear when people are contented. The church can see and hear when those in the pulpit are delighting in Christ and satisfied
in him. True contentment is as powerful as it is visible.” (211)
“And so we dare to pursue contentment in God. We dare believe that there is such a place of settled joy and peace in Jesus. We really can make him our treasure when life and ministry are painful, as much as when they are exciting. We can, and we must. To him be the glory, forever.” (211)
Notable Content
Six questions to help asses whether sin has crept into your preaching. (73)
1. What happens in my heart when people thank me for my preaching? Do I straight away silently thank God that they were blessed? Or do I thank myself for my skills as a preacher?
2. When I preach a terrible sermon, why does it devastate me? Is it because I don't think that Christ's sheep have been fed? Or is it because my ego hasn't been stroked?
3. Do I preach to serve my hearers or to scratch my own preaching itches? Do I choose passages for the pulpit because I know they will serve where my hearers are in need or because I prefer them and think I preach them well?
4. When someone says something critical that is true but painful about my preaching (to me or to someone else, and it has gotten back to me), is my first response angry self-pity, or do I give God thanks for this Spirit-given opportunity to grow in my preaching?
5. Should I adopt a different preaching tone and style or perhaps preach shorter sermons in order to reach my hearers more effectively? Or do pride and fear tie me to preaching as I always have?
6. Do I ever have the courage to ask those closest to me (my wife or the church's leaders) about my preaching? Am I prepared for honest and loving feedback, or do I wish to keep justifying my ministry exactly as it is?
Ten Commandments, re-written: (116)
Put nothing in the place of Jesus.
Make nothing which gets in the way of your love for Jesus.
Honor Jesus' Name in all you do.
Seek your soul's rest in Jesus.
Honor your parents, as a love-expression for Jesus.
Do not murder, as Jesus brings life, never death.
Keep sexually pure, because Jesus has won your body, as well as your heart.
Do not steal, because Jesus is enough.
Do not lie, because Jesus is the truth, and loves the truth.
Don't set your heart on anything, because Jesus really is enough.
Four pointers to obey the commandment concerning contentment: (159)
Believe that God is who he is.
Identify your discontentment, and starve it.
List your blessings, and celebrate them.
Knowing Jesus is contentment.
