Proclaimer Blog
The idol of novelty
I'm just reading Derek Tidball's excellent Preacher Keep Yourself from Idols. There's an excellent chapter on novelty as an idol with a paragraph which goes to the heart of preaching:
It should be axiomatic that no sermon should make a secondary issue in the text its main theme. Yet the thirst for novelty often pushes preachers to do just that. To preach, for example, about good parenting on the basis of the parable of the prodigal son is to miss why Jesus told the parable. If we want originality we can do no better…than to study the text carefully. To continue with the prodigal son for a moment, we should be asking why Jesus never told a parable about 'a prodigal son'. His introduction reads, 'There was a man who had two sons' (Luke 15.11). How does that impact our preaching? Perhaps we should be preaching on the question, "Which son was the prodigal?"
Worth the price.
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