In the church I grew up in, Deacon Heart and his team would go down the aisles with their hole punchers before Communion. Each congregant was given a membership card. It was the size of a business card with boxes for each month of the year at the bottom. Before Communion started, the deacons would go through the congregation and punch a hole in the box for that month.  If your box was hole-punched, it indicated that you were permitted to receive the bread and cup. If not, you were not to take the Lord’s Supper that day. I didn’t...

Franz Kafka wrote a story entitled “The Hunger Artist.” Professional fasting was a respected, lucrative, and celebrated art. The Hunger Artist was the main attraction. He sat in a cage for forty days without eating or drinking. When the fast ended, his manager made a speech. The band played. A woman led the weakened but triumphant hunger artist out of the cage. But the day came when fasting was no longer understood or appreciated. The hunger artist lost everything and joined the circus to survive. His cage was placed with the animals. He became depressed. No one paid him any attention. One fast went past forty days because his attendants neglected to count the days....

You start reading through Genesis. In Genesis 1, you read how God created the heavens and the earth. In Genesis 2, you read how God created Adam and Eve and placed them in the Garden of Eden. In Genesis 3, you read about the Fall, when Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden tree. In Genesis 4, you read how Cain killed his brother Abel. After breezing through these historical narratives, you hit a speed bump at the genealogy in Genesis 5.  The temptation is to skip over this biblical ancestry.com record. That would be a mistake. Nothing in scripture is meaningless, unnecessary, or superfluous. 2 Timothy 3:16 asserts: “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” After Cain killed Abel, Eve gave birth to a son named Seth....

Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. – 2 Timothy 2:15 I often say that I don’t want God to speak to me in the pulpit. I concluded this after hearing the story about the unprepared preacher who walked to the pulpit begging God to speak to him. To his surprise and dismay, the Lord spoke to him and said, “You should have studied.”  Get it?  If that’s how the Lord speaks, I don’t want the Lord to speak to me in...

Welcome to The On Preaching Podcast, the podcast dedicated to helping you to preach faithfully, clearly, and better. "Preaching and praying go together," It is well said. "If there is to be preaching in the pulpit, there must be praying in the pews." I fully agree with these statements. But I would add one point. Not only should there be prayer in the pews, but there should also be praying in the pulpit. The entire process of sermon planning, preparation, and delivery should be seasoned and saturated in believing prayer. What are the marks of a prayer-saturated sermon? Pray for...

There is a sense in which the first three beatitudes are about humility.  Poverty in spirit is humility toward God.  Mourning is humility toward self.  Meekness is humility toward others.  These opening beatitudes present the foundational aspects of the humility that characterize the blessed. Yet these beatitudes build on one another. To be poor in spirit is to mourn. To mourn is to be meek. These beatitudes also build on one another in the opposite direction. Meekness comes naturally to those who are poor in spirit and mourn their sin. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones said, “The man who is truly meek is the man who is amazed that God and man can think of him as well as they do and treat him as well as...

There was a time when churches held weeklong revival services. An evangelist preached sermons to save the lost and sanctify the church. Church members invited the unsaved, unchurched, and unrepentant to the revival. They even had special seating: The Mourners’ Bench. The mourner’s bench was created by John Wesley, the father of Methodism. There are biblical reasons to reject Wesley’s theology and methodology. But his premise was right: contrition is the key to conversion.  The second beatitude clarifies two misunderstandings about the Christian life.  Being a Christian is not about being sad. Matthew 6:16 says, “And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites.” The hypocrite looked gloomy, assuming this is what it meant...

Welcome to The On Preaching Podcast, The Podcast dedicated to helping you to preach faithfully, clearly, and better. In this episode, H.B. discusses four targets of gospel application in your preaching. A biblical sermon should include explanation, application, and illustration. Throughout the body of the sermon, you should explain the text, apply the text, and illustrate the text. For many, effective application is difficult to develop. But this principle might be helpful: Think about the who before you think about the how. Who are you trying to apply the text to should come before thoughts about how to make that...