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Listening to the Word of God

Throughout Christian history, evangelical Christians have always put a premium on the preached Word of God. Christians believe, and have always believed that when God's Word is opened in the sermon, His voice is heard by His sheep. To this end, sermons are a vital if not most vital part of the Christian worship service. We worship God not just in our sniging and praises, but in giving due attention and heed to His Word as it is brought to us faithfully through the preacher.

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But do you realize that in a year, (without breaks for Sundays because there's no such thing) you hear AT LEAST 52 sermons? If you add in Good Friday and Christmas (which typically don't fall on a Sunday) that's 54 sermons a year? If you came to church regularly for 5 years, you would hear 270 sermons in total. That's a lot of preaching.

So how do you prepare to hear the Word of God? Are you a good listener? Do you hear it well? By surveying some of the writings of great Christian writers, we can take a look at the best practices for the building up of the church.

Rev (Dr) Phil Ryken, President of Wheaton College has written on how a member of the congregation can rightly listen to a sermon,

"So what is the right way to listen to a sermon? With a soul that is prepared, a mind that is alert, a Bible that is open, a heart that is receptive, and a life that is ready to spring into action."

David Murray suggests 10 things one can do during the sermon to listen better:

  1. Come to church in good time to get calm, settled, and focused
  2. Respect the silence of the sanctuary: This includes training your children not to distract others
  3. Engage your body and soul in worship and prayer: Stir up your whole body, mind, and soul in the worship before the sermon.
  4. Tell yourself that God is about to speak: Keep praying that He will speak to you through His Word.
  5. Recognize that this is a team effort and take personal responsibility. It is a joint venture between the preacher and the listener. Successful sermons result from the listener teaming up with the preacher much like a catcher works in unison with a pitcher. Both the pitcher and the catcher have an important role to play in the pitching process. The responsibility doesn’t all rest on the pitcher’s shoulders. (Expository Listening, 4)
  6. Take brief notes: Enough to help you concentrate but not so many that it turns into a lecture that only engages the head.
  7. Check that the preacher is preaching God’s Word: Not a critical Pharisaical spirit (Luke 11:54), but with a discerning Berean spirit (Acts 17:11).
  8. Accept there will be times when the Word hurts you: Don’t react against this and shut down, but receive it and try to profit from it.
  9. Build up good-will towards the preacher: Ill-will or malice towards the preacher is a hardener of the heart. It blocks the Word.
  10. Try to find one thing to benefit from: You can usually find a crumb or two in even the poorest preacher’s poorest sermon.

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Even the great George Whitefield, the well-known British evangelist, addressed this subject at some length. In one of his writings, he notes 6 different ways one can profit better from a sermon:

"1. Come to hear them, not out of curiosity, but from a sincere desire to know and do your duty. To enter His house merely to have our ears entertained, and not our hearts reformed, must certainly be highly displeasing to the Most High God, as well as unprofitable to ourselves.

2. Give diligent heed to the things that are spoken from the Word of God. If an earthly king were to issue a royal proclamation, and the life or death of his subjects entirely depended on performing or not performing its conditions, how eager would they be to hear what those conditions were! And shall we not pay the same respect to the King of kings, and Lord of lords, and lend an attentive ear to His ministers, when they are declaring, in His name, how our pardon, peace, and happiness may be secured?

3. Do not entertain even the least prejudice against the minister. That was the reason Jesus Christ Himself could not do many mighty works, nor preach to any great effect among those of His own country; for they were offended at Him. Take heed therefore, and beware of entertaining any dislike against those whom the Holy Ghost has made overseers over you.

Consider that the clergy are men of like passions with yourselves. And though we should even hear a person teaching others to do what he has not learned himself, yet that is no reason for rejecting his doctrine. For ministers speak not in their own, but in Christ’s name. And we know who commanded the people to do whatever the scribes and Pharisees should say unto them, even though they did not do themselves what they said (see Matt. 23:1-3).

4. Be careful not to depend too much on a preacher, or think more highly of him than you ought to think. Preferring one teacher over another has often been of ill consequence to the church of God. It was a fault which the great Apostle of the Gentiles condemned in the Corinthians: 'For whereas one said, I am of Paul; another, I am of Apollos: are you not carnal, says he? For who is Paul, and who is Apollos, but instruments in God’s hands by whom you believed?' (1 Cor. 1:12; 2:3-5).

Are not all ministers sent forth to be ministering ambassadors to those who shall be heirs of salvation? And are they not all therefore greatly to be esteemed for their work’s sake?

5. Make particular application to your own hearts of everything that is delivered. When our Savior was discoursing at the last supper with His beloved disciples and foretold that one of them should betray Him, each of them immediately applied it to his own heart and said, 'Lord, is it I?' (Matt. 26:22).

Oh, that persons, in like manner, when preachers are dissuading from any sin or persuading to any duty, instead of crying, 'This was intended for such and such a one!' instead would turn their thoughts inwardly, and say, 'Lord, is it I?' How far more beneficial should we find discourses to be than now they generally are!

6. Pray to the Lord, before, during, and after every sermon, to endue the minister with power to speak, and to grant you a will and ability to put into practice what he shall show from the Book of God to be your duty."

So how good of a listener are you? What can we do to improve our faithfulness to God's spoken and preached word?

For additional resources on this subject, one can read John Piper's eBook entitled Take Care How You Listen, available for free download, or purchase Listen Up!: A Practical Guide to Listening to Sermons by Christopher Ash