This morning....Monday March 14....'Pi Day'....3.14....as I am told....I was doing chores around the house....and as usual listening to a sermon by either a man from the past....or a man who preaches like men of the past...."redeeming the time, because the days are evil"....(Eph 5:16 KJV)....or...."making the best use of the time, because the days are evil"....as the ESV puts it. It was John Piper in this instance whose sermon I was listening to....titled....Why God Inspired Hard Texts....on Romans 3:1-8....and Piper gave an anecdote that I would like to share with you....because you have heard something very similar from me.....often.....in fact right here in this post!
I went back later on to the recording and this is pretty much verbatim what Piper said...."I've been listening to a tape....two tapes....this week....two sermons....by Martyn Lloyd-Jones....who preached on this text....and I was listening to his sermons....two of them....forty years ago in London....it's a great thing to be able to listen to preaching that was preached forty years ago in London...." Charles Spurgeon read Pilgrim's Progress....by his own admission....100 times during his life! Gee...he never stopped seeking to learn....I wonder if that's part of the reason he was rightly known as....The Prince Of Preachers?
I have tried on a number of occasions to encourage pastors to do just this....listen to how great preachers of the past preached....to possibly learn something from them....glean something that might stick to their souls....so that they might then be gifted by God as He gifted these men....but even more so....listen to them to be preached to by them.
I've never even had a favorable comment on this....at most something like...."Oh yes....I've read some of Spurgeon's sermons....he was very good!" So I bring that effort here....to you....redeem the time....for the days truly are evil. How often would a painter in oils on canvas go back to the masters....just to see their color scheme....or brush stroke? How often would a musician or composer just listen to classical music....to take in once again the beauty of it? How many times would even a golfer watch an instruction video....determined to better his game....no matter how much effort it took....all of this yet we seem to take little interest interest if any in listening to sermons by men whose names had become household names....and with good reason....that being that God had blessed so many....through the ages....through their faithfulness.
Addendum: Three Lord's Days after posting the above.....we were travailing....and the pastor that we heard gave a wonderful sermon.....and in that sermon he related how after he preaches on at certain scriptural verse....he then listens to a recording of Sinclair Ferguson preaching on the same verse. That is how he personally incorporates sermons from.....men of the past....or men from today who preach like men from the past....Sinclair Ferguson being a man who preaches and teaches and writes like men from the past. I'm telling you my heart leapt when I heard him say that.
