This third and final post on preaching the Tower of Babel includes an exegetical outline of the text by Allen Ross and a suggested method of preaching Christ from the passage by Sydney Greidanus.
Second post on preaching the Tower of Babel.
This is the first of a 3-part post on preaching The Tower of Babel passage in Genesis 11:1-9
Amassing intellectual capital is an important part of Seminary training. In ministry, you’re going to need all you can lay your hands on!However, those of us who have been around the block a few times know that you cannot survive in ministry off that capital alone. Since you are constantly making withdrawals, you have to constantly make deposits. . . or go bankrupt.
In his classic On Christian Doctrine (Book 4), Augustine extols rhetoric as the handmaid of truth. Rhetoric must never degenerate into the role of court jester in preaching. We have all witnessed the preacher who “with conjuring adroitness keeps producing fat rabbit after fat rabbit out of an obviously empty hat” as Arthur Gossip put it. The abuse of rhetoric should not necessitate the rejection of rhetoric. Otherwise we might be a not-to-distant relative of the young woman Bunyan told us about, “whose name was Dull. Ah! Poor soul, can’t you see her, flat-faced, flat-footed, a mere vacant lump of a thing? Too many preachers spring from her family. . . .”
“Some people preach for an hour and it seems like twenty minutes, and some preach for twenty minutes and it seems like an hour. I wonder what the difference is? I think I’ve spent my life trying to answer that question.” So said the Dean of Evangelical homileticians, Haddon Robinson, concerning the question of what makes a sermon interesting and memorable.
I have always been partial to train whistles. My grandparents lived less than half a mile from the railroad tracks in the little sleepy mill town of Lindale, GA. I would hear the train whistle blow day and night. My favorite time to listen was late on a fall night. Everything in the house was quiet and tranquil. Suddenly, off in the distance, the first whistle pierced the darkness. The whistle grew louder as the train neared. After the powerful locomotives passed the crossing and the whistle stopped, the only sound was the rhythmical clickety-clack clickety-clack of the wheels as car after car rolled past and then disappeared into the darkness. Somehow it brought to me a feeling of comfort as a child.
When it comes to the galaxy of Puritan preaching, the name of William Perkins shines brightly. His famous work on preaching, The Art of Prophesying, remains a classic in the field.
Charles Spurgeon’s prolific pen is well known. Today he still holds the record for the most books in print by any author living or dead. Spurgeon was barraged with requests to write prefaces for other authors during his lifetime. He refused to do so, as far as I know, with only one exception. Vernon Charlesworth published Rowland Hill: His Life, Anecdotes and Pulpit Sayings in 1879. For many years, Charlesworth lived in Surrey Chapel parsonage, where Rowland Hill (1744-1833) once lived and ministered.
On any given Sunday in today’s preaching pantheon, one can observe a diverse group of devotees, some paying homage to the chapel of “creativity,” others sitting at the feet of the “culturally relevant.”
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