We cannot expect our hearers to remember everything that we say to them. But how can we increase the chances that they might be able to call to mind, and perhaps benefit at a later date, some of the key ideas that we wish to communicate?
In other words, what are some of the ways in which we can create ‘sticky statements’?
Here’s a helpful acrostic on the word PREACH:
Picture – Is there a word picture or metaphor?…
(This is a slightly revised version of a short talk that was first drafted many years ago)
Text: Luke 2:22-24, 36-38
Some 80 years before a certain baby boy was cradled in a manger in Bethlehem, a little girl was born just a few miles away. No doubt she was her parent’s pride and joy. And no doubt she was strong, active and healthy. Anyway, in due course, she grew up and fell in love with the man of her dreams. …
Andrew Lincoln (Born of a Virgin?) maintains that the birth narratives in Luke’s Gospel witness to the virginal conceptions of Jesus. Specifically, Lincoln cites:
1. The step-parallelism between the birth accounts of John the Baptist and Jesus. As Lincoln remarks:
‘If an infertile woman can bear a child, then the greater miracle is for a virgin to conceive without any male seed being involved.’
2. Mary’s response to the annunciation: ‘How can this be, since I do not know a man?’…
4:13 I am able to do all things through the one who strengthens me.
Ben Witherington has characterised this the ‘Superman Verse’, on the basis of its common misinterpretation.
Noting that this verse is often claimed by athletes, the Apologetics Study Bible for Students explains:
…‘Paul is not claiming that Christians can do absolutely anything. After all, is it really possible to run three-minute miles or bench press one thousand pounds? The context shows that Paul actually had Christian perseverance in mind.
It is sometimes imagined that Jesus was nothing but sweetness and light. But this is very wide of the mark.
As N.T. Wright (Jesus and the Victory of God, p183f) points out the Synoptic Gospels record a ‘pretty devastating catalogue of threats and warnings’.
That catalogue, as compiled by Wright, looks something like this:
Leave the dead to bury the dead (Mt. 8:22/Lk. 9:60);
…Do not put the new wine into old wineskins (Mt.
This is an updated version of a piece I first published on 6th December 2019.
In 2013, Andrew Lincoln published Born of a Virgin? Reconceiving Jesus in the Bible, Tradition, and Theology, presents a case for denying the virgin birth (more properly, the virginal conception) of Jesus.
As Jason Engwar says,
…‘Lincoln is a supernaturalist who accepts traditional Christian concepts like the deity of Jesus and his resurrection, but rejects other traditional positions, such as Biblical inerrancy and the historicity of the virgin birth.
In Born of a Virgin?, Andrew Lincoln expresses the view that Luke, in the early part of his account of the circumstances of Jesus’ birth, acknowledges the tradition that Jesus was conceived without the biological participation of a man.
But thereafter, according to Lincoln, all the signs are that Luke and his sources regarded Jesus’ conception and birth as being through entirely normal means.
God honours his word. As John Stott has written:
…‘Behind every word is the person who speaks it, and the authority he possesses or lacks. God’s Word has power for the sole reason that it is God who speaks it. His Word is creative (“for he spoke and it was done,” Ps. 33:9), productive (“my word … shall not return to me empty but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,” Isa. 55:11), and redemptive (“it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe,” 1 Cor.
Some extracts from Chapter 1 of Expository Preaching: Principles and Practice, by Haddon Robinson (1st ed., 1980). (The headings are my own)
Is preaching past its sell-by date?
‘The word is out in some circles that preaching should be abandoned. The moving finger has passed it by and now points to other methods and ministries that are more “effective” and in tune with the times.’
Preaching takes place in a context of communication over-load
‘Preaching takes place in an overcommunicated society.…
John 1:51 – “I tell all of you the solemn truth—you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”
The allusion is to the experience of Jacob (later re-named Israel), Gen 28:17. While on his way to see Laban, he had a dream in which he say angels ascending and descending between heaven and earth. He concluded that ‘the Lord is in this place’, and named it ‘Bethel’, meaning ‘the house of God’.…
