Sublime

An FCF will remain faithful to a text and identify powerful purposes in a sermon if a preacher uses these three successive questions to develop the FCF: 1. What does the text say? 2. What spiritual concern(s) did the text address (in its context)? 3. What spiritual concerns do listeners share in common with those to (or about) whom the text was wri

The FCF sets the tone, determines the approach, and organizes the information in a sermon to reveal this divine provision and direct our response to it. Thus, the FCF is usually directly stated or strongly implied in the introductory portion of a sermon.

Lastly, most sane men believe, and all sane men in practice assume, that they have a power of choice and responsibility for action.

“Our mission is to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the

If both logic and Scripture make it apparent that motivations of selfish fear and gain are a menace to holiness,35 why does the debate persist over whether a divine threat of retaliation or a promise of grace better stimulates holiness? The simple answer is that preachers feel the need for a corrective. We wonder how we can compel others, or even o

Not this: God justifies his people by his grace. (Note that the wording is in the third person—the truth applies to “them,” those justified people out there somewhere.) But this: God justifies you by his grace. Or even better: We should rejoice that God justifies us by grace.

conclude with chapter five by noting what Edwards’s view of conversion led him to do in his own church, demonstrating that Edwards was no ivory-tower thinker, but a pastor who lived his convictions even to the bitter—but scripturally faithful—end.

Then v. ii, 12, I would say, show us the character of the Christian as proved by the reaction of the world to him. We

Believers are “new creation[s]” commissioned with the “ministry of reconciliation,” sent forth as “Christ’s ambassadors”