In his booklet “Listen Up!”, Christopher Ash lays out seven ingredients for healthy sermon listening. Let’s look at each of those, along with the steps/questions he suggests for getting after each of those points:
Expect God to speak.
- Look up next Sunday’s Bible passage and read it at home during the week.
- Pray for next Sunday’s preacher in the middle of the week.
- Pray often for yourself, that, by His Spirit, God will grow in you a heartfelt expectation that God Himself will speak to you as his word is preached.
- If you can, try not to come to the sermon exhausted, but to come rested and ready to pay close attention.
- Deliberately quiet your mind and heart before the sermon and say to yourself: “This is when God speaks to me.” Pray again: “Lord, speak to me. I am listening.”
Admit God knows better than you.
- Which parts of this week’s preached Bible passage challenge your beliefs or lifestyle
- Does the Bible clearly teach these things?
- Pray for the work of God’s Spirit to enable you to submit to what the Bible clearly says, and to help you to change.
Check that the preacher says what the passage says.
- Read the passage or listen carefully when it is read.
- What do you think is the main point of the passage? This may be signaled by repetition of something important, or by being in the punchline (for example, of a parable), or by being the theme that runs through the passage. Is the main thrust of the sermon the same as the main point of the passage?
- Are there any surprises in the passage, i.e. things the Bible says that we wouldn’t expect it to say, or that it says in ways we wouldn’t expect it to say them
- Who was the passage originally written or spoken to? Are we in the same situation as them? In particular, if they were before Christ, we need to be careful what parallels we draw; we can’t simply apply it straight to ourselves. After all, it wasn’t written to us. It was written for us (for our benefit), but not directly to us.
- Why do you think the Bible writer wrote this passage? What is the passage intended to achieve in its hearers
- Pray as Martin Luther used to pray: “Lord, teach me, teach me, teach me.”
Hear the sermon in church.
- Hear the sermon in church: Be physically present, because when we listen to a sermon together, we are accountable to one another for our response.
- Hear the sermon in church: Don’t check out by looking at your phone, whispering to a neighbor, making plans for the day, or drifting into people watching.
Be there week by week.
- Keep count for six months or a year of how many weeks you are in your own local church to hear the sermon. Make a note of the different reasons why you’re not there.
- If you find you’re away more than you realized, and more than you ought to be, take some practical action to make sure you’re there more regularly. Come back from vacation or visiting relatives on a Saturday. And so on.
- Be aware of the others in your local church as you listen to the sermon. Talk to them afterwards, not only about how we should respond as individuals, but about how the Bible passage should shape the church.
- Pray often for the work of God’s Spirit to shape both you as an individual and your church as a body of Christians together.
Do what the Bible says.
- After this week’s sermon, write down all the ways you wish that other people would obey that teaching. Don’t hold back. When you’ve written it all down, tear it up.
- Now let’s get to business. Write down as definitely and precisely as you can some action you need to take to obey this Bible passage. It may be a change of attitude, or an alteration in the way you speak, or some action you need to stop doing, or start doing. Whatever it is, write it down.
- In a week’s time, and then in a month’s time, look at what you’ve written and ask yourself whether the Bible passage made any difference to you.
- Pray, pray and pray again for God to work obedience in you to his word.
Do what the Bible says TODAY—and rejoice!
- Ask yourself how the preached passage shows you an attitude, or words, or actions that need to change.
- Then change – urgently. Pray for grace to enable you to repent.
- Ask yourself in what way the passage encourages you to trust in God and in Christ afresh. Then resolve, urgently, to put that fresh trust into your life as God helps you.
- Enjoy preaching, not as entertainment but as God’s regular, gracious invitation to walk with him, rejoicing in a clear conscience.
- Remember, God loves to change us through the preached word!
If we really believe that God’s word is living and active, our source of light and life and salvation, a treasure beyond any of the wisdom of this world, and if we really believe that God has given “the shepherds and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and for by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes…”, but rather working properly and built up in love, then let’s press in and actively listen well.