Just how the writer has such insight is amazing. Perhaps when mpc needs to employ someone else we should ask this guy first. Especially if he is happy to be paid $5 a week.

Brad Pitt's hardly in it and it's mostly in french :-)

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And as for being one of those 8 voices from the fairer sex, what am i supposed to say?…thankyou…. but i guess i should be happy i've retained a coveted spot. :P (insert snarky comment here about you never sending any traffic my way – :P)
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And as for being one of those 8 voices from the fairer sex, what am i supposed to say?…thankyou…. but i guess i should be happy i've retained a coveted spot. :P (insert snarky comment here about you never sending any traffic my way – :P)
My recent post So you want to know what we wished we'd known: Goannatree's guide to Surviving Graduate School

Hey everyone, I've decided to kill the toolbar and dropdown menu for now, so unless you really loved them and want to see them back it's a case of the tribe has (un)spoken.

But if things are working properly – each of my replies (if I hit reply on the comment I'm replying to) will come in under the comment I am replying to.

PS: Robyn's probably going to be your best asset during college….you should read the extra hints on my "Things we Wish We'd known when we started Graduate School" post…

You are spot on with the FCF from Bryan Chapell.

I'm not worried so much about a timely word to the congregation's needs – which I agree would be a pretty crazy thing to aim for – I'm more interested in being able to remove my "just go and evangelise" blinkers that seem to come out in every sermon I give. Perhaps I only ever get to preach on passages that are actually urging people to evangelise…

For the record – here is the text of my sermon from the weekend – http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AWOncFHgCpAEZGN...

Here, for those who can't be bothered reading the whole thing, is my application part (well the substantive part, I had application points the whole way through)…

But this morning I want to challenge you on three things – firstly – do you know the gospel? Apollos, the twelve men in Ephesus, the sons of Scheva and Demetrius all thought they had the message right. And they were wrong. For some, like Apollos, the correction was gentle. The sons of Scheva had to have the truth was beaten into them painfully and embarrassingly – and Demetrius and his idol makers will ultimately face their maker – who looks nothing like Artemis. Knowing the gospel is important. The gospel is powerful to save. If you don't know Jesus – then the message is simple – Jesus Christ is not just an interesting historical figure. He's not even a wise teacher or some normal human leader. Jesus is God made flesh, he came to earth to guide us back into a relationship with God. None of us can earn that relationship on our own. Through his death and resurrection we can, by believing, restore our relationship with him and have the hope of eternal life.

Secondly, I want to challenge you this morning to ask yourself: is the gospel my passion? Do you recognise the power of the gospel? Perhaps this morning you're more like Demetrius – passionate about your profit and loss columns. Perhaps you're worshipping an idol and not really recognising the power of the gospel. If this is you then you need to repent – you need to turn from those idols and follow the living Lord Jesus.

Perhaps this morning you're a person of conflicted passions – maybe you know the Gospel and it's power. Maybe you trust Jesus – but are you showing your passion? Do people look at you and know that you have been bought at a price by God through the blood of Jesus? If the answer is no then you need to rethink your priorities. If the answer is yes – then that's terrific – because it's in people living with Jesus as Lord and the gospel as their priority that others come to know God. We see that in this passage as people are lovingly introduced to the power of the gospel – and while we can't expect that power to manifest itself in the same way that it did for the people in Ephesus – we can expect the gospel to have a powerful effect on people's lives – and in the long term it has the power to save people from everlasting death.

The gospel is powerful to save – but in every case in our passage today it had to be taught first. Living with the gospel as your passion is hard – it would have been much easier for Paul to talk tentmaking – nobody was ever stoned almost to death for talking about tents, nobody has, to my knowledge, ever caused a riot by suggesting that one form of canvas stitching was superior to another… living for the gospel is hard – but it's worth it. If we're to love the people around us like Paul loves the Ephesians – weeping and working with our all so that they may be saved – then we need to be living examples of Jesus' love. This is a matter of life and death. The people around us need the gospel in order to be saved from eternal punishment. They need the gospel in order to meet Jesus – the risen saviour of the world.

Thanks for stopping by. I enjoy your blog – and having visited almost daily for a while finally added it to my pile of subscriptions this week.

Love the factoring in depravity idea.

Application is hard. But I ask myself the same questions each time I preach – what is the human depravity factor in the original audience that the author is addressing in this text. And how is Jesus the answer to that problem.

Build the tension with the problem. Make me as the listener feel it. And then relieve the tension with the answer – Jesus.

The application will usually be the same – turn to/trust in/believe in/love/follow Jesus. But the difference will be in the thing that we are turning from.

I think I am following Jesus perfectly. But I'm not. So I need the preacher to identify those things or people in my life that I'm yet to turn from. That's where the idolatry stuff which Keller et al bang on about is helpful. What or who is replacing Jesus as my object of desire/worship.

I like the impossible application too – but I don't think it works every week. I like the Perkins quote.

Tim Adeney has done a great short introduction (with a five-step process in 200 words) of how to move from text to application here: http://timadeney.wordpress.com/2009/11/11/teachin...

(As an example, Mark Driscoll is especially good at points iii–v; less good on i and ii)

If you're after a more long-winded, overly theoretical, and less useful thing, you can see my post here: http://leslumieres-au.blogspot.com/2008/02/framew... (and the earlier posts in the series, if you're a masochist)

“Perkins in his Arte of Prophecying distinguished the different classes of people that the preacher could expect to be addressing in any ordinary congregation:
the ignorant and unteachable, who needed the equivalent of a bomb under their seats.
the ignorant but teachable, who needed orderly instruction in what Christianity is all about.
the knowledgeable but humbled, who needed to be given a sense of sin
the humbled and desperate, who needed to be grounded in the gospel
believers going on with God, who needed building up, and
believers who had fallen into error, intellectual and moral, and needed correction
…
To Perkins classfication of types of people we must now add the list of types of applications that the Westminster Directory for Publick Worship gives. … In form they are inferential and logical, being structured thus:
‘Since this is true (‘this’ being the truth just taught), you must
(1) be sure of the following further truths which it implies;
(2) abjure the folllowing errors, which it contradicts;
(3) do such-and-such good things, which it requires;
(4) stop doing, or avoid doing, such-and-such bad things, which it forbids;
(5) take to yourself the encouragement which it offers;
(6) ask yourself where you stand spiritually in the light of it, and how far you are living by it.’
The quality of a preacher depended ulitmately, in the Puritan estimate, on the clarity, wisdom, authority and searchingness that hearers found in his application.” (from his "A Quest for Godliness")