How Do We Hear Preaching?

How Do We Hear Preaching?

Taken from the Pastor Ricky’s sermon How to Listen to a Sermon, March 30, 2025

1. Listen reverently  

2 Timothy 4:1-2 - I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word…

Don’t approach it lightly. Paul does not suggest here, he charges Timothy. And he brings to the fore the holy eternal realities that add soberness to our work. Timothy is to remember what he does in the pulpit he does in God’s presence, he does in front of the judge of all things, that we will soon appear before him, and that his kingdom and judgments will last forever. 

We are not to approach the Word or the preaching of the Word flippantly. If it is holy for the preacher it is holy for the listener. 

Do approach with reverence. We lean forward into the holy moment. When we open his book God is speaking and we should lean into that. 

We all come in distracted. We all have our phones next to us with a world of sports scores and social updates. But this charges us to do our best.

Let me suggest something to you: Treat the whole service with reverence. Do your best to arrive ready for the call to worship. Put your phone out of your grasp. Grip your Bible. Do your best to be focused, attentive, etc. And don’t leave until the service is over.

2. Listen inconveniently 

2 Timothy 4:2 - Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching.

Don’t listen only when convenient. Paul is charging Timothy that there will be seasons he’s ready to preach and seasons he isn’t. Seasons you preach as planned and seasons you wake up after a tragedy and have to preach comfort and peace. 

But similarly there will be seasons in our lives when our hearing will not be convenient. When we have infants who don’t sleep. When we get off the night shift. When we have crisis and difficulty in life. When we are dead tired. 

Do listen in all seasons. If Timothy is to preach in all seasons we are to listen in all seasons. When we think we’re doing fine and don’t need to hear it, we listen. When we think we’re too burdened and beat up to hear it, we listen. 

Let me encourage you to build your weekend around the Word rather than planning your weekend and trying to fit in a service. Kids will push on this commitment, first with sleep schedules, then with sports, then perhaps with boredom. But the best gift for your kids is a parent that is being shaped by the Word. 

3. Listen painfully 

2 Timothy 4:3 - For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions,

“A good preacher is one who “gets it straight, and gives it straight” - Hughes

Don’t listen with itchy ears. I love this image. And Paul is saying that we all get an itch at times to disobey the word, to explain away the word, to say that the word doesn’t say what it looks like it says. So when you get that itch you go find someone who will tell you want you want to hear.  

Social Media companies have us figured out. Once they zero in on your political or religious views they will keep serving you content. Someone asked, “Why not give them a mix?” Answer: “Because people don’t want to hear it and won’t click it.” 

Do listen when it hurts. He contrasts itchy ear teaching with “sound” teaching, literally “healthy” teaching. Paul is telling Timothy to teach the Scriptures even when what they say is unpopular. How much more then should we be willing to listen to teaching from the Bible that is unpopular. 

I joke that the Bible is always an equal-opportunity offender. In the first century the Bible was criticized for having a high view of women, today people say its view is too low. In the first century, the Bible told a slave master to forgive his bondservant from running away, today people say it was a tool of oppression. Here are some areas: 

• Views of Gender – What does it mean to be a man or woman? 

• Views of Children – Why are children a blessing? How do we raise them? 

• Views of Sexuality  – How do we think about sex, same-sex relationships, transgenderism? 

• Views of Dignity – How do we think about the unborn, the elderly, the disabled? 

• Views of Money – How do we think about money, materialism, purchases, debt? 

• Views of Work and Vocation – How do we consider career and work? 

• Views of Self – How do we view our identity and self and emotions? 

In each area, the Bible will be an equal opportunity offender but we must listen. 

How do you respond when you hear something you don’t like? Do you flinch and try to explain it away, or sit and receive the Word and examine it? Do you go searching for people just to agree with what you want to do? 

Answer: We listen like it’s the Word of God, because it is.

4. Listen safely 

2 Timothy 4:4 - …and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.

Don’t wander off. This phrase is such a great picture – wandering off. What is this wandering from the path? It is into “myths” which is a category for speculation and being sidetracked. Why is this there? Because Paul has seen a pattern – Christians will wander off the path after strange teachings. We want to know the “secret history of the Bible” or find the Bible code or secret scrolls about angels or the magic formula for end times or one of a hundred other things. We want to have the secret knowledge others don’t, our brains are tickled. 

Do keep to the main path. Paul’s picture is that the clear teaching of Scripture is a trustworthy main path. Stay on the path. Stay to the clear teaching of the Bible. I think a good rule of thumb is to spend the majority of our time as Christians where the Bible is most clear. Now, do I enjoy a discussion about the giants in the Bible or the Leviathan – totally. But if my diet becomes that I’ve wandered from the main path. 

Are you wandering off? Has anything optional or ancillary pulled your focus from what is clear and central?

5. Listen gratefully 

2 Timothy 4:5 - But as for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.

Paul gives Timothy several rapid-fire charges: be sober-minded and clear-headed, endure and persevere when it’s hard, never stop sharing the gospel with those who don’t know Christ, and fulfill the ministry God has given you. A heavy but beautiful charge. 

Don’t neglect the gift of a faithful Bible teacher. Before I taught the Bible regularly I underestimated the time and attention it takes to teach the Bible well. Then Tom brought me into his sermon prep, I got to see how he labored over the text. It had become normal that “Yup, he just gets up there every week.” No, he climbs a mountain every week. 

Do steward the gift of faithful teachers. Knowing that the charge is heavy, that it is not easy, we should steward those can teach the Bible. Preaching on Sundays is primarily in view here so let me encourage that when one of our faithful older guys preaches, thank them for the labor. When a new guy gets into the pulpit for the first time, thank them for the labor. And beyond Sunday mornings if you benefit from walking with an older mom as a young mom through the word, thank them. If you benefit from a faithful counselor’s handling of the word, thank them.