Carl Trueman writes on Martin Luther And The Power Of Preaching;
We don’t listen to sermons to hear about us.
An excerpt:
Luther’s sermons first of all remind us of a very important truth: we are not the center of the universe; God is. And we are not so unique that we need tailor-made personal answers to our greatest problem. The answer is always the same: God’s promise in Christ. Thus, preachers and congregants alike must understand that the most important thing one can hear on a Sunday is not some pep talk on how to have a good marriage or how to cultivate an appropriate self-image or how to raise one’s children. The most important thing is to hear what God has done in Christ and then to grasp that message by faith.
That is a great antidote to Christianity’s capitulation to particularist conceits of the contemporary culture as evidenced in the dethroning of preaching by placing it on par with, or even below, one-to-one counselling.
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