Be Careful How You Listen To Sermons
The spiritual discipline of listening to your pastor.
Sunday morning is a pivotal time for the New Testament Christian. God has promised to speak to his people through the preaching of the Word. Because of that, we should listen well.
Why This Series Matters
I want to do a series on the spiritual discipline of listening to sermons. One of the reasons I want to do this is that, as Protestants who value the centrality of the Word of God, the primary means of grace in the believer’s life is the preached Word. And yet surprisingly little to no attention is paid to how believers should receive the Word. In the absence of this instruction, what can end up happening is that the focus turns to the quality of the sermon being offered. At worst, this can lead Christians to adopt a consumerist mentality when it comes to preaching. Post-church conversations can revolve around critiquing sermons like we’re leaving Yelp reviews. How did he do? How does it compare to my favourite Spotify pastor? How would I rank the sermon on a five-star scale? There is truly nothing wrong with having thoughts about preaching. But there is a problem when the weight of conversation significantly tilts away from the application of the preached Word to our lives.
I was recently blessed to read a book by Jay Adams, the founder of the biblical counselling movement, titled A Consumer’s Guide to Preaching. I also revisited Christopher Ash’s Listen Up, a book that was distributed to members of our church years ago. Focusing on the very thing that I hope to accomplish in this blog series, namely, how to listen to a sermon in a way that builds faith, increases virtue, and honours God and his people.
Listening is a Life or Death Business
The first thing that needs to be addressed is that we must be cautious about how we listen to sermons.
For Christopher Ash, “the way we listen is a life or death business… listening to sermons is a risky business. It can damage your health or take you closer to final rescue. What it won’t do is leave you unchanged.”1 The Great Preacher Charles Simeon, namesake of the Simeon Trust, says something similar when he says that every sermon “increases either our salvation or condemnation.”2
As Jay Adams says, “the Word of the Lord is always effective. It either softens or hardens hearts. The responsibility to receive it in faith for blessing rests on all who hear. As a listener, you must do some things that a preacher cannot do for you.”3 For Adams, this is a primordial problem for humanity. After all, in the garden, “preaching was not the problem; the problem had to do with listening! Adam ignored God’s Word and listened to Satan instead. The issue, from Eden on, has always been whether people will listen to God or someone else.”4
Consider Carefully How You Listen
In the New Testament, Jesus agrees with this assessment. It matters how we listen. After He gives the parable of the sower in Luke chapter 8, He says, “ consider carefully how you listen.” In fact, if we listen in one way, we will be given more. But if we listen in another way, then what we already have will be taken from us. Interestingly, in Matthew 13:9, Jesus says: “Whoever has ears, let him hear.” That same expression is repeated at the conclusion of each of the letters to the seven churches in Revelation. God expects his people to pay attention to what he says.5
Of course, the natural question to ask is: what does this have to do with a Sunday sermon? Well, everything according to Jay Adams. After all, it was Jesus who said, “Whoever hears you, hears me, and whoever rejects you, rejects me” (Luke 10:16). For Adams, who is merely echoing the Protestant reformers, “Hearing preachers who preach his word are hearing Christ; rejecting preachers who preach his word are rejecting Christ.”6 After all, this is why St. Paul says, “How can they hear without a preacher?” in Romans 10:14. This is how God speaks to his people: it’s through his Word and, in particular, his preached Word.
When Sunday Morning Becomes a Comparison Game
This is where a consumeristic comparison game can be spiritually risky. If our reflex is to evaluate our pastor against our favourite online preacher, we run the risk of never actually receiving the preached Word as the Word of God, right here, right now.
“Jesus governs his church by the written Word of Scripture. The main way that he does this is not by the written Word being read but by the written Word being preached and taught. Of course, it is good when people who can read do read and study the Bible, but it is vital that all people with that exception hear the Bible preached.”
This has much biblical support.
In Acts 17, we learn about Paul preaching in Thessalonica. When Paul reflects on this in his first letter to the Thessalonians, he says in 2:13, that when the Thessalonians received the Word of God, they accepted it not as the Word of men but for what it really is: the Word of God. Christopher Ash points out that “of course the words they heard were spoken by human preachers, but they recognized that these words were at the same time the actual words of God. And it is not just Apostles like Paul who can speak in this manner. Peter says that if anyone speaks, he should do it as one speaking the very words of God” (1 Peter 4:11).7 And the context in 1 Peter is Bible teaching in a local church.
What the Reformers Understood About Preaching
This is one of the reasons why the Second Helvetic Confession (1566) surprisingly says that the preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God. Of course, the author, Heinrich Bullinger, didn’t mean that preachers are inspired like the Apostles. What it means is that when a preacher faithfully explains the Bible, God Himself is speaking to the congregation. We must also remember the context of the Second Helvetic Confession. Bullinger is writing, in part, in response to the Radical Reformation. What was key about the Radical Reformation was that they downplayed the external Word (preaching) in favour of internal private revelation. However, the key for Bullinger is the preaching of the gospel in the church. That is the primary way God meets His people.
Sometimes I wonder what Bullinger would say about podcasts. While it’s amazing that we have access to faithful preaching beyond the local church today, it’s essential to recognize that this same access can shape our expectations and listening in ways we often overlook. More on that in another post.
Lest we think that Bullinger and the Second Helvetic Confession are saying something atypical, consider that John Calvin himself said in a sermon on Ephesians 4:11-12: “When a man has climbed up into the pulpit, it is that God may speak to us by the mouth of a man.” The Westminster Larger Catechism in Question 160 asks how we are to hear the Word preached. Its answer is that we are to listen to it as “the Word of God” with “reverence” and “meekness.”
It matters how we listen to sermons.
The Ulster Revival and the Art of Listening
In 1859, a revival swept through Wales and Ulster, Ireland. A visiting preacher spoke with Reverend William Johnston of Townsend Street Presbyterian Church in Belfast, a pivotal figure in this move of God. The visiting preacher remarked to Johnston, “The ministers are preaching a great deal better than they used to do.” Johnston responded: “Perhaps the people are listening a great deal better than they used to.”8
Indeed.
Most of you reading this post will go to church this Sunday. A question for us to ask ourselves is, “What would it look like for me to listen to this sermon if I truly believed that God was going to speak to me today?”
Christopher Ash, Listen Up! A Practical Guide to Listening to Sermons (London: The Good Book Company, 2009), Kindle edition, loc. 47.
Ash, Kindle edition, loc. 361.
Jay E. Adams, A Consumer’s Guide to Preaching (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1991), 12.
Adams, 11.
Adams, 9.
Adams, 11.
Ash, Kindle edition, loc. 75.
Adams, 5. See the quote in particular here: Peter Hammond, “The Ulster Revival of 1859,” Livingstone Fellowship, accessed January 3, 2026, https://www.livingstonefellowship.co.za/reformation--revival/the-ulster-revival-of-1859.