In a recent Christianity Today article titled "Flipping the 40-Minute Sermon," the author's argument goes like this. Attention spans have shriveled and what we think of as a sermonic monologue should be split up and pastors should actually do their main teaching online in bite-sized segments throughout the week and use the gathered church on Sundays as a place to foster personal interaction and fellowship.

Pastor John, what do you think of flipping the 40-minute sermon, of making the sermon less significant or insignificant on Sundays? Well interesting that you should ask that because Bob Glenn, my friend out at Redeemer Bible Church, sent me a notice about this article. So I read it and he wanted to know what I thought and I had just in fact listened to a 40-minute, a great 40-minute message from Bob on Hosea so I could see why he was concerned about this.

I wrote him, I said, "Oh Bob, this suggestion rolls around every 20 years or so. Oh poor sermon on life support. The sermon's days are numbered. Let's all get participatory." I get weary frankly of these kinds of suggestions for sermons. But here's the main problem. The author of that article I think is committing a category confusion.

He was comparing the sermon to the lecture method of teaching in a college class compared to what happens in a more Socratic or participatory method. And I agree with that. I think that's exactly right. When I teach in college or in seminary, I don't want to mainly lecture. I want to teach by forcing students to ask questions, to think for themselves.

But here's the catch. The sermon in the context of worship is not a lecture. Worship is not a classroom. The category for thinking about it is not pedagogical. It's not educative. Those are secondary. Pedagogy and education are secondary in the worship service. The category is supernatural encounter with the living God as the preacher worships over the Word and draws the people into an experience of God Almighty through His proclamation.

That's the category. And if you try to just replace that category with a lecture category, then her argument is going to make sense. All we're trying to do here is improve people's understanding of some theological truths. Well, that's just not the main point of preaching. So the aim of preaching is not first education but encounter.

Second Timothy 4.2 says to Timothy, "Preach the Word." And the context is one of worship there. It's one of the people of God, not just proclamation to the world, but the people of God. "Keruxon ton logon," and a kerux is not a teacher. A kerux is a herald, a town crier.

So sermons are, "Hear ye, hear ye, hear ye, the King of the universe has a message. Everyone who bows the knee to Him will be forgiven all their sins and there will be a treaty and they will be free to be a part of the King's kingdom evermore." You announce.

You don't first explain. Now, if a little child comes up to you and says, "I don't know what the word 'treaty' means," then you're going to explain that. And you might explain it in the sermon itself. But the explanation is secondary. The announcement, the heralding, the proclamation of the living God, calling His people to the fullest enjoyment of His kingdom is the main purpose of the sermon.

I call it "expository exaltation." That's with a "u," exaltation. I'm exalting in God over His Word, and I'm drawing people into my exaltation over the truth that I'm preaching. And there are other times, Tony, in the church when what this author was commending is exactly what should happen. There should be lots and lots of discussion and lots of provocative back and forth and lots of testing and proving and wrestling and struggling.

That's what classes are for and seminars are for and conferences are for and small groups are for. And it's just sad that anyone would suggest that this one hour or hour and a half a week in which we as a collective people gather to stand before the living God and lift our voices in praise to Him, confess our sins, and hear Him powerfully address us through the voice of an anointed person, that that would be replaced somehow by all the other good things that are happening in the church.

So my response is, let preaching be preaching. Let it be expository exaltation, a profound meeting with the living God. Very good. And so does this mean that there's something missing when we listen to a 40-minute sermon through earbuds, through an iPhone, and we're not with the gathered local church?

It is, but I would say this. The nature of that expository exaltation does not cease to be that when it's listened to on the internet. It still is that, and a person can be drawn into that kind of heralding. Yes, you can't reproduce the actual collection of the people of God gathered in that moment of worship there, but that doesn't mean that the only kind of communication that should happen through the internet is a more teaching or pedagogically back-and-forth kind of effort, because expository exaltation really is a man in a worship setting exalting, worshiping over a text, and that kind of encounter with the living God can come through that medium.

Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this podcast. If you have questions, please email those to us at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org. At desiringgod.org, you'll find thousands of other free resources from John Piper. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening.