2015 has been a great year here at Prince on Preaching. We had almost a 100% increase in our traffic over 2014! Thank you to all our readers for sharing and retweeting our content over the past year. We hope and pray that your faith and ministry has been strengthened because of the content you find here at Prince on Preaching.
Here are the Top 5 most read posts during 2015.
A Sample Christ-centered, Gospel-focused Wedding Sermon and Vows
Dr. David Prince provides the full text for a sample wedding sermon.
Spurgeon on Christians who Rail Against the Times
The current conspiracy theory, sky-is-falling, outrage culture can’t be reconciled with what the Bible says about living in the already of Christ’s Kingdom. Christians ought to be the last people to fall prey to doom and gloom hopeless theology, but sadly, it is thriving in contemporary evangelicalism. The problem is exacerbated by our minute-by-minute social media news cycle. The prophets of outrage, despair, and conspiracy often position themselves as courageous truth-tellers. But do not be fooled: the evangelical outrage industry is often more about building donor lists than it is about truth.
You Aren’t as Smart as You Think You Are . . . So Don’t Manuscript Your Sermons: A Friendly Response to Jason Dees
My good friend, Jason Dees, pastor of Valleydale Baptist Church in Birmingham Alabama, wrote a short piece in an outstanding edition of the 9 Marks Journal (Expositional Preaching Spring 2015) entitled “You Aren’t as Smart as You Think You Are . . . So Manuscript Your Sermons”. I encourage you to read the entire thought provoking journal. I am responding to Jason’s piece because, after 10 years of teaching preaching at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, I see the issue from the opposite direction of my good friend. I think the person who can preach effectively from a manuscript is the rare gifted exception.
A Simple Guide to Reading and Applying the Bible with Jesus as the Hero
This guide is designed for Sunday school teachers, home Bible study leaders, and the Christian who is trying to be faithful to read and apply the Bible on a consistent basis. Though I am a seminary professor and a pastor, this article is not written for an academic or technical audience and it seeks to avoid all technical vocabulary. My goal is for you to gain a Jesus-centered, gospel-focused mentality while reading the Scripture. Every Christian is called to read, interpret, and apply the Bible to honor and glorify Jesus Christ. I hope that many find this a helpful tool to that glorious end, and if so, they use it to help others as well.
Should We Only Forgive Those Who Repent?
I preached a sermon on forgiveness from Luke 17:1-10 and received the following question afterward and thought the answer might be helpful to others.
Question:
I have heard it taught that if a person does not seek forgiveness (repent) that we are not required to forgive, do you agree with this? Can a person refuse to forgive and not harbor sinful bitterness? Does the picture of salvation requiring repentance before forgiveness apply or is it different and not applicable?
Answer:
Good question. And an obvious one that comes up as you carry the discussion of forgiveness forward. It is also a topic that I feared many people overcomplicate. Some want to have a simplistic view of forgiveness that doesn’t take people’s actions and consequences for those actions seriously, but others want to reduce the definition of forgiveness by coming up with technical arguments as a justification to harbor unforgiveness. Neither approach adequately deals with the biblical data.
