{"id":2068,"date":"2022-12-28T03:15:00","date_gmt":"2022-12-28T03:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=2068"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:33:46","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:33:46","slug":"two-sermons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=2068","title":{"rendered":"TWO SERMONS"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For years I worked alongside a pastor who made this claim about his own preaching: &#8220;I have only two sermons &#8211; maybe three &#8211; that I preach.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He did not say this as a confession.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It was a boast.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I wanted to tell him that I had noticed this.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That <i>everyone <\/i>noticed this.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I loved the guy. His heart was in the right place. But preaching the same two sermons over and over? What a missed opportunity.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">(I hesitate to say &#8220;dereliction of duty&#8221; only out of friendship.)\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It is not as though a preacher ever lacks material.\u00a0 God&#8217;s word contains more wisdom than a person could grasp in a lifetime.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And there&#8217;s no time for slacking. Paul&#8217;s command to Timothy is meant for us as well: &#8220;Train yourself for godliness&#8221;. (I Tim 4:7)\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For the sake of the believers in their care, preachers must enter the pulpit each week with fresh teaching.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For years I worked alongside a pastor who made this claim about his own preaching: &#8220;I have only two sermons &#8211; maybe three &#8211; that I preach.&#8221; He did not say this as a confession.\u00a0 It was a boast. I wanted to tell him that I had noticed this.\u00a0 That everyone noticed this.\u00a0 I loved [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2068"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2068\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2069,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2068\/revisions\/2069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}