Getting the Most Out Of the Vintage Sermons Podcast

Check out an audio version of this post here on Vintage Sermons Podcast.

Later this month (on Sunday, September 27th, to be precise), we will launch our first podcast from Reimagine Faith: The Vintage Sermons Podcast. As the description for the podcast says, "The Vintage Sermons Podcast is dedicated to bringing the preaching of the ancient church to the contemporary church. Your host, Scott H. Carr, Jr., produces weekly audio recordings of historic sermons in English translation from some of the church's best preachers, thinkers, leaders, and Bible teachers such as Chrysostom, Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Barth, and many more. We bring these classic sermons from before the age of audio recording to your podcast app alongside your favorite modern preachers. Our prayer is that hearing these sermons from other times and places will give you fresh insight into Scripture and help you see Jesus more clearly."

In this blog, I wanted to give a short guide for how to listen to and learn from these ancient sermons, but first, it is worth asking, why listen to these old sermons? I can't think of a better answer to this question than one C. S. Lewis already gave. To make my point, I will substitute "sermon" where he originally wrote "book": "Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the [sermons] that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old [sermons]" (10). We all, including our preachers, are shaped by the culture around us. That tunes us to see certain themes in Scripture and blinds us to others. We need to hear from preachers in other historical and cultural settings who noticed things in Scripture and saw Jesus in ways that our culture has trained us to miss. When we listen to them, they teach us to see what God is saying through the Bible that we could not see on our own.

So, how do we learn from these vintage sermons?

1.Pray As You Listen.

The first and most important thing to do is to pray as you listen. These sermons and the individuals who preached them are not perfect. They didn't always get it right, but God used them in powerful ways to reveal Himself to the world as they preached from the Scriptures. So as you listen, talk to Him. Ask Him what new insight He wants to give you. Ask Him to teach you something about His Word you didn't notice before. Ask Him to help you understand Jesus more fully through listening to this sermon. Don't just look at the sermon, but look up to the One the sermon points to.

2.Compare It To Scripture.

As I already said, these preachers will not always be correct. Their culture had its own blind spots, but so do we. We don't have the same blind spots, but we all have blind spots that shape how we read the Bible. When you hear something in a sermon that strikes you as odd, don't dismiss it right away. Pull out your Bible and read it carefully (and prayerfully). Ask if what was said in the sermon lines up with what is in Scripture. Be open to the possibility that the insight that struck you as odd is actually faithful to Scripture and only struck you as odd because it is pointing out a blind spot you have had in reading Scripture. As you think about that insight from the sermon and study the Bible passage in question, you might find the sermon taught you to notice something that was there, but you had never seen before. Or you might find the preacher was speaking from his own cultural blindspot and what he said did not line up with the text. Either way, listening to a sermon with different cultural assumptions drove you to read Scripture more carefully and taught you something about what God was saying.

3.Don't Get Distracted By Historical Details.

Occasionally, you might notice something in a sermon that you don't understand, not because it is a blind spot in how you read the Bible, but because it is referring to a historical detail you aren't familiar with. Don't let that distract you. If you're curious about it, jot down a note to look it up later, but in the moment, continue to focus on what the sermon is saying. Don't let the historical detail take your focus so that you miss what the sermon is saying about who God is. You can always research it later, look on this site for more information as I try to keep up with the most significant topics, comment on the website with your question, or talk with a friend who also listens to the podcast. It can be fun to learn, but the history isn't the point of the podcast. The point of the podcast is to hear how these ancient preachers taught the Bible and spoke about Jesus so we can have a deeper, richer, fuller life with God.

You can find the podcast on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, iHeart Radio, Pandora, Stitcher, Tune In, Deezer, RSS, and wherever you get your podcasts, beginning September 27th! Head over and subscribe to stay up to date with every episode!

Happy listening!

Sources

Lewis, C. S. "Preface." In On the Incarnation, edited by John Behr. St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2011.