Overview

The Preaching Suite is new base package from Logos Bible Software designed with tools and resources specifically with preachers in mind.

Some years back, Logos came out with Denominational Base Packages with resources specifically selected from various traditions (e.g., Reformed, Baptist, Methodist, etc.). You might think of the new Preaching Suite something akin to that, except instead of being a base package designed for a particular denomination, its resources are geared towards preaching.

You can break down the Preaching Suite‘s resources as follows:

• A sermon scheduling tool (Sermon Manager).
• Sermon prep and study resources (e.g., commentaries, Bible dictionaries, homiletical resources, Logo’s Factbook, passage guides, preaching workflows, etc.).
• A sermon composition tool (Sermon Builder).
• A sermon delivery tool (Preaching Mode).
• And finally a streamline way to upload and archive your recorded sermons.

The Preaching Suite is available via a monthly subscription; or own it for a one-time fee.

Continue reading →

Our society prizes authenticity, the desire to be “true to oneself.” And coupled with this is an innate longing for community and to be truly known by others.

However, if we’re honest about our “true selves” — that form of ourselves that only we know, what happens in our “inner life,” those thoughts we’d be ashamed of if others knew, the person we are when no one else is looking — there’s an equally true sense in which we don’t want to be known. We don’t want others to know this self, the true self that lies in the deepest recesses of our hearts, you might say. We only want them to know the “me” I want them to know. And so we curate our self-expression, our public face, our performative self. Know me, but only as I want to be known.

But then here’s the quandary: If that’s the “me” they know, am I really known? Does this satisfy my desire to be known?

We have a deep, deep desire to be loved by others. But when we only show others the parts of ourselves we deem lovable, are we truly loved, or is what they love just a parody of our true selves?

You see, we face a dilemma. We long to be known and to be loved. But given the ugliness that exists in the deepest levels of our human hearts we feel must choose between the two: either I will be known or I will be loved, but not both. For if people truly know me, they most certainly will not love me.

Our society says it wants authenticity. But only a shallow form. It wants authenticity without actual transparency. Actual transparency would be devastating to us.

But what if there was one who truly knew us, all our faults and brokenness, and loved us nonetheless, meeting both our deepest desire to be known and our desire to be loved, with neither coming at the expense of the other? Well, this is exactly who God is. He knows all the worst there is to know about us, in fact far worse than we even know about ourselves. Nothing is hidden before his sight. The scriptures say it’s as if we lie naked before him, entirely exposed. And yet he loves us nonetheless—not because he doesn’t know our deepest faults, but despite knowing them. Not first and foremost because we are lovable, but because he is loving.

And this is possible because of the gospel, the good news that in Christ’s death God satisfies the demands of this absolute knowledge of our wrongs by clearing them away at the cross when Christ dies in our place. And this, fueled by God’s love for us.

And not only so, but then God invites us into a community where others are shaped by this same reality. A “gospel-people,” a church. A place where — albeit imperfectly — we can allow ourselves simultaneously to be known and loved by others. A place where we can be honest about our true selves and own our failings because the gospel has already said as much — we’re all sinners, and we know it. There are no surprises. But place where, despite this sin, we love each other nonetheless because, after all, God, has loved each and every one of us despite our sin; and who are we to argue with that?

A God and a place where we can be known and loved. And this is the gospel.

My daughter, nearing 3-years-old, has entered the stage where she’s beginning to take the moral instructions I’ve given her (e.g., rules about how we are to behave) and to apply them to me, in ways that seem to make sense to her… but don’t actually make sense.

I’ll make up an example. Say I tell her, “You need to eat all your vegetables.” Now whether or not she always follows it, she’s absorbed that “moral code.” So let’s say she sees me discarding a rotten carrot from my plate. She objects, “No, daddy! You have to eat all your vegetables!”

It’s cute. She’s not trying to be defiant. Her inherent sense of moral order is showing. In fact, she’s using my own moral code that I myself gave her to instruct me on moral order.

Now, in this case she’s wrong. And I can tell her, “No, we don’t eat rotten vegetables.” But she nonetheless insists in demanding of me adherence to this “moral order” that she’s been taught, forgetting all the while that I’m the one who taught it to her in the first place and so probably knows otherwise. She borrows from my own moral code in order to critique my moral code.

It got me thinking: Isn’t this so much like the objections we make to the supposed immorality of God? We critique God for (as far as we see it) acting unjustly or immorally. “That was wrong of God! I don’t want to worship a God who does that!” All the while, where did we even get this standard of morality to begin with? We have to first believe in a God of morality to even begin critiquing the morality of God. It’s self-defeating.

We can attempt to critique the morality of God. But from where do we get such morality? Who are we to say what is right and wrong? Where do we get the authority to say, “He is wrong”? By what standard? Our own? And from where have we learned such things except from him?

---

(1) My daughter, nearing 3-years-old, has entered the stage where she's beginning to take the moral instructions I've given her (e.g., rules about how we are to behave) and to apply them to me, in ways that seem to make sense to her… but don't actually make sense. …

— Kirk E. Miller (@KirkMiller_) September 10, 2020