Sermon Repeats! (Not Really)

You may feel like you have church-deja-vu. If you pay careful attention to the bulletin, you will notice that the sermon titles for today are exactly the same as two weeks ago. Your first reaction might be, "Wow, that new preacher is already out of sermons!" Actually, I did not preach the sermons that were posed in the bulletin two weeks ago. If you remember, we were covered in snow and ice and did not meet that Sunday night. Also, because it was an unusual Sunday I changed my morning sermon.

However, the unique situation of the same sermon titles being printed in two separate bulletins got me thinking about "sermon repeats." It is no real secret that sometimes preachers repeat sermons. Often when I am asked to preach in gospel meetings I will assemble a "greatest hits" collection of sermons that I have already tested on a previous audience.

I once heard a preacher preach the exact same sermon two consecutive Sundays. It was almost verbatim. I'm still not sure whether he was trying to see if we were paying attention or whether he had a momentary lapse in memory. Most of us in the audience could recite the sermon as he was preaching it.

An older preacher once gave me the advice, "If a sermon is good enough to preach once, it is good enough to preach again." It is likely that even Jesus sometimes repeated his sermons. Have you ever noticed that Matthew's "Sermon the Mount" (Matthew 5-7) and Luke's "Sermon on the Plain" (Luke 6) are very similar except Luke's version is much shorter? It is likely that rather than Luke editing the sermon, he is actually recording another occasion where Jesus preached some of the same material, but in a more concise fashion. Apparently even Jesus had "sermon repeats."

Educators know that repetition is one of the keys to the learning process. We are more likely to remember something if we hear it numerous times. We often need to be reminded even of beliefs that are firmly established in our minds (2 Peter 1:12-15; 3:1). Even mature Christian need to go back and sing the "books-of-the-Bible song" and review the key passages about the fundamentals of the Christian's life and attitude. Usually we catch things the second time around when we missed them on the first occasion. Even the most observant Bible reader will see things that he or she never saw before even after reading the same passage hundreds of times.

When you see the sermon topics for today, don't get nervous you are not going to hear a "sermon repeat." But what if you did?