Preaching: Movie Style (Pt. 4)

Why do a movie series? Reason number four is that it teaches people to exegete culture.

God speaks to us through the bible, and so it’s critical that we teach people to exegete the bible. They need to understand how to hear God speaking through His Word and how to interpret and apply what He’s saying.

God also speaks to us through culture. He may want us to hear his message through the lyrics of a song, or the stroke of a painter’s brush, or a dance in the Nutcracker Suite. If that’s true (and we could argue whether it is, but I would again point to Paul’s sermon at Mars Hill in Acts 17 as an example) but if it is, isn’t it critical that we teach people to exegete culture? Don’t they need to understand how to hear God speaking through culture and how to interpret and apply what He’s saying?

How do we do that? Well, in a variety of ways, and one of those is a movies series. When you preach on a movie that a person has seen, and you point out how it’s an expression of the gospel, or of the destructive power of sin, or of our desperate need for God, or for how God wants children to treat their parents, or of the addictive nature of sin – the person who saw the movie will think, “Wait, why didn’t I see that? Man, there was more going on in that movie than just entertainment. I could have learned something about my spiritual life from that movie. I need to pay more attention to what God might be saying.” See what happened? That person learned, at least a little, to exegete culture. And that’s a good thing.

Next time we’ll talk about some practical ideas on how to do a movie series effectively. Until then, it’s time to change the settings on your radio.

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