from Packer:
How are we to hear sermons as the Word of God land benefit from them in our ongoing relationship with God? In his Christian Directory (1673) Richard Baxter addresses this question in a way that is worth quoting at some length.

Directions for . . . Understanding the Word which you Hear.

I. Read and meditate on the holy Scriptures much in private, and then you will be the better able to understand what is preached on it in public, and to try that doctrine, whether it be of God . . .

II. Live under the clearest, [most]distinct, convincing teaching that you possibly can procure . . . . Ignorant teachers . . . are unlike[ly] to make you men of understanding; as erroneous teachers are unlike[ly] to make you orthodox and sound.

III. Come not to hear with a careless heart, . . . but come with a sense of the unspeakable weight, necessity, and consequence of the holy word which you are to hear: and when you understand how much you are concerned in it, and truly love it, as the word of life, it will greatly help your understanding of every particular truth . . . .

IV. Suffer not vain thoughts or drowsy negligence to hinder your attention . . . be as earnest and diligent in attending and learning, as you would have the preacher be in teaching . . .

VIII. Meditate on what you hear when you come home . . .

VI. Inquire, where you doubt, of those that can resolve and teach you. It showeth a careless mind, and a contempt of the word of God, in most people . . . that never come to ask the resolution of one doubt . . . though they have pastors . . . that have ability, and leisure, and willingness to help them.

Directions for Remembering what you Hear.

I. It greatly helpeth memory to have a full understanding of the matter spoken which you would remember . . . . Therefore labour most for a clear understanding according to the last directions . . . .

III. Method is a very great help to memory . . . . Ministers must not only be methodical . . . but . . . choose that method which is most easy to the hearers to understand and remember . . .

IV. Numbers are a great help to memory . . .

V. Names also and signal words are a great help to memory . . . Therefore preachers should contrive the force of every reason, use, direction, [etc.] as much as may be, into some one emphatical word. (And some do very profitably contrive each of these words to begin with the same letter, which is good for memory . . .) As if I were to direct you to the chiefest helps to your salvation, and should name, 1. Powerful preaching. 2. Prayer. 3. Prudence. 4. Piety. 5. Painfulness. 6. Patience. 7. Perseverance . . . the very names would help the hearers' memory . . .

VII. Grasp not at more than you are able to hold, lest thereby you lose all. If there be more particulars than you can possibly remember, lay hold on some which most concern you, and let go the rest . . . .

VIII. Writing is an easy help for memory . . . .

IX. Peruse what you remember, or write it down, when you come home; and fix it speedily before it is lost . . . Pray over it, and confer on it with others.

X. If you forget the very words, yet remember the main drift . . . And then you have not lost the sermon, though you have lost the words; as he hath not lost his food, that hath digested it, and turned it into flesh and blood.

Directions for Holy Resolutions and Affections in Hearing . . .

II. Remember that ministers are the messengers of Christ, and come to you on his business and in his name . . .

III. Remember that God is instructing you, and warning you, and treating

with you, about no less than the saving of your souls . . . .

VI. Make it your work with diligence to apply the word as you are hearing it . . . You have work to do as well as the preacher, and should all the while be as busy as he: as helpless as the infant is, he must suck when the mother offereth him the breast; if you must be fed, yet you must open your mouths, and digest it, for another cannot digest it for you . . . . Therefore be all the while at work, and abhor an idle heart in hearing, as well as an idle minister.

VII. Chew the cud, and call up all when you come home in secret, and by meditation preach it over to yourselves . . .

IX. Go to Christ by faith, for the quickening of his Spirit . . . Entreat him to . . . open your hearts, and speak to you by his Spirit, that you may be taught of God, and your hearts may be his epistles, and the tables where the everlasting law is written . . .

Directions to bring what we Hear into Practice.

I. Be acquainted with the failings of your hearts and lives, and come on purpose to get directions and helps against those particular failings . . . say when you go out of doors, I go to Christ for physic for my own disease . . .

IV. When you come home, let conscience in secret . . . repeat the sermon to you. Between God and yourselves, consider what there was delivered to you in the Lord's message, that your souls were most concerned in.

V. Hear the most practical preachers you can well get . . . that are still [constantly] urging you to holiness of heart and life, and driving home every truth to practice . . .

VII. Associate yourselves with the most holy, serious, practical Christians.

VIII. Keep a just account of your practice; examine yourselves in the end of every day and week . . . Call yourselves to account every hour, what you are doing and how you do it . . . and your hearts must be watched and followed like unfaithful servants, and like loitering scholars [schoolchildren], and driven on to every duty, like a dull or tired horse.

IX. Above all set your hearts to the deepest contemplations of the wonderful

love of God in Christ, and the sweetness and excellency of a holy life, and the . . . glory which it tendeth to, that your souls may be in love with your dear Redeemer, and all that is holy, and love and obedience may be as natural to you. And then the practice of holy doctrine will be easy to you, when it is your delight.⁷

It seems to me that Baxter covers the entire waterfront here, and I do not see how a single sentence that I have quoted from him can be challenged by anyone who knows that the Bible is the Word of God.

But the contrast between the hard-working, hard-thinking, purposeful way in which Baxter tells us to listen to the Word preached and the aimless, detached, passive frame of mind in which most of us today do listen to sermons could hardly be greater. Baxter's discipline of expecting, focusing, memorizing (writing notes if need be), discussing, praying and applying is at the opposite extreme from our modern habit of relaxing at sermon time, settling back in our seats to see if the preacher's performance will interest and entertain us, and if anything he says will particularly strike us — and if not, then to forget the sermon and to say if asked that we got nothing out of it. But even if the preacher is not operating in full accord with the principles that the present chapter lays down, this casual, unexpectant, prayerless, half-bored way of listening to his messages cannot be right. I remember one or two very elderly Christians in my youth who listened to sermons essentially in Baxter's way, expecting them to yield fodder for a week's meditation and soul nourishment, including applicatory reflections going beyond what the preacher actually said. But this devotional style seems nowadays to have completely died out, so that it needs to be learned all over again, starting very much from scratch. The combined efforts of homiletics professors in seminaries training tomorrow's clergy, senior ministers guiding junior members of their team and preaching pastors leveling with their congregations about what it means for them to preach and for people to hear the Word of God would seem to be needed to get the church back on track at this point. A great deal of work will have to be done if sermons are to be restored to their proper place as a means of grace in our Christian lives.

from chapter 5 of Packer's TRUTH AND POWER book

Romans 14 and the Weak and Strong and Stumbling Block

this is an excerpt from a pdf online entitled Wine in the Bible and in the Church, by G.I. Williamson

Chapter Four - The Weaker Brother
"It is good" says the Apostle Paul "not to eat meat or to drink wine, or do anything
by which your brother stumbles" (Rom. 14:21). This statement is often quoted
by those who would make total abstinence a requirement for the Christian. They
argue that it is the duty of the strong to abstain out of deference to the weak. They
say, in other words, that even a careful and temperate use of wine contradicts this
apostolic principle. It is to this argument that we now direct our attention. We do so
by asking two important questions.

What does Paul mean by the weaker brother in this passage?

And what does he mean when he talks about causing this brother to stumble?

The fact is that Paul means something very different in this phrase "weaker
brother" from what the proponents of total abstinence mean. When they speak of a
weaker brother they mean someone who has a tendency to drink too much. A man
who has been an alcoholic, for example, and is now seeking to remain sober, by
practicing complete abstinence, would be a weaker brother as they use this phrase.
But the weaker brother in Paul's terminology is not a man who tends to drink too
much. To the contrary, he is a man who feels that it would be wrong to drink any
wine at all. He is a man who has a certain scruple of conscience. If certain kinds of
meat and wine were really evil per se, then it would not be necessary to speak of
such people as weaker brothers. But the fact is that there is no meat or wine that is
evil in itself. So the stronger brother is the one who recognizes that this is true. The
weaker brother is weaker because he is mistaken in his conviction. If he eats, or
drinks, he sins. The sin does not lie in the mere physical act of eating or drinking as
such. It lies in the fact that the weaker brother in eating or drinking has violated his
own conscience. For, as Paul says, "whatever is not from faith is sin" (Rom. 14:23).
Paul's definition of the weaker brother is therefore the exact opposite of that which
is propounded by the advocates of the total abstinence position. To put it precisely:
the weaker brother, in Paul's terminology, is someone who holds the total abstinence
position. His weakness is that he erroneously believes that drinking wine is a sin.
From this it can readily be seen that when Paul speaks of causing a brother to
stumble, he doesn't mean anything like the proponents of total abstinence. When
they say that we must not cause our brother to stumble, they simply mean that we
must not do anything that they do not like. We must not engage in any behavior
that is offensive to other believers. Or in other words we must never do anything
that other believers consider to be sin. Now this is not at all what Paul meant.
When he spoke of causing a brother to stumble, he meant an act on our part which
induces our brother to sin—encourages him to act against this scruple that he has
in his conscience. It may well be, of course, that what Paul is saying may—in certain
circumstances— dictate that we must not do something that is intrinsically
lawful. If a certain Christian has been an alcoholic, and now believes that any use
of wine for him would be the path of ruin, then other Christians must certainly
make this their concern. They must be careful that they do not act in such a way as
to encourage him to go against conscience. This does not mean that they must adopt
the rule of his conscience as law.
We can easily see this if we simply notice that Paul also speaks of the religious
observance of days (Rom. 14:6). It is a well-known fact that no day was observed in
the Apostolic Church, by divine commandment, except the Lord's Day (I Cor. 16:1,2;
Gal. 4:9-11). When the Judaizers attempted to impose the observance of other (additional)
days the Apostle strenuously objected (Gal. 4:9-11). Yet in this matter too
Paul had compassion for those who were weaker brothers. The weaker brother in
this instance was someone who felt obligated to observe these other days. (Think
of the Jew who still felt bound by conscience to observe the traditional Jewish feast
days!) The problem, again, was a misinformed conscience that went beyond the
law of the Lord. Does anyone think that Paul demanded that the strong conform to
the weak? No, the plain fact is that when the attempt was made to force such conformity
the Apostle severely denounced them. For it is one thing to receive the
weaker brother (Rom 14:1) and quite another to allow his weakness to be imposed
upon others as law (v. 4).
It was exactly the same with food. In Paul's day—as in ours - some people had
scruples of conscience against eating certain kinds of meat (pork, for example).
Wrong as they were in having this scruple, they were still to be received as brothers
(v. 3). The strong were not to try to induce them to eat against conviction of conscience.
Who would argue that it was the duty of the strong to conform to the
weak? Do the proponents of total abstinence themselves submit to such scruples?
No, the fact is that the very people who attempt to use this argument to force other
people to practice total abstinence, when it comes to wine, do not themselves practice
it when it comes to pork. It is small wonder! If Christians were obliged to abstain—
completely —from any food or drink that weaker brothers have, at one time
or another, and at one place or another, considered to be sinful, they would have
little to eat and drink. Why then should this passage be taken in this way with
respect to wine? The passage, after all, does not say that it is evil to eat meat or to
drink wine. It is only said that it is good not to eat meat or drink wine if it causes a
brother to stumble. The one concern of the entire passage is to teach us to avoid
anything that would induce a weaker brother to act against his own conscience.
When Paul says "it is good for a man not to touch a woman" (I Cor. 7:1) he
does not mean that sexual intercourse is inherently wrong. To the contrary, in
order to avoid sexual immorality he recommends it—by telling us that each
man is to have his own wife and each woman her own husband, if they do not
have the gift of continency. The opposite of sexual immorality is not necessarily
celibacy. To say that total (sexual) abstinence is good, is not at all the same as to
say that lawful indulgence is evil. Quite the contrary: while complete abstinence
may be best for some, a proper indulgence is better for others. Indeed, for
most people the expedient thing is not abstinence but lawful use. Yet this is the
distinction that the proponents of prohibition ignore. They condemn the use of
wine, even in moderation, on the grounds that it could cause another person to
stumble. It is interesting to observe that some people in the ancient Church did
exactly the same thing with respect to marriage. Because the Scripture says "it is
good for a man not to touch a woman" they began to require people to practice
celibacy (I Tim. 4:3). Like present-day advocates of total abstinence, they sought
to make a scruple of their own conscience binding on everyone else. But Paul,
speaking prophetically, brands their teaching as coming from deceitful spirits,
and as the devil's doctrine, not Christ's (v. 1). He does not praise their conviction
of conscience, but rather describes their consciences as having been seared
with a branding iron (v. 2). In forbidding marriage, and commanding abstinence
from certain foods, they really impugned the handiwork of God (v. 3,4).
For God has created all these things to be received with thanksgiving, by those
who believe and know the truth.
It is the same with wine. Those who seek to impose their scruple of conscience
on others usurp the authority of Christ. Paul teaches us to resist them.
"The faith which you have" he says "have as your own conviction before God"
(Rom. 14:22).

Romans 8:23-27. b). The sufferings and glory of God’s children.

Verses 22-23 draw an important parallel between God’s creation and God’s children. Verse 22 speaks of the whole creation groaning. Verse 23 begins: *Not only so, but we ourselves...groan inwardly...* Even we, who are no longer in Adam but in Christ, we who no longer live according to the flesh but *have the firstfruits of the Spirit*, we in who God’s new creation has already begun (cf. 2 Cor.5:17), even we continue to groan inside ourselves *as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies* (23). This is our Christian dilemma. Caught in the tension between what God has inaugurated (by giving us his Spirit) and what he will consummate (in our final adoption and redemption), we groan with discomfort and longing. The indwelling Spirit gives us joy (E.g. Gal. 5:22; 1 Thess.1:6) and the coming glory gives us hope (e.g. 5:2), but the interim suspense gives us pain.
Paul now highlights different aspects of our half-saved condition by five affirmations.
First, *we...have the firstfruits of the Spirit* (23a). *Aparche*, the firstfruits, was both the beginning of the harvest and the pledge that the full harvest would follow in due time. Perhaps Paul had in mind that the Feast of Weeks, which celebrated the reaping of the firstfruits, was the very festival (called in Greek ‘Pentecost’) on which the Spirit had been given. Replacing this agricultural metaphor with a commercial one, Paul also described the gift of the Spirit as God’s *arrabon*, the ‘first instalment, deposit, down payment, pledge’ (BAGD), which guaranteed the future completion of the purchase (see 2 Cor.1:22; 5:5; Eph.1:4) Although we have not yet received our final adoption or redemption, we have already received the Spirit as both foretaste and promise of these blessings.
Secondly, *we ...groan inwardly* (23b). The juxtaposition of the Spirit’s indwelling and our groaning should not surprise us. For the very presence of the Spirit (being only the firstfruits) is a constant reminder of the incompleteness of our salvation, as we share with the creation in the frustration, the bondage to decay and the pain. So one reason for our groaning is our physical frailty and mortality. Paul expresses this elsewhere: ‘Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling [meaning probably our resurrection body].... For while we are in this tent [our temporary, flimsy, material body], we groan and are burdened....’ (2 Cor.5:2, 4). But it is not only our frail body (*soma*) which makes us groan; it is also our fallen nature (*sarx*), which hinders us from behaving as we should, and would altogether prevent us from it, were it not for the indwelling Spirit (7:17, 20). We long, therefore, for our *sarx* to be destroyed and for our *soma* to be transformed. Our groans express both present pain and future longing. Some Christians, however, grin too much (they seem to have no place in their theology for pain) and groan too little.
Thirdly, *we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies* (23c). Just as the groaning creation waits eagerly for God’s sons to be revealed (19), so we groaning Christians wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, even our bodily redemption. We have, of course, already been adopted by God (15), and the Spirit assures us that we are his children (16). Yet there is an even deeper and richer child-Father relationship to come when we are fully ‘revealed’ as his children (19) and ‘conformed to the likeness of his Son’ (29). Again, we have already been redeemed (cf. Eph.1:7; Col.1:14; cf. Rom.3:24; 1 Cor.1:30), but not yet our bodies. Already our spirits are alive (10), but one day the Spirit will also give life to our bodies (11). More than that, our bodies will be changed by Christ to be ‘like his glorious body’ (Phil.3:21; cf. 1 Cor.15:35ff.). ‘Bondage to decay’ will be replaced by the ‘freedom of glory’ (21).
Fourthly, *in this hope we were saved* (24a). *We were saved (esothemen*) is an aorist tense. It bears witness to our decisive past liberation from the guilt and bondage of our sins, and from the just judgment of God upon them (cf. Eph.2:8). Yet we remain only half-saved. For we have not yet been saved from the outpouring of God’s wrath in the day of judgment (5:9), nor have the final vestiges of sin in our human personality been eradicated. Not yet has our *sarx* been obliterated; not yet has our *soma* been redeemed. So we are saved *in hope* of our total liberation (24a), as the creation was subjected to frustration *in...hope* of being set free from it (20). This double hope looks to the future and to things which, being future, are so far unseen. For *hope that is seen*, having been realized in our experience, *is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has?* (24b). Instead, *we hope for what we do not yet have* (25a; cf. Heb.11:1).
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