I am pleased to introduce a most unusual sermon feedback team: 5 dead prophets. Nothing gets past them, which is why I keep them at the table. Their insights get to the heart of the matter, transcending mere praise or criticism. I invite you to experience the cross-pressure and promise of our conversation. I hope it will make your sermons more fruitful and faithful.

More Scripture

Moses says: "more Scripture." Of all my preaching mentors, Moses is the most experienced and the least gifted. When I give a sermon that is a touch too clever, Moses warns me that a preacher's authority comes not from his eloquence but from faithfulness to what God has already revealed. Moses has no patience for charlatans. He wants God's people to be nourished by biblical meat, not impressed with special tricks. Moses pokes a bony finger at my chest and stutters out a warning: "Man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord!" He has seen the Law feed God's people like bread from heaven, and he knows how they drift and die from a lack of it. Before I can get a word in edgewise, he's telling me (again) to "bind the Scriptures on your heart … teach them diligently to your children, and talk about them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise, and especially when you preach."

Moses is listening carefully to see whether or not I am preaching expositional sermons. When I am preparing in my study, he pops in unannounced to ask if I am actually reading and wrestling with the text. He tells me to look at the words of the Bible, take my cues from the Bible, and shape my sermon from the Bible. This was Moses' modus operandi: listen to God's word, believe it, and then repeat it to God's people (and on occasion, God's enemies). When he stuck to this simple process, beautiful and wild things would happen: water became blood, staffs became snakes, and slaves became sons. Like the author of Psalm 119, Moses knew that the Word of God is a gift, not a burden, and that I would do well to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest it as I prepare each sermon. Moses reminds me that my authority is derived, my days are numbered, and that my calling is clear: preach the Word.

More practical wisdom

Solomon says "more practical wisdom." Lest I dump a truckload of Bible content on my congregation and call it a sermon, Solomon weighs in. The former King of Israel understands well the human capacity to compartmentalize our existence into "sacred" and "secular"—to be ever consuming the true, good, and beautiful but rarely acting on it. So he pushes me to be practical.

Solomon gets a bad rap these days. Maybe it was his political success, his building program, his women, or his divided heart. In our cultural moment, his sins seem worse than most others. And his Proverbs have been badly aped by fortune cookies and leadership books. It's easy for us to overlook that Solomon's wisdom was expressly not a 10-steps-to-success program but the passionate instruction from a father to his son. Any father worth his salt understands the difference, and he will apprentice his children into godly maturity in all areas of their life.

Solomon asks me about specific people in my congregation—the sleepy college freshman, the retiree with back pain, the recovering alcoholic, the young mother. Do I know their life, the battles they face? Do I care about them as a father? If so, Solomon wants me to break it down for people, to keep it simple, and to climb down the ladder of abstraction. I am to teach them about sex, about money, about conflict, how to pray, and what it looks like for them to pick up their cross and follow Jesus in their vocation. If I'm too good to preach about the actual human experience, I have no business preaching to actual human beings.

More gospel

Hosea says: "more gospel." As I brainstorm ways to exhort people towards obedience, Hosea taps me on the shoulder. With a quivering voice and crazy love in his eyes he reminds me that I'm not just preaching to humans. I am addressing The Bride who is cherished more than she will ever know. She's cheated on her husband—several times in fact. And she's so bewitched by her own shame and guilt that my practical wisdom might just send her running for the hills.

Hosea knows that the Bride of Christ is broken and scared. She remains unconvinced that Jesus actually loves her, that Jesus gave over his body to torture and death to be married to her. Hosea reminds me that it is the love of the Groom, not the rule-keeping of the Bride, that gives this romance its power and beauty. The Bride must hear again that her Groom's affection is unconditional until she believes it in her bones. Yes, the Groom is chasing hard after the Bride. But he's not mad at her—he's jealous and lovesick.

So when my application points start to burden and discourage the beloved and broken, Hosea begins to weep. He pleads with me to stop cracking the whip and return to the scandalous story—again and again in a hundred thousand ways. Hosea challenges me to connect every Scripture to the story of Jesus Christ—the story upon which all our hopes hang. Because like the beloved disciple John, Hosea wants my congregation to meet this Jesus and be made alive, to get saved. He wants me to deconstruct all the false lovers that woo the Bride with empty, lying promises. Hosea beckons me to beckon them to "return to the Lord; for he has torn us, that he will heal us." God knows how much we need that healing.

More justice

Esther says, "more justice." When the sermon's over, I exhale: "At last; they now believe the gospel." Esther overhears this and counters: "No Aaron, they'll just enjoy their bourbon a little more tonight." Esther explains that the love of God is meant to be poured out on behalf of the vulnerable and thirsty, not to pool into a cul de sac of privilege. When you are secure in the love and providence of God, you can be fierce for those who are suffering. Queen Esther is poised and full of grace. Behind her grace is fury, and behind her fury is a fierce bond with those who have been denied justice.

As Esther speaks, I'm reminded of the words of Martin Luther King about preachers: "[They] have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained glass windows … the powers that be are often consoled by the church's silent sanction of things as they are." Ouch. Got me. When Esther lifted up her voice on behalf of the marginalized, King Ahasuerus was disturbed, not consoled. For Esther did not offer to him an anesthetized, cushioned piety but a pointed call to action. Mountains were brought low, valleys were lifted up, and by God's sovereign hand justice rolled down like waters for the oppressed.

This is where Esther calls me—to lift up my voice, to steward my power as a shepherd of God's people, to prepare the way of the Lord. I'm not just playing church anymore, but perhaps putting my life and livelihood on the line for the sake of those whose life and livelihood is on the ropes. Esther is thumbing through my sermons from the last year. Her unblinking eyes move from left to right as she asks where the poor and marginalized fit into my thinking.

She calls me to speak up on behalf of the persecuted church, the unborn and disabled, the displaced refugees, the boys in the crossfire and the girls in the brothels. These are Jesus' precious ones, and the Spirit of Jesus will give them an advocate through the preachers who bear his name.

More God

Job says "more God." After seven days and seven nights of staying silent, Job finally opens his mouth. He looks me in the eye, leans over the table, and puts the question to me: "Do you actually know God, the living God?" He's heard my barrage of words, the ceaseless chatter. It all reminds him of the lectures he received from his friends Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. Job cannot abide another syllable of godtalk—the abstract babble that diminishes God to a sanitized deity who knows nothing of suffering. Job has an ear for mystery, but all he's heard so far is theories, categories, and systems.

"Gird up your loins like a man," Job whispers, "and seek the face of God." He invites me to meet the Lord of the text, whose glory filled the temple and whose voice shakes the earth. Job speaks of a silent night, a holy night, where nothing can be rushed and I must wait on God in the darkness. Job assures me that it is there God will meet me, nourish me, repair me, and commission me. The love of God will flood me at the bottom of this pit. Grace upon grace will be more than enough. On the other side of that encounter is the anointing of the Holy Spirit for which all of us preachers hunger.

I am tempted to confuse this with anger and punishment, but Job knows this is all goodness and love. The blessed Trinity is at war with my little kingdom and my self-sufficient ways. God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit will enlarge my spiritual vision and appetite. Job speaks of the day when I might limp from the prayer closet to the pulpit as a living sermon that God always wins the wrestling match against mortal flesh. Together, my congregation and I can tremble and worship and hear God speak.

Who is equal for such a task?

Jesus says, "Come to me, Aaron, and put on my easy yoke."

After so much substantive feedback from this team, my head is spinning. I know they are right, but their truth is more than I can metabolize. So right at the moment where I need an advocate the most, I see one standing next to me: Jesus Christ, the greatest of the prophets. I see him interceding for me and for you in the presence of the Father. He's standing on the snake's head, and he's giving gifts, and there is no condemnation left for me or for you.

Yet, he has also been speaking to me through the prophets the whole time. Through their voice, I hear his voice. In their face, I see his face. As I mediate on the Holy Scriptures, he lets some of the refining fire pass through his loving hands into mine. In the end, the Head of the Church knows what the people of God need to hear on any given Sunday. He is the living Word who speaks the voice of the Father to us. I can listen to this Voice without anxiety. He will animate the preaching in the end. And this is a yoke I can bear.

Aaron Damiani is the pastor of Immanuel Anglican Church, a church plant in the Uptown neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois. He is the author of The Good of Giving Up: Discovering the Freedom of Lent.