Lee Jung-kyu's Preaching Style — Ancient History, Living Scholarship, and the Modern Screen

Pastor Lee Jung-kyu of Sigwang Church (Presbyterian Church of Korea — Kosin denomination, Seoul) rarely surfaces in press coverage or academic research on Korean preaching. His YouTube channel, @seetheglory, carries a steady stream of Sunday sermons, daily devotionals, and small-group series. In one of the few interviews he has given, he named what he sees as missing from many pulpits today:

“Many churches think they’re preaching the gospel, but a great many aren’t actually gospel-centered… Preachers tell people to faithfully reflect the biblical text and live by it. If a minister only delivers ethics, there’s no way forward. Only when the gospel soaks in does its power give the next generation hope.” — Kosin News KNC, “Pastor Lee Jung-kyu: ‘Young People Want to Hear the Gospel at Church’”

In the pulpit, he carries out that diagnosis in several distinct ways.

A Door into the Ancient World — Historical Scene Reconstruction

The most distinctive feature of Lee Jung-kyu’s preaching is what happens before the argument begins. Before the theological claim is made, before the application lands, he opens a door into the world behind the text — and then uses that world as the first premise of every argument that follows.

In his Mark 43 sermon (May 2026) on the scribe who asks “Which commandment is the greatest of all?”, he begins with a problem most congregations don’t know they have: “When we read Scripture, the Pharisees, scribes, and elders always appear together as a set, and we never quite know what a scribe actually does.” What follows is a careful description of the scribal career track — from apprentice copyist to senior legal scholar — and an account of the rabbinic tradition of classifying Moses’ commandments into 613 categories, each assigned its own weight and hierarchy. Only after that groundwork is laid does the sermon move to Jesus’ answer. At that point, “You shall love the Lord your God… and your neighbor as yourself” is no longer an ethical slogan; it is a single sentence that dismantles the entire 613-commandment classification enterprise.

In his Mark 5 sermon (April 2023) on the leper who approaches Jesus, he pauses at the question most readers skip: “Was there a worship service for lepers? No. There wasn’t. They were isolated — socially, emotionally, even spiritually.” He draws a line between ancient ritual exclusion and the experience of COVID-era quarantine, showing the congregation how close to home a first-century purity code can land.

The same method carries through every subsequent series. “The God of the Prophets” #1 (September 2025) on Hosea examines the cultural and legal weight of what it would have cost the prophet to publicly reclaim an unfaithful wife. “Life School” #4 (November 2025) opens with academic research on how modern Western culture has inverted the ancient treatment of death and sex — what was once spoken about daily (death) has become the great taboo, and what was once the taboo (sex) has become public entertainment. The inversion is historical before it is theological.

This consistency is not incidental. For Lee Jung-kyu, understanding the historical world of a text appears to be epistemologically prior to understanding its theology: the ancient landscape must be inhabited before its claims can be heard.

A Library on the Pulpit — Direct Author Citation

Lee Jung-kyu cites Reformed and broadly evangelical authors directly — with attribution, at length, and with explanation of why each quotation belongs where it sits.

The name that appears most often across the twenty-five sermons is Charles Spurgeon, cited in five separate messages on five distinct topics. In his Mark 14 sermon (June 2023) on the storm at sea, he brings in Spurgeon’s counsel: the way to glorify God in a season of fear is not complicated — “Pray, and then go to sleep.” The simplicity is the point; the context is the disciples’ terror in the middle of a squall. In his Mark 23 sermon (May 2024) on guilt and self-justification, he quotes Spurgeon’s warning to preachers: “Don’t preach to save other souls. Preach to save your own.” The inversion exposes the trap of using ministry as a form of self-righteousness. In Mark 27 (July 2024) on the cross, Spurgeon’s assessment of what Christ’s love cost: “The greatest act of love Christ performed was staying on the cross.” A Spurgeon sermon — A Precious Drop of Honey from the Rock Christ — appears in “The God of the Prophets” #2 (September 2025), introduced with a personal note: Lee has been reading it in his early-morning devotional. In #4 of the same series, a Spurgeon analogy on the assurance of salvation — a believer’s confidence pictured as a ship that can weather any storm — anchors a section on justification.

C.S. Lewis appears in three sermons. In Mark 14, Lewis’s two-part argument against classifying the Gospels as mythology — their proximity in time to the events they record, and the fact that their authors knew actual mythology far better than the critics who dismiss them — functions as an apologetic foundation. In Mark 39 (April 2026), Lee extends Lewis’s “God in the Dock” analysis: the ancient person came before God as a defendant before a judge; the modern person has reversed the arrangement, placing God on trial and himself in the judge’s seat. Lewis’s observation generates a further one: spending a lifetime answering the critics can leave a person permanently in the posture of judge rather than creature — and there is a kind of understanding that only comes through attempting to obey. In “Community of Grace” #4 (March 2026), Lewis on praise — that genuine praise is not flattery but the natural outward expression of inner health, what a person does when they enjoy something deeply — becomes the center of a sermon on corporate worship.

Tim Keller appears in four sermons, primarily through pastoral anecdotes. A counseling conversation Keller had with a woman in his congregation (Mark 19) illustrates the difference between faith and certainty. Keller’s observation that preachers can seek to justify themselves through their sermons rather than through Christ (Mark 23) runs parallel to the Spurgeon citation on the same point. A story about how Keller evaluated elder candidates (Community of Grace #1) anchors a teaching on discerning character. His pastoral reading of the surge in church attendance following September 11, 2001 — people flooded the churches, and then left when the immediate crisis passed — opens the conversation in “Life School” #4 about how modern people handle the fact of death.

Martin Luther appears on calling and vocation (“Life School” #1) and on the theology of resistance (Mark 46). Jonathan Edwards appears on the nature of Christ’s suffering at Gethsemane (Mark 49) and on the resurrection body’s capacity for sensory experience — Edwards’s claim that glorified believers may possess hundreds or thousands of senses rather than the five available now — in “Community of Grace” #6.

None of these citations function as ornamentation. Each is positioned to provide language for a claim the sermon is building, and each is followed by explication of how it connects to the biblical text at hand.

From Screen to Pulpit — Film and Drama Illustrations

Of the twenty-five sermons, eleven incorporate film and six incorporate television drama as illustrative material. These illustrations do not arrive as attention-getters dropped once the sermon is underway; they are built out slowly and made to carry argumentative weight.

The clearest example is Cypher from The Matrix, who appears in two sermons — Mark 23 (May 2024) and Mark 46 (June 2026). In Mark 46, Lee reconstructs the scene at length. Cypher has seen the truth: the world he thought was real is a simulation. He chose to fight the machines. And then, after nine years, he negotiates his way back in. He sits in a restaurant inside the Matrix, cuts a piece of steak, and says: “I know this steak doesn’t exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. After nine years, you know what I realize? Ignorance is bliss.” Lee stays with that line, then connects Cypher’s arc to fifteen years of pastoral observation: people who had understood enough of the gospel to see through the simulation — and who chose to go back anyway. The Markan call to “stay awake” arrives with Cypher’s failure already lodged in the congregation’s imagination.

“The God of the Prophets” #1 (September 2025) uses the Korean drama My Mister to name a common misunderstanding of who God is. “People treat God like the older gentleman in My Mister — a neighborhood man you see occasionally, call on when you need something, accept a little money from now and then.” The sermon’s correction: the relationship the prophets describe is not a distant benefactor but a bridegroom. The drama’s title gives the congregation an immediate sensory name for the error before the text corrects it.

“The God of the Prophets” #7 (October 2025) draws on a scene from Hospital Playlist: a young resident who carries an air of cool detachment pauses at the bedside of a homeless patient whose foot has become necrotic, and treats the wound with unhurried precision. Lee uses the scene to hold before the congregation what the gospel looks like at close range — beauty entering what is most corrupted, at the initiative of the one who has nothing to gain.

Mark 27 (July 2024) introduces Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man as a representation of the hero narrative modern audiences carry as default expectation: someone gets stronger and stronger until they defeat evil. Lee’s argument is that Jesus keeps disappointing that narrative deliberately — and that understanding why requires understanding what kind of story the Gospel of Mark actually is, and what kind of victory it is working toward.

“Life School” #2 (November 2025) opens with a scene from a 1980s film about a father who spent his working life providing financially for his family. Reflecting near the end of his life, he tells his son: “Making money made me feel like a man.” The sermon uses this as its entry point into a Christian account of work and masculine identity.

The breadth of these references — almost no title appears in more than two sermons, The Matrix being the exception — suggests that engagement with contemporary culture functions as a standing practice, not an occasional strategy. The preacher appears to watch widely and retain specifically.

“Doesn’t That Make Sense?” — Conversational Rhythm and Self-Disclosure

Counting phrase frequency across twenty-five sermons reveals a consistent pattern. “Look at this” appears 288 times. “Think about this” appears 78 times. “Listen to this” appears 56 times. Variations of “Isn’t that right?” — a soft, recurring invitation to agreement — appear 273 times combined. These are not verbal tics; they are signals. Each one marks a transition point in the argument where the preacher pauses and invites the congregation to evaluate for themselves what has just been said — to confirm, correct, or push back inwardly before the sermon moves forward.

Self-disclosure is equally consistent. In Mark 34 (January 2026), Lee says directly: “There is a darkness in me that you don’t know, that my family doesn’t know, that I carry alone.” He adds — with practiced timing — that someone always comes to find him after the service and asks, privately: “What is that? Can you tell just me?” The congregation laughs. In “The God of the Prophets” #4 (September 2025), he describes what went through his mind during his own gallbladder surgery, and when his father was hospitalized: the internal voice that said, “I must have done something to deserve this.” In Mark 23 (May 2024), he admits: “I do this too. I try to justify myself through my preaching.” In Mark 46 (June 2026), he observes that economy class seats were not designed for his frame. The congregation laughs again.

What separates these disclosures from calculated pulpit humility is their placement. Each one arrives inside an argument, not before it or after it. The structure is: “You have felt this, haven’t you? Let me tell you that I have too.” The revelation precedes the claim, shortening the distance between pulpit and pew. The congregation is less likely to receive the sermon as a lecture delivered at them, and more likely to hear it as a reflection that includes them.

The transcription records congregational response: “[laughter],” “[sighs],” “[sounds of surprise]” appear at specific moments in the captions. A confessionally Reformed preacher delivering substantive doctrinal content can, apparently, also read a room.

“First… Second…” — Explicit Outline Structure

Twenty-three of the twenty-five sermons contain the pattern “first… second…” used at least twice. Lee Jung-kyu tells the congregation where the sermon is going before he takes them there. In Mark 43 (May 2026), the structure is announced at the outset: “First, we’ll look at the question itself. Second, we’ll look at Jesus’ answer. And finally, we’ll consider how we can respond.”

But this is not the rigid three-point sermon form that description might suggest. The three sections do not receive equal time. Some sermons close with two points rather than three; others pursue a single thread without subdividing it. Across the Mark series, the prophets series, “Life School,” and “Community of Grace” alike, the explicit outline appears — but no sermon in the corpus brings all three points to precisely equal balance and closes on schedule.

The function of the structure is orientation, not architecture. The congregation always knows which stage of the argument they are in, but the pacing within each stage is governed by the texture of the passage. A sermon that needs extensive historical reconstruction will spend most of its time there. A sermon anchored by an extended film illustration will let the illustration run long. A sermon built around an author citation will move quickly from quotation to text. The announced outline is a map; how long the preacher walks each section is decided in the moment, according to what the passage requires.

The Craft That Holds Across Text Types

Whether the passage is Gospel narrative, prophetic poetry, an epistle, or a sermon on a life topic, Lee Jung-kyu’s craft stays the same. Historical scene reconstruction, direct author citation, film and drama illustration, the “isn’t that right?” / “look at this” conversational rhythm, self-disclosure, and an explicit outline structure all recur regardless of text. The method does not appear to be tied to the form of the passage — it belongs to how this preacher thinks.

The Place of Apologetics — Preaching before Doubt and Questions

Lee Jung-kyu has, at least once, named apologetic preaching as one of the aims of his ministry. In one interview (ReformedJR, reformedjr.com), he is reported to have named Christ-centered preaching, expository preaching, and apologetic preaching as three pillars of his work — though that page could not be directly verified due to a persistent connection error, so it is introduced here only as reported content.

The apologetic posture shows up concretely in the sermons themselves. In Mark 14 (June 2023), he answers head-on the skepticism that dismisses the Gospels as myth, borrowing C.S. Lewis’s two-part argument — that the Gospels were written too close in time to the events for myth to have formed, and that the people making the claim don’t actually understand what myth as a genre looks like — and presenting it to the congregation directly. Mark 39 (April 2026) approaches from the opposite direction: borrowing Lewis’s late-life reflection that endless apologetics can leave a person never actually understanding Christianity, and that obedience has to be attempted, Lee challenges the modern posture of putting God in the dock. Answering doubt with argument, and refusing to let the argument itself substitute for faith — both sermons hold that balance together.

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For preachers working with Didymus Lab sermon preparation materials, Lee Jung-kyu’s method points toward specific uses. The historical background sections of verse-by-verse commentary reports are designed exactly for the reconstruction work he does in every sermon: scribal career structures, ritual purity codes, first-century synagogue practice. The materials compress into accessible form what would otherwise consume hours of preparation, allowing the preacher to reconstruct a scene accurately and briefly, then move on. The same logic applies to the author citation practice: locating the relevant Spurgeon or Edwards passage for a given text is a research task the report can support, leaving the sermon’s effort for integration rather than retrieval.

Know a hidden master? If you know a preacher who hasn’t made it into scholarship or press coverage but belongs there, send us a note at didymus@didymuslab.com.

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