Lessons We Can Learn About Preaching & The Word Of God From The Reformation (Part 2)

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, �But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry.

Christ-Centered Preaching in the Reformation

My name is Mike Abendroth. And today we have part two of our special treat. I did a Zoom message for some Indian pastors and Bible teachers with Veneet, and so we�ve cut it up a little bit. So, you can listen.

Reformation principles we can learn from the Reformation when it comes to preaching the Word of God, Christ. I think you�d be encouraged, whether you�re a pastor or not, if you�re a congregant or not.

I guess you should be a congregant, right? Everybody�s a congregant if you�re a Christian. Anyway, this is Mike Abendroth. Welcome to Lessons Learned from the Reformation and Preaching on No Compromise Radio.

What else can we learn about Reformation? Let�s see. How are we doing for time? All right. 917. Let�s do another one, and then we maybe have some questions, and we�ll do part two another time. What can we learn from the Reformation, and how can I have this encourage you men?

Well, not only was it a recovery of Bible preaching at the center of everything. To make it even more specific, it was recovery of what I just led into, and that is a recovery of preaching Christ Jesus every single week.

It was Luther who wanted to make Christ central in everything. It was Luther who said, you know what? Instead of going into a Roman Catholic church and the largest area enclave was for Mary, it�s going to be about the Lord Jesus.

Luther said to place the Bible in a central position had been done by theologians of earlier centuries to place Christ in the center of the Bible as Luther did was previously unheard of. There's one thing that I want to make sure you men know.

If I ever come back to India or not, and I sat down and listened to you, and you said, �Oh, Mike, you know, would you kind of grade this sermon or help a little bit because you kind of do that. You could be eloquent.

You could have a short introduction without a long story. You could have alliteration for outlines. You could be totally, you know, never end a sentence in a preposition and have it all down. But if you're not telling me about who Jesus is, it's going to be a fail.

I'm 60 years old, and I regularly think this could be my last sermon. What's going to come out of my mouth? The last sermon I preach, Luther, Christ centered, Calvin, Christ centered. It was the centrality of Christ, not just for unbelievers to hear about them to be saved, but also as a motivation for Christians to live a holy life.

Ask yourself this question. What motivates a Christian to live a holy life? Law, judgment, a lot of things you could ask. But if you think about Romans, we're guilty. God's graced us. We respond with gratitude.

There are other motivations for the Christian in terms of giving God glory, assurance of salvation. But the primary motivation for the Christian is gratitude. And so how can Christians be regularly encouraged by what's going on when they see themselves?

They need to make sure they hear about the majesty of God, the son. It is Christ-centered preaching that took the Reformation by storm. Luther said for the sake of Christ Jesus, he wanted to make sure that he was glorified in every single sermon.

And one of the things that happened, maybe you don't like Luther's Christ-centered view of the Old Testament. You think, I found Jesus in too many places. Well, if it's true that he overdid that, it's coming from a climate that underdid that, that hardly talked about him at all.

And so he wanted to make sure that he would talk about the Lord Jesus all the time and every time. I alluded to this earlier. Remember men, when you think of Colossians 1, verse 28, him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom that we may present everyone mature in Christ for this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.

This is really the issue. We want our saints to mature. Do you want church growth? How many of you guys want church growth? I hope the answer is we all want church growth, new Christians and maturing Christians.

We are after church growth and maturation. Matter of fact, when you think about the word complete there in Colossians chapter one, if you study the word complete in the Old Testament, Septuagint, complete means someone's heart is fully turned to God.

He's motivated to serve God and love him. That's what you want is that are these complete Christians, mature Christians. You say, well, you know what, a Christ-centered preaching. You mean I'm going to have to talk about Jesus every week?

Yes. That's exactly what I mean. Remember that old lady that said to Spurgeon talking about Jesus every week preaching type of thing. And she said, oh, Mr. Spurgeon, if Jesus loves me like that, he'll never hear the last of it over and over and over.

She would hear about the love of Jesus for Christian people and for sinners. And she just wanted to hear about it every single week. And that is why Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4 or 5, for what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord with ourselves as your servants for Christ's sake.

There's been a shift in evangelicalism and I talked about this last time, but I'll say it again in case some of you men weren't there. There's been a shift and here's the shift across the world. Instead of talking about the objective work of Jesus and what he did in his life, what he did at Calvary, what he's doing now as an intercessor, Hebrews 7, we've moved it to how do I personally make approbation for that?

How am I affected? What's been happening in my life while Jesus is saving me? In other words, we've gone from a redemptive event external to us, life of Christ, death of Christ, resurrection of Christ, ascension of Christ, soon return of Christ, how Christ is in heaven praying for us.

And we've moved from that to a pietism and piety, holy living's good. Pietism is this subjective, we've got to look at ourself all the time and how have I been affected by the Lord? I'm all for affecting me by the Lord, but not at the expense of who Jesus is and making sure we talk about who he is.

Think about it for a second. The just shall live by faith, that's shorthand. The just shall live by faith in the risen Savior. I need to make sure I keep telling my people about who that person is, the object of their faith, that is, the object of their faith is the subject of my sermon every single week.

And you say, well, I'm preaching through Proverbs, well, you're a better man than I am. It's very, very difficult. You're like, how do I preach Christ in a Proverbs? Well, that's why you get paid the big bucks, right?

That's why, of course, the Indians are saying, I get paid nothing, I understand. When I read Proverbs, here's how I read it, have you ever read all Proverbs and said, who could live like this? Who could live such a wise life?

Who could be the opposite of a fool? Who could live like this? And the answer is obvious. No one. This is God's standard. This is his law. But when you think about wisdom incarnate, I hope you think about the Lord Jesus and even 1 Corinthians 1.

He is this great wisdom. But anyway, that's a little rabbit trail, but sometimes rabbit trails are the best thing when you're teaching, right? You always try to get the professor on a rabbit trail. If things are boring, you're sitting in a class, raise your hand, get the professor on a rabbit trail, and you're in good shape.

If your sermons and your messages to your people are how to have a happy marriage and what about my money and what about my retirement and how am I going to get by this week and what will Jesus say about the election in America for president?

I think you just have to gut all that. If you're preaching through Ephesians 5 and you're talking about marriage, fine. But even that, think about it, husbands love your wives. Is that true? Yes. The Mormons love that, by the way.

Atheists love that. Druids love that. Hindus love that. Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church. And you see right there, here's why we love. Here's how we can love. Here's the gratitude for love.

Here's the power of love. Remember, we have the double benefit of Jesus, the duplex gratia, and that is the first benefit is for pardon, no more sins to pay for. Jesus paid it all. Excuse me. The second is for power, the power of God, the son via the Holy Spirit's work in the person who's a Christian, powerfully working out a sanctified life.

Questions, Recommended Books, and the Book of Hebrews

All right, let's see. What time do I have here? All right. Let me just, Ranit, you want me to keep going or you want to have some questions?

How much time do you have, Mike? You said you had an appointment.

Well, by the way, I'm glad you wrote me again because I had on my time, 9 .30 AM Eastern Standard Time. And you said I'll see you in a half hour. And it was 8 .30 Eastern Standard Time. So I don't know if it's what I have here, but I would have been, like last time, you would have been texting me saying, Mike, are you there?

I think it's the time thing you all do, reset. Yeah. You know what?

Why don't we take a few questions? Because I had some other things I wanted to talk about in terms of what could we learn from the Reformation? And it was going to be, it was going to be this. These were my four, the centrality of the word preached, centrality of Christ exalted at the center of the worship service, sola fide, and then courage, courageous preaching because the Spirit of God had them do that.

And then when I was talking about sola fide, I was going to talk a little bit about law and gospel and the differences between that and then the courage. And so I guess we could, maybe some of that will come up in Q &A and then we could always do part two sometime soon.

OK, yeah, great time to pause, if anybody has some questions, you can definitely put it on the chat. Mike, while the questions are coming in, what are like some top must read books to help young men who are growing in their preaching to really read some good books?

Maybe I can, I think most of the books are available on Amazon and we have Kindle here. So any like top three books you would suggest, like not too heavy, but easy to read and yet profound?

Sure, well, the first one that every person should get and it's easy to access for all preachers, it is the book of Hebrews. And here's why I say that. Hebrews 13, 22 talks about it's a word of encouragement, it's a message.

It's the only New Testament sermon we have given to an established group of people. There are evangelistic sermons, Acts 2, Acts 3, et cetera, Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. I understand all that. But if you men want to know what a sermon looks like that's inspired by the spirit of God, it's a wonderful template.

And what you're going to find out is while there are some warnings and a few exhortations and laws given in the first 12 chapters, he waits until chapter 13. For kind of rapid fire, 10 imperatives, but he is heavy on the person and work of Christ.

Of course, when he gets to 13, there are things that Christians must do in order to honor the Lord and their Savior, Christ Jesus. And he says things about let the marriage bed be undefiled, be content with money, remember the prisoners, et cetera.

Those are important laws for Christians, but they are in light of who Jesus is. And so chapter one, he starts quoting all these passages from the Old Testament that you would rarely think apply to Jesus if you read your Bible.

But the Holy Spirit knows they do. I mean, it's obvious Psalm 2 applies to Jesus, Psalm 22, Psalm 110, Isaiah 53. We understand those. But when he starts talking about Psalm 102 and other Psalms in the New Testament in chapter one, you will say to yourself, I need to make sure that I read the Old Testament like the writer of Hebrews does, like Jesus does, and to push it a little bit.

And I know it's almost not fair, but I like to use some hyperbole and some exaggeration to drive the truth home. I personally and you should not want to read the Old Testament and miss Jesus because there's a name for that, Pharisee.

They missed Jesus in the Old Testament. So I like to have men read Hebrews over and over and over again. And here's kind of an interesting thing, men. It's about, depending on how fast you read, it's about 45 minutes.

I'm not saying that this is the template, a prescription, but as you read the book of Hebrews, you're going to hear things and you're going to go, oh, the way he talks, the way he phrases things, the way he asks questions, the way he puts little chiasms together and little inclusions, a start and an end to kind of have a book end.

This is this is elegant preaching. And so the reason why I always go to the book of Hebrews, not only for its content, but its delivery. You men ought to spend at least 25 percent of your Bible study time on crafting the sermon, not just the data and give a big data dump.

You know, the loos back up and not the loos go. What do you call a truck? A truck? Yeah. Just a truck? Yeah, we just call it. What are they? The English have a weird name for a truck. Don't the Indians call that the same?

Are you talking about a tempo? I don't know. I'll stick with what I'm good at. But anyway, it's like a truck backing up. A lorry, lorry. Yeah, yeah. Sorry, lorry. That's excuse me. Yeah, that's right.

Anyway, what we need to do is we need to say, OK, how do we craft this hermeneutics, the science and art of biblical interpretation, homiletics, the science and art of biblical proclamation. The science is Greek and Hebrew and systematic theology and exegesis and understanding everything through a hermeneutical lens.

I get that. And that is the most important thing. But since it's so important, how you say it matters. If I were God, I would say first Timothy four, read the word, sit down, shut up. But God has done something different.

Read the word. But also he uses finite sinful preachers to preach the word. So he uses our personality. He uses everything about us to proclaim the word of God and not just read it, although we must. Do you have a scripture in your service?

Number two, how do we proclaim it? And so I see Hebrews as a Christ centered content and about his work, not just at Calvary, although that's very important, but why it fulfills the Old Testament, what he's doing now, right?

We call that the session of Jesus. He's seated and he's interceding on our behalf right now. Hebrews chapter seven, verse 25. So here's this Christ centered, Christ fulfilling, Christ encouraging message that's put together well, that there's really almost no book like Hebrews in terms of its art and its crafting and how it takes time.

And I have to think, you know what, how can I put this together in such a way? That's compelling. And I know, man, sometimes you're sick. Sometimes you got the flu. Sometimes you have to take care of your wife and your sermons, just data.

I understand that, but you ought to spend time crafting the message and how should I ask questions and how can I get people to listen, right? And say, well, when I say a familiar verse, I should say things like the wages of sin and then pause and let them in their minds say death or ask questions because my mind goes 400 words a minute and I can only talk 150 words a minute.

So I want them to think about what I'm talking about, not the cricket match down the street. So I ask questions. It is amazing to ask a question and then leave a long pregnant pause. So he asked me a question and I just started preaching from Hebrews, but you will see in the book of Hebrews, not only the Christ centered nature, not only laws that come from Jesus, who's the redeemer, right?

Think about this for a second, guys. God's holy. His law is holy. His law reflects his nature. It never changes because God does not change. He's immutable. So before we're Christians, we stand under God's law, but the law giver is a judge, right?

And you think about different uses of the law, first use of the law. We stand before God as judge, do not commit adultery. And we realize we've thought about things and we've done things and we stand as guilty.

Then Jesus, who is inherently righteous, he does not need to fulfill the law for his own sake. Galatians 4, he comes and he fulfills the law. He merits for us righteousness. He does the right thing by keeping the law, not for himself.

He's already righteous, but for others. And now he gives us perfect law keeping, and then he pays for our law breaking, right? If you think of active and passive obedience of Jesus, you can think about law and the law has something positive.

Do this. And the law has something as a penalty. If you don't do this, you have to pay for it. And so Jesus, he both positively merits our law keeping and gives it to us by imputation. And then also he takes our sins.

So now when we stand before God as believers, it's God's still holy. God's still righteous. God still has his law, but our relationship to the law giver is no longer judge, but savior or father. So now we keep the law, not because we need to, to keep our position, not because we have to do it in order to keep, to get our position, but because we're children, because he's our father.

And so we want to obey the law in light of that. So what the book of Hebrews does, it makes sure it's so front loads it, that you see the grace of God in Christ Jesus. Yes, there are warning passages.

I don't deny that, but you have to think about the audience. Then at the end, you are solidified in your mind. This is a triune God that loves me. He saved me. And it was planned in eternity past. It was affected in real time in history when Jesus lived on earth and then he was raised and he's even having a ministry now for me.

And if there was a God who loves me like that, wouldn't I want to obey him out of gratitude to glorify him, to help with my assurance, right? There's lots of reasons to obey, but at the top of the list, we've got to have a motivation for obedience.

The law men doesn't motivate. The law has no animating force to help you obey. The law is God's law, yes, but the motivating force behind all this. And of course, I don't mean the Holy Spirit's a force or anything like that.

But loosely speaking, he, the triune God shows us his great pleasure in Christ Jesus. And then we see the rapid fire law at the end. So anyway, the answer to the question, if it needs question, Hebrews has to be dealt with in one way, shape or form when it comes to gospel preaching.

And I think it should demand out of all of us in summary, two things, Christ-centered preaching and a well-crafted sermon. What else could I say for books? It's a little harder to read. Him We Proclaim by Dennis Johnson is an important read that no matter where you come down on when it comes to Christ-centered preaching, you ought to read that book.

I don't know what it's called, but Larson has an easy little book on preaching. I don't know the name of it, but if you typed in L-A-R-S-E-N or S-O-N, I think it may be called Anatomy of Preaching.

That's a good little book. Preachers in Preaching by Lloyd-Jones is always important to read to talk about the centrality of preaching. So those are three books that I'll recommend.

Closing Announcements and Ministry Information

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible-teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.