January 7, 2019 Show with Dr. Joel R. Beeke on “Reformed Preaching: Proclaiming God’s Word From the Heart of the Preacher to the Heart of the People”

Iron Sharpens Iron Opens With Scripture and a Praise Report

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors, Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another. Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions. Now here's our host, Chris Arnzen.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida and the rest of humanity living on the planet earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on the seventh day of January 2019.

This is actually, if I'm not mistaken, the first live broadcast of the new year. I could be wrong about that. I've had a lot of activity going on but it is certainly one that I am thrilled about because one of my favorite preachers, teachers, authors and radio guests has returned to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr. Joel Arbeeky today and before I formally introduce him, I want to just give a praise report about the Iron Sharpens Iron Radio pastor's luncheon that we had this past Thursday at the Carlisle Fire and Rescue Banquet Hall in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

It was a phenomenal success by every way you could determine success for an apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary was our keynote speaker and we had once again nearly a hundred men in attendance at this pastor's luncheon.

The food was absolutely free of charge, compliments of our friends at Firehouse Subs of Carlisle, Pennsylvania again and we had thousands of free books that we were giving away for free that I selected from numerous publishers all over the United States and the United Kingdom who donated a hundred copies of each of these titles that I selected so that every man could leave with a copy and in fact some of those books arrived late so when we have our spring edition of the Iron Sharpens Iron Radio pastor's luncheon, God willing, there will be even more books there because some of them arrived on the day of the event and we could not give them out on Thursday but I just want to thank everyone who was involved in it.

I want to thank all of the pastors who came. I of course want to thank Dr. Tony Costa speaking. I want to thank my dear friend Pastor George Jensen of the Enola First Church of God in Enola, Pennsylvania who was an enormous help and who also hosted a conference following the luncheon featuring Dr. Costa that had rave reviews by all who attended and I want to thank of course our friends at BatteryDepot .com, LinbrookBaptist .org and also our friends who published the New American Standard Bible who sponsored this event, this Iron Sharpens Iron Radio pastor's luncheon, and perhaps I'll be giving you more details in the days ahead about this but I am just thanking God so much more than I can describe in the English language for this wonderful event and it is keeping an event that my precious late wife Julie came up with.

It was all her idea in the 1990s to treat men in ministry to a free luncheon because she knew being in Christian radio that the majority of my friends actually are pastors. I have an unusual circle of friends.

Not everyone could say that most of their friends are pastors. Most of my friends are pastors because I've been involved in Christian radio most of my adult life so my wife said let's treat these men to a Christmas luncheon and this tradition kept going until she went home to glory with Christ for eternity and I relaunched her luncheons after relaunching my radio show in 2015 here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania when I moved from New York to Carlisle and every luncheon has been a wonderful event that people continue to rave about so thank you my precious Lord, God, Savior, and King for blessing this event.

Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary and New Books

Well as I said our guest today is Dr. Joel Arbeekie and he is probably not a stranger to most of our listeners but since we have new listeners joining the audience of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio every day he may be new to some of our listeners especially if they are outside of the Reformed faith and we do have many who are not even Christians let alone Reformed but Dr. Arbeekie is an author.

He is also a professor and the founder at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan and today we are going to address one of his books Reformed Preaching Proclaiming God's Word From the Heart of the Preacher to the Heart of the People and it's my honor, privilege, and joy to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Dr. Joel Arbeekie.

Good to be here Chris. And I want to urge everyone if you ever see an advertisement somewhere either on this show or you see it on the internet or you receive it in the mail a notice about Dr. Arbeekie preaching anywhere I would strongly urge you to take a plane train automobile helicopter boat or whatever you need to do to get to hear him preach because he is truly one of my very favorite preachers of all time and he is an extraordinary man of God a brilliant man of God very biblically literate and his preaching and teaching is just oozing with God-breathed truth from the holy scriptures and I look forward to every opportunity I have personally to hear him preach and teach.

He preached at the church where I was a member on Long Island before moving here Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island in Merrick, New York and I have heard him preach on a number of occasions at other places but Dr. Arbeekie before we get into your book and before we even get into other projects you're working on that we want to start having our listeners informed about.

I want to have you for those of you who don't know who you are to let them know about Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary in Grand.

Rapids Michigan. Okay Chris well yes. Puritan Reformed Seminary 220th degree for the regular THM already have their MDiv about two years ago which we do in biblical studies and historical studies and a few percent come from normed in their theology and the academic in terms of informing the mind but academics and praise God.

And if anybody wants more details about.

A Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids Michigan you can contact them or you can look up their website which is prts .edu. Is that am I correct on that. That's correct. Prts .edu. Well before we go into as I said the heart of our program today that the topic that we are going to be primarily addressing reforms preaching tell our listeners about some other projects that are you are working on that are very important to you.

Well the most important.

Anyway is um four volumes working on with me so he's co-authoring it with me uh Paul Smalley. And what it does in each chapter or doctrine pro and the con. And then we look from this doctrine how do you for your spiritual gain.

And it's going to be written. Or it is written the educated layman teacher and that type of thing. So it's got a wide target audience. And it does address all the current issues of the day. And uh it's a it's a traditional reform systematic theology made contemporary.

Great. And uh so was that all you wanted to mention as far as the new projects. Or should we move on to the reform preaching. Well i've just come out with some books. I might mention those a quick minute.

Um sure. I just published a book with a christian focus called knowing and growing in assurance of faith. I did my dissertation topic on that 30 some years ago. Yes i.

Remember that in fact i got a copy of your dissertation years ago from peter lang publishing. That's right it was a phenomenal book and then it was later uh republished in a more popular form i.

Believe. Yes yes. By banner truth trust. So what christian focus asked me to do is to take my studies three decades pain and death related to spear long usain king reprinting was the father puritanism.

And we just came out with a volume that i edited within 10 volumes. And this one is the of what perkins is known and here he in this nation so popular chris old john calvin's work perkins. We have a little biography we've published about a year ago about it but we're doing something about his teaching.

And then two other things just come out with a book for children puritans are in the conclusion about 10 today and this is really for the whole family. And then the last thing i'm really met by piety by mcgraw mark jones.

So all of these books are available from heritagebooks .org. Great. And i also want to uh announce our email address if.

Anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own. Our email address is chris arnzen at gmail .com. Chris arnzen at gmail .com. That's c-h-r-i-s-a-r-n-z-e-n at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name at least your city and state of residence your country of residence if outside the usa. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter let's say you are a member of a church and you disagree with the theology there.

We would not want you obviously to identify the name of the church. Maybe you're a pastor and you disagree with the theology of your own denomination. There could be a number of reasons why you would want to remain anonymous and we will permit that.

But please only request to remain anonymous as i said if it's a personal and private matter that you want to ask about. And that's chris arnzen at gmail .com. One of the reasons i love the title of this book dr beeky especially the subtitle is that it seems to militate against not only hyper calvinism which does exist but it does also militate against the stereotypes that reform that non-reformed christians have about calvinistic or reformed preaching proclaiming god's word from the heart of the preacher to the heart of the people as you probably know dr beeky sadly there is a stereotype and on occasion it is a it is an earned stereotype uh that reformed preachers are emotionless passionless stoic.

Uh they are professorial. They do not have their heart beating with passion for the lost or for even the doctrines that they're teaching. Uh it has been often said that our preachers are only lecturers and there's nothing wrong with lecturing when it's appropriate.

But i'm assuming you would agree with me that that these are stereotypes about the preaching of reformed pastors. And unfortunately sometimes that stereotype is true because there are those among us that perpetuate that uh view of our preaching because that's exactly what some of our men are doing.

But uh but our arminian and non-reformed friends would be sadly and tragically mistaken if they think that all reformed preaching and preachers are stale and lifeless and passionless in their preaching.

But please explain in your own words the title of the your book.

Especially the subtitle. Yes well to the heart of his people. And what i'm trying to do is simply look at experiential preaching and to separate the believer from the non-believer in preaching god's word faithfully.

But even more importantly the whole man is ministered to in preaching head heart and hands. And the idea is that you inform the mind you then penetrate the heart goes out and feels compelled to do. That was the old way of reformed preaching.

In fact all the way from the 16th century to the mid 19th century all reformed preachers preached to the heart. They it's been a recent phenomenon that uh some reform. So in my seminary what i do if i have a class i teach first of all on uh preaching and delivery he said actually with dr david murray.

And then our second class experiential preaching which i talk about how can a preacher reach the heart. And that's what i'm doing in this book. In fact this book is a simplified digest of that of that.

And so in the book i'm really doing three things. I'm first explaining what experiential preaching is for examples or so exactly the first to dr martin lloyd jones in the 20th century showing how they all have preached experientially in different ways.

I might focus on say preaching repentance with one and preaching christ with another. And but how do you preach other doctrines how they did it. And then the third we cross the bridge and do that as ministers today by the grace.

Of the holy spirit praise god. Well uh one of the things let me ask you about this because it is something that i have heard from that uh group among us reformed preachers that although they might not describe their preaching as passionless uh they get concerned they get upset.

They want to distance themselves from uh passionate preaching. Uh a pastor who is filled with emotion because he is truly heartbroken for the lost and he is truly in love with the doctrines that he is preaching.

That because they think that uh emotion that is dominant in a sermon is going to perhaps manipulate the minds and emotions of the listener where you will have unregenerate people giving responses to the message that wither away within not only uh days weeks months or years but sometimes hours.

And they they just want to distance themselves from that passionate preaching. And what is your response to men like that that speak like that. Well whenever you have people.

Approach you with objections to things the first thing to do is to say yes there is some there's some wisdom in that. And there are preachers who have and shout and yell and do all kinds of other things.

In preaching who don't have biblical content puritans were saying is something far different and i would say to that individual i would say it's common sense isn't it that preaching should relate to the whole reformers and puritans did.

Is they first appealed to your intellect in front of you based on and then they appeal to your conscience and to your heart. And then they appeal to and do this sermon how will you go out live so again ministering to the whole man in good sermons.

They're not full because sometimes you're just communicating historical material at the beginning or you're you're setting forth a doctrine so then you speak.

About the way i'm speaking right now right. Like if and if and um i know that they don't call them stewardesses anymore. A flight attendant. If a flight attendant is passionately telling you about the uh escape exits and all these kinds of things you might be fearful wrongly that you are in in jeopardy of dying or something that the plane has something wrong with it.

But when she when there is no need to fear she is just calmly instructing you about these exits and safety precautions and so on. But when the urgency is needed of course there might be a different level of energy involved.

But uh right. And if somebody is screaming everything they're saying the parts that are important are going to be missed. Am i. Right. That's right. That's right. Let.

Me give you an example i'm just going to try to do something off the top of my head. I don't know if this works over radio because you can't see me. But here's a reformed preacher and he's going to speak for a couple minutes now in his sermon about some reference to the intercession of christ at the father's right hand.

So he would say something like this you know our congregation this is a this is a wonderful doctrine. Pray. And to have him praying for us is is a really encouraging thing. Now he's praying for us continually.

He's praying for us in a way that all of what i just said is true. Absorb it because that's an amazing thing. That she's quite different trend of the intercession of christ is so precious to the believer.

I hope you know something and you feel you're helpless. And you fly by faith to the intercessory work of the lord jesus christ and you see that he is interceding for you moment by moment according to the word of god.

What a comfort this can bring. You never need to despair. There is comfort in this comfort in a mega way. For for each and every one of you who trust in the intercession of christ he will never fail for you at the father's right.

Trust him my friend. You see now you're speaking not just with more passion but you're touching the the heart and and that's a good thing. We're made up of mind and soul is moved by affections just to move their affections.

You move their affections by truth truth. That is you're using all kinds of tones of voices all kinds of a writer preacher historical to you about intercession of christ. So it shows them experiential where the more heart parts are of the service.

Now would this be something that would be under the category of homiletics rather than hermeneutics.

Correct because the art of pre-systematic theology in the old and new testament. Departments how do you hardly that teach those courses. Well we are going to our first station break right now. And if.

Anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own for dr beeky. Our email address is chris arnzen at gmail .com. That's c-h-r-i-s-a-r-n-z-e-n at gmail .com. Please give us as always at least your first name your city and state of residence and your country of residence.

If you live outside the usa please only remain anonymous if your question involves personal private matter. That's chris arnzen at gmail .com. Chris arnzen at gmail .com. Don't go away we will be right back god willing with dr joel beeky and more of our discussion on reformed preaching.

Proclaiming god's word from the heart of the preacher to the heart of the people. Hi phil.

Johnson here. I'm executive director of john macarthur's media ministry grace to you and i'm also an occasional guest on iron sharpens iron radio so i'm delighted that my friend chris arnzen and i will be heading down to atlanta for the g3 conference where i'll be joining james white steve lawson vody balcom mark dever conrad and bayway todd friel josh bice and a host of other speakers to address the topic a biblical understanding of missions.

Chris arnzen and i hope to see you all at this very important conference from january 17th through the 19th. Make sure you stop by the iron sharpens iron exhibitors booth to say hi to chris. For more details go to g3 conference .com.

That's g3 conference .com. See you there.

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Thank you. Welcome back. This is chris arnzen if you just tuned us in. Our guest today is dr joel who will be with us for the entire program and he is an author he is a professor and he is the founder of puritan reform theological seminary in grand rapids michigan.

And we are addressing today reformed preaching proclaiming god's word from the heart of the preacher to the heart of the people. If you have questions of your own feel free to email us at chris arnzen at gmail .com.

Chris arnzen at gmail .com. And i did get uh an email uh from one of your authors with reformation heritage books. Uh dr beeky. Uh bill book. Bookestein. I believe it's pronounced. You may know of a better.

Yes did i pronounce it. Pronounce it correctly. Uh. Bookestein. Bookestein. Okay. And he uh wanted to to have us highlight for just a brief moment the coloring book that you have published through reformation heritage books.

If you could speak on that for.

A moment. Okay. Yes. Yes. Bill is a urc pastor and he has a recent coloring book for children to color their way through an idea and the children color and then there's a little about that individual so have a little basic.

By the way bill has also done a very good book on eschatology that is the doc um heaven hell death judgment you know are you pre or are post. Think that book is coming out in about two hours to really get a handle.

Great. Yes i've had.

The privilege of uh meeting um brother bill on several occasions and i've had him on this program on a number of occasions as well and it's typically on a historical figure from church history and even more specifically somebody that has been long forgotten unfortunately that he brings back to the consciences of uh 21st century christians.

But uh looking forward to getting bill back on the program perhaps to address one of those books that you just mentioned. Uh going back to our theme reformed preaching proclaiming god's word from the heart of the preacher to the heart of the people.

Uh i i have some things that have uh rose up in my mind about uh some of the major problems in preaching today. But if you could uh before i go on with any of my own thoughts on this what do you think are the the greatest.

Uh problems. You might even go to the extent of saying sins when it comes to failures of men in the pulpit and failures of men behind microphones and television cameras who are preaching and teaching.

Uh that are not only uh unfortunately growing in popularity outside of the reformed faith but even within if you could mention some.

Of those things i need to mention uh here and just pick out a few of them not preaching the scriptures. Not next even in this subject area i'm talking about reformed experiential preaching. There are men working on that particular.

That's a travesty. So no kind of preaching that you you've got a huge problem because then you just one of the problems without warning a number of preachers today are preaching things like this in their sermon.

If there's anyone here that doesn't know the lord then they preach the gospel for a minute. But the problem is they give the hearers the feeling. Well maybe there's some really notable sinner here. I wonder who that could be.

Certainly can't be me. Can't be more than one or two people in the church that are unsaved whereas our forefathers always preached to the saved and to the lost a little bit more to the saved of course comforting guide and mature the people of god but they always preach evangelistically.

Adults who think they're saved who aren't. Um or people who are seriously backsliding or or children that aren't saved. Or teenagers that aren't saved. So that that's a problem. And then of course the problem we've been talking about not preaching to the heart is not brought.

And then lastly let me mention this we've got the huge problem today of people going to church just to be convicted you know a good sermon. A good sermon will usually exhort us in some area of our lives as well as encourage.

I feel like i've been in the presence of god and i've been exhorted and encouraged that is encouraging to. You don't go to church also areas that you need to work at with the grace of the holy. So the whole idea of a health and wealth gospel that themselves and if and you just deal you're not being a faithful preacher to the gospel.

We need to preach in such a way that people by the grace of god leave the church hating sin loving christ and pursuing.

Amen. And um to uh segue into something that is probably more the problem amongst some in the reformed faith and also our brethren who are known as fundamentalists because it's certainly not the mainstream problem or at least the the most significant main problem in mainstream christianity today.

But there are those perhaps a minority amongst us who are reformed and those who are fundamentalists who preach in the reverse of what you said they have nothing to say other than frightening warnings of condemnation.

They scold those who listen to them preach and they are their. Their messages are filled with nothing but the frightening descriptions of the torments of hell and the warnings about it. But are they're joyless.

They're hopeless. They're graceless. And that is something that must be avoided too even if it is a minority of a problem.

In the minority today don't you believe that. Of course of course. And uh thank you for bringing it up because that just illustrates my my overall point. And you just have one where you need to preach serious solemn warning sermons to your flock and you better be faithful in your bible exposition that's by no means the majority of scripture so you have to just be faithful to the word.

You people should be able to walk out of your sermon. He opened that up from both for my mind and my soul as well as for my practical daily life. Excellent. Well we have a listener.

In eastern suffolk county. Ronald uh who asks. I know that this has been brought up many times on iron trap and zion radio but i haven't heard specifically dr beeky address it so i want to ask it again.

I am very seriously concerned about the dominance of topical preaching in pulpits and storytelling rather than exegetical and expository preaching. Does dr beeky believe that expository preaching is the more faithful model which in my opinion not only forces us to cover much greater ground in the scripture but it also is a tool of god to prevent us from hobby.

Horsing on our favorite issues complex question i give exactly the answer that faulty preaching today and story to then revert to a position where the only way to preach through a bible book there's. It's only the last 50 years that there have been preachers that said that's the only way to do it.

I mean certainly there were certain preachers like calvin in particular or chrysostom or who would often preach through bible books. But my favorite way personally is to. But it's also good thing from time to time.

And i'll explain why in our dutch tradition for the heidelberg catechism. Because it summarizes on lord's day 18. It's all about the ascension of christ. Now you can preach through many bible books. You can have a ministry for 20 years in a place preach about the ascension of christ.

The ascension of christ is a tremendous doctrine that that really gives a lot of comfort to the people of god. But once every other year your people will hear a sermon on that very rich doctrine. Now how do you preach it.

However. That's the key. Well you take a particular on that doctrine. You take three and you preach them. But you give an overall view of that of that doctrine again gleaned directly from the scriptures.

And that must not be thrown at get away from scripture. Good topical preaching tethers you to scripture. And it brings you legitimate. But you can also do expository preaching through good topical.

Well thank you ronald for the excellent question. Please make sure you give us your full mailing address in eastern suffolk county long island new york because thanks to our generous friends at crossway books you have received a free or you will receive a free copy of reformed preaching proclaiming god's word from the heart of the preacher to the heart of the people.

We have rj in white plains new york. And rj says i remember at a banner of truth conference you gave wonderful lectures on what we should maintain in our preaching from the puritans example and also what we should avoid from the puritans example.

Things that they did typically that you found problematic. If you could just for the sake of our listeners who missed this conference just give us a few examples of this. Obviously because of the time restraints today.

Yes well on the positive side i think one of the things that the puritans did that we need to emulate is they have what's called uses. Uses. And what they meant by that was how do you use this truth. I've just expounded.

And that point is a model for us. They are far far better at it than also of god. They feared god more than they feared men. And they feared the smiles of god and the frowns of god more than the smiles and frowns of men.

And we need to get back to that word of god. They were also tremendous wrestlers in prayer for their preaching and they would go. What i said in that lecture is problematic today. The puritans office you did for a couple pages and then they would gather a preaching.

And i think today go preaching in a catechetical way straight through a bible book and let for itself um in and gather your theme and your major points on each text. The other thing that the puritans did that doesn't work today is that so children could follow a sermon two sub points and two sub points under the sub points of the two main points and two sub sub sub points and maybe to five levels.

Today people can't follow that they don't know where you're at anymore. A fault of the puritans for their own day just a day when they just try to imitate the puritans because can't get far beyond sub points have three main points in a sermon.

Maybe 0 .1 you have five to four maybe 0 .3 you just have a two. Probably those 10 sub points isn't enough for one sermon following their ways. Great. I'm going to ask you.

A question uh by cj in lindenhurst long island new york. And then have you answer it when we come back from the break to give you time to think about it. Uh by the way uh ladies and gentlemen brothers and sisters this is our elongated break that we air in the middle of our two major segments of iron trip and zine radio because grace life radio 90 .1 fm in lake city florida requires of us a longer break in the middle of our show because they air local commercials and public service announcements in order to localize iron trip and zine radio to the lake city florida area.

So please be patient as we take this elongated break and use this time not only to write your own questions for dr joel beeky but also to write down the information provided by our advertisers so that you can more successfully and more frequently patronize them.

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But the question that i have for you dr beeky oh and by the way i forgot to mention to rj in white plains new york please give us your mailing address as well because we have a free copy of reform preaching proclaiming god's word from the heart of the preacher to the heart of the people.

Compliments of our friends at crossway. And also compliments of our friends at cumberland valley bible book service cvbbs .com who actually will be shipping that book out to you at no charge to you or to us.

But um the question that we have from cj in lindenhurst long island new york is i have been blessed by hearing preachers including yourself from the heritage reformed congregations. And i've noticed a tradition among you where you will sing at least one hymn in the middle of a sermon.