August 20, 2018 Show with Dr. Thomas J. Nettles on “The Privilege, Promise, Power & Peril of Doctrinal Preaching”

The Privilege, Promise, Power, and Peril of Doctrinal Preaching

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 this 20th day of August 2018.

I'm delighted to have back on the program an old friend of mine, a returning guest to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Dr. Thomas J. Nettles is retired now from full-time teaching after 38 years in the classroom, including his most recent post as professor of historical theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary from 1997 to 2014.

Previously, he taught for 21 years at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Mid-American Baptist Theological Seminary, and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, where he was professor of church history and chair of the Department of Church History.

He is an author and editor of a number of books, along with numerous journal articles and scholarly papers. And today we are going to be addressing the privilege, promise, power, and peril of doctrinal preaching.

And it is my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, my friend Dr. Tom Nettles. And let me give our listeners our email address. It's chrisarnzen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Let's say you disagree with your own pastor over something involving our subject today.

Or perhaps you are a pastor. You disagree with your fellow elders or your congregation or your denomination or fellowship or association over something, and you'd rather remain anonymous. We can understand that.

But otherwise, if it's just a general question, please give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA. And Dr. Nettles, oh, by the way, I want to tell our listeners, please take this time also to quickly call, text, or email pastors and preachers that you know that should take advantage of this program today and tell them to tune in.

They can hear it anywhere globally via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. Dr. Nettles, you have a long history of teaching, and it primarily is focused on the issue of church history. In fact, that seems to be what you've written on primarily over the years.

I love your book, By His Grace and for His Glory. It is an excellent tool to give, I think, especially to either non-Calvinistic Baptists and Baptist pastors perhaps who wrongly think that Baptist history is either devoid of Calvinistic influence or it is a very rare stain on the history of Baptists.

Because according to them it would be a stain, obviously we would not view it that way. And also for those who are Baptists, who are theologically reformed, who need further encouragement and bolstering in their faith, knowing that they are not alone.

Yeah, I'm aware we are.

Yeah, it is quite ironic that the Southern Baptist Convention today is, in its majority, of course many of them wouldn't use the label for themselves Arminian, but it is in its majority Evangelical Arminian, or at the very least non-Calvinist.

And yet the history of the Southern Baptist Convention is steeped in Calvinism. In fact, we're not all the founders of the denomination Calvinists.

Yeah, every Southern Baptist has pretty much the same, all the writings and all...

One of the reasons I brought up your expertise in history, and that being the primary focus of your studies for what appears to be the entirety of your life as a teacher and professor and author, that you have written this new book that appears to be something that should be written by a homiletics pastor.

The Privilege, Promise, Power and Peril of Doctrinal Preaching. If you could tell us why you, someone known as a historian, made a choice to plunge into this work, this excellent work, and to make it available to pastors and general Christians alike.

Well, we teach New Testament and Old Testament, try to get scholarly degrees in that. I'll give you a lot of theory. In history, one of the things that I've tried to start with the preachers, the flux of preaching and making it more effective.

So one of the things that preachers have had...

I hope to get through all the four Ps of preaching. In fact, the publisher of this work, Free Grace Press, has nicknamed the book, The Four Ps of Preaching, even though that's not the official title. But let's start with the privilege of preaching.

It's an interesting aspect of the title because we have all heard about pastors, even in recent days, who have been caught or exposed in sins that would make them no longer eligible to hold the office of a pastor or preacher, at least for a season, if not for the remainder of their lives, depending upon the severity of the sin.

But some of these pastors and preachers and media personalities have acted as if the church, the body of Christ, and even God needs them. They act as if it is their right to be a preacher, that we would not exist without them, or we would not continue our course in a safe path, in a biblical path, or an educated path, without their assistance.

They act as if this is not a privilege, but a right. But if you could tell us why you use that term in your title.

Yeah, well, I like that question, and I like the application you've made of it, even if it's not one that we have...

Now, what do you think, from the biblical data, of course, are the qualifications for one to be a preacher? Because, obviously, someone who is not a pastor or elder, or even a deacon in their church, may, with the approval of their congregation, preach.

I, for instance, have been invited a number of times, and I'm on a list of people in the church who has been requested to preach at a men's shelter in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the Bethesda Mission. And I have preached there, I would say, three times at least, and I have another preaching engagement on my calendar for them.

I am not a pastor, I'm not even an elder. Of course, I believe, actually, that those are the same office. Perhaps you agree, I don't know. But I'm not a deacon either. But, obviously, there is not necessarily an identical requirement for one to be a pastor as it is to be someone who preaches, although I think that a preacher should not do so without the approval or request of his own elders.

But if you could.

I think that we have examples that are functional to teach in a proper way to understand that one part of...

Do you think perhaps that they should have all of the qualifications for a pastor, biblically, except for the fact that they may not have a call from God to be a pastor, for that specific office? I'm talking about somebody who is just a layperson, for lack of a better term, preaching.

Hello about this. I think that there is a spiritual giftedness of the church. God gives him a gift. He gives him a desire for this, that of the gospel, but some to be evangelists. The one there that I may not have among all the people.

Right. And I'm assuming, though, it would be unwise for a group of elders or a congregation to approve of someone to publicly preach if there was scandal going on under their roof or if there were other things that violated the requirements of a pastor, even though this person was not intending to be a pastor, was not desirous of being a pastor, but was called for the task of preaching.

There are still primary things involved in one's requirements to be a pastor that I think wouldn't apply for anyone representing Christ's church publicly.

Yes. Now, this question has come up from time to time in the past.

I'm fairly certain you would agree with me and my convictions of complementarianism that men solely are to be leaders in the church and they are the leaders of their household, but obviously wives are to be leaders over their children as well.

Men and women share leadership in the household, but a wife is still submissive to her husband. But at the same time, even amongst complementarians, there are divisions that come up where some might say that a woman, as long as she is preaching exclusively to women, if her audience is designed to be solely female, like if it's a woman's conference or a woman has a ministry to other women in prison, and you could go on and on with the settings that would be exclusively women.

Would you say that a woman at those events and in those venues is permitted to preach to other women? And if not, what would you call it if she is exhorting and if she is bringing a biblical message to those women gathered there?

A woman's...

Really?

Yeah, I mean...

Okay, that may legally...

I may be wrong about that.

Well, that may be legally different from county to county and state to state anyway, but...

Right, yeah. So, a woman to be a woman nowadays, the apologizing to...

Now, how would you distinguish teaching from preaching? I know that preaching is always teaching, or should I say there is always teaching involved in preaching, but they are not necessarily the same thing.

But preaching always... Teaching can be a dialogic. You let people ask questions with teaching, whereas I view preaching as...

Ben, one thing that I'd like to ask you about the title before we move on to the promised power and peril of preaching, the subtitle, or it's actually a part of the title itself, of doctrinal preaching, and if you could tell me why you specified doctrinal preaching.

You added that word, or should I say you included that word doctrinal in the title, if you could tell us why.

Yeah, well, I view all preaching as doctrinal. It is, on the one hand, I believe, even that preaching has its own thing in a way that does not... To the way we do it...

The Qualifications and Privilege of Preaching

We have to go to our first break right now. If anybody would like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, 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, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA.

Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal, private matter. I have a request. I'm going to have to rely upon honesty here, but we are giving away copies of this book, a limited number, of course, to those who write in questions.

This book that I am speaking about, of course, is the Privilege, Promise, Power, and Peril of Doctrinal Preaching by Dr. Thomas J. Nettles, our guest today. I am saying that I need to trust your honesty here, because we're only going to actually mail the books to those who are either pastors and preachers themselves, or if they promise to give it to a pastor or preacher or seminary student, somebody who is actually going to be at some point preaching and is going to be using the book for that reason.

So you can ask a question, regardless of who you are. You can ask a question even if you're a Muslim, a Jew, a Hindu, a Buddhist, or an atheist, or a Swedenborgianist. But if you want the book, please only give me your mailing address to receive the book if indeed you are a preacher, a pastor, or intend, or should I say promise to give it to one who is a preacher or pastor.

But we're going to our first break right now, and don't go away. We'll be right back with Dr. Tom Nettles right after these messages from our sponsors.

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Give yourself unto reading. The man who never reads will never be read. He who never quotes will never be quoted. He who will not use the thoughts of other men's brains proves that he has no brains of his own.

You need to read.

Solid Ground Christian Books is a publisher and book distributor who takes these words of the Prince of Preachers to heart. The mission of Solid Ground Christian Books is to bring back treasures of the past to minister to Christians in the present and future, and to publish new titles that address burning issues in the church and the world.

Since its beginning in 2001, Solid Ground has been committed to publish God-centered, Christ-exalting books for all ages. We invite you to go treasure hunting at Solid-Ground-Books .com. That's Solid-Ground-Books .com, and see what priceless literary gems from the past to present you can unearth from Solid Ground.

Solid Ground Christian Books is honored to be a weekly sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

Listening to Christian radio can be a big gamble spiritually. Even many of the major Christian networks that include excellent, biblically faithful teachers on their lineup sadly often also include the worst of doctrinally dangerous heretics.

If you are a lover of the doctrines of Sovereign Grace, you need not fear listening 24 hours a day to FirstLoveRadio .org. They feature Christ-centered programming from Reformed pastors and teachers you can rely upon for theological soundness and biblical faithfulness, such as Dr. W .R. Downing, Dr. Peter Masters, Pastor Joe Jackowitz, Pastor Robert Gifford, Al Martin, Edward Delcor, and more.

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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 from January 17th through the 19th, 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, Vodie Baucom, Mark Dever, Conrad Mbewe, Todd Friel, Josh Bice, and a host of other speakers to address the topic of biblical understanding of missions.

Chris Arnzen and I hope to see you all at this very important conference. Make sure you stop by the Iron Sharpens Iron exhibitors booth to say hi to Chris. For more details, go to G3conference .com. That's G3conference .com.

See you there.

Welcome back, and don't forget to continue to pray for Mike Gaydosch, who is the founder of Solid Ground Christian Books, Solid-Ground-Books .com, a sponsor of this program, Solid-Ground-Books .com.

He is going in for very serious, very dangerous, very complicated, very delicate open-heart surgery. This Thursday he goes in to prep for surgery, and this Friday morning, God willing, he will be actually having his surgery.

We will keep you updated on that, and please pray that our great physician, Jesus Christ, raises Mike up out of that bed when the surgery is complete, a stronger and healthier man than he has been in years, and even a stronger and healthier man spiritually, because of this trial that our loving Lord has placed him in.

We can only trust in the fact that he has done so to work all things together for the good in Mike Gaydosch's life, and that he would even be a far better servant and ambassador for Christ because of this trial that he has been placed in.

We are now back with our guest today, Dr. Tom Nettles. We are discussing his book, The Privilege, Promise, Power, and Peril of Doctrinal Preaching. If you have a question, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Also, I have an announcement. If anyone knows of anyone who is an egalitarian or so-called Christian feminist who would like to have a debate on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio with a complementarian, I would love to use this program as a venue at some point to have a debate on that subject, since it does divide the body of Christ.

There is a dear sister in Christ with whom I strongly disagree on this issue, Cheryl Schatz, because of her health situation. She is a cancer survivor, and she cannot physically, in her opinion, do an adequate job these days.

She would have loved to have done it before this cancer invaded her life. But if you know of anybody that you would like to recommend, send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com, c-h-r-i-s-a-r-n-z-e-n at gmail .com.

Well, we do have some listeners who have questions for you. First of all, we have Chris in Runnels, Iowa. And Chris says, Thank you for discussing this vital topic of preaching today. I would like to hear Dr. Nettle's take on how doctrinal preaching and expositional preaching go hand in hand and whether they can also be mutually exclusive, meaning can doctrinal preaching be non-expositional, and can expositional preaching be non-doctrinal?

I think you already answered that last question as far as any preaching being non-doctrinal, Dr. Nettles. Also, if you have time, how do we preach doctrinally in a culture where most people have a second attention span, a two-second attention span?

That really isn't to get at. There's a worldview, and then there's a whole. There is one message in the Bible all the way to Revelation. We tend to forget the continuity, that learning what this text means in its context, why that text is people.

If we have not tied the whole framework, then we have sin used the whole body. Great. Well, thank you, Chris.

And as I said, if you are either a preacher or pastor yourself or intend to give it to one, let me know in an email confirming that fact, and we will send you a free copy of The Privilege, Promise, Power, and Peril of Preaching.

Thanks to our friends at Free Grace Press, and also thanks to our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com, who will actually physically be shipping the book out to you if indeed you are giving it to a pastor or are one yourself.

Let's see here. We have Gordy in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, and Gordy has already told us that he plans to give this book to one of his pastors. He has two questions, actually. Can and should passion in a sermon be Christ?

Oh, wait a minute. I think I have to enlarge this because I think that that was a cut-off sentence. Here it is. Can and should passion in a sermon be calculated, or should it strictly flow naturally from a man of God, enthralled with and focused on the glory of Christ?

Oh, that's silly.

Yeah, I guess there are some preachers who have been accused of using theatrics or putting on a show, but sometimes it might be that they do because they may be, by nature, very introverted and quiet people.

Maybe they have to, in some way, force themselves to be more powerful and passionate when they preach. But if you could, that's one of two questions he has.

Yeah. Okay. It depends on what you mean by calculated. Now, if a person doesn't love the gospel, if of love for the gospel, but preaching is also something in which every preacher theorizes about how some people, like Lex say 1, 2, 3, can calculate to do one or the other without it being insincere.

Everything that these hearers, what Dyer surfaced upon, is not going to be contrived, but there is the affections of the people. But the preacher is supposed to be calculating, thinking about the impact.

Gordy's second question is, David W. Wanders asserted that it is against this backdrop of revivalism that Edwards' pastoral concern must be seen. He was a heart, a pastor. He was, at heart, a pastor. Part of being a faithful pastor is being a faithful preacher.

Please share how Edwards balanced these two roles.

Well, everyone was there. If someone would seek people, the true application of them to the wife and applying them...

Well, thank you, Gordy. You have won a free copy of The Privilege, Promise, Power, and Peril of Doctrinal Preaching by our guest, Dr. Thomas J. Nettles. Since you live in Mechanicsburg, and you live so close to the Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service on North Hanover Street in Carlisle, please swing by there at your convenience later this week.

It is already there, or I should say the copies that we're giving away are already there. So you can swing by and pick it up. Just tell them that you are Gordy from Mechanicsburg who won a free copy of the program on Iron Sharpener's Iron Radio.

And we have a question. Let me see what time it is, because we may have to go to our midway break. Oh, we do have to go to our midway break. We're going to go to our midway break right now, and before we do that, we'll remind you of our email address, and we'll get to you after the break.

Our listener Brandon, we'll get to you after the break, so don't be too concerned. Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com. Please, as always, give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA.

And please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. That's chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back. Well, this is our elongated break. I just wanted to let you know this is a longer than normal break because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break because they air their own commercials and public service announcements during this break.

So please use this time to write down questions for Dr. Nettles and also write down the information provided by our advertisers so that you can successfully patronize them. Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages from our sponsors.

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Charles Haddon Spurgeon once said,.

Give yourself unto reading. The man who never reads will never be read. He who never quotes will never be quoted. He who will not use the thoughts of other men's brains proves that he has no brains of his own.

You need to read.

Solid Ground Christian Books is a publisher and book distributor who takes these words of the Prince of Preachers to heart. The mission of Solid Ground Christian Books is to bring back treasures of the past to minister to Christians in the present and future and to publish new titles that address burning issues in the church and the world.

Since its beginning in 2001, Solid Ground has been committed to publish God-centered, Christ-exalting books for all ages. We invite you to go treasure hunting at solid-ground-books .com. That's solid-ground-books .com and see what priceless literary gems from the past to present you can unearth from Solid Ground.

Solid Ground Christian Books is honored to be a weekly sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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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 from January 17th through the 19th, 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, Voti Baucom, Mark Dever, Conrad Mbewe, Todd Friel, Josh Bice, and a host of other speakers to address the topic of biblical understanding of missions.

Chris Arnzen and I hope to see you all at this very important conference. Make sure you stop by the Iron Sharpens Iron exhibitors booth to say hi to Chris. For more details, go to g3conference .com. That's g3conference .com.

See you there.

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If you are a lover of the doctrines of Sovereign Grace, you need not fear listening 24 hours a day to FirstLoveRadio .org. They feature Christ-centered programming from Reformed pastors and teachers you can rely upon for theological soundness and biblical faithfulness, such as Dr. W .R. Downing, Dr. Peter Masters, Pastor Joe Jackowitz, Pastor Robert Gifford, Al Martin, Edward Delcor, and more.

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with about an hour to go is Dr. Thomas J. Nettles. We are discussing his book, The Privilege, Promise, Power, and Peril of Preaching.

If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. We are giving away a limited number of copies of the book that we are discussing today.

Compliments of our friends at Free Grace Press and also compliments of our friends at CVBBS .com, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service. But these are reserved only for either pastors and preachers or for those who promise to give their copy to a pastor or preacher or seminary student, somebody who's actually going to be using the book for preaching.

So we have to obviously rely on your honesty for this. So please be honest, as you always should be. Before we return to Dr. Nettles, we just have a few announcements for special events that are coming up that you need to know about.

First of all, I have arranged a couple of events in Jacksonville, Florida that I hope that you join me in attending. The first is being held at the Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary in Jacksonville, Florida.

It's their Jacksonville campus. And they are having an event featuring my dear friend, Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries and his dear friend, Dr. Michael L. Brown of the Fire School for Ministry and also the Line of Fire radio program.

They are going to be both lecturing on the theme, A House Mended, Christian Unity in a Culture of Outrage. That's going to be Friday night, September 7th at 6 .30 p .m. at the Jacksonville, Florida campus of Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary.

For more details, go to SwitzerlandCommunityChurch .org. That's SwitzerlandCommunityChurch .org. They are co-sponsoring this event with Iron Trip and Zion Radio. Then the following night, Dr. White and Dr. Brown are teaming up once again, this time for a debate.

They are debating two homosexuals who are ordained ministers and professing Christians. The debate theme is, Is Homosexuality Consistent with New Testament Obedience? That's Saturday night, September 8th at 6 .30 p .m. at the Switzerland Community Church in Switzerland, Florida.

Once again, for more information, go to SwitzerlandCommunityChurch .org, SwitzerlandCommunityChurch .org. Then, coming up in November on the 9th and the 10th, the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals is having their conference known as the Quaker Town Conference on Reform Theology.

The theme is, The Glory of the Cross, and the speakers include David Garner, Ray Ortland, Richard Phillips, Timothy Gibson, and Carlton Winn. That's November 9th and the 10th at the Grace Bible Fellowship Church in Quaker Town, Pennsylvania.

For more details, go to AllianceNet .org, AllianceNet .org. And then, coming up in January, from January 17th through the 19th, that's Thursday, January 17th, through Saturday, January 19th, the G3 Conference returns to Atlanta, Georgia, more specifically College Park, Georgia, at the Georgia International Convention Center.

I will be there, God willing, at Manning, and at Iron Sherpa's Iron Radio booth for my third year in a row. I love being there. It is one of my favorite of all conferences of all time. They are expecting between 4 ,000 and 5 ,000 people to be there.

The theme is, The Mission of God, A Biblical Understanding of Missions. Keep in mind, for your Spanish-speaking and bilingual friends, there is an exclusively Spanish edition of the conference on Wednesday, January 16th, so you might want to tell them about that.

But, as far as the English conference is concerned, these speakers include Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries, John Piper, Stephen Lawson, Voti Baucom, Mark Dever, Conrad M. Bayway, Tim Challies, Phil Johnson, whose voice you just heard advertising this event.

He is the executive director of John MacArthur's Grace to You ministry. Josh Bice, who is the founder of the G3 Conference, and we have Todd Friel of Wretched TV and Wretched Radio, David Miller, who is a brother who endorsed this book that we're discussing today, The Privilege, Promise, Power, and Peril of Doctrinal Preaching.

He is a phenomenal preacher himself. Jeremy Volo, a good friend of mine, who pastors in Texas. Dr. Stephen J. Nichols, who is the president of Reformation Bible College, the college founded by the late R .C. Sproul and Ligonier Ministries.

And the list goes on and on. It's a very long roster of impressive names. If you would like to register, not only to be an attendee of this event, but also to register for an exhibitor's booth, just like I will have, to have your business or ministry present in a crowd of between 4 ,000 and 5 ,000 people, then go to g3conference .com, g3conference .com, and please tell all of these organizations that you heard about them on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.