Harmed or Helped by Hearing | Behold Your God Podcast

Media Gratiae

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Welcome to another episode of the Behold Your God podcast. I'm Matthew Robinson, director of Media Gratiae, and I'm with Dr.

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John Snyder, pastor and author of the Behold Your God study and pastor of Christ Church New Albany.

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This week we're continuing to think about sermons, not their preparation or delivery or anything that the preacher does, but rather particularly how we hear sermons.

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Last week in an episode called Take Care How You Listen, we talked about different kinds of listening and how the ability and the degree to which we can truly hear and understand and benefit from our listening to the preached

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Word of God is actually a spiritual issue and it has much more to do with the condition of our hearts than the condition of our ears.

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This week we're going to spend some time trying to glean some wisdom from a letter. This is a letter that was written back in the 1700s by wise and experienced pastor to someone who apparently found themselves living in a new city where there was an opportunity to hear a lot of preaching.

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And so you have to remember this is before the days of YouTube, especially if you lived in a rural area, you would have maybe had one opportunity to hear the

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Word of God preached on the Lord's Day, maybe in a morning and evening service. But now this person finds themselves in a situation where they can hear multiple preachers on multiple days of the week and he's reached out to his friend, this older, wiser pastor for advice about all this.

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And the friend who writes him the letter that we're considering today is named John Newton.

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Now a lot of you know that name because of the hymn Amazing Grace, which he wrote along with hundreds of other hymns.

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But John, tell us more about John Newton. Who was he? What was it like ministering in his day?

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And what was the context that this letter was written in? Yeah, if all you know about John Newton is

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Amazing Grace, as wonderful as that hymn really is, you're missing out.

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In this life there is such a breadth and depth of practical knowledge.

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Newton above all else, I think. We would go to him for just everyday questions of the

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Christian life. He's not a great theologian that wrote a big systematic theology. He wasn't the most powerful preacher of his day.

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But when men and women wanted answers, and they couldn't turn perhaps to their local preachers, they would often write letters to Newton and Newton responded.

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And Newton became really, in his day, late 18th early 19th century,

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Newton became well known for his ability to pastor through his letters. And we're going to be talking about those letters more in upcoming episodes.

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And we will, we will, I hope, be able to steal some wisdom from Newton frequently. But Newton, we have to,

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I think, put him in the context so that we can really benefit from this particular letter. One is the context you mentioned.

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He's a preacher now, not in the little town of Olney, but he's at St. Mary Woolnoth in London.

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So this is, this is the, this is the tail end of the Great Awakening or the

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Evangelical Revival in the UK. Suddenly there are really just a host of very capable men who don't pastor just in one church, but perhaps they travel around a lot.

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So like a George Whitefield. Now Whitefield's passed away by now, but other lesser men are doing that. So if you live in the city of London, you could literally go every week to a different church, hear a different preacher, hear your favorite preacher during the week, and really not plug into a church.

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And there are a lot of dangers that come with the blessing of having many faithful men that you could listen to.

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And Newton wants to deal with those dangers so that the enemy doesn't use that blessing to the detriment of the people.

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But another issue is that the epicenter of the worship service has shifted.

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Prior to the Evangelical Revival, many, and this occurred mostly in the

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Church of England, most of the Church of England kind of, it approached its worship service primarily through liturgy.

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And there's nothing wrong with liturgy, but that became, that was the center.

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So the preacher would read, and you would respond with reading, and there would be a very short sermon.

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But as we mentioned, I believe in our previous podcast, in the Evangelical Revival, the sermon became fundamental.

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So there was still liturgy, there was still ceremony, it was still the Anglican Church, but now it has a man in the pulpit who might preach 45 minutes, which was quite shocking.

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And Newton didn't want the people to miss the benefit of having a substantial sermon in the midst of their worship services.

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Yes, so the focus is now on the preaching of the Word, and now there is ample opportunity to hear lots of preaching.

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And so he has to give a little bit of wisdom and guidance about some of the benefits, but also some of the great dangers.

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So let's get into the letter. You can read this letter in its entirety at our website at Mediagratia .org.

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It'll be part of this blog post, this podcast. If you prefer, if that's hard to spell, if you prefer, you can write our

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URL in English, which is TheMeansOfGrace .org or Mediagratia .org.

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So the whole text of the letter will be there in our show notes for you to read. If you want to pause the podcast now and go read it, then you're welcome to do that.

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Or you could just listen to us talk about the letter and then go back and look at it later. That's perfectly okay to do too.

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So this is letter 13 from the letters of John Newton on hearing sermons. I'm not going to read the whole letter, but I'm going to read the intro here.

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The letter starts, Dear Sir, I'm glad to find that the Lord has at length been pleased to fix you in a favored situation where you have frequent opportunities of hearing the gospel.

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This is a great privilege, but like all other outward privileges, it requires grace and wisdom to make a due improvement of it.

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And the great plenty of ordinances you enjoy, though in itself a blessing, is attended with snares, which, unless they're carefully guarded against, may hinder rather than promote your edification.

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I gladly embrace the occasion you afford me of offering you my advice on this subject.

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A remembrance of the mistakes I myself have formerly committed and the observations

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I've made upon the conduct of professors considered as hearers will perhaps in some measure qualify me for the task that you've assigned me.

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So then he gets into his first point, his first warning, I suppose, which is really foundational to the rest of what he says in the letter.

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And so what's the first point that he hits? Yeah, the first major point he makes is that different preachers will have different spiritual gifts, and that's from the

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Lord. And the second point that I think we can kind of throw them together is that different ministers have different natural gifts or temperaments.

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Yeah, styles. Yeah, different styles, different emphases, and the way they bring the truth to bear on the people.

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And so when you have so many ministers you can hear, you're gonna see a great variety, and Newton has to say some things about that before he gives us his beneficial advice.

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So under the first one, different preachers have different gifts suited to different needs of the body.

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It is a wonderful reality that not every minister preaches the same, and we see that, you know, if we think of, maybe we could simplify and think of the agricultural metaphors again, we could think of preachers that are plowers.

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They break up the ground. So we come to the church, perhaps we haven't been moved by a sermon in years, and it bothers us, and maybe we've been blaming the preacher, maybe we've been blaming ourselves, but we're not making any progress, and we come and we hear a man, and he doesn't just lay out the truths in a gentle way that would guide a soul that is responsive.

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It's like having an atom bomb dropped on your life, and all that hardness is broken up, and it's a great benefit to us.

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Yeah. Another one you think of is a spiritual planter, someone who brings the seed of the gospel and puts that in a life that's been prepared by a plowing.

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And then a third category, which many of our ministers, many pastors fit this, and we could say that they're the nurturer.

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They come along, and like the gardener, they prune, they nurture, they feed, they bring the spring, you know, they bring the watering, and so they're guiding, they're giving clarity to doctrine.

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Yeah. Newton says, perhaps no true minister of the gospel, for all such are taught of God, is wholly at a loss upon either of these points, and we might say any of those giftings, but few, if any, are remarkably and equally excellent in managing them all.

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So, you know, it stands out a little bit, and we can think of guys that we know that the Lord has so clearly given different kinds of ministries.

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I think about Paul Washer as a plower, you know. I mean, how many people are going along in their sort of perfectly happy religious life until somebody says, hey, there's this sermon on YouTube that I want you to hear, and they're plowed up.

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Richard Owen Roberts, you know, our good friend Richard Owen Roberts, for goodness, how many years now as an itinerant minister?

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Seriously, how many years? I would think it would be probably 50 plus. Yeah. I mean, he said he started preaching when he was 12, so that's a lot of years, but he's been...

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he's had this itinerant ministry that has... where he's gone... I know he pastored churches, but what...

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where the real blessing that we is... he's sort of known for is this itinerant ministry where he goes around to different churches, and you know, like Paul, has only preached in some of them once because of the gifting that God has given him in plowing.

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If you think of the biblical pattern, the prophets tend to be the plowers, and both of those men fit that, and there are others, but they really stick out in our experience.

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I mean, we're not just talking theoretically. I mean, these are men that have plowed our hearts. Sure. I remember sitting in a sermon by Mr.

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Roberts maybe eight years ago, and it's the only time it's ever happened to me. I shook physically while he preached on the text in Genesis that said, sin is crouching at your door, and its desire is for you, and you must master it, and I thought of the horrible and horrific power sin could have if we're not careful to walk with our king, and it just made me shake.

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I thought that he was speaking only to me, but you know as we talked about, we've mentioned it frequently to each other and to others,

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Paul Washer is a unique plower, because normally the plower uses the

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Old Testament prophetic passages. Sure, the law. Yeah, the law or the bigness of God's character, and when you feel the gap between God and you, then you begin to feel the plow point, but Paul Washer is unusual in that he uses the doctrines of the cross in such a way as they break up the ground and leave a seed at the same time.

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Yeah, so in a sense he's a planter. Yeah, we would think that he had been particularly gifted as a planter.

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I don't know how many people I've heard say, I don't think I understood the gospel.

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I grew up in church. I don't think I really understood the gospel until I heard Paul Washer preach on it, you know, so that certainly would be under a planter kind of model.

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Some are nurturers, and thankfully I think this is probably the widest gifting.

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I mean the local minister, we would hope, would not just be a plower. I mean, what happens to people when they get on a

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Paul Washer YouTube binge? They just get plowed every day, just ground, plowed, plowed, plowed, and they think,

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I can't repent, right? You know, these are some of the best Christian, you know, humblest genuine Christians that we know, and they think,

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I'm just, I'm worthless, you know, so you wouldn't want to sit under just a plowing constantly, and Paul doesn't do that in the local church.

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That's just kind of his itinerant ministry, but, you know, hopefully the local minister would be gifted in nurturing, and there's so many guys that come to mind like that.

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Andrew Davis, our friend over in Wales, you know, he's like, I've heard him described as a gentle spring rain.

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It just comes, and it's such an encouragement to your soul to sit under that.

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I mean, he's preaching the same texts, but it's the way that it comes to you, you know, is such of a nurturing thing.

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Yeah, and we don't want to misunderstand, we don't want to mistake kind of styles for spiritual tasks like this.

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A plower isn't a man that just screams from the pulpit, and the nurturer isn't the man that always has a quiet voice.

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What we would look at is, when I attend their preaching, and my heart is prepared to be responsive to the

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Living God through His Word preached, what is the general response, or what is the general impact in my soul?

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And when I go to hear Mr. Roberts, I may be encouraged. I may be enlightened, and in a sense there's nurturing and growth, but generally

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I come away thinking, God is so much bigger than you ever imagined, John. Why are you holding these little views?

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And when I hear Andrew Davis, I may be rebuked, but I always go away with the general impact of, my soul has been helped to take the next step forward.

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Yeah, that's a great point. I wouldn't encourage anyone to try to think of themselves, well, you know, I'm just a plower.

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I don't need to nurture, certainly, or I'm just a nurturer. I don't ever need to say anything that might plow up the ground, or I don't need to plant.

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These are, as he said, all ministers, true ministers, are taught of God, and so no one is at a loss on either of these things, but few are remarkably and equally excellent in managing them all.

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Newton says, continuing the letter, he says, again, as to their manner, some are more popular and pathetic, meaning they're in this, what, late 1700s language, able to move the passions.

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So there, some are more popular and able to move the passions with their preaching, but at the same time, more general and diffuse, or more widely spread, while the want of that life and earnestness and delivery is compensated in others by the closeness and accuracy and depth of their compositions.

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So I think they're about men who, who are able to move the passions, and may be more widely known, and you,

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I derive great benefit from listening to guys like John Piper preach, and you know,

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I'm, I'm moved by that, and some people may be more drawn to a more scholarly, more specific, and almost more of a lecture, where as I listen to those,

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I'm incredibly helped by those, but it's, it's rare to see those, those two things come together perfectly in a person.

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I mean, obviously, that's the goal, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah, well, I think that, you know, one thing we, we clearly see in Scripture is that God is behind these differences.

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These are not sinful differences. Right. We can't come to a man who is more of a teacher than, than the, than the preacher, you know, the more of the precise, very focused, he's going to lay out the teaching of all of Scripture, and show you how it fits together, and why that means what it means in this passage, and that is such a help to us, and that's not that common.

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It's probably a pretty, I'm not that way, I feel, and I wish I were more that way, but I think that's probably, in some ways, the more difficult.

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A very logical mind, a very, a very diligent man, and he brings all the meal before you, and he lays it out in a way that you understand how it all fits together, but then there are men,

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I mean, if we're thinking of sermons that are in print, a Charles Spurgeon, who gives you sweeping views, panoramic pictures, and you're not going to get him to stop and explain the bark on one tree.

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It's the whole picture, and your heart is caught up, and you, you know, in those sermons, you think, man, when he's done preaching,

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I will never sin again. I will never be cold toward my King again. I will never doubt him again, and those are necessary too, but those differences are from the

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Lord, so we do have to guard against that sinful tendency in us that Paul mentions to the

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Corinthians. I'm of Paul. Yeah. I'm of Peter. I'm of Apollos, and then the really super spiritual guys who are just as wrong.

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I'm of Jesus, you know, and Newton points that out in his letter that it's only our sinfulness that makes the differences of these men to become issues that cause us trouble.

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Right. Yeah, so how do we get a balanced diet? Well, surely the primary way is that God has set up the kingdom so that Christians gather together, and because we gather together, we are able to benefit not from just one man in a pulpit, but a variety of teachers within the body that have been given those gifts.

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They may not all be full -time. They may not be paid. They may not be the guy that's primarily in the pulpit, but they are gifted by God to explain

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Scripture to us, and some of them, some of them are like plows, and we don't need to avoid them just because the edge can feel sharp at times, because as Rutherford said, when

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God plows you, why are you shocked at the sharpness of the plow? God intends a crop, but when we look at the local body that we attend regularly, that we're plugged into, that we are accountable to, that we are involved with, your pastor, your teachers are probably not the top ten preachers in the

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Western world, you know. They're not superstars like America thinks of superstar preachers, but if they're faithful, and if they're laboring to bring truth to bear in clear ways, then you have the opportunity of having a very balanced diet by being a part of a local church, but what about online?

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I mean, what do you do online so as to guard yourself against only listening to one type of food?

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Yeah, I think one of the things that we have to do is be, so I, you know, if I just really like Twinkies, I would be in a mess.

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I'd be in a worse mess than I am today if all I ate was Twinkies, you know, so I have to be very careful not to just run to the guys that I know that I think will, you know, preach what

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I want to hear, so. Yeah, well, we could say this way.

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We need to know the Word of God, and, you know, in that category, we'd include the kind of preacher we're about to listen to, but we also need to know ourselves, and,

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I mean, we've talked about how to use books, and it's the same application with this sermon. There are times where I have to read a

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Robert Murray McShane because John Snyder has become fat and lazy theologian who sits around with concepts in his head, and I have to read a life that's going to get me off the couch and say, what are you doing not living it, but there are times where I read

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McShane or some other biography, and after a while, I just think I'm not even a

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Christian. I'm not that, and I have to step back and go back to the objective truths, and so I do that with preachers as well.

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You know, there are times where I need a Paul Washer, but there are times where you need, you know, an Andrew Davis and all those in between.

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Yeah, so how do we...let's look at Newton's next warning because Newton's next warning is don't hop around from preacher to preacher, so how do we reconcile that?

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Yeah, so getting a balanced diet is not the same thing as being a church hopper or a conference junkie, you know.

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There are some genuine believers that we know that every time you ask them, hey, what you been doing, and they, well, they're at the next conference, and conferences can be a benefit to our souls, but they can also become a substitute for other things, and so then we have to be careful.

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Yeah, they're absolutely not the local church. Right, right, so I think that one thing that we would have to say,

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Newton in his letter, he says, prayerfully ask the Lord to help you choose a church where there's a faithful minister, and once you find that, you stay there.

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You don't jump around, but he says, so Sunday you're with the believers in your local church.

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You're a part of that, and you're being taught. Now, your preacher in the pulpit of your church may not be your all -time favorite speaker, but he's the man that God has placed there, and you remember we were talking about that quote that he gave.

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He says, Newton says, if you could find a man who had a power in himself of dispensing a blessing to your soul, you might follow him from place to place, but as the blessing is in the

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Lord's hands, you will be more likely to receive it by waiting where his providence has placed you and where he has met you before, so stay put in your church, but then he said, but you can get a, you can benefit from other ministers throughout the week, and of course he had no idea how easy that would be in our day with online preaching.

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Yeah, let me read a couple of quotes from the letter. So he says, what I've observed of many who run about unseasonably after new preachers has reminded me of Proverbs 28, or what is this, sorry,

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Proverbs 27. I got thrown off by my Roman numerals there. What I've observed of many who run about unseasonably after new preachers has reminded me of Proverbs 27 8.

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As a bird that wandereth from her nest, so is the man that wandereth from his place.

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Such unsettled hearers seldom thrive. They usually grow wise in their own conceits.

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They have their heads filled with notions. They acquire a dry, critical, and censurious spirit, and they're more intent upon disputing who is the best preacher than of obtaining benefits to themselves from what they hear.

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So I think that's a little bit more pointed at people who might jump church to church, you know, there's a new guy here,

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I want to go hear him preach. Well, there's a new preacher here, I want to go hear him preach. But then the quote that I just don't think he could have imagined how prophetic in a way that it was is this, there are many who are always upon the wing, and without a due regard to what is incumbent upon them in the shop, so at work, in the family, or in the closet, they seem to think that they were sent into the world only to hear sermons, and to hear as many in a day as they possibly can.

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So we know these, maybe I've been this guy before, just all I need to do, I'm just gonna listen to sermons today.

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That's how I'm gonna grow spiritually. I'm just gonna listen to sermons while I'm mowing the grass, while I'm at work, while I should be spending time with my family, while I should be alone with God in prayer and in the

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Word. Newton goes on and says, such persons may be fitly compared to Pharaoh's lean kind or cow.

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They devour a great deal, but for want of a proper digestion, they do not flourish.

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Their souls are lean, they have little solid comfort, and their profession abounds more in leaves than in fruit.

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What does he mean by that, their profession abounds more in leaves than in fruit? Well, I think if we were looking at a tree from a distance, if it's covered in leaves, green, full, then we think that that's a very healthy tree, but if it's a fruit tree and the season is one that you would expect fruit on it, if you don't see any fruit, no matter how pretty it looks, it's not really doing its job, and so we can appear by our being constantly hearing the next sermon and being able to discuss it with people with real emotion.

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I mean Newton's not saying that you don't benefit from a unless you really appreciate it emotionally.

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I think he would say, no, you can appreciate it emotionally. You can understand the concepts, and you can be thrilled with them, and you can go to your friend and say, man, yesterday

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I was listening to this. Have you ever thought of this? But if it doesn't produce the fruit of godly obedience, of a transformed life, then we are in danger of having a lot of pretty leaves, but not a lot of fruit.

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You know, two things that he mentions there. One was you mentioned the neglect of normal duties, so family duties.

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I remember working at Lowe's hardware store, and now this was when most of Lowe's was a big lumberyard, all right, and I was the guy at the guard shack checking every car or truck that left with wood, and that was my only job, just check the people, make sure that what they got on their truck is what they got on the invoice.

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Now, I was not a Christian at the time, but I was a very religious kid, and this was one of my religious kicks, all right.

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I gave my friends whiplash, which John Snyder shows up, you know, the bad John Snyder or the super religious

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John Snyder. So this was super religious, John, and I decided I was going to memorize Bible verses while I was at work, because that's holy.

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That's godly. Yeah, it's godly, and it never crossed my mind, you know, actually what you're doing is you're stealing from your employer, and God is displeased.

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So I'm memorizing of all books, the book of James, very practical, but it was making no, it wasn't getting through.

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So I'm memorizing, and a guy came up with the truck. It was a Lowe's truck, and I knew the driver, and I thought, oh, that's

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Joe. He wouldn't steal from the company. So I go out, and this truck is loaded with thousands of things, and I say, go on,

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Joe. So he goes on. You're memorizing the Bible. Go on, Joe. I'm busy. So I went back, and I made it up to like chapter 3 in James.

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I get a phone call at the guard shack. John, can you come and talk with me for a minute? It's the owner.

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It's the manager of Lowe's. It's Mr. Lowe. It's Mr. Lowe, and Mr. Lowe's goes to church, and he says to me, did you just let

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Joe go without counting the wood? Because we've had a lot of loss of stuff, and you're not supposed to be doing that, and I said, well, don't worry.

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I was memorizing the Bible, and you go to church. You understand? He said, yeah, yeah. You're fired, and he was absolutely right to do that, and Newton was right because people were pointing their fingers at the converts in the revival saying, oh, you love hearing a great sermon by Whitfield, but you don't like doing what a dad ought to do or others, you know.

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Okay, so his next point is, what about your favorite preacher is actually your pastor? Yeah, he gives some really good advice there, and that is that you are not to idolize that man, and it's obvious because God Himself is the one that is the source of all benefit to our souls.

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Yeah, I think one evidence that he gives is that, do you get incredibly disappointed when you go to church, and you think, okay,

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I'm going to hear my pastor tonight, and there is one of the other elders, or there's one of the people that are being trained for ministry, or there's maybe a visiting preacher, and you think, oh, if I had known, you know, that so -and -so was going to preach, well,

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I guess I wouldn't have made all the effort to come out here. I've preached in this pulpit in this church, and I've probably seen that face made, you know.

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I might have seen that face in the, maybe not, you know, but it would be a very, it would be,

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I can imagine it would be a painful thing if you thought that someone was feeling that way. Newton says,

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I hope you, my friend, will always attend the ordinances with a view to the Lord's presence, and when you're in your proper place, consider the preacher, if he preaches the truth, as one providentially and expressly sent by the

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Lord to you at that time, and that you could not choose better for yourself, all things considered, than he's chosen for you.

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And his admonishment is, do not limit the Almighty by confining your expectations to a single instrument.

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So I can only really, my soul can only benefit if I hear this person preach. I mean, it's great to have, you know, to love your pastor, but it's wrong to limit

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God's ability to minister to you and your soul to one person, one instrument.

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Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and there are many wonderful historical examples of how God has taught

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His children that. You know, McShane leaving his church in Dundee, Scotland to be a part of a missionary trip to Israel.

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While he's gone, a younger, lesser -known minister, William Burns, preaches, and an extraordinary revival breaks out, and it's not under the great

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McShane, and McShane was so happy that God brought it. He didn't care that it wasn't under him.

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Yeah, and I think that preachers have to be careful as well. There are times where the people really appreciate you, and they may come up to you with a statement like, you know,

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I went to a conference, I heard so -and -so, but they don't do my soul good like you do, or if I would have known that you were preaching at this church,

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I would have followed you there, and it's very easy for a preacher to take that on, and to kind of close his hand around those compliments, and make an idol of himself.

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So all the gifts that God has given you, all the books He's allowed you to have, all the opportunities, all the grace

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He's given as you walk up into a pulpit, and you take all that, and you devote it to Me, and it's a really a wretched sin, and again,

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McShane said that he had to learn early on in the ministry that the people's love and appreciation for him did not equal love and appreciation for Christ, so we have to be careful about allowing people to attach themselves to us.

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Yeah, he says it's a good test for you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How do you respond when someone comes and says that?

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If you're building your kingdom, the kingdom of Me and My church, then you're pretty happy with that kind of talk.

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If it's Christ's kingdom, Christ the teacher, Christ's church, then you want to lovingly, you don't want to be harsh, but you want to lovingly warn the people against the way the enemy would use that attitude.

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You know, another thing Newton points out there is being careful about having itching ears. Now, this is a phrase we hear all the time, you know, itching ears.

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What is he talking about? But in that situation, what he said was there were people that liked to go hear preachers that they knew were wrong, so the man may be notorious for having some heretical ideas, and it's fascinating.

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It's, you know, they wanted to go and hear him, and even though they know what he says is not from the

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Lord, it's not an accurate picture of what Scripture teaches, they go there out of curiosity, and Newton warns them that they can poison their soul without really recognizing it, and many people had been damaged going to hear a very clever speaker explain his erroneous point of view, and next thing they know, they're in agreement with him.

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Yeah, that's, you know, some of the people in our day who are the most gifted speakers and writers also happen to be the most wrong about the issue of justification by faith, and so that could not be more applicable in our day.

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Don't run over to hear what this guy has to say about issue X, because you really like issue X, and he's right about issue

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X, and you know, and hey, what is he, what is all this that he's talking about, about justification anyway, and before you know it, wow, that's really interesting.

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Wow, that's, you know what, I see that too. Right, yeah, it's very dangerous. Really, the last point in the letter that I think is very encouraging, because since I have to do a lot of preaching, is that he tells the people to be careful in how they judge the minister that's preaching, and so we're not talking about a person living a double life, we're talking about gifts and differences, like he mentioned at the beginning of the letter, but one of the things he said was, two parts here.

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First was this, if we're not careful, we can judge them unfairly, and meaning this, a preacher will get up and preach a sermon, and one guy over here, guy number one, gets up after the sermon, he's angry, he says, that preacher's an antinomian, he doesn't believe in holiness.

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Guy number two over here gets up, and he's angry, and he says, that preacher's all about legal righteousness, and good works, and he doesn't believe in grace, and so you kind of, you look at the preacher, when

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Newton says that, and you think, goodness, you know, it's kind of right, isn't it? You know, and we can be very, we can be unfairly strict in our judgment of the person that's teaching us, and want them to say everything we would have said in that passage, and then we label them as a heretic, because they didn't say it, but the guy next to us, he's complaining about something else, but another thing he says there is, and I wrote down a quote, he said, be careful about being critical of the ministers, unnecessarily, because he said, they will already be very critical of themselves, they feel their weakness, and defects, and the greatness of their task, and the difficulty of doing it well, their conscience, that they are conscious, that their warmest endeavors to proclaim the

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Savior's glory, are too cold, and their most important addresses to the consciences of men, are too faint, and sometimes they are burdened with such discouragements, that even their enemies would pity them, if they knew their case, and so, that's always a good reminder, when we think of how to respond to a man who has that heavy burden.

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Yeah, when you sit under a sermon, and you're unhappy with the sermon, you don't feel like you got what you should have gotten from it, the question to ask, shouldn't be, well, the thing to do, shouldn't be, let's pick this guy apart, let's pick apart his approach, or his style, or his etc.,

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the question to ask is, maybe the fault is with me. Yeah, did I pray, have

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I cried out to the Lord to aid this mere mortal, to speak on his behalf, really a job that we would think would be better suited to angels.

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Yeah. Did I come despising the man, and God has given me what I deserved.

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Did I come idolizing the man, and God has caused his sermon to be dry, because I have yet to learn the childlike lesson that it's

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God himself. Many things that we need to ask ourselves. Maybe we haven't applied what we heard in the last sermon.

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Yeah, certainly. God's not given more light, until we apply the light, and the truth that we've been given before.

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Maybe we've indulged a careless attitude toward preaching in general, and so God has left you with a season of spiritual deadness to rebuke you.

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As we talked about last week, the ability to hear, and the degree to which we can hear and understand, has more to do with the condition of our hearts than it does with our ears.

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So, it's not a bad question to ask, is the fault with me. Right, right. Well, we're going to bring this to a close now, and we're going to move on and talk about some more stuff in the next podcast, which we are calling the

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Supporter Appreciation Podcast. You can't buy it.

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It's not for sale, but it's something that we do, that we give to people who come alongside

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MediaGratia as supporters, and make monthly donations to enable us to continue to do the studies that we do, and small things like these podcasts as well.

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As a gift, as a token of our appreciation, we like to give you additional podcasts.

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When we get back to conference season, we'll be doing a lot of behind -the -scenes videos. We'll invite you to kind of come along with us online to G3, and Ligonier, and TGC, and T4G, and Shepherds.

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And when we start into our next season of big production, whether it's the next

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Behold Your God study, or several other studies that we have planned for 2019, you'll be able to see some behind -the -scenes footage for all of that.

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That's just to say thank you for those of you who have come alongside of us monthly. Now, if you can't afford to feed your family, tithe to your church, and be a supporter of MediaGratia, and you want to have access to that content, we want you to have it.

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So why don't you just reach out to us at support at MediaGratia .org. Let us know your situation, and we, more than anything, want to make sure that finances are never a legitimate burden or a legitimate obstacle to people who want to hear this content to be able to hear it.

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So you can reach out to us at support at MediaGratia .org. But that's all for today in this podcast, and we thank you for listening, and hope you'll join us again next week.