Discipleship Begins in the Pulpit

Hey guys, and welcome back to Your Calvinist Podcast. My name is Keith Foskey, and as always, I am your Calvinist.

And I'm coming to you from the 2024 Southeast Regional Conference of the

Fellowship of Independent Reformed Evangelicals. We had our first conference speaker tonight.

It was Matt Rayburn of Arbor Heights Baptist Church. Bible Church. Bible Church. I'm sorry. Arbor Heights Bible Church.

And he spoke on the subject of the shepherd and preaching. Matt, can you tell me just a little bit about what you talked about tonight?

Sure. You know, when I was given that topic, I thought it was pretty specific into what it was after.

You know, it wasn't asking me to talk about how to preach or anything, but how do you shepherd your people from the pulpit?

And so, really, I thought, as I was thinking about it, really three things, you know, just from the most cliche text to ever have, you know, when you're at a

Baptist conference. Second Timothy 4, I actually wrote that outline in the truck on the way home right after I'd accepted to do it.

And I was just looking at how we need to feed the sheep, you know, we need to protect the sheep, and then we need to be devoted to it, persistent in it from Second Timothy 4.

Now, now, now, I don't mean to interrupt you, but you had three Ps. Don't give it to him like he didn't do it right. You did it right.

You Baptisted it up. You might not be a Baptist church, but you did it like a Baptist. Well, you know, I wanted to impress people.

I'd never spoken at a Baptist conference before. I tried to bring the, you know, I don't even know what they call it. Everything started with the same letter.

So, yeah, sure, we did provision, protection, and persistence, you know, I thought that sounds pretty good. Very good. That's an alliterated masterpiece.

That's it. Alliteration. I didn't want to say it if that was wrong. That's what I thought it was. Nope, nope. You are 100 % right. Well, brother,

I'm thankful. We met a few years ago at the, I think, the Memphis conference.

Thank you, dear. That's correct. We appreciate it. Yep. And I didn't call you dear. Just saying, a lady just handed me a drink.

Definitely wasn't me. Yeah. And we met at that conference, and I've been just thankful to be a part of FIRE for several years.

When did you guys join? Oh, goodness. We joined after we had left the Southern Baptist Convention. Actually, we were looking, this was probably in, oh, 2015, 2016.

My first one was when we went to the Sugar Creek in Ohio. I can't remember exactly what year it was, but that's when we decided to look into FIRE, and I really, really enjoy it, too.

I mean, the fellowship in it is real. I mean, these are good guys over here, and I love just spending time talking with them. Yeah.

I would say of all the conferences I go to, this is probably the one that I'm most, I feel like most is like sitting around with your friends, brothers.

They care about you. Yeah. People know you. Which, I prefer that. You know, you're going to get, you know, with the exception of the guy who went tonight, you're going to get good preaching, you know, and then.

And that is not true, but very humble. Well, you know, you're going to get good preaching, and then you're going to get real talk.

You know, this conference isn't about going and hearing your favorite preacher, you know, whoever you like, which

I have them, too, but I'm not criticizing, but it's more about the conversations we have around the table and sharing the struggles that we have and encouraging each other.

I mean, that means a lot to me. I love these regionals, and I try to get to as many as I can. Yeah. Well, the thing

I wanted to talk to you about since I have you for a few minutes, I know your lovely wife is waiting, so we're going to be, not fast, but we'll make sure we don't stay all night because we could talk about preaching all night.

We could. I mean, you're scraping the bottom of the barrel here. But when

I was listening to your sermon tonight, I was thinking about something I had heard years ago, and I got to thinking, well,

I'd like to get your thoughts on this, and we can just banter about it for a bit. But this is the subject that came to my mind because you were saying, you know,

I'm not teaching you how to preach. I'm telling you what preaching is about, what you're supposed to be doing. You're providing for the sheep.

You're protecting the sheep. You're being persistent in your preaching, which, again, that's why you do the peace because I remembered.

I didn't have to write it down. That's it. But something somebody said to me years ago, and it has stuck with me, is the idea that preaching is discipleship.

And what the person was saying is we often think of discipleship as something you do in Sunday school or something you do in small group, life group,

Wednesday night, or something you do one -on -one. But this person, when he was talking to me about preaching, he said,

Keith, you need to understand that what you're doing from the pulpit is the only time of the week where all the bodies together, you know, unless you had a

Sunday night, Wednesday night, and even then, you know, it's like they say, if you come on Sunday morning, you love the pastor.

If you come on Sunday night, you love the church. If you come on Wednesday night, you love Jesus, right? That's the rule, right? People don't come on Sunday night,

Wednesday night like they used to. So the only time you're going to have everybody together, Sunday morning.

And so this is your, I don't know, this might not be the right way to say the greatest act of discipleship, but this is like, this is the, if you will, the, the, the first step of discipleship.

Do you think that's right or wrong? What are your thoughts on that? Honestly, I hadn't given that much thought, but now that you say that, I mean, I definitely do.

Usually we think of discipleship, like you said, I think in a one -on -one settings, we go have coffee, we go to lunch or something like that, and we talk people through things.

But every Sunday morning, if you're preaching the way that I believe you should be preaching and the way that we looked at 2

Timothy 4 tonight, and you are actually rightly dividing God's Word and you are preaching

God's Word and you're seeking to really give the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God, I believe it absolutely is, is discipleship.

I mean, there, you know, there's a lot of stuff we could have talked about tonight, right? But when you're given doctrine, solid foundational doctrine, which you should be giving in every sermon, there's a doctrine in every text.

And when you're talking as well about the Christian life and what it looks like and you're calling people into following Christ under His grace, of course, but into obedience, it absolutely is a part of discipleship.

Yeah, you can follow up and you probably should if you have those opportunities, and a lot of times you don't even have to.

People follow up with you. They send you messages and ask you questions about your sermon. At least that's my experience, but with your entire congregation,

I would agree with that. If you are giving people what they need, you have put hard study in through the week and you're trying to give people the authorial intent, this is what

God has said, I mean, how could it not be discipleship at that point? Yeah. You had a quote in your sermon, and I don't remember exactly what it was, and you may not either.

I hope I do. Well, I was going to say, you preached for 45 minutes or so, so I'm sure one line may not come to your mind, but you said something about doctrine and it was a quote from someone else, but it was about the importance of doctrine.

I think it was the quote you're talking about, it was the Calvin quote. We're at a Reform conference, you've got to quote Calvin, right?

Yes, okay. He said that the sheep cannot be fed except with pure doctrine from the Word. I like that quote.

I wanted to hear that again. I mean, that was me paraphrasing it, but it was basically that, yeah. Yeah, and I think that's so true because, you know, when we preach expositionally, and I don't know your method for preaching, but I'm assuming you go verse by verse with the book?

Yes, sir. Yeah. When we do that, we are providing not what we, not our hobby horse, not necessarily what we want to preach.

In fact, I'll give you a little secret. Currently, I'm finishing my series through 2

Corinthians. I'm in chapter 11, so I've got two more chapters to go, but I'm on the downturn.

I would have never chosen 2 Corinthians, at least not where I was in my heart and my mind.

I had finished Colossians, and I really wanted to do Colossians. I had wanted to preach Colossians for years, and I preached through it.

And I was wanting to do a book other than one of Paul's letters because I just wanted to mix it up some.

But I had the idea. I said, well, I'm going to go to the elders and ask them what they think I should preach.

And lo and behold, both of them said 2 Corinthians, and I was like, well, I guess God has, you know,

I cast a lot in the light, and it's every decision is from the Lord, right? And I've been so thankful of what

I have learned about pastoring, about the difficulties of ministry.

I'm right now at the portion where Paul's talking about the false apostles and those men who are agents of Satan, who are, you know, he says

Satan is like an angel masquerading as or masquerades as an angel of light, and his ministers masquerade as ministers of righteousness, but they're not.

They're false teachers. And I'm like, how applicable is this to today? Just last week,

I talked about the fact that there are three things that people find. It was false

Jesus, a false spirit, and a false gospel. I said, every cult you'll ever find, you'll find one of those three, if not all three.

And that's right in 2 Corinthians 11. And so it just reminds me all the time that what you said, and I want to get you to say it again.

The word... You're talking about the Calvin quote? No, the word does the work. Oh, the word. That was

Kent Hughes. Don't credit me with that. No, no, no, no. Yeah, that one was Kent Hughes. Kent Hughes said, let the word do the work. That's the way we should be preaching.

And I think I said it wrong tonight. In my mind, I said, you don't need my intelligence. Actually you do, because I got to interpret the text.

I got to write. But what I meant to say was, you don't need my ingenuity. You don't need my creativity. You don't need me to come up with strategies.

What you need me to give you is this is what God's word says. And then you let God's word do the work.

There's so many things. I think my sermon was only 45 minutes, because I think I forgot to say a lot of things. But I don't know how many times that happens to you.

I'm sure it does. People will say, man, you were preaching to me this week, and you have no idea. You're just preaching expositionally.

I'm at the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts chapter 8 right now. And that's what you do. When we finish that, we go into chapter 9.

Then we go to chapter 8. And sometimes you're preaching this, and you're, Lord, I don't know who this is for, but I trust that you, through your spirit, will apply it how you will.

And I have those emails. Man, you were preaching right. It's like you were in my living room this week. You reading my mail, preacher?

That's right. That's right. Which is certainly, of course, obviously not the truth, but God is using his word in that way.

You let the word do the work. Preaching is not easy, but it's simple.

You just give people what the word says. That was another quote you gave. Yeah. I like that. I have my favorite textbook in preaching when

I was studying, and I still study, but I mean when I was really studying to become a preacher, Stephen Kreloff.

He's actually a FIRE pastor. Okay. He's not a FIRE church, but he's a FIRE member, a great guy.

And he has a small book called Expository Preaching, and he says your job is to read the text, explain the text, apply the text, and move on.

That's it. And I remember thinking, that just made my life better.

Absolutely. Because I don't have to be a creative genius. Now, listen. I'm not tooting my horn here, but we've had some visitors come into our church lately, and these are folks that haven't been to church ever.

Their kids are coming. They've never been to church. And funny thing is, those people have been evangelizing.

They've been inviting other people to come. And they told me, yeah, I just tell them, you just tell us what the text means.

You just read the Bible and tell us what it means. I thought, praise the Lord. I hope that's all anybody ever says about me.

You don't need to tell them my name. You don't need to tell them anything else. He just reads the Bible and tells us what it means. I try to apply it too, but I mean, that's it.

At the same time, and we do try to apply it, but I would say, and maybe you might disagree, sometimes that's the hardest part because the

Spirit's going to apply it how He will in the life of whomever. Like you said, we don't always know. And I love that idea, you know, pastor, you read my mail.

People say, oh, how'd you know? I didn't know. Yeah. I preached the Old Testament on Wednesday nights.

I mean, we're in second King. Some of those historical narratives are so hard to apply. But I trust that if we've pulled some doctrine out of the tape.

And you hope some of them ain't getting applied. You get a David and it's like, I hope this don't apply to any men in this church.

If you're sending your best friend out to get murdered. I want to tell you.

We need to have a meeting. That's a bad decision. That's a discipline. Yeah. Well, Matt, I want to say

I'm thankful for your message. Thank you, sir. I'm thankful for your ministry and for your friendship and for being on the show.

Well, thank you for having me. I love all your content too, man. I just wish I could have a conversation with the

Superior Theology Presbyterian. Well, I didn't bring my sweater vest, but we'll have to do that one day.

Yeah. Thank you, brother. All right, brother. Thank you. And thank you guys for watching. Be watching for more. I'm going to have some more interviews from this conference.

And keep in mind, if you want to get in touch with me, go to KeithFoskey .com and send me an email right from the website. If you liked this video, hit the thumbs up button.