March 15, 2017 Show with C. Matthew McMahon on “The Preacher’s Charge & the People’s Duty”

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, 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 Arnson.

Good afternoon Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida and the rest of

humanity living on the planet earth who are listening via live streaming.

This is Chris Arnson, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you a happy Wednesday on this 15th

day of March 2017.

I'm delighted to have back on the program someone who has proven to be one of

my favorite guests, a fountain of knowledge.

I really love having this brother on the program.

His name is Dr. C. Matthew McMahon.

He is founder of A Puritan's Mind and we are addressing today The Preacher's Charge

and The People's Duty, a book that he has brought back into print and

edited that was written by John Brinsley.

And it is my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr. C.

Matthew McMahon.

Thank you so much, Chris.

Very much with you and talk about this great subject.

Amen.

And I'd like to give our listeners our email address right off the bat.

If you have questions for Dr. C. Matthew McMahon, our email address is chrisarnson

at gmail .com.

That's chrisarnson at gmail .com.

And John Brinsley was a 17th century evangelist.

Tell us something more about him.

Well, Brinsley, Emanuel

College, right when

he was

appointed

in his life, his uncle,

who's a well -known, about

20 years ago, got rejected.

John Brinsley, the

descendant of Dort,

went with him, attended it,

respected the minister in many ways, you know.

And then from that

point,

he was minister all through that time, up until the

time of the

Reformation, he was one of the ministers.

So he would be a

non

-conformist.

So

much, in

13 or 14 of his books, nothing.

And this work,

he's in charge of people's duty, even though

it's, you know, and,

like,

just thinking about,

and I was

really

thinking

through,

very focused, very, he's very applicable.

He wrote a book here on the preacher, and yet,

he's all

around, and something

on healing Israel's breach.

All of his works are from beginning to end.

I think we're on one of my favorite books,

one of those

top 10,

I'd say

five

or six,

to be able to have only book on

talking about the

commission

of the preacher.

It's more set

in the work.

And again,

that

kind of shows

you marriage put

together.

They

wanted you

to tear it out of the book and hang it on your wall,

put together their

mind that they have not been able to read.

Where, even though many did, for example, put together his chart on

salvation and damnation using circles and lines, so that people, as he said, could take their finger

and place it in each one of these places and follow along, almost like a game, like chutes and

ladders, when you hit the ladder and you get to climb up

it.

He put a table together, book, read it,

and then tear that out, hang it on the wall, and be reminded.

We have a question from Ronald in Eastern Suffolk County, New York, who says,

I, from time to time, discover these unknown gems, such as John

Brisley, through the Iron Sherpa's Iron Radio program and through other sources.

Why do you think it is that men who have such profound talent and

abilities are not as well -known today, and in fact, are often unheard of,

when compared to the likes of great men like Charles Spurgeon and Jonathan Edwards?

Other

publishers have

come in

and

done things like all of Thomas Manton's work.

Some of these buy them for a

time, and then they become scarce.

They become difficult to get.

I think with just the sheer volume,

it's going

to be a long

time.

We

say, here's

a gem, John Brinsley.

It's not

that I think we're neglecting them, because between all of these different

publishing houses and putting out these great works, and now with the way that Google Books works,

and maybe Internet Archive, and some of these other places where you can go and actually get some of

these, all these works that

are printed, but at least are available, there's just so many of them.

Unless you're constantly reading all of these original source documents,

again, where are we going to get all of

those?

We also want to be discerning in what it

is that we want to put

out.

Sometimes it's sad when we find a really, really good Puritan, and there just isn't

anything of a book.

Gammon is one of them, and Thomas Valentine, same thing.

They only have three.

You take those, you put them in one volume, it makes up 100 pages or so, and then you're sad

that there's no more, because they're such a good one,

such a treat, once

they actually get published.

But I don't think it's like an aversion to it.

I just think it's time to be able to get to them, and ultimately, they

should be published.

I mean, I've read works that you read by people who were known at the time, like,

for example, Henry Hammond, and some of his works, you just say, you know, we just

don't need to do that, or he's just a little off there.

We just don't really need to deal with that particular volume, and so you have to be choosy about it.

Yeah, you mentioned Don Kistler earlier, and he said there's only a tiny handful of works that he

thinks are worthy of republishing by Richard Baxter.

Exactly, right.

I mean, Baxter's works, I believe Soledeo did this gigantic one,

did that, little teeny

tiny print, gigantic volume, 1 ,800

pages, but when you really get down about what you read by

Baxter, because he's got a lot of stuff that's kind of odd.

Right.

So, you know, you want to choose the best stuff, even among the Puritans,

you know, you choose the best stuff to publish.

Yes, and his Reformed Pastors seems to be universally applauded as a classic and a must

-read in spite of anything else that he wrote that was aberrant in other places.

Yes, the Reformed Pastors is a phenomenal book.

Any preachers who are listening, if you have not read...

And it has nothing to do with Reformed theology, they may be misled by the title.

It's actually like, Reformed as in being transformed.

Yes, it's pastoral theology, it's about the pastoral ministry.

It's what you should be an

exhortation in that department.

I had one gentleman, because every now and again I'll...

What do you mean?

He was like, what are you doing?

Wow.

That's what I said, you know, it's like, yeah, I mean, I definitely understood what he was saying.

But yeah, so it's a classic.

The way that you think about the ministry, just in...

Yeah, I have heard from at least three different pastors that I know

that don't even know each other, who have said that when they were

Arminians, when they first read A .W. Pink's The Sovereignty of God,

they got so angry they threw the book across the room.

But then later, as the curiosity welled up in them, they had to

search for it, pick it up and read it to its conclusion.

And all three of them were eventually, by God's sovereign grace, drawn into that

theology and accepted it.

So...

Right, right.

By the way, Ronald, in Eastern Suffolk County, you have just won a free copy of The Preacher's Charge

and People's Duty by John Brinsley, with chapters by our guest C.

Matthew McMahon, who also edited the book.

And we thank you for submitting that question today.

Give us your full mailing address and we'll have that shipped out to you as soon as possible via our friends at Cumberland Valley

Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com, cvbbs .com.

One more quick note about the availability of these other more well -known preachers,

when you compare them to somebody who might be virtually unknown, like John Brinsley, is that Charles

Spurgeon, for instance, every one of his sermons was transcribed.

I mean, all of his sermons were available in print, and

so there is a difference.

I discovered somebody, I don't know if you've ever read, a pastor in New York, The Life and

Times of Spencer Cone by John Thornberry.

Spencer Cone was a 19th century particular Baptist in Manhattan, pastor of First

Baptist Church in Manhattan, and it is quite a remarkable story.

And John Thornberry, the biographer, is convinced that if

Cone's writings were as available as Spurgeon's were, if his sermons were

transcribed and so on, that he believes he would be just as well known today and just as much

cherished as Spurgeon.

But now, what was it specifically that made a light go on in your head and

say, I've got to get this book into the hands of pastors, I've got to bring John

Brinsley's work back into print?

Yet his exposition.

Generally, when you read, come away

with what they are dealing with, because

generally the whole book is going to be set on the springboard of one particular scripture.

In this case, Brinsley's scripture, if

nobody gets anything other than this one thing, Brinsley is pressing,

pressing, pressing this one point.

Preachers are to preach the Word.

And you say to yourself, well, if you're a preacher and you're a minister, isn't that what you're supposed to do?

Well, yeah, that is what you're supposed to do.

The United States, for example, and gone into all sorts of different kinds of churches, a lot

of times you would think,

or a messenger, as a minister, because

Brinsley, in season

or out of season, whatever aspect or time it may be,

whether necessity makes it to be important or not, the preacher is supposed

to be excellent.

And then, I

mean,

that

would be

in

this

one

particular

text.

He never even read the text from the Bible, instead

of what it is that he's at or what it is that

he's trying to demonstrate to us.

Well, in the course of a 25 -minute sermon, 15 minutes of it were five illustrations

in the beginning, the text was never read, and the

rest of

it never

given the minister,

because on it I have a finger.

Every single thing that I did

over the...

And that caused me to do two things.

The pages, and needed to

be able to have done my duty exegetically.

And two, every

text from that

text, mind is.

And for some reason, we want to begin with something other than the text, like some illustration.

I don't, honestly, I really don't understand why seminaries teach that.

They add that idea of wanting to catch their interest.

Me, personally, I think the Word of God is interesting, and I think we should start, we should

be preaching the Word.

The Puritans used a lot of illustrations.

They

use

what

interest

is a

concern

in

preaching,

because the preacher has to be...

The problem that arises

already is interesting.

Preacher makes it...

Transcribe them on Lord's Day, so that he

had to be able to memorize it.

People think, oh, it's written out.

They were just...

In the

Puritans, they should

write out their sermons until they get used to being

able to be precise in preaching their sermons.

Edwards used to write out his sermons.

He did that on purpose.

Why did all of these guys, why don't all of these...

Why do we have all of these books of sermons from all of these...

Why do we have them?

Well, because they wrote them out.

They wrote them out word for word.

They would then preach, and then...

African enlarged it,

and done that way on purpose.

So, well, why?

Exactly what Grinsley begins in his...

To be preaching the Word.

The command is, preach the Word.

That's what it says.

They want to be able to take what is happening in that text, and they

want to tense in that text together.

That's what they all want.

And the manner...

Say, hey, that seems to be a simple idea.

We need preachers to grab hold of that, take that bull by the horns, and run with that, and do that every

single week when they're not doing it.

They need...

That needs to be corrected.

I encourage

lots of

people to

get up

there, and they give theological lectures in the preaching.

Then you just have...

20 minutes needs to come every Lord's Day, and so they know that that's part of what they do.

He

shows

what

my

function

is

in the

body.

Well, that means the mind

is.

To men.

In another book that we're working on, he

says, it's a very interesting thing.

He gave men men in this particular way.

God uses men.

He uses men to do that.

Yes, in contradiction to the hyper -Calvinist claim, we have to

go by what the scriptures teach, even if it may seem on its first appearance

to contradict our theology.

That's why historic Calvinism is very balanced about the sovereignty of God and the responsibility

of men.

Very much so.

Jonathan Edwards, in some of his sermons, said, look, he's Arminian.

Look at the way that he's trying to implore people to come to Christ.

That they just misunderstand what preaching is about.

Yes, and I had just had that charge hurled against Charles Spurgeon yesterday in a private conversation.

But in fact, let's pick up right where you left off because we have to go to a station break.

And Joe in Slovenia, we will get to your question as soon as Dr. McMahon finishes his

thought when we return from the break.

If anybody else would like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Don't go away.

We'll be right back with Dr. C. Matthew McMahon.

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Welcome back.

This is Chris Arnsin.

If you just tuned into Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, our guest today for the full two hours is Dr. C. Matthew McMahon.

We are discussing The Preacher's Charge and People's Duty by John Brinsley, a

17th century nonconformist, and we are taking your emails, your

questions by email at chrisarnsin at gmail .com, chrisarnsin at gmail .com.

Before I go to any of our listener emails, Dr. McMahon, if you could continue your thought on God using

men to bring new life to sinners.

Yes.

You know, in the Old Testament or the New Testament, God has

his mat.

He uses men to convert other men.

It's not that the man himself does some kind of converting, but if only if

the spirit uses the word.

And so talking about the

minister and the office as a man bringing the word,

don't get to muse up at the pulp in that way at the pulpit.

Rather, the office of the minister, he's an aid to

God and the people.

He does two things in his office.

He deals with God for the people and he deals with the people for and from God.

So when he deals in the first

request, their desires, their supplications, their thanksgiving to God,

they're praying for him.

Samuel said in first Samuel bid that I should sin

against the Lord and the minister should be thinking one of his two main objective

and Jeremiah 15, 19 from the

vial, thou shalt be as it were my mouth.

The prophet Jeremiah that the prophet, the ministers of the word are God's

mouth to his people.

And that's where he begins by who utilized the minister in the

second part of the office, which is

to preach that

way.

Audible voice.

He says the audible voice by the will of God's

mouth.

In preaching, he says they take,

see what he just did there.

The outline for everything,

some doctrine out of the text, and then they would apply

if the text is analyzed and

divide the text to expound some doctrine out of it, and then you apply

the text.

So this was a common of the minister

all through the Reformation, all through the Puritans.

You go grab one of Calvin's sermonies is the very thick,

some doctrines and teaching and then applied it.

And that was the basic function of what it was that the ministers

expound that.

Chris, when you were going to say that you had someone that had a question.

Yes, we actually have a few.

We have Joe in Slovenia who says, from what I've read, John Brinsley

continued to preach in the town hall after having been dismissed from his ministerial function.

This was in direct disobedience to the governing authorities.

How do we understand this to be heroic when he could have moved away to another country in order to be

obedient to the God ordained authorities?

How do we emulate this great man of faith and others like him who did not love their life more than

obedience to God in our present day as our government, as our government, more and more

impinges against faithful obedience to Christ?

Excellent question.

Thank you for focusing on preaching God's precious word.

Very good, very timely.

And obviously we are to obey the authorities above us until they have us

violate his very word, right?

Yes, because he was given, in the Puritan days, they

were given stipends.

And so they would be under a particular and

community that they cared.

This was not a presbytery.

It was not a session.

It was not a group of ministers rich enough to be able to have a

minister.

And so for Brinsley, he, in this particular, in

Yartmouth, there was a conflict between another minister who thought

that he was supposed to be in there instead of Brinsley.

And so there was some contention.

It didn't suddenly unordain contention

about who should actually be preaching in that particular church where Brinsley had to leave and he wound up

preaching in another part of,

wound up different

than going against the magisterial or going against the government.

It was more over who was going to get the stipend, who is going to be the one paid to preach in

that particular church.

But don't you think though, whether what we are never to obey any man or

body of men when those commands that we are given or prohibitions we are given

cause us or would have caused us to violate commands of God.

Yeah, we would never have done that.

Jeremiah Burroughs called great

and evil times.

We are never judged in some

way that would

cause

us even upon pain of death again.

We just

had a

conversation yesterday.

With Dr. Barry Horner on John Bunyan.

And obviously I believe that John Bunyan was completely correct to

disobey the Anglican authorities who were forbidding him to preach without an

Anglican minister's license because that is nothing that is commanded in the scripture.

So anyway, I really view Bunyan as a very courageous

and noble hero of the faith.

We have, let's see, we have Jeremiah in Charlestown,

New Hampshire.

And he says it is astounding and sobering at the pace at which I have seen pastors

end their ministry by committing disqualifying sins.

It seems that we would do well to heed Paul's exhortation to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20

to 28.

Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to

care for the church of God which he obtained with his own blood.

My question is, what are specific ways that we can obey this charge?

Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock so that we might avoid stumbling instead of

being faithful shepherds.

...video show in the end of it.

Or a series of...

I have no doubt about that.

There are so many acts the minister can do to take

heed what the minister can do in that particular manner.

Take heed to your life and to your doctrine.

A really good work, The Faithful Minister of Jesus Christ by

John Jackson.

And he talks about the breastplate of the ephah that

had the 12 stones,

stones that are found amazingly in the way that he

deals with the text of the ministry in the Old

Testament and the New Testament by each one of these stones.

Ministers, how ministers of

being unfearful of men,

melancholy or sad that they are to be preeminently

to be a glorious shining light

against any kind of

possible

evil.

And all together, taking heed in that way encompasses so many different things

and having a gravity about all the two.

William Perkins or the minister of the gospel be about

that business.

Now, if ministers would do that, they would avoid so many discrepancies in

that way.

And I agree with your emailer that astounding

rate,

some heinous, disqualifying way

then to stop.

Amen.

And by the way, I forgot to mention to Joe in Slovenia and

Jeremiah in New Hampshire that you are both getting a free copy of The Preacher's

Charge and People's Duty by John Brinsley with chapters by C. Matthew McMahon.

And thank you, Joe in Slovenia for providing an American address where we will ship this to your daughter.

Saves a lot of money to Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CVBBS .com.

CVBBS .com saves them a lot of money in shipping costs

because they ship out all of our winners, their free books and Bibles and whatever else they win by submitting questions.

So thank you very much for your questions.

We are going to go to another break right now.

If anybody would like to join us on the air with a question, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail

.com.

Chrisarnson at gmail .com.

In fact, I'm going to read you a question before the break and you can answer it when we return.

I'm going to read a question by Erin in Indianapolis, Indiana.

And she asked, could Dr. McMahon please tell us ways the Puritan preacher advised the hearer of the

sermon to best hear or absorb the sermon or text during preaching

in order to apply the word to our sanctification?

Wow, that's a pretty excellent great question.

Well, we'll have you answer that when we return from the break.

And as I said, if anybody else would like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name, city and state and country of residence.

If you live outside of the good old USA, you may remain anonymous if it makes you feel more comfortable

for reasons such as you're disagreeing with your own pastor or something like that.

But we look forward to hearing from you after these messages with your questions for C. Matthew McMahon.

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Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, For am I now seeking the approval of man or of God, or am I trying

to please man?

If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.

Hi, I'm Mark Lukens, pastor of Providence Baptist Church.

We are a Reformed Baptist Church and we hold to the London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689.

We are in Norfolk, Massachusetts.

We strive to reflect Paul's mindset to be much more concerned with how God views what we say and what we do

than how men view these things.

That's not the best recipe for popularity, but since that wasn't the apostles' priority, it must not be ours either.

We believe, by God's grace, that we are called to demonstrate love and compassion to our fellow man, and to be

vessels of Christ's mercy to a lost and hurting community around us, and to build up the body of Christ in truth and

love.

If you live near Norfolk, Massachusetts or plan to visit our area, please come and join us for worship and fellowship.

You can call us at 508 -528 -5750 that's 508 -528

-5750 or go to our website to email us, listen to past sermons, worship songs, or watch our TV

program entitled, Resting in Grace.

You can find us at that's or

even on.

Providence Baptist Church is delighted to sponsor Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

One sure way all Iron Sharpens Iron Radio listeners can help keep my show on the air is to support my

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Welcome back.

This is Chris Arns.

And if you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours is Dr. C. Matthew McMahon,

founder of A Puritan's Mind.

We are addressing the book The Preacher's Charge and People's Duty by John

Brinsley, which has been brought into print or back into print, I should say, by Puritan

Publications, a publishing arm of A Puritan's Mind.

And if you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Just want to quickly highlight a couple of things that we have going on for tomorrow and Friday.

Tomorrow, March 16th, which is the day before St. Patrick's Day, I am delighted to have

back on the program Dr. Michael Haken, who is a professor at the Southern Baptist

Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

And he is going to be addressing his book, Patrick of Ireland, his life and impact.

We'll be able to separate fact from fiction in regard to this legendary figure from

history known as St. Patrick.

And I hope that you tune into that program and contribute to it with your questions for Dr.

Michael Haken.

Then on Friday, we are going to be blessed for the very first time

to have Pastor Steve Garrick of Emmanuel Reformed Baptist Church of

Georgetown, Texas.

He'll be on the program right in studio here.

He happens to be in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, doing pulpit supply for

Grace Baptist Church in Carlisle, where I am a member.

And he is a wonderful brother, a phenomenal preacher and speaker, a

delightful man to meet personally, a humble man with a servant's heart.

He is going to be talking about his journey out of independent freewill

fundamentalism.

He's not going to be merely bashing that which he left, but he is also going to be

talking about things that he believed were appropriate to retain from that

background, in addition to pointing out the flaws and aberrancies that caused him

to abandon that system or that movement.

So I hope that you tune in as well on Friday to hear Pastor Steven Garrick

from Emmanuel Reformed Baptist Church of Georgetown, Texas, as he will be, God willing, our guest on Friday

for those two hours.

So we've got a couple of excellent programs waiting ahead of us.

And just another quick note that Iron Sharpens Iron Radio is in urgent need for your donations

or for your advertising dollars, should you choose to sponsor our program and run

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So you can make your checks out for any amount to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

I thank all of you who have already done so from the bottom of my heart.

My head is still spinning from the really tremendously

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But I thank all of you who have submitted checks to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio or

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Words cannot describe my gratitude.

And I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Just all of you keep praying that we get the needed

finances to remain on the air so we can continue having interviews such as the one we're having today with Dr.

C. Matthew McMahon.

And I'm sure that most of you realize that these kinds of interviews are rarely heard in

Christian radio because there is a lot of fluff out there and a lot of soundbite

theology where people are just fed itsy -bitsy pieces of teaching

here and there.

And a lot of times you wouldn't want any more than an itsy -bitsy piece of the teaching that you hear on a lot of Christian

radio.

But we are back with our discussion now with Dr. C. Matthew McMahon on the preacher's

charge and the people's duty.

And I'll reread the question that we received from Indianapolis, Indiana from Erin Birch.

She says, Could Dr. McMahon please tell us ways the Puritan preacher advised the hearer of the sermon

to best hear or absorb the sermon or text during preaching in order to apply the word

to our sanctification?

That's a great question.

Yes.

And in the whole treatise that

we're talking about the preacher, we've actually only

talked about that.

And so how do we do that?

Well, first he talks about that when the preacher

gets up there and he's up behind the pulpit, it's an ordinance.

It's an ordinance of God.

It's a commandment of God.

We are to hear by the word.

And so God makes everything useful for the Christian

word.

Every means, all of our help, faith comes by hearing

happens in that way.

And so there is a word of command that goes along with hearing.

So when we say we're supposed to hear first in our minds, we're to be thinking,

this is God speaking to us.

Now, if the preacher's up there and he's not preaching God's word, that's a whole problem in and of itself.

Because now you can't, as the one listening, hear God's word.

You're hearing illustrations of story

be doing his duty so that you can do your duty.

And in being able to do that, it's hearing God himself, God's

voice.

And there's one of the things

that before we even get to church,

we need to lay aside anything that in us might be sinful.

So we want to be self -examining our

some kind

of gossip or begrudging or complaining or murmuring.

Christians never do that, do they?

Oh, unfortunately they do.

And we got to think about that.

It tells us a little bit of leaving.

Lee,

on Saturday night,

you're thinking about how you're going to come to church and consider hearing the word in

a way that you've just self -examined yourself.

Another thing that a lot of them will talk about is being like, chill

until long after it.

Just to be okay.

Brinsley even talks about to be okay, that when the preacher gets up there and he preaches the gospel, and you've heard the

gospel a million times and you go, oh, you know, I'm hearing the gospel again.

I've heard that a million times.

I need something more.

No, no, we preach Christ.

We deliver Christ.

Now, it could be that the minister may be deficient in some way, in the way that he's

doing that.

Or maybe he hasn't done what he was supposed to do.

But let's say and assume for all intents and purposes, when he's delivering a gospel message,

for whatever reason, the Lord's

pressing you

to repent

and

be saved.

You need to repent and be saved.

And you need to repent and be saved.

That's the only thing we ever hear.

The gospel comprises all of scripture.

Jesus said all of the Bible, all of scripture.

Carrying ourselves up to the duty, we want to receive with meekness.

Another thing is that we should be prayerful.

We should be prayerful before we come to hearing, so that we're looking to the Lord,

who's the one that teaches us to profit, so that we're praying for us to hear.

We're praying for the ministers to preach well.

Berkeley has a whole section in hearing the word in this section.

He's talking about how he needs as a minister to be encouraged to preach well, to

preach in a way that...

And he says the people should be encouraging in that particular way.

We should be thinking Puritans and talking about

this subject.

We'll all talk about, well, you're not going to get anything out of the preaching that's preached, unless

you're a convertible man.

He obviously can't receive the things.

Obviously, to be convinced that we are Christians,

we want to stir ourselves up in the duty of knowledge.

Here's another big one.

In terms of knowledge in general, you know, in dealing with,

because we're not perfect, we still need to encourage one

another, well,

why the Westminster's

for the adults, so that everybody was on the same page.

We'll talk about everything in the catechism or in any of the good confessions of the church.

They will talk about everything.

They talk about the basics and fundamentals, which, without which, if we don't have those, we can

become those.

You're dull of hearing because we have to keep going over the basics.

Be a knowledge that moves us out of the realm of being ignorant about the basics, because

without those,

then we'll be attentive

at Internet Archive.

But that's all he deals with.

All the distractions, we have to give attention.

Isaiah says in Isaiah 55, 3, incline your ear and come to me.

Here, a

Christian has when they come,

when hearing the word.

And it's framed in that way because they know in their mind, their understanding that they're coming to hear

through the minister.

You didn't receive it from us as just mere moral members.

You received it as attention of mind.

And then even after the previous,

which was meditation and musing about the word.

That's one of the things that we need to do.

We need to take, we need to meditate on it and muse about it and think about it

and ponder it, which means that if we're not geniuses while we're sitting there,

we may need to take notes and we may need to write it down or maybe we'll get up to

it again.

Sometimes preachers, sometimes Reformed preachers can be long -winded.

And when they're long -winded, you know, sometimes it's difficult to remember all of

them.

They all might be good, but sometimes they're difficult to remember them all.

One of the reasons why the Puritans, the

way that they have,

because it's very easy to remember being taught.

And this is how it applies to me.

Very

easy

to remember

things early given.

Now, I have not discussed this with you before the program, so I don't know what your opinion is on this

that I'm about to bring up, but I have a good feeling that you will be in harmony with me because of your love for the Puritans.

I think one of the things that is very distracting to the person

in the pew are churches that are architecturally very ornate and have

a lot of stuff going on with carvings and engravings and statuary and

paintings all over the place.

And in fact, there is a church in New York City

that is historically a low church, Calvinist Episcopal Church,

St. George's Church that was founded by Stephen Ting, a really remarkable

19th century Calvinist Episcopal minister.

And he, in his chapel, the chapel part

of his worship sanctuary that is still there,

he wanted, he actually designed the building to be very simple,

to, in fact, unlike many Episcopal churches, the only thing that you saw

there at the front where Stephen Ting would preach was a pulpit,

the table where they had the Lord's Supper, and on the wall behind him, he had the Ten

Commandments and the Apostles' Creed.

But there wasn't even a wooden cross or anything like that there.

It was all just very plain and simple because Ting knew that even

an ornate building could cause one's mind to wander and search around with your eyes and lose

track of what you're even listening to, which is why in many of the high churches, and of course in the Church of Rome,

the word spoken is a very small part of the service.

They have a homily or something like that, but most of it is just ceremony and ritual and rites and

so on.

But if you could comment on your own opinion of what I just said.

Well, I'm going to give you opinion.

Okay.

Whenever we talk about that particular,

you can read in their catechism and any of that, they're always going to

talk about the very basic thing, none of that stuff in terms

of idols and question 108 and question 109 in the larger

catechism both deal with the Second Commandment and talk about the duties in it.

And one of them did not

want to do in

what the Church of England wanted them to add in certain things that God hadn't commanded.

And so when we deal

with devices because we

have to point it

and so when you bring into

the church this, that, and the other, that's the whole point of what preaching is

about is that God speaking through the minister to the people, not being distracted by all of the other

things that are going on in the church.

So if you were to go to, you know, any visit New England or any

of the colonial, London, England, and visit

round church, nothing in it,

slash burning in the city

and in the middle of the, in the middle of the churches, the

poundedness just engulfs the seat.

There isn't anything else.

Right, but you could even be a church that is biblically orthodox

who does not have specific images that would violate the Second Commandment

that would actually be an attempt at providing an image of God, but you could also still be

ornate and distracting from the message with a lot of stuff going on.

Yeah, you might even have a reformed church that has paintings of the reformers everywhere

or what have you, something that just really is not enabling you to really keep your

mind focused on what is being preached on.

Right, church, they didn't have any of that.

Right.

All of them were set in setting and

it's not that we would

never say, well, do you have a...

And you could have a beautiful sanctuary in a church.

That is simple.

I mean, you could have beautiful woodwork or whatever, but I understand

that there are churches that don't want to look like warehouses or something like that.

Right.

I understand that.

They don't want to look like they rented space in a mall.

They want to make it look like a place of reverence, a place that is a church, but obviously

you could go overboard with that.

But we're going to our final break right now.

And by the way, Aaron in Indianapolis, Indiana, thank you very much for the question.

And you are also receiving a copy of The Preacher's Charge and People's Duty by John Brinsley, the

17th century nonconformist that has been brought back into print by

the publishing wing of the Puritan's Mind, Puritan Publications.

And if anyone else would like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

We only have about a half hour left of the program.

So if you intend to ask a question, I would do so quickly.

And we already do have a couple of you waiting to have your questions asked and answered.

So I ask of you to please be patient as you wait for your question to

come about.

But anyway, we will be right back, God willing, after these messages.

So don't go away.

Lynbrook Baptist Church on 225 Earl Avenue in Lynbrook, Long Island is teaching God's timeless truths in

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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.

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One sure way all Iron Sharpens Iron Radio listeners can help keep my show on the air is to support my

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Welcome back.

This is Chris Arns, and if you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours has been and will continue to be Dr.

C. Matthew McMahon, founder of A Puritan's Mind.

We are discussing a book that he has brought back into print through Puritan Publications, a publishing

arm of A Puritan's Mind.

The title of that book is The Preacher's Charge and the People's Duty.

And if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail

.com.

Chrisarnson at gmail .com.

And there's a couple of you waiting for your questions to be asked, and we will get to those as soon as possible.

But I do want to specifically return to the book, Dr. McMahon.

And Brinsley refers to the necessity of preachers being heralds of

God.

If you could describe and define what a herald is and what Brinsley means by this.

Yes, they

are bold

and they

are plain.

He says they are bold because they have authority.

The prince, the king, they're the ones that send the herald.

So the herald has to be bold, representing the person and intent of the

king or the prince.

They have to be, they have to not detract from what

the king has sent them to speak about, demonstrate the

instruction of their master in that particular way.

And then they have to be plain so that everybody to whom they're sent can hear

and understand their message.

So in that way, the minister of the word should behave themselves, he says, and

the dispensation of the gospel in

prayerful

of men.

Brinsley says they are not to fear the faces of those to whom they are sent.

Undaunted should be

in the ministers of the word in delivering the will of God to the people.

They got to do that with boldness.

They that preach authority.

That's what the people said of Jesus.

When they heard him, they said, oh, he's not like all of these scribes and Pharisees

because when he preaches, he encourages,

you do these things

that represent his

preachers listening.

If they would just do that one thing, it would change.

Everything about their ministry.

But they also have to do it faithfully, which means they have to deliver God's will because you could be a preacher and preach

boldly and not deliver God's will.

So faithfully means that it's his will, nothing but his will.

You don't add to it.

You don't detract from it.

Paul says, I have received of the Lord that which I also delivered unto you.

1 Corinthians 11 23.

So he received what he delivered.

He delivered what he received, Princely says.

He kept nothing back.

I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God.

Acts 20 27.

And because the people don't understand them,

they have to speak distinctly.

They have to have an audible voice and a known language so that people will understand them.

And they have to do that in a way that everybody that they're sent to will understand it.

That's why I mentioned earlier Nehemiah 8 and the law of the Lord

distinctly and gave the sense and caused the people to understand it.

And so that's what the preacher is supposed to

do plainly.

And they should be preaching Christ in the name of God.

And so Brindley says, well, what are they then to preach?

Well, he says, our text is very plain.

It says that's in tune with

God.

The ambassador of God preaches

the word

sometimes in the text in the

beginning was the word, but also the

word is like,

whichever way you preach Christ, well, you preach the

word.

Well, if you preach the word, you preach Christ.

So you begin and you end with

the whole Bible and the

gospel is the marrow, the sum, the substance of the word.

And so that if the minister is doing what

they are, and they should be as they come from the minister's

mouth to the hearer, the words of eternal life.

And so in doing that, the preacher has to be skilled the

bad news of the law and the good news of the gospel and place them

together in which they,

when the word of

salvation, because,

and so there is an eminence doing when he rightly divides

going to be plain to people who have to hear that as God

speaking to their heart and their mind.

That's what the, it is not what we always hear, but it is what

is required.

It is what's commanded in his text and in second Timothy four two.

And that work, what that does reveals the Lord Jesus

Christ because it lays open all the truth of doctrine surrounding who he is, his person, his natures,

God had manhood, his offices, being a Keith, a king,

a penitent works concerning his incarnation, birth,

life, death, resurrection, his ascension, which is hardly ever talked about is

coming again for the last day.

All

concerning

Christ are saved by him and by him

alone.

And that he sent forth Christ is sent forth as a mean that God has used

and only means of reconciliation for center.

And that he's also.

And so I was just going to say.

That you've already addressed this in many ways throughout the entire program, but to focus on the word

work in the work of preaching, it's funny when I hear people say,

why do they pay your pastor what they pay him?

He only gets up there and talks for an hour each week.

Obviously, the pastor in any good church does a lot more than that.

But even that sermon, any good preacher that I know, any preacher worth his salt really

pours a lot into the preparation of that sermon.

It is real work.

I can even attest to the fact that even though I'm not a preacher, when I have to give a

message of any kind in regard to public speaking, I

often am exhausted after writing and preparing for what I'm going to say more

than I am exhausted from doing manual labor.

When I used to do manual labor for a living as a janitor or working for the highway department or other things that I've done in my

life, I can remember being less exhausted than after a writing and

preparing for something that I have to say in public.

And now that would be multiplied many times over when the souls of men and women are at stake

and so on, and when this is something where you are either going to bring praise, honor, and glory to God or

bring offense to Him.

But if you could comment on that.

Absolutely.

And I think this is part of a lot of times this law

going to be a saver of life.

Something is saying when you're dealing with this

particular topic that the sermon

should bring you closer to heaven or closer to hell one way or the other.

There's no middle ground in it.

It's not some kind of static area.

It will either more sanctify you if you're a Christian

of self -examination or if you're unsaved, it demonstrates the curse of the law and

brings you closer to hell in that particular regard.

Or maybe if you're looking at Christ and looking to have Christ

applied particularly and burdened with sin, then

it'll bring you closer.

We hear that with

Him.

You're walking away from Him.

There's no standing still.

There's always some kind of movement.

Either you're being drawn closer to heaven or you're not.

You're closer to hell one way or the other.

So the work of preaching, the gravity of it in that particular manner,

we're almost in terms of being able to place it.

The ministry of the sermon,

like the work of the ministry is

all because the minister is the one being

and if people take that lightly, that, I mean, that's just an utter mistake.

Spurgeon used to say that every time he walked up to the pulpit to get ready to preach, on every step that he stepped, he would say,

I believe in the Holy Spirit

going on in this particular of life or a favor of death.

And I think a lot of times the

problem

doing

that, 2323 talking

about how the minister is one in a thousand.

He's that kind of a person to show a man his uprightness and to demonstrate God's

will to that person.

One in a thousand, gather up a thousand minister.

And there's one that can show a man his uprightness in that way.

And so the gravity of that work is many times overwhelming or ought

to be overwhelming to the minister who is saying to himself,

in just a few, responsible enough to take God's

word and deliver that

because my job, my job description is that I am the cure of soul.

I am the one who brings God's word to the never dying souls of the people who are listening.

John Welch, a Puritan,

late at night

came out.

He said, I don't know if I'm fulfilling my office and the way

that I ought.

Thinking about the souls of those never dying souls, thinking about the people that he's been charged

by God and have a certain mindset over the

disposition of his office.

And so Brinsley particular way, you have to be

everything that you do in the work of preaching.

And so there has to be

in the mind of the preacher and thinking about what his office really is about.

But this is something, I mean, realistically, you look at all of the books that you could read,

they're relatively few.

There's not a lot of them out there that are certain stead

exchanged or preachers charged in people's duty by Brinsley or any of the reformed

pastor by Baxter, any of these great

people.

And we kind of exchanged that thinking that, well, if I'm going to be a minister and I'm going

to be up at the pulpit and I'm going to be preaching, I'm going to be preaching to these people.

I need to do it in a way in which they like me and in which they receive from me

whatever it is that I give.

And so I want to be sure

that walking on eggshells

is in a work that we've just finished on the necessity, dignity, and duty of

gospel ministers, that ministers are to be

when sought, nothing but to

be thrown down to be trodden by men.

He said bad ministers who can't put together a sermon,

he called them bad.

He just basically says they're completely useless.

And all of those people are being affected.

Minister in the way that scripture has specifically laid out.

And a lot of times we tend to lose that when we just said

they have their degree and they think that they're all ready to go.

Listen, at the end of seminary, if you ask me where the

10 commandments were, I could tell you they're in it.

What do they mean?

Common denominator in dealing with, and again, it's not every seminary, but I'm telling you that my

personal experience.

And a lot of people.

That I talk to right now, he's gone through

seminary in touch and he's like, I don't feel like I'm, I've been equipped in the way that I needed to be equipped

to not just have a degree, not to get my MDiv or whatever degree that they're looking to get, but to

actually, I think that's

one of these great works.

Now, when we go off the air, I'd like you to hang on because I'd like to schedule another interview with you on the

calling of the ministry by William Perkins, the 16th century evangelist.

So if you could hold on, but let me, we have time for one more question.

From BB in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania.

She says, I repeatedly hear the commercial that you air for Waiting River Baptist Church that

claims that one of its central identities is that of expository preaching.

Why is it that expository preaching in our day and age has even received a black eye

from some who claim to be theologically reformed?

I just don't understand how someone could be a Calvinist and not love expository

preaching, if you could respond to that.

I am so on that page.

I mean, I don't even think you need to put the word Calvinist in there.

All I think that you need to put in there is a Christian to be

a preacher and not exposit the word.

To be a herald or ambassador, take the mind of the

spirit and connect it to the mind of the congregation from the word.

It's impossible to do that without exegeting the text, without applying

the science of hermeneutics to the text, to find out what God's intention to deal

with the text.

You're always going to exposit the word of God whenever you preach.

It doesn't matter if the kind of sermon that you happen to be preaching is doctrinal.

It doesn't matter if it's in for the narrative in scripture,

or even if you're preaching from the genealogy.

Regardless of which one you do, whatever kind of sermon you happen to do, it's always going to fall out

in the same way.

You're always going to have the text and some kind of doctrine from the text and the text applied.

You cannot do that unless you...

A lot of times, preachers will move away from that because that's hard.

It's a difficult thing to do that.

It's difficult to wrestle with it.

Sometimes the first part is easy because you're exegeting certain aspects of the text and people like to study.

But then coming up with the doctrine that would be taught to the Christian church for all ages,

sometimes that's difficult.

And then taking that and applying it specifically to the lives of the people so that you speak directly to them and

your congregation.

So why does that get a black eye?

It's much easier just to share some musing or

something like that for 15 or 20 minutes behind the pulpit.

That's not going to sanctify the people.

It's not going to bring them deliver or reveal Christ.

And of course, I'm sure you wouldn't oppose a preacher breaking from his

stride in a certain text that he's been or book he's been

expositorily going through for weeks in order to give special attention to a current event that is happening.

As long as obviously he's preaching exegetically from the word, I'm sure you wouldn't

think that topical preaching is never proper.

Oh, no, no.

See, but the topical

idea out of the

air from the text of scripture.

So even if you've decided that on a particular

book and you say, well, you know, there's a particular event going on where I need to talk about the providence of God, maybe

there's some kind of

sermon that you

ever give is always going to be held captive to the idea.

Well, Tyler in Mastic Beach, Long Island, New York, we don't have time to ask your question, but you can go to

if you go to the search engine of IronSharpensIronRadio .com IronSharpensIronRadio .com

and go to the archive.

And if you type in McMahon, M -C -M -A -H -O -N, you will be able to hear

at least two other interviews we've done on the Puritans that will answer your question on the

stereotype of the Puritans being nothing more than religious zealots and so on.

We've covered a lot of that in our previous interviews.

But if you could, in two minutes, just summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners, Dr. McMahon.

I would say

he has given

to be bold enough,

rightly divine, so that he can, because nothing

that he's going to say, apart from the word, is going to be helpful to those people as

much as it might make them feel emotionally good about what it is that they might be saying.

If you want to be a preacher, you're going to take the text, you're going to explain it,

you're going to derive its teaching, and you're going for sitting in the

pew.

And the people who are sitting in the pew listening to the preacher, you need to receive that word if the preacher is

doing his job.

And the way that the Lord has set it up, you need to take that

what cleanses our conscience.

And that's what we need

from the herald that God has sent.

And we're out of time, and I know that your two websites are a PuritansMind .com, a

PuritansMind .com, and also PuritanPublications .com,

PuritanPublications .com.

Thank you so much for being on the program.

If you could hold on, Dr. McMahon, so we can schedule another interview.

And I want to thank everybody who listened today, especially those who took the time to write in questions.

Don't forget about our interview tomorrow with Dr. Michael Haken of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

in Louisville, Kentucky, as we address the true St. Patrick from his book, Patrick of Ireland.

I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater savior than you

are a sinner.