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

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Now here's our host Chris Arntzen. 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 Arntzen, 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, appreciate being here very much, especially to be able to converse 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 ChrisArntzen at gmail .com.

That's ChrisArntzen at gmail .com and John Brinsley was a 17th century evangelist.

Tell us something more about him. Well, Brinsley, he was the son of John Brinsley the

Elder. He was the younger, both of the same name and he, after his conversion, he was sent off to Emanuel College of Cambridge to earn his degrees and right when he got to that particular point in his life, his uncle, who was

Dr. Hall, Joseph Hall, he was a well -known Puritan writer and theologian of the day.

He was Bishop or Elder of Norwich. His works, probably about 20 years ago, got reprinted by Sola Dei Gloria, which is a great volume on Dr.

Hall's work, but he took John Brinsley to the Synod of Dort and Brinsley went with him as his

Immanuensis and attended it. As a result, that would have been a nice field trip to go on as a prospective minister in many ways, you know.

And after he came back, he went, finished his studies at Cambridge, got his

B .A., got his M .A., and then from that point in various ministerial areas, he was a preacher and he was a minister until his injection and then death.

He was around the time, obviously went through the time of Westminster, which spanned through to 1646 -1647, but he was minister all through that time, up until the time of the

Restoration when Charles II was kinged as a result of bringing back the kingship and then the act of uniformity was given and he was one of the ministers that were ejected from his pulpit as a result of not adhering to that act.

So he would be a non -conformist? He would definitely be a non -conformist. He was exceedingly active in his pastoral duty.

He wrote, he preached so much and took the preaching, turned those into a number of works.

I think we've done 13 or 14 of his books so far and there is nothing that Brinsley has written that is not astoundingly excellent.

And this work here, The Preacher's Charge in People's Duty, even though it's not but 80 pages or so, it's still astoundingly helpful.

And just thinking about this particular topic today, I was thinking, you know, if John Brinsley was alive today, where would we place him?

And I was really thinking through, because I've obviously read his works and have been dealing with him for years,

I mean, he would be in the top 10 preachers today without a shadow of a doubt in the way that he expounds the

Word and the way that he is tender in his pastoral application of the

Word, but he's just as theological as any of the best Puritans.

William Perkins, William Ames, any of those guys, Brinsley holds certainly a candle to all of them.

And he's very focused, very precise, and yet at the same time, he's very applicable.

He wrote a book here on the Preacher and yet he had to include the hearer, which we'll talk about, but Brinsley is great all around.

Any book that you read by him, whether it be on false teachers, he's got one on that, to whether you read something on healing

Israel's breaches or the way that the Savior comes to save, all of his works are just fabulous from beginning to end.

I think, I'm not sure if I mentioned this the last time we were on, one of my favorite Puritan books of all time.

If you ask me, top 10 books, one of those top 10 would be Brinsley's book on the

Union, Communion, and Conformity to Jesus Christ and His Death and Resurrection.

It is one of the best Puritan books ever, in my estimation, and so I've grown very akin to enjoying

Brinsley. We have probably, I would say, five or six more of his works to do and then he's basically completely published.

So we're pretty excited to be able to have this book, which I believe is his only book on the

Preacher and preaching. He doesn't really deal with the Preacher and preaching like William Perkins does in dealing specifically with the manner in which a sermon is put together or the calling of the ministry like Perkins has specifically talking about the commission of the

Preacher. It's more set in the context of the exhortation for the minister to do his duty in preaching the

Word. And again, that kind of shows you the marriage or union between the duty that the

Preacher has and his responsibility, and yet Brinsley's being very...he's

like the pastor's pastor, being very pastoral about trying to encourage ministers to do what they have been commissioned to do.

And you can even see in the book itself, a lot of the

Puritan books will have tables. They'll put together a table or like a chart that gives you an overview.

Not necessarily just a bare outline, but they call it a table so that you could...they

wanted you to tear it out of the book and hang it on your wall. That was the idea that many of the Puritans put together charts and tables like this so that you could hang them up and visually see them.

Keep in mind that in their day, a great percentage of the people in the church would have not been able to read, where even though many did, like Perkins, 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 move your piece to the point where you hit the ladder and you get to climb up it, his chart was put together that way.

Well, Brinsley did the same thing here for Preachers, and he put a table together so that the

Preacher could take his book, read it, and then tear that out, hang it on the wall, and be reminded of what their duty is.

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 Brinsley, 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?

Well, in what has been published thus far, we don't want to detract away from all of the good stuff that has been published.

I mean, Banner of Truth has published lots of Puritans.

You know, we've got Swinick and Brooks and Sibbs and John Owen.

Other publishers have come in and done things like all of Thomas Manton's work. Some of these, they'll come in, and they'll be popular for a time, or people will be able to buy them for a time, and then they become scarce.

They become difficult to get a hold of. I think with just the sheer volume that this particular age in Church history put out, it's going to be a long time before we actually get to publish everything that should be published or ought to be published.

So, you know, as much as we say, here's a gem. John Brinsley is a gem.

He is one of those guys that should be published. But at the same time, William Perkins.

Lots of people know about William Perkins. Just now, after all of this time, he's slowly being published into various volumes and individual works and such.

He's one of the fathers of Elizabethan Puritanism, you know. So, 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 old 19th century photocopied editions of some of these works that still need to be updated, still need to be reprinted, but at least are available.

There's just so many of them. And unless you're constantly reading all of these original source documents, again, where are we going to get all of those?

You know, that's why there are only so many publishers being able to do that. It's just going to take some time to be able to put out these gems.

But we also want to be discerning in what it is that we put out, because we want to put out really good books.

We don't want to just publish a Puritan for the sake of publishing somebody that may have five or six works.

Sometimes it's sad when we find a really, really good Puritan, and there just isn't anything available from them.

Case in point, Hannibal Gammon is one of those guys who was a Westminster Puritan, and Thomas Valentine, same thing.

They only have, you know, three sermons apiece, three published pieces.

That's it. And you take those, you put them in one volume, it makes up, you know, 100 pages or so. And then you're sad that there's no more because they're so rich and so good.

But it's because of some of the scarcity of these volumes and such that make publishing the good ones 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 put things out that we think 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 one.

There are better works than 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 what it is that you put out. 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. And I mean, Baxter's works is, I believe Billy Dale did this gigantic four volume set of Baxter, I don't know, maybe like 15, 20 years ago, or whenever Don did that.

But yeah, I mean, if you if you look at that, it's like double column, little teeny tiny print, and they're gigantic volumes of 1500, 1800 pages.

But when you really get down to it, you want to be really careful about what you read by Baxter, because he's got a lot of stuff that's kind of odd.

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

Puritan, you choose the best stuff to publish. Yes, and his Reformed Pastor 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 Pastor is a phenomenal book. Any preachers who are listening, if you have not read the

Reformed Pastor, you should go read that. 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 doing as a minister. And his encouragement and exhortation in that department is to fulfill your duty.

And I had one gentleman, because every now and again, I'll put a quote out or different things like that on Facebook or Twitter or things that are

Puritan related, which is the only reason I use any of those things. And one person commented on a passage that I had put out there on Baxter's Reformed Pastor, and he said,

I'm a pastor. He said, I got halfway through this book, and I threw up. What do you mean?

He was like, well, it was so convicting that he says that literally happened to me. And that's what

I said, you know, it's like, yeah, I mean, I definitely understood what he was saying. But yeah, so case in point,

Baxter's book is a classic, and it will change the way that you think about the ministry, just in the duty of accomplishing it the way that it's supposed to be done.

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 till its conclusion.

And all three of them were eventually, by God's sovereign grace, drawn into that theology and accepted it.

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 by 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?

His simplicity, yet his precision, and his exposition.

Generally, when you read a really good Puritan book, you're going to come away with whatever the

Scripture is that 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 of 2 Timothy 4 .2, preach the

Word. Now listen, 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, but if you've traveled the

United States, for example, and gone into all sorts of different kinds of churches, a lot of times you're sitting under something that isn't that, which is odd.

You would think that you would want to be a herald or messenger of God's Word as a minister, because that's what the minister is.

So Brinsley deals with this text by saying that 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 exercising himself in preaching the

Word. And then everybody listening says, well, yeah, I mean, that would generally be the point of what a preacher is.

I say, okay, let me just give you an example, then, of the opposite of that. So the preacher, this is a true story, the preacher gets up and he's behind the pulpit.

I'm sitting in the pew with everybody else in the church in this one particular instance, and the preacher begins by giving me an illustration of something that happened to him in 1982 during Christmas time, and that went on for five minutes.

Now, he hasn't read the text yet. This is what he began doing when he got up behind the pulpit. The second thing that he did was he told me another illustration about his dog.

The third illustration was about the conversion of somebody that he knew. And then the fourth illustration was about a quilt.

When he was done, he had forgotten what his text was.

He never even went back to his text. He never even read the text from the Bible. Instead, I'm like, really, he didn't.

I was like, is he ever going to get back to the text? Is he ever going to actually read it so we know where 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, nobody knew what in the world he was talking about.

So when you say, well, yeah, this is the way that it should be, preaching the word, we should be preaching the word in that way, why don't we do that?

Why don't preachers do that? Why don't they? I think one of the greatest things, and this is a side note, one of the greatest things that God has ever given the minister, and this is from my perspective, my left hand is very important to me, because on it,

I have a finger, my first pointing finger, and I take that first pointing finger and I put it on the text, and my finger doesn't move from the text.

I actually trained myself over the course of four months, every single sermon and every single teaching that I did over the course of this period of time when

I was thinking about this, I would take that finger and I would place it on the text, and that caused me to do two things.

One, I couldn't turn the pages in Scripture, which means I had to stay on the text that I was preaching from, which means

I really needed to be able to have done my duty in hermeneutically, exegetically dealing with the text that I was going to be preaching on.

And two, it reminded me where I was supposed to be for the entire length of the sermon. So every text of Scripture gives you the ability to preach from that text what

God's intention and what God's mind is. And for some reason, we want to begin with something other than the text, like some illustration.

Honestly, I really don't understand why seminaries teach that. They add that into what they call their application sermon, or that idea of wanting to catch their interest.

Me personally, I think the Word of God is interesting, and I think we should start with the Word, and it should be about the

Word, and we should be preaching the Word. We don't need, really, illustrations in that particular manner.

You say, well, wait a second, the Puritans used a lot of illustrations. Well, actually, when you read their sermons, they use what preachers in homiletic books in the last hundred years will say.

They use proverbs. They use short, pithy, one -liners that sum up everything that they had been teaching concerning the text.

For example, we were just talking about Richard Baxter. Richard Baxter says it's the preacher's job to screw truth into people's minds.

See, that's a proverb. You see the picture. It's an easy thing to grasp. John Trapp said, heresy is leprosy of the head.

You see, it's a little picture. It's a little proverb. It's easy based on understanding everything that the preacher had been talking about up until that time.

So when John Brinsley begins here, he begins with the text, and he explains in his book, that's part one, what the text means.

And we ought to be preaching the Word, not worrying about, let's see, how can I get the people interested in what

I'm about to say? Now, that is a concern. Interest is a concern in preaching, because the preacher has to be interesting.

But the problem that arises is that for the preacher to be interesting, he has to remember that the

Word of God is already living and active and sharper than any two -edged sword.

So it is interesting in and of itself. If the preacher makes it boring, that's not the

Word's fault, that's the preacher's fault. So he has to be mindful about what it is that he's going to say, how he's going to say it, and such.

Now, you had just mentioned, Chris, that all of Spurgeon's sermons were transcribed. They were.

He would transcribe them on the Tuesday after the following Lord's Day, so that he would have his entire sermon laid out in order, with the mind that Spurgeon had, to be able to memorize it and bring it into the pulpit.

A lot of times people think, oh, well, Spurgeon just got up there and kind of winged it. He didn't. All of his sermons were written out.

They were just in his head, so that he was able to deliver them that way. Robert Lyton, one of the

Puritans, he said, for the first seven years of any minister's ministry, they should write out their sermons, word for word, and read them until they get used to being able to be precise in the way that they deal with preaching their sermons.

Edwards used to write out his sermons. He did that on purpose. Why do all of these guys, why do we have all of these books of sermons from all of these thousands of preachers?

Why do we have them? Well, because they wrote them out. They wrote them out word for word. They would then preach from their manuscript, and then after that, if they wanted it published, they would go back and enlarge it in some way.

Maybe they, you know, polished this aspect or that aspect. But all of it was done that way on purpose.

So, well, why? Exactly what Brinsley begins in his first part in dealing with the text.

We are to be preaching the Word, and there's a gravity about that command, right?

The command is, preach the Word. That's what it says in 2 Timothy 4, preach the Word. So, we want to be very careful about preaching the

Word, or ministers should want to be very careful about preaching the Word. They want to be able to take what is happening in that text, and they want to join the mind of the people and the mind of the

Spirit and His intent in that text together. That's what they all wanted to do. So, Brinsley says, in dealing with preaching the

Word, we have the duty that's commanded, preach the

Word, and the manner in which it's discharged. That's what 2 Timothy 4 gives us.

And so, he talks about the duty is preach the Word.

Again, as simple as we'd like to 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.

Part of the problem is, is that they think that they are doing it when they're not doing it. And that needs to be corrected.

My encouragement to the preachers that are listening is to think through whether or not they are actually a herald, or as Brinsley would say, a herald or crier for God, or they're just up there musing.

Because there's a difference between sharing from the pulpit. Lots of preachers share things.

That's preaching. Lots of people get up there and they give theological lectures. That's not preaching.

There's going to be theology in the preaching, but that's not preaching. And then you just have people who are up there to be up there for 20 minutes, because the 20 minutes needs to come every

Lord's Day, and so they know that that's part of their job, and so that's what they do. But the

Puritans were of the mind that the charge that they have has to have,

Brinsley would say, much seriousness and earnestness as could possibly be conceived.

And if you can conceive of being as serious as you can, and as earnest as you can, he's saying that Paul, in writing this to Timothy, is telling him to preach the

Word, and that the preacher ought to be serious and earnest about doing that particular duty, knowing that Acts 6 tells us that ministry is divided into two main ideas, preaching of the

Word and prayer, and both of those are applied in pastoral ministry in various ways.

But those are the two main things. Preaching the Word is a main thing. So Brinsley says it is of necessity that there be seriousness and earnestness in doing that.

They must preach the Word if they're going to be a minister. He says, woe to them if they don't do it, because that's what Paul said, woe to me if I preach out the

Gospel. And so he shows what that means in saying, okay,

I as a preacher have to be thinking there's a great gravity about what my function is in the body, and that is to preach

God's Word. Well, what does that mean? Well, that means,

Brinsley says, that you declare what God's mind is. You're making known

God's will to men. It's a very interesting thing. In another book that we're working on by Thomas Hodges on pastoral ministry and preaching, he says it's a very interesting thing that God gave men men in this particular way.

God uses men to convert, save, sanctify, preach.

He uses men to do that. It's an interesting thing, Hodges says. 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. There's a lot of people that point their finger at Jonathan Edwards in some of his sermons and say, look, he's

Arminian, look at the way that he's trying to implore people to come to Christ. They just misunderstand what preaching is about.

Yes, and I 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. Don't go away, we'll be right back with Dr.

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This is Chris Arnsin. If you just tuned in to 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, regardless of whether it's in the Old Testament or the New Testament, God has his ministers that he uses men to convert other men.

And certainly in that particular function in the office of the ministry, it's not that the man himself does some kind of converting, but if, only if, he is preaching the

Word, the Spirit uses the Word to convert. And so Brinsley will say that when we're talking about the minister in the office as a man bringing the

Word, preaching the Word, it is to, he says, speak distinctly, which means preachers don't get to muse up at the pulpit, they don't get to give their own thoughts in that way at the pulpit.

Rather, the office of the minister, he's an agent, Brinsley says, between 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 way, he is their mouths to God, which means he's putting up their requests, their desires, their supplications, their thanksgiving to God, they're praying for him.

Samuel said in 1 Samuel 12, 23, God forbid that I should sin against the

Lord in ceasing to pray for you. The minister should be thinking one of his two main objectives is to pray, and pray for his people, pray for his church, pray for all of the various providences that occur in that way.

And Jeremiah 15, 19, Brinsley says, if thou take away the precious from the vial, thou shalt be, as it were, my mouth.

So the Lord says through the prophet Jeremiah that the prophet, the ministers of the word, are

God's mouth by which he speaks, and he makes known his will to his people, and that's where he begins, by visible signs, to utilize the minister in the second part of the office, which is to preach the word.

So in being able to do that, Brinsley defines what the minister's role is in that way by the audible voice.

He says, the audible voice by the will of God is declared to the church by the ministers of the word in two actions, in reading the word and preaching the word.

That's what they're to be as God's mouthpiece. And so in preaching, he says that they take the scriptures and they interpret, they expound, and they apply the word to the edification of the church.

Now see what he just did there, is he basically gave you the outline for every single sermon that any minister will ever do, forever.

And it's what all of the Puritans did. They would explain the text, then they would pull a doctrine and expound some doctrine out of the text, and then they would apply the text to the people.

That seems simple and straightforward. Even if you, you know, jump over and read the directory of public worship from the

Westminster Divine, they are just as specific. Let the introduction to the text be brief, drawn from the text after it's read, and if the text is long, explain it.

After you do that, you analyze and divide the text to expound some doctrine out of it, and then you apply the text.

So this was a common function of the minister all through the

Reformation, all through the Puritans. You go grab one of Calvin's sermons, he does the very same thing. He reads the text, the text is read, explains what the text is, he takes some doctrines and teachings, and then applies it.

And that was the basic function of what it was that the ministers are supposed to do as Brinsley expounds that.

Chris, 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, I mean, in Brinsley's case it was a little bit different because he was given, in the

Puritan days, they were given stipends, and so they would be under a particular benefactor that had a church and community that they cared for.

This was not a presbytery, it was not a session, it was not a group of ministers, this was the benefactor who was rich enough to be able to have a minister in his particular area.

And so for Brinsley, he, in this particular town, 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 Brinsley, rather there was a 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 the area in a church which was actually divided between a couple of ministers, and they wound up having to utilize the church at different times to be able to preach to their respective congregations.

So a little bit different than going against the magisterial authority in some way or going against the government, it was more over who was going to get the stipend, who was going to be the one paid to preach in that particular church.

But don't you think, though, that 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 do that. Burroughs has a great treatise on that, Jeremiah Burroughs, called the

Holy Courage in Evil Times, and we are never to give into the secularization of anything, including the secularization of the church in some way, that would cause us to have to do something or be bound by something that is anti -biblical or require us to do something in that particular way, even upon pain of death.

Burroughs, again, the simplicity of the Puritans, Burroughs says it's better to suffer the greatest affliction than commit the least of sins.

Yeah, 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.

Well, that is a radio show in and of itself. Or a series of radio shows.

No doubt about that. There are so many aspects to what the minister can do to take heed, what the minister can do in that particular manner, to heed to your life and your doctrine.

A really good work that we're just finishing up now is called The Faithful Minister of Jesus Christ by John Jackson, and he talks about the breastplate that the priest had in the

Old Testament, the ephah, that had the 12 stones, and he combined that aspect with the 12 stones that are found in the

New Jerusalem. And amazingly, in the way that he deals with the text, shows the virtue of the ministry in the

Old Testament and the New Testament by each one of these stones, and talks about how ministers are to be sealed by the

Spirit, and how ministers are to have a sovereign power in terms of being unfearful of men, and not to be melancholy or sad, that they are to be preeminently adorned as wise

Christians, and they're to be a glorious, shining light, and they're to have moderated passion, and they are to guard against sin and any kind of possible problem with sin, and avoid all appearance of evil, having a a drawing effect.

All of these different aspects, putting them all together, taking heed in that way, encompasses so many different things that it's really difficult to simply say, well, if he just is

A, B, and C, he'll be okay. Because it's not just that, it's really taking the entirety of the office and having a gravity about all the different things that the minister is supposed to do.

William Perkins had a plaque above his desk that said, Thou art a minister of the gospel, be about thy business.

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

And I agree with your emailer that at an astounding, it's probably a light word to use, an astounding rate of the number of ministers that are falling in some heinous, disqualifying sin.

And, you know, the devil is prowling about attempting to tear apart the church in every way possible, and what better way then to stop spiritual revival than striking at the minister who's supposed to be preaching the word.

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 asks, 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.

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N 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, uh, 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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that's batterydepot .com welcome back this is chris arnes 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 saint patrick's day i'm 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 saint 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 reform 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 and uh 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 free will fundamentalism uh he's not 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 stephen garrick from emmanuel reform baptist church of georgetown texas as he will be god willing our guests on friday for those two hours so we got a couple of excellent programs waiting ahead of us and just another quick note that iron sharpens iron radio is an urgent need for your donations of or for your advertising dollars should you choose to sponsor our program and run advertisements with us not only on the radio program but also uh with banner ads on our website we are 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iron radio or mail checks to us uh words cannot describe my gratitude and i thank you from the bottom of my heart and just keep all of you keep praying that uh we get the the needed finances to remain on the air so we can 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 uh we are back uh with our discussion now with dr c matthew mcmahon on the preacher's charge and the people's duty and uh 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 in the whole treatise that brinsley has his first six parts are talking about the preacher we've actually only talked about a couple of his parts the last part part seven is hearing the word preached and so how do we do that well first he talks about that we have to realize 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 through the preached word every means all of our help faith comes by hearing all that good helpful service to us 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 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 or stories or fables or things of that nature the preacher has to be preaching he has to 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 speaking through this particular preacher and there's a number of things that the puritans talked about when we deal with hearing one of the one of the things that very basic to all of them and they'll all say the same thing is that you know before hearing 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 ourselves and thinking about what kind of spirit that we have in coming to the duty uh are we involved in some kind of backbiting are we involved in some kind of gossip or begrudging or complaining or murmuring christians never do that do they oh unfortunately they do and and we gotta think about that you know um james tells us that all filthiness is to be put aside and jesus tells us a little bit of leaving leaving the lump in that way so we want to lay aside all that filthiness all of that so that means maybe instead of watching a movie 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 um another thing that a lot of them will talk about is being like children in our affections to the word to love it too long after it to be okay brindley 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 more no no we we preach christ we deliver christ now could be that the minister may be deficient in some way in the way that he's doing that or maybe he's being over simplistic because he hasn't done what he was supposed to do but let's say and assume for all intents and purposes that he has done what he's supposed to do and he's delivering a gospel message for whatever reason the lord's that and so we what we should be okay with the simplicity brindley says of that message we should be all right to receive christ crucified as a child would receive it because in hearing that word and christ is christ is all in all so it's not that every single service that we go to we should be hearing the gospel preached in the sense that you need 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 speaks and testifies about him so the preacher should be dealing with all of that but in stirring ourselves up to the duty we want to receive with meekness the implanted word in that way 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 uh brinkley 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 is edifying and profitable and he says the people should be encouraging in that particular way we should be thinking about that uh obviously all of the puritans and talking about this subject will all talk about well you're not going to get anything out of the preaching that's preached unless you're converted brinkley talks about that as well he says that the natural man i mean he obviously can't receive the things of the spirit quoting first corinthians 2 and so there's a great need obviously to be converted to hear the word with profit but assuming that we are christians in doing that we want to stir ourselves up in the duty through prayer through knowledge here's another big one in terms of knowledge in general uh you know in dealing with christians and ignorant uh the reason that we have preachers the reason that we have teachers is because we're not perfect yet we're not in heaven yet we still need to be taught we still need to encourage one another while still called today so the puritans will talk about knowledge of for example the catechism one of the reasons why the westminster assembly has a shorter and a larger catechism for the children and for the adults so that everybody was on the same page in the basics of doctrine they don't talk about everything in the catechism uh or any of the good confessions of the church they don't talk about everything they talk about the basics and fundamentals which without which if we don't have those we can become dull of hearing because uh like with hebrews when the warning comes to us in hebrews 5 where the writer says we have much to say but you're dull of hearing because we have to keep going over the basics and so there should be a knowledge that moves us out of the realm of being ignorant about the basics because without those basics it's going to be difficult to hear the word of god with prophet as a christian then when we're sitting there we have to be attentive there's a great work by richard steel about distracting thoughts in worship that's a great work it might be online at internet archives but that's all he deals with all the distractions that come to us in hearing the word we have to give attention our attention has to be crisp and inclined to hear uh isaiah says in isaiah 55 3 incline your ear and come to me here and your soul shall live uh so there has to be a certain composure that the christian has when they come that's free from distraction that expresses a kind of gravity and reverence 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 god speak to them through the and so they're hearing the word as the living word not as the word of men right as paul says you didn't receive it from us as just mere moral men but you received it as the word of god so prayer intention of mind putting off sin and then even after hearing which i think we talked about in one of the previous uh discussions that we had on your program which was meditation and about the word that's one of the things that we need to do we need to take the word that's been preached and 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 uh we may need to take notes and we may need to write it down or maybe we'll get a copy of the sermon and we may need to listen to it um sometimes preachers uh sometimes reformed preachers can be long -winded and when they're long -winded you know sometimes it's difficult to remember all of the things that preachers are saying that they all might be good but sometimes they're difficult to remember them all one of the reasons why the puritans kept their form and structure of the sermon in the way that they have it the text opened the text the doctrine from the text the text applied the reason they did that because it's very easy to remember here's what the text said this is doctrine that's being taught and this is how it applies to me it's very easy to remember those things in that particular manner so uh once we do all of those things we can begin to repetitively do them and hearing will become easier because brinsley says we're naturally given the slothfulness and deadness and dullness and weariness instead we need to be seizing on the duty so that we can perform hearing the word which is a duty for the christian carelessly formally and not negligently and so all of those things will help uh the christians hear well 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 uh i think one of the things that is very distracting uh to the person in the pew are churches that are architecturally very ornate and have a lot of stuff going on with uh carvings and engravings and statuary and paintings all over the place and in fact there is a a church in new york city that is historically a low church calvinist episcopal church uh saint george's church that was founded by steven ting a really remarkable 19th century calvinist episcopal minister and he in in his chapel uh the chapel part uh of of his worship sanctuary that is still there uh he uh wanted he actually designed the building to be very simple to in fact uh unlike many episcopal churches the only thing that you saw there at the front where steven ting would preach was a pulpit the table where they had the lord's supper and on the wall behind him he had the uh ten commandments and the apostles creed but there wasn't even a wooden cross or anything like that there it was it was all just very plain and simple because ting knew that even uh 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 of the service they have a homily or something like that but the most of it is just ceremony and ritual and and rites and so on but if you could comment on your own opinion of what i just said well my own opinion i'm going to give you uh the westminster opinion the puritan opinion okay whenever we talk about that particular issue we're always talking about the second commandment and dealing with all of that and so you can read in their catechism you can read in the larger or shorter you can read in at any of that they're always going to talk about the very basic things that belong in the church which is uh none of that stuff in terms of idols and pictures and all of that uh 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 is removing all monuments of idolatry in the church they would they would never put up with that it was part of uh what they did not want to do and what the church of england wanted them to add in certain things that god hadn't commanded and so when we deal with you know pictures and carvings and images and what they would call superstitious devices because what they're getting to which are always driving to is those things oppose worship that god has appointed and so when you preach the word it doesn't say preach the word and bring into the church this that and the other is there 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 uh you know any visit new england and go to edward's church or or any of the colonial churches that way or go to uh cambridge london england and visit some of the very old churches you can go in the round church thousand years old there's nothing in it it's a brick it's a stone slash brick structure it's one of the oldest churches uh that's still standing in the city of cambridge and in the middle of the church it's round in the middle of the church is the pulpit and the roundness just engulfs the seat there isn't anything else and so all the churches were that way they were they were basic simple they all focused on the centrality of the preached word right and but you could even be a uh 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 uh 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 reform church that has paintings of the reformers everywhere or what have you uh something that just really is not enabling you to really keep your mind focused on what is being preached on right right generally when you walked into a puritan church they didn't have any of that right all of them were set in a a simplistic setting that focused solely on the word and the preached word and the centrality of the pulpit and it's not that the part we would never say well do you have a pulpit we take that from ezra and nehemiah that they specifically created a platform in which they put a pulpit on to learn to do the law and to cause the people to hear it and understand it for the express purpose of preaching so whatever they did and i think personally all reform churches should should take that to heart is they kept it simple to keep the centrality of the word preached without any kind of distraction whatsoever and you could have a you could have a beautiful sanctuary in a church that is simple i mean you could have very much so you have beautiful woodwork or whatever but uh and you know i understand that there are churches that don't want to look like warehouses or something like that right i understand that uh 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 uh with that but we we're going to our uh 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 non -conformist that has been brought back into print by the publishing wing of a 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 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 linbrook baptist church on 225 earl avenue in linbrook long island is teaching god's timeless truths in the 21st century our church is far more than a sunday worship service it's a place of learning where the scriptures are studied and the preaching of the gospel is clear it's like a gym where one can exercise their faith through community involvement it's like a hospital for wounded souls where one can find compassionate people and healing we're a diverse family of all ages enthusiastically serving our lord jesus christ in fellowship play and together hi i'm pastor bob waldeman and i invite you to come and join us here at linbrook baptist church and see all that a church can be call in brook baptist at 516 -599 -9402 that's 516 -599 -9402 or visit linbrookbaptist .org

that's linbrookbaptist .org every day at thousands of community centers high schools middle schools juvenile institutions coffee shops and local hangouts long island youth for christ staff and volunteers meet with young people who need jesus we are rural and urban and we are always about the message of jesus our mission is to have a noticeable spiritual impact on long island new york by engaging young people in the lifelong journey of following christ long island youth for christ has been a stalwart bedrock ministry since 1959 we have a world -class staff and a proven track record of bringing consistent love and encouragement to youths in need all over the country and around the world help honor our history by becoming a part of our future volunteer donate pray or all of the above for details call long island youth for christ at 631 -385 -8333 that's 631 -385 -8333 or visit liyfc .org

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chris arndsen 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 the herald is the spokesman on behalf of god uh what what the heralds do heralds are criers he says that uh cry out on behalf of the king and so how do they do that he says they do that in three ways they are bold they are faithful and they are plain he says uh 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 faithful uh they have to not detract from what the king has sent them to speak about they have to 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 in the dispensation of the gospel in preaching the word they have to do it boldly they are standing in the place representing god himself so in that particular way they ought not to be uh fearful of men brindley says they are not to fear the faces of those to whom they are sent that kind of undaunted boldness an invincible resolution he calls it that should be in the ministers of the word in delivering the will of god to the people they're supposed to instruct they're supposed to exhort they're supposed to convince they're supposed to reprove they got to do that with boldness they that preach christ have to preach as having 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 preaches as one having authority so hall encourages timothy and titus uh when you preach you do these things speak and exhort and rebuke how with all authority he preached as having authority in himself christ did we as ministers preach with all authority that come from god derived from him because as brindley says we're his ambassadors we represent his person we're to preach boldly in that particular way now if there are 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 uh paul says i have received of the lord that which i also delivered unto you first corinthians 11 23 so he received what he delivered so he delivered what he received brindley says he kept nothing back i have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of god x 2027 so here you have the faithful bold preacher and he's got to do it plainly because if people don't understand them well harold have to just 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 they read in the book in 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 boldly faithfully and plainly and they should be preaching christ that way in the name of god that way and so brindley says well what are they then to preach well he says our text is very plain it says they're to preach the word what does that mean he says it that's in two ways the herald of god the ambassador of god preaches the word the logos the word of god and he boiled it down to two things christ himself who is sometimes in the text of scripture called the word in the beginning was the word but also the word itself which explains who christ is the purpose of god is made known in the word about christ for the people so he's like well whichever way that you declare those things about the word 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 word in that particular way that is the word of the gospel the gospel is the word called the word the whole bible every part of it is the word and the gospel is the marrow the sum the substance of the word and so that way whenever we preach both of those things are taking place if the minister is doing what he's supposed to be doing and they are 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 to be able to take the bad news of the law and the good news of the gospel and place them together in a specific manner in which they are preaching the word of truth and so brinsley says when you do that that's when the word is sent as salvation to people it's called the word of salvation because the power of god for salvation and so there is an eminence in what the minister is doing when he rightly divides the word has a sermon that is going to be bold and he's going to be faithful in preaching it he's going to be plain in order to preach the word to the people who have to hear that as god speaking to their heart and their mind so uh that's what the herald does it is not what we always hear but it is what is required it is what's commanded in his text in uh in second timothy 4 -2 and that work what that does is it reveals the lord jesus christ because it lays open all the truth of doctrine surrounding who he is his person his nature's godhead manhood his offices uh being a keith a king a priest a prophet uh with all of how the covenant works with all of the different passages concerning his incarnation birth life death resurrection uh his ascension which is hardly ever talked about his priestly intercession which is hardly ever preached about and his coming again last day all of that is revealing christ and we're to reveal god's will concerning christ in that way that it's his will that sinners 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 ordained and set as the only means of reconciliation for sinners and that he's all all sufficient in his sacrifice in that particular manner and so go ahead what are you going to say 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 uh it's funny when i hear people say uh why do they pay your pastor uh 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 uh i can i can even attest to the fact that even though i'm not a preacher when i have to give a a message of any kind uh in regard to public speaking uh i often am exhausted after writing uh and preparing for what i'm going to say more than i am exhausted from doing manual labor when i you know 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 uh i i can remember uh being less exhausted than after 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 uh comment on that absolutely paul says that when preaching occurs and i think this is part of the gravity that a lot of times it's lost that preachers are going to be a saver of life or a saver of death something is going to happen there all of the puritans will say uh the same thing when you're dealing with this particular topic all the reformists have the same thing when you're dealing with this 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 or cause you some kind of self -examination or if you're 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 to you as a penitent sinner that's heavy laden and burdened then then it'll bring you closer to heaven so it's like there's no static area you know you always hear that uh that kind of cliche where if you're not walking with him you're walking away from him uh there's no standing still there's always some kind of movement either 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 is almost incomprehensible in terms of being able to place it in words uh william taylor in his work the ministry of the word basically says it that way i believe thomas murphy also says it that way both of them are like it's the work of the ministry is almost difficult to put into words in terms of its gravity and work because the minister is the one being used to herald god's word 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 i believe in the holy spirit every step up to the pulpit to think the gravity of what's going on in this particular situation is life and death a saver of life or a saver of death and i think a lot of times that's not taught it's not taught in seminary in that way that that gravity you know like like trying to almost discourage preachers to be preachers so to speak or those looking to be in the ministry to be a preacher seeing the gravity perkins didn't have william perkins didn't have any problem doing that when he used job 33 23 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 days i have to be responsible enough to take god's word and deliver that to god's people boldly faithfully and plainly because my job my job description is that i am the cure of souls i am the one who brings god's word to the never -dying souls of the people who are listening john welch a puritan rolling around on his floor late at night weeping tremendously his wife came out middle of the night she's like what is it what's happened and he 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 to act in a certain manner and have a certain mindset over the disposition of his office and so brinsley it says in this particular way you have to be earnest in everything that you do in the work of preaching earnest with yourself and earnest with others and so there has to be that gravity 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 on this particular topic it's a relatively few there's not a lot of them out there that are circulated around instead it's like we've we've exchanged the calling of the ministry by perkins or preacher's charge in people's duty by brinsley or any of the reformed pastor by baxter or any of these great works with you know how to make friends and influence people and 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 i can't ruffle feathers so i i want to be sure that i'm i'm you know careful walking on eggshells in the way that i preach thomas hodges in a work that we've just finished on the necessity dignity and duty of gospel ministers that ministers are to be the salt of the earth and when salt loses its saltiness what is it useful for nothing but to be thrown down to be trodden by men he said bad ministers who can't put together a sermon who don't preach boldly who don't preach faithfully who don't preach plainly who don't do what it is that they are required to do he called them back he just basically says they're completely useless and all of those people are being affected by that and so there has to be something along the way that takes those ministers and raises them up to minister in the way that scripture has specifically laid out and a lot of times we we tend to lose that when we just send people through seminary really quickly they have their degree and they think that they're all ready to go listen i went through seminary and i can tell you that at the end of seminary if you ask me where the 10 commandments were i could tell you they're in exodus 20 but then if you ask me what do they mean seminary didn't teach me that it's the lowest 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 will say the same thing i'm talking with the minister right now and he's gone through a seminary in such 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 be a good preacher and i think that's one of the the powerful aspects of what these great works like brindley's work does is it exhorts us to be what scripture explains that the minister should be 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 uh we have time for one more question from bb in cumberland county pennsylvania she says i repeatedly hear the commercial that you air for wading 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 preacher it's impossible to be a preacher and not exposit the work it's impossible to be a herald or ambassador of god to take the mind of the spirit and connect it to the mind of the congregation from the work 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 is in the text 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 encouraging it doesn't matter if it's biographical or it's part of a 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 exposit the text so 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 is that's that's work as we talked about a moment ago so why does that get a black eye it's because it's hard and it's much easier just to share some some thought or some musing or something like that for 15 or 20 minutes behind the pulpit and call it a sermon and if that's not a sermon that's not going to sanctify the people it's not going to bring them closer to christ it's not going to deliver or reveal christ to the people it's not going to be helpful but every single real sermon is going to be expository it's impossible to avoid that and of course i'm sure you wouldn't oppose a preacher uh breaking from his uh stride in a certain text that he's been or or book he's been uh 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 uh i'm sure you wouldn't think that topical preaching is never proper oh no no see but even that's the that's the whole point even when you deal topically or we would say doctrinally in that particular you're still expositing the text what are you going to pull your topical idea out of the air some preachers do but they shouldn't that they should be taking it from the text of scripture so even if you've decided that you need to stop your expository work 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 affliction going on uh and i need to address that you're still going to exegete the you're still going to exposit it there's no there's no avoiding it every single sermon that you ever give is always going to be held captive to the idea that you have to take what it is that you're preaching from the text and that i think is what brinsley encourages greatly for every preacher to do well uh tyler and 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 iron sharpens iron radio .com

iron sharpens iron radio .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 uh in two minutes just summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners dr mcmahon i would say both for the hearer and for the preacher there should be a gravity that surrounds the word of god that god's word is what he has given us for life and godliness that means that the preacher has to be bold enough and faithful enough to take that scripture and to rightly expound it rightly divide the word of truth so that he can deliver that to the people 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 to apply it to those people who are 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 with all gravity because that is what cleanses our conscience that is what we need to receive with meekness and that's what we need daily because that is the lord jesus christ given to us and delivered to us 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