Steven Furtick Most Viewed Sermon | Pastor Reacts

Preaching the Word with Reverence and Clarity

But now you know the parameters for a preacher at the pulpit. And so within those parameters, how much should you be talking about yourself? Welcome to a brand new type of video on this channel. If you are brand new, welcome, welcome.

I'm glad that you're here. My name is Nate, and this is Wise Disciple, where we're helping you become the effective Christian that you were meant to be. Today I want to talk about preachers and preaching.

Specifically, I'm going to be looking at a popular preaching pastor. Say that three times fast. His name is Stephen Furtick. He's a senior pastor at Elevation Church in Charlotte, North Carolina. I'll be looking at his most viewed sermon on YouTube and breaking it down, sort of talking inside baseball about what's good, what we should be looking for as Christians in good sermons, maybe what I would even do or would not do myself if I were preaching, and reacting to all of this as a pastor.

Now maybe you're wondering, Nate, who the heck are you to do something like this? Well, I was a pastor for a number of years. I trained with my mentor to become a pastor, and then I jumped onto staff at a local church in Las Vegas where I preached God's Word.

So this is, of course, all alongside what I've been doing at Wise Disciple. So that's a little bit of the background and experience that I'm drawing from in order to do this kind of exercise. Also, let me just say this before we begin.

First, my heart in this is not to be a watchdog or to turn this channel into some kind of a watchdog ministry where I just bash everything that I hear. My goal is to talk about the art of preaching and what should go into a good sermon that preaches the Word of God.

And let's face it, that's what our desire as Christians should be. We should be looking for those that bring the Word, that they handle the Word of God rightly, they preach the Word well. The second thing is, I don't know Stephen Furtick very well.

I'm not familiar at all with his preaching. I've never seen a sermon by him in its entirety. I've caught clips here and there when he said something controversial, but I don't know what all of his theology is or where he stands on all doctrines.

So in that sense, maybe you're way more familiar with him than I am. And so this is going to be you watching me get a bit of an education. So this is Furtick's most viewed sermon. It's called When the Battle Chooses You.

Let's stop talking and get right into it.

Reading 2 Chronicles 20 and Setting Up the Sermon

I would like to share with you a verse of Scripture that I pray will go off like a bomb, like the promise that it is. When I read it, a certain number of you, I don't know how many and I don't know where you are, but a certain number of you are going to know that this one is for you when I read.

The verse.

And I'm not saying it's for everybody, but if it's for you and how you can know if it's for you, if you're currently facing a battle that is bigger than you, then this verse is for you today.

So first of all, Furtick looks a lot like my best friend who I rolled around with in my 20s. He was the best man at my wedding. I got a lot of love and affection from my best friend, and Furtick looks a lot like.

Him.

So I'm just being upfront. There's a familiarity to him that I'm observing. The other thing is, he's doing what pastors do, okay? He's setting up the sermon. This would be all under the broader category of the introduction period of the sermon.

Now, I've noticed a lot of pastors do this. They say something like, well, I'm about to drop some scripture on you, and it's going to mess you up. So he's setting expectations, and he's teasing where he's going.

And praise God. The Word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword. So hopefully the Word will be preached, and God's people will be affected by it.

2 Chronicles 20, verse 17, the Word of the Lord. You will not have to fight this battle. Six of y 'all. All right, if you want that to be your word, shout when I read it. You will not have to fight this battle.

Come on, punch somebody and say, not this one.

Not this one.

You will not have to fight this battle. You will not have to fight this battle. Tell them, you will not have to fight this battle. Take up your positions, stand firm, and see. Stand firm and see the deliverance the Lord will give you, O Judah in Jerusalem.

Do not be afraid. Do not be discouraged. Don't believe that devil when he tells you that there's nothing you can do about it. Go out to face them tomorrow.

So I would be very careful here. So I know what Furtick's doing, and now I'm trying to think if I've ever done something like this before. Maybe I have, but I would just caution the preaching pastor here, too.

If you're going to read the Word, let the Word speak. Give the Word space to speak. If you're going to expound on what that means, do that after you've read the Word, as it has been given to God's people.

There's a reverence that the preacher needs when reciting God's Word. The picture that I have in my mind is Jesus in the synagogue unrolling the scroll of Isaiah and reading from it. And then he said, today the scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.

When you stop God's Word to add in your own commentary and then start up God's Word again, and then you kind of do that back and forth over and over again, I think you lose a bit of the reverence you need when you kind of do this thing.

And the Lord will be with you. Let's give God a shout of praise for his prophet. Is it really worth, if Holly still after 17 years doesn't know how to correctly load the silverware in the dishwasher, and she thinks it's still okay to put the part of the fork that you put in your mouth facing up so that your hand touches the part that's going in your mouth when you get it out the next day, if she really still thinks that makes sense after 17 years, is it really worth fighting about?

No, I'm bigger than that. I'm not a petty man. I let it go. So they'll tell you, choose your battles. Let your kids play the music too loud every once in a while. Don't always choose your battles. Don't get tripped up over tiny things.

Choose your battles. The question I want to ask today, and I guess you could use it as a title for the message as well from 2 Chronicles 20, is it's wise to choose your battles when you can. But what do you do when your battle chooses you?

So we're now just about nine minutes in, and Furtick has finally articulated the theme of the message. And it took a while because he went on a long journey talking about his own marriage and what he's learned in marriage.

He even joked about writing a song for his wife so that he can be more intimate with her when he wants in front of everyone. Yeah, he did that in front of everybody. And then he just made a joke at her expense about how she loads dishes into the dishwasher.

I personally would not do any of this. There's an important balance a preacher strikes within his message. And how you figure out this balance is by asking, first, what is the goal of the preacher?

Right?

This is a question that should come to your mind. What is the purpose for a man to get up, to walk to that pulpit, to open God's Word, and to teach from it? And I think a lot of preachers—and I don't know about Furtick yet—but a lot of preachers end up forgetting about the goal because they're so focused on the job.

The job of the preacher is threefold, all right? The preacher has three jobs on a Sunday morning. Or maybe another way of saying this is, a preacher worth his salt is really answering three questions in his sermon.

Number one, what does the Bible say? Number two, what does the Bible mean? And then number three, how can we all live by it? And there's some overlap between the job of the preacher and the goal of the preacher.

But what I was saying a moment ago was, it can be easy for someone to forget about his purpose and then just focus on his job, right? The purpose or the goal of the preacher is to relay God's revelation in a manner that is glorifying to God and transformative to the listener.

Now, there's a lot more to say about all that. But now you know the parameters for a preacher at the pulpit. And so, within those parameters, how much should you be talking about yourself? Furtick just spent the better part of 10 minutes talking about himself and his wife and his.

Marriage.

Now, he did it to create an illustration that leads into 2 Chronicles. And I'm not saying talking about yourself is off-limits. I'm just saying, how much should you do it? This goes back to the balance that I was referring to.

And like I said, I would not do this. I certainly would not even hint at disparaging my wife in front of other people. My wife would be so upset with me. And I think rightly so.

The Historical Context of Jehoshaphat's Battle

What do you do when something shows up on your doorstep and it's not from Amazon Prime and you didn't order it? What do you do when the devil drops something off for you to deal with that you did not directly cause, choose, or definitely anticipate?

Like Jehoshaphat in 2 Chronicles 20, who is told one morning in verse 1, might I add, in a time of spiritual renewal for Judah, the southern kingdom of Israel, in a time of great momentum spiritually, one day, just when everything is going good….

You know how just when you get something figured out and just when you get in your groove and just when you get in your rhythm…. And here comes some news. The Bible says after this, verse 1, the Moabites and Ammonites and even some of the Meunites came to make war on Jehoshaphat.

And some men came and told Jehoshaphat, I'm not telling him.

You tell him. I'm not telling him. You tell him. We'll all tell him.

Let's all tell him together. A vast army is coming against you from Edom.

So, I'm noticing that, you know, to go back to those three questions that a preacher must answer, Furtick is jumping back and forth between questions number 1 and 3. Part of what makes him interesting is that he hops back and forth between question number 1 and 3.

What does the Bible say? But also, how can we live by it? Or another way of saying that is, how does this apply to me? Furtick keeps jumping back and forth between these two questions very quickly. That's why he's also adding words to his reading of the Scripture.

Furtick's goal is to answer that third question for his congregation. And this is how he's answering it.

From the other side of the sea. This means they're sneaking up from behind. They're going around the Dead Sea and then coming back up to attack the people of God on a little-known route because they can't use the normal trade route.

And so, they're sneaking up from behind and they're 25 miles out. That means that Jehoshaphat doesn't have time to develop a strategy. He doesn't have time to build the armed forces to mount a defense.

He doesn't have time to rethink the occasions that led up to this event. It's coming and it's coming now.

So, this is really good. And when you can find a preacher that does this well, praise God. What Furtick is doing is he's focusing on the historical context. See, when you open up the Bible, you're going back in time, okay?

You're looking at God revealing himself to people in history. So, the Bible is a time machine and it gives you a picture of that history. The problem is, if you don't know the history very well, that picture the Bible gives will be like a coloring book that has not been colored in yet.

And so, you end up missing out on the rich, vibrant hues of the colors of history that help to answer the questions, what does the Bible say? What does it mean? And how can we live by it? So, good for Furtick for doing his due diligence.

He knows his history and it's very important.

Feeling and going with it and calling it God. And this isn't just slapping a scripture verse on something that you wanted to do anyway so that you can blame it on God when it doesn't work out. This is really seeking the Lord.

In fact, the Bible says that he was shaken, but he wasn't…. Maybe I should say it this way. He was shocked, but he wasn't shook. Didn't see this coming. Ammon, Moab, and the Edomites. That's three of them.

I could fight one, but there's three of them. It's bigger than me and it's coming up from behind me. You got something bigger than you that came up from behind you? Jehoshaphat's prayer is interesting, because he's praying about Ammon, Moab, and the Edomites from Mount Seir, but we have three different enemies.

We have the world, the flesh, and the Devil. That's from 1 John. That's your enemy. The world, the flesh, and the Devil. That's the values that oppose your purpose, the world. The flesh, that's the patterns that oppose your purpose, and the Devil.

That is the principality that opposes your purpose. And I could fight one, but how do I fight the Devil when I'm fighting my own flesh? How do I fight the world?

So, I'm noticing an implicit message underneath the teaching of Scripture here. And again, I think a lot of this is due to the fact that Furtick jumps back and forth between what the text says and how it applies to his people now.

The downside to this is your people may not properly understand or appreciate the application if they don't spend enough time in the biblical history. In other words, if you don't spend enough time answering questions number one and two, how can you expect your people to fully appreciate and understand question number three?

When I preach, I try to go in order. So, I'm not saying that this is the only way to do it. I'm just saying how I do it. So, after the intro, I'll read the Scripture. Then, I'll unpack the history and the context of the passage.

Then, I'll pull out the biblical truths of the text. And then, I'll apply it. So, I'm actually very linear in my approach. Furtick's not doing that. And there's a problem here because when you jump back and forth like this, you end up skipping over things that are extremely important.

Furtick just said the Christian has three enemies—the flesh, the world, and the Devil.

Great!

I totally agree with that. But then, he said, well, I can fight one of them, but not all three. And now, he's trying to connect this back to Jehoshaphat because Jehoshaphat is dealing with multiple enemies.

And so, there's the connection. The problem is you can't fight any of your enemies, ladies and gentlemen. The teaching of the Scripture is you have no strength in yourself to fight even your own flesh.

None whatsoever. A lot of Christians understand this taught in Romans chapter 7. It most certainly comes out of the teachings of Galatians chapter 2 verse 20. For it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.

And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith. Not by my own strength. Not by my own fight against my flesh. By faith. That is how we produce fruit. Jesus said, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it will not bear fruit.

And that connects to his teaching on abiding in him in John chapter 15. This is why Paul said, consider yourselves dead to sin. The way we battle our flesh, the world, and the devil is through dying to ourself and living by faith.

We don't have anything in us to fight. Now, all of that nuance just got skipped over when Furtick tried to connect 1 John to Jehoshaphat. So, that's what I'm talking about. Preachers, we need to be very careful relaying God's word to the congregation.

Faith, Shame, and God's Possession of His People

What you have to do when you fight a battle that's not your fault. Sometimes you fight against things that are in your genetics. But you still have to figure out what to do about that battle. And when it's that deep, it's that strong.

Sometimes you fight against things that other people did. If you go into shame and you're like, well, I take responsibility for my part, that's good, but it's tricky. Because before long, shame will drive you out of the presence of God, which is what you need when you're in a situation, even if you created it.

So, it's tricky. You can find yourself in a battle and you can say, well, I can't expect God's help in this situation because it was created by my hand. But Jehoshaphat is transcending all of that with his prayer.

He says, O Lord our God, we belong to you.

We are your possession.

When we came into this land so many years ago, you would not let us drive out these enemies. And they're bigger than us. And they came up from behind us. And we're not to blame for this battle. And yet here it is.

So now, verse 11, O Lord our God, see how they are repaying us by coming to drive us out of the possession you gave us as an inheritance. Now, let me put this in here. I'm just going with the Spirit today.

I haven't opened my nose. I mean, I got in my heart. I'm preaching Spirit to Spirit today for whoever needs to receive it. And God gave me this Word before I gave you this Word.

So that's an interesting admission. I'm not relying on any notes. Now, I don't know a whole lot of pastors who can memorize the essential details required to handle the Word of God efficiently. As a matter of fact, I can only think of one person who can do that well.

So if Firtik did his sermon prep all week, and then he's just riffing right now because he's got a photographic memory or something, then that's awesome. You know, praise God for that. But I will tell you this, your sermon prep is very often the difference between communicating the inspired text and doing improv.

You know what I mean? My friend Chuck, who's also a pastor, says it like this. The Spirit is in your prep just as much as you're preaching. So when you say, oh, I'm just letting the Spirit guide me up here, it almost sounds like Firtik did next to no prep and then just decided to walk up cold and start talking.

And for most preachers, that's a recipe for disaster.

If it's God who gave it, then it's God's to protect it. That's about possession. It's not about how much power you have. It's about possession. And if you are God's possession and you are stewarding something that he gave you to possess, then it's not a matter of how much power you have that determines what happens next in this battle.

When it's God's possession, it's God's problem. I don't want to cry telling you this. If it hits your heart that if it's God's possession, it's God's problem, and then you realize that you are his treasure, you are his possession, you are his daughter, you are his son, you are his friend, and your friend knows how to fight, it gives you the confidence.

O our God, will you not judge them? For we have no power to face this vast army that is attacking us. It's bigger than us. It came up from behind us. We can't do it. We do not know what to do. If you're there right now, raise your right hand.

I do not know what to do. I don't know how to fight. I don't know how to fix it. I can't control what comes against me. But our eyes are upon you, and God says—.

Application, Worship, and the Need for Concrete Confession

So clearly, Furtick is a very good speaker. He has the command of the stage. He knows how to connect with his people. He knows how to use himself as a means to establish ethos and pathos with his people.

I mean, all of that is crucial for a preacher, and it's working for Furtick. He even knows the biblical context of the Scripture. He's saying things that I applaud. So all of those things are really, really good—good for him.

The only thing I would say is, just remember, Furtick has three questions to answer because every preacher has three questions to answer as part of their job. What does the Bible say? What does the Bible mean?

And how can we live by it? And so far—now, we're nearing the end here, so the conclusion is coming up. But so far, I'm not seeing an answer to question number three just yet. See, when it comes to application, God's people need a preacher to do more than merely identify with their struggles.

They definitely need a preacher to identify with their struggles, right? But they also need a preacher to relay God's Word in a manner that persuades them, that transforms them by God's Word. D. Martin Lloyd-Jones said that the preacher isn't just reading his sermon.

It's not just like reading his notes or giving some dispassionate lecture. He's dealing with living souls and trying to move them, to take them with him, to lead them to the truth. If the preacher's not doing that, he's not preaching.

I heard it like this—the preacher's job is not to make the truth clear, but to make the truth real. So when it comes time to apply God's Word, my opinion is you have to be very concrete. You have to be extremely practical.

Your people need very practical ways to live out this biblical truth in their daily lives. You cannot remain abstract and just say, raise your hand if you feel betrayed today. That's not good enough. That's a good starting point, but it has to go further than that.

And so, hopefully—Fertick's got a lot of time. Hopefully he'll get to that practical stuff soon.

When you don't understand the nature of the battle that you're in, you use the wrong strategy. And some of us are losing because we are fighting on the wrong level. To unpack it, I could use Ephesians 6 .12.

We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but that's what we fight against, flesh and blood. We fight every battle physically. We fight people. We even fight people who are trying to help us because we're insecure.

We fight the battle to protect our ego and to protect our pride, and then we lose the battle in our spirit because we were more concerned about protecting our pride than we were about receiving God's power and his help and his provision in our lives.

Amen.

So, I mean, this is great. He's identifying with his congregation, and clearly what he's doing is he's listing out the things of what not to do. But again, just hold this into your head. The question that he needs to answer is, what do his people do practically moving forward in light of the teaching of 2 Chronicles here?

What should his people do practically?

I was talking to somebody this week, and they were saying all kinds of crazy stuff to me. The Lord said,.

Not this one.

Don't fight this one. Learn the 20 percent that he's saying that's true. Keep your mouth shut. Save your energy for the real battle. Sometimes I see a comment on Instagram about my preaching or my shoes or something like that, and the Lord says,.

Not this one.

So, I'm going to sidestep whether or not God speaks privately to individuals. I'm fairly certain I've talked about this in other videos on this channel. What I will say is the preacher's focus at the pulpit is the Scripture.

We are to exegete the Word of God, not his whispers.

Not this one.

Somebody say,.

Not this one.

Somebody say, Where's the application?

If it's too big, it doesn't belong to you. If it's too big, you got to give it back to God. And we say the battle is the Lord's, but we stress like it's ours. We say the battle is the Lord's, but we worry like it's ours.

Now we've wasted all of our strength worrying when we could have been worshiping.

So, again, Furtick is identifying with his people. He apparently knows his people well, and that is definitely something that a teaching pastor, a senior pastor, any pastor at a church should know. They should know their sheep.

But the question is, how do we do this, Pastor Furtick? What is an example of what you're talking about now? What are some practical steps for me as a believer to live this out starting Monday morning?

Especially if I'm in the habit of doing the very thing that I'm not supposed to do. Give us some very practical steps that we can implement immediately, Pastor Furtick.

If you worship, you wage the war of worship.

It's too big for me. What do you do when the battle chooses you?

You worship your way through it.

Now that sounds good, but it feels stupid, because here they come, Ammonites, Moabites, Edomites. They were all big in their own right, and they're all fighting together. So how are you going to fight them?

What are we going to do, Jehoshaphat? What are we going to do about this situation? What are you going to do about it? The prophet said, you, verse 17, will not have to fight this battle, but you're going to experience the victory, not by fighting, but by focusing.

So, I mean, we're kind of now getting closer to the answer here. He's running out of time. So the answer is worship and focus. And I agree with all of those, right? But wait a sec. What does that mean?

Does it mean to sing songs every time a difficulty comes up? Is that what worship means? What does focus mean? Does it mean focus on the Lord? You know, but what does that even mean? Do I just think about God in my mind whenever I'm in crisis?

Does that mean read the word and focus on God that way? Also, what kind of issues even count here? Like, how can I avoid my habit of stress, anxiety, and worry? There are so many questions, and this right here is not very practical.

This is too abstract. Worship and focus. So while the conclusion of the sermon sounds really great, and it's really inspiring, and Furtick is really good at this, and it's not wrong, okay? It's just not helpful either.

So I can see why Furtick is popular. He's a very good speaker. He connects with his congregants. In the sermon, he read the scripture. He appeared to have a really good grasp of the historical context.

These are all very important for the preacher. I think the areas of concern here are that he's spending more time on relating the scripture than revering the scripture, and I think a preacher needs to stop and think a little bit harder about what that looks like, you know?

What it is to actually have a fear, to have a holy reverence for the word of God as you stand at that pulpit and try to communicate it, because you're really not going to be able to do it in your own strength.

And these kinds of issues, they start to affect the purpose of the preacher, right? Again, the preacher's purpose is to relay God's revelation in a manner that is glorifying to God and transformative to the listener.

There's a story about this crazy professor who was teaching a class on how to be effective teachers, and on the first day of class, he runs down the list of the syllabus and all that stuff, and then at the end of it, he says, look, at the end of the semester, I'm going to give you a test, but it's not for you, the student.

Your job is to teach everything that I show you each week in class to someone else off campus. And then at the end, at the end of the semester, I want you to bring this person, I want you to bring them in and sit down and take my test in your place.

That will determine your grade. See where I'm going with this? If you're a preaching pastor, you need to be thinking, are my people actually living out what I'm saying? Have I given them what they need to live by the truths of God's word?

Because if you haven't, you have not done your job well. There's one last thought that I had, and I just think it's noteworthy, so I'm going to share this, and then I'll close. And I'm trying to think about how to put words to this exactly, but throughout the whole sermon, Furtick spoke in a manner that did not call out sin.

In his application comments, you know, which is all throughout the sermon, really, Furtick talks about people worrying. He talks about them being anxious. He talks about, you know, trying to do things in their own strength and flesh, really the things that only God can accomplish, right?

The thing is, these are all sins, though. Every single one of those things that he lists are sins, and Furtick never calls them out. It's as if he's saying, well, you know, things aren't okay, but they can be better, right?

Which is not the way that the Bible speaks. The Bible says you are a sinner in need of a savior, right? You cannot perform. You cannot live righteously. You cannot do anything without God's grace upon your life.

Even after you are saved, you still need God to do in and through you what you cannot do for yourself. And what are those things, Nate? Nothing. You can do nothing. Jesus said, whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit.

For apart from me, you can do nothing. And when you act this way, you know, that you got it, that you just sometimes you need God's help, but only a little bit because you mostly have it. You're sinning.

And you need to take time and confess. And the preacher at the pulpit needs to give space. He needs to create that space for the congregation. To let the word of God come to bear on their life. And if and if that requires confession, which it usually does, the preacher needs to give that space for confession to let the word of God really, truly transform the lives of.

The church.

Why?

Because the only way for there to be a change is by first confessing. You know what, God? I've been worrying because I'm trying to control and accomplish what only you can do. Please forgive me and change my heart so that I can recognize your ability to protect me, your ability to help me overcome this, this hurdle or this obstacle.

I can't do it in my own strength. See, that is the first practical step for a congregant to do when they are faced with an insurmountable challenge. You know, they must say, God, I can't do it. Only you can do it.

I have no control. Forgive me for ever thinking that I could. Give me your grace and your peace while I wait on you to provide a way for me to move forward in this particular crisis. Give me rest, Lord Jesus, as I lay my burdens on you, for your yoke is easy and your burden.

Is light. All right.

Well, somehow I ended up preaching. So there you go. What do you think about this sermon? And listen, be constructive, OK? Now, you know the parameters of a good sermon.

All right.

Now, you know the goal of a preacher. Now, you know the job of the preacher to really answer three questions. Where does Furtick's sermon fit into all of this? Let me know in the comments below. This was purely a science experiment.

If you want more of these kinds of videos, let me know by liking the video. If not, I'll know to move on to something else.

All right.

As always, I hope that this conversation has blessed you in some way, maybe just to know a little bit more about what to look for when you're maybe maybe you're searching for a church or maybe you're looking just to have the word of God preached to to minister to your heart in the moment.

Now, you know what you're looking for a little bit clearer, I think. So anyway, I'm going to take my leave and return soon with more videos. But in the meantime, I'll say bye for now.