July 3, 2024 Show with Dr. Joseph C. Morecraft III on “Preaching: What Is It, What Should It Contain, & How Should It Be Presented?”

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this

Independence Day Eve, July 3rd, 2024.

Today, we have a returning guest on the program. His name is Dr. Joseph C.

Moorcraft III, pastor of Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, and the author of the eight -volume commentary on the

Westminster Larger Catechism entitled Authentic Christianity, who will address preaching, what it is, what it should contain, and how it should be presented.

It's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr. Joseph C. Moorcraft III.

Can you hear me, brother? I barely can, but it's good to be back with you.

You can barely hear me. That's odd. It sort of is.

Sometimes I can hear you and sometimes I can't. Can you hear me now? Yes, sir. Okay.

Well, Brother Joe, for the sake of our listeners who have not yet heard you on the program, please provide for us a brief description of Heritage Presbyterian Church.

My church is Heritage Presbyterian Church in Cumming, Georgia, which is a county seat, a

Forsyth County, a county just north of metropolitan

Atlanta. We've been in existence for about ten years and have continued to grow.

We are a congregation largely of young adults, but not just young adults.

We have every age and every background you can imagine. Our church is dedicated to the original

Westminster Standards. We're dedicated to the Great Commission. Our church does a great many things to be as faithful to the

Great Commission as we can possibly be. We're involved in preaching trips to Mexico and Cuba.

We have conferences. We have many, many things that we do,

Bible studies. And it is a great group of people that I count it a privilege to be their pastor.

Well, praise God. If anybody wants more details on Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, go to HeritagePresbyterianChurch .com,

HeritagePresbyterianChurch .com. For more details on Dr. Moorcraft's eight -volume commentary on the

Westminster Larger Catechism called Authentic Christianity, go to WestminsterCommentary .com,

WestminsterCommentary .com. And for all of Dr. Moorcraft's books, of which she has written many, go to ComprehensiveChristianity .com,

ComprehensiveChristianity .com. Well, if you could, Dr. Moorcraft, since our subject is preaching, and this may seem like a no -brainer, but obviously there is a failure in the church today on this very topic where the true meaning of the word and the concept is grossly neglected or not conducted in any meaningful way at all.

But if you could define preaching for us. I don't know of any subject that I would rather talk on than this subject.

It's one of the most important subjects that anybody can talk on that the church needs to hear about, that preachers need to hear about, because preaching has failed in this country.

Preaching has always been one of the most powerful instruments in North America for good or evil.

For the first centuries of our country, it was the most powerful instrument for the good.

Now, for the past hundred or more years, it's been one of the most powerful instruments for evil in this country.

I don't think that is an exaggeration. I have heard a lot of preachers, and I realize how deficient preaching is in this country on all kinds of levels.

And one of the most important things about preaching is to understand its theology and to understand what it does and what it's capable of doing in the power of the

Holy Spirit. There is a passage in Romans that says,

Whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. How shall you call upon him in whom you've not believed?

How shall you believe in him whom you've not heard?

And how shall you hear without a preacher? And how can he preach unless he's been called?

So, to me, that is an inspiring passage of scripture. It says that you can't call upon the

Lord, you can't worship Jesus as God unless you believe in him.

And you can't believe in him unless you've heard him, unless you've heard his voice.

You see that many times in the scriptures. John 10, my sheep hear my voice, and they follow me.

So Christ's own voice is to be heard in the faithful preaching of the gospel.

How shall they call upon him in whom they've not believed? How shall they believe in him whom they have not heard?

And where is Christ's voice to be heard? And how shall they hear his voice without a preacher?

Amen. Now, what's interesting is that the Greek word for preacher hardly ever occurs in the

New Testament. In fact, it does not occur in our text. It's not a noun.

It is a participle. And what our text says is how shall they hear without a preaching one?

The emphasis in scripture is not on the one that does the preaching. The emphasis is on the faithful preaching of the gospel itself.

And when that gospel is preached faithfully, the Lord Jesus Christ himself preaches through it into the hearts of men.

That should be a great comfort and a great encouragement to preachers. And a great encouragement to members of the congregation.

That you go to church not to hear the preacher, but you go to church to hear

Jesus preach. So what America needs more than anything else is two things, a preached

Christ and a preaching Christ. The content of our sermons must focus on the person of Christ.

And when that happens, the resurrected reigning Christ from God's right hand by the power of the

Holy Spirit preaches the congregation.

Through the weak, frail preaching of men. And it is a great truth to be cherished and to be loved.

Preaching is, you ask me what's the definition of preaching? That's an interesting question.

There is a difference. The Bible does make a difference between preaching and teaching.

Those are two entirely different words, but they are obviously connected.

Preaching does involve teaching. It involves exhortation.

It involves counseling. A preaching is to be done by one who has been called by Christ himself to preach.

It's interesting that in the New Testament, ruling elders are not said to preach.

Church members are not said to preach. Elders are to be apt to teach.

But the only people in the New Testament that we find proclaiming or heralding the word of God are those who have been called by Christ himself to preach that word.

And I think if I were to define the distinctives of preaching, it would be in terms of passion and power.

A faithful preacher of the word of God is faithful to the Bible. He teaches the

Bible. He exhorts the congregation for the Bible.

He encourages the congregation for the Bible. But when he does all that, he does it with a passion, an observable passion, and a spiritual power that only the

Holy Spirit himself can produce. One of the first, in fact, the first book on preaching that made a great impact on my life many, many, many years ago is a book called

The Relevance of Preaching. It's by a French Calvinist who lived in the late 20th century.

His name was Pierre Marcel. And whereas there are several other great books on preaching and longer books on preaching, this book has meant more in my life than any other book because it emphasizes the fact that preaching includes a spiritual unction, a spiritual empowerment that is far beyond anything man can produce.

So that when I go into the pulpit, I am very conscious of the fact, as Calvin said, that we are standing on the throne of God and that we are empowered by the

Holy Spirit of God to speak the word of God. And here's the thing we learned, and that is whatever

Jesus preaches happens. Write that on the inside of your eyelids.

Whatever Jesus preaches happens. In the New Testament, the

Bible says that Jesus preached peace, but then it also says that he brings peace.

It says that Jesus preached about his kingdom, but then he says that his kingdom comes in the preaching of the word of God.

It says that Jesus comes preaching repentance, and then it also says he brings repentance.

So whatever Jesus preaches happens. We come to church and we pray,

Lord, I don't want to be impressed with the preacher. I want to be impressed with Jesus Christ, and I want him to bring about in my life whatever

I need to be done, have done to me. So when we talk about preaching, we're talking about a very spiritual thing.

We're also talking about something that's not otherworldly. To say that it's a very spiritual thing is not to say that it is not related to this world.

Preaching is the spearhead of Christian reconstruction.

God has called us to preach, to take practice of the

Great Commission, to bring the discipline of the word of God upon the nations of the world, to bring about political revival and reformation, economic, family, education, all those things.

But the sharp point of the spear that brings everything else with it is the preaching of the word of God.

So whatever else we're doing to work toward revival or reformation or renewal or reconstruction or whatever you want to call it, whatever we're doing to try to accomplish those goals, we will get nowhere unless the emphasis is on the preaching of the living, reigning, ruling

Lord Jesus Christ. I was preaching to a group of Christian preachers one time, and I asked them, how many of you know the verse,

I determined to know nothing among you but Christ and Him crucified.

And of course they all raised their hands saying they did know that verse. And then

I said, well, there is no such verse in the Bible. There is no verse in the

Bible that says I determined to know Jesus Christ crucified, as if the focus of preaching is the cross.

What it says is, I determined to know nothing among you but Jesus Christ, comma, and Him crucified.

So the focus of faithful preaching is not even the cross, as important as that is, and as important as it is to emphasize it and to explain it.

But the focus of faithful preaching is the living, reigning, ruling, ascended

Lord Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world, the only

Redeemer of God's elect. Amen. Now, tell us how what you have just described, with great fervor and power, tell us how that is different than the multitudes of pastors, even within our circles of theology, that ascend into pulpits every

Sunday and give a very calm and audibly quiet lecture.

Even if everything they are saying in that time from behind the pulpit is true and biblically faithful, what's the difference between what you just said and the man that lectures a message from the pulpit?

I don't see, and that's a very important question, I don't see, after having just explained to you what the focus is,

I don't see how anybody can get in the pulpit and preach the focus on the living

Christ as if he were dead. Boring, sound, but sound asleep.

But that's the kind of preaching we have today. The kind of preaching you go into some of these churches, and the preacher's just as dead as he can be.

One time I went to Texas to visit my father, and the only

Presbyterian church in town, which is Texas City, Texas, the only

Presbyterian church in town was a liberal one. So I knew

I wasn't going to like it. So we walk in the door, and the deacon hands my daughter, little daughter, a bag of toys to play with during church.

Well, that made me mad right off the bat. And then the preacher comes in, and he starts preaching, and I asked for a bag of toys.

The only good thing about liberal preachers is that their sermons are short.

But it's not just the liberals. I mean, we've got plenty of liberals that waste time in the pulpit.

But we also have people, evangelicals and even some in the reform world, that don't know how to preach.

We have a lot of reform preachers that are celebrity oriented.

Their main approach is to preach, wear their flashy coat and tie, and preach so that they maintain their celebrity status.

Somebody asked me not long ago who my favorite preachers were, and they thought

I was going to mention the big ones, the celebrity ones. And I said, oh, you don't know them.

They're men that pastor small churches, that faithfully expound the word of God Sunday in and Sunday out.

The celebrity preachers, they say some good things, but they really are not preaching sermons that change cultures.

And that has disturbed me for a long time. Because even our good guys, even the faithful preachers, don't preach culture changing sermons.

Now, what do I mean by that? Well, I mean several things. But one thing

I mean is look back through history when preaching was what it ought to be.

And when reform preachers preached in such a way that by the power of God, they changed cultures.

They changed men's lives. And one thing that Presbyterians and Baptists quit doing, but I think

Presbyterians even more quit doing it, in the 1800s and even in the 1700s, they quit preaching through books of the

Bible. You read the sermons of the great

Presbyterians of the 1800s, James Stonewell, Dabney, Charles Hodge, etc.

I hate to say this, but none of those men preached regularly through various books of the

Bible. They preached on subjects. The subjects they preached on were great.

But that's not the kind of preaching that changed culture. You look at Reformation preaching in the 1500s and 1600s.

You look at the preaching of people like Calvin and the rest. They preached through books of the

Bible, paragraph by paragraph. And that changed all of Northern Europe in less than a generation.

But preachers don't do that much anymore. I'm not sure what all the reasons are.

It requires a lot of effort. I will tell you that. You really got to work to preach through a book of the

Bible, and then go and preach through another one the next time. There's nothing easy about it. There's nothing simple about it.

But it's that kind of preaching. Expository. Now, what I mean by expository is more than just taking a text and explaining it.

By expository, I mean, I preach by paragraphs. I preach through this, because paragraphs, you know, are unified by one particular emphasis.

That's the unity of paragraphs. That they have one particular thing they're emphasizing.

So I preach by paragraphs. I preach by this paragraph, go through it, explain it.

I use the Greek all I can. I use the Hebrew when

I can. I'm not that good in Hebrew. But I use the Greek whenever I can, and I would encourage people, and this is going to be radical,

I encourage people that whenever you call a new preacher, make sure he knows

Greek. If he doesn't know Greek, his sermons are not going to have the richness and the power, the energy, the life, the correctness that would be in the sermons of somebody who understood

Greek. Because you can read something in English, in the

English New Testament, and when you study Greek, it says something greatly different.

So you preach by paragraph, go paragraph by paragraph, and explain the main point of the paragraph.

Make the point the way the paragraph makes the point. Use the illustrations that the paragraph uses.

Include the doctrines that are included in that paragraph. Don't just generally preach a paragraph.

Drain it dry. Draw every truth you can from that paragraph.

And then once you, and don't read into it anything. You just read, preach what's in that paragraph.

And then when you apply it, your job's not done when you've applied the point of the paragraph practically to individual

Christians in the congregation. It's not done until you've preached applications to individual non -Christians in the congregation.

And your work's not done until you have applied it culturally. And not just individually.

I was talking to a great preacher whom I love and respect.

And he was talking about the great Scottish preachers of the early 1800s.

Well, there were some good Scottish preachers in the 1800s. But most of them all had the same flaw.

And that is they didn't preach to the cultures. This man said, one good thing about these

Scottish preachers is they never mentioned current events in their sermons.

Well, that is right. In that, most of them did not. And that's what made them anemic in their preaching of God's word.

Another dear friend of mine, I invited to speak at a preaching conference I had. I asked him to speak on Samuel Davies, who is probably one of the two or three greatest preachers ever produced in North America.

And this dear friend of mine was not a Christian Reconstructionist.

He knew we disagreed on things. But I figured he couldn't do any harm preaching on Samuel Davies.

So he's preaching on Samuel Davies. And he says this. He said, the strength of Samuel Davies, and he was preaching to a room of preachers, the strength of Samuel Davies is that he didn't mention current events in his sermons.

Well, I just smiled because I loved him. I didn't want to publicly say

I disagreed with him or anything. But during the question and answer period,

I said, brother, so and so, do you have the three volumes of Samuel Davies sermons?

He said, yes, I do. I said, so do I. Those are great sermons, aren't they? He said, oh, they are great.

And I said, those first two volumes of evangelistic sermons, you can't beat them, can you?

He said, no, sir. And I said, in that third volume, that was some of the best political preaching

I've ever heard in the rest of my life. And all he could do was smile.

That was Morton Smith. Now, I don't mean make your sermon secular.

Right. I mean, preach to the whole of life, to the old man in the whole of life.

Because Jesus is not simply a personal savior.

He's a cosmic savior. I'm teaching our people going through Genesis and Exodus and I told them what

I thought was the emphasis in the book of Genesis and Exodus, particularly

Exodus. Two points Moses makes. Jesus is the savior of God's covenant people and the savior of the world.

He came to be the only redeemer of God's elect and he came to bring the blessings of the covenant to every family and nation upon the face of this earth.

I think for so many people today, our gospel is truncated. It is so small and so broken that that's one of the reasons that our preaching doesn't have the effect that it could have in this culture.

And we have to pick up where you left off when we return from our first commercial break. If you'd like to join us with a question for Dr.

Joseph C. Moorcraft III, send us an email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Give us a first name at least, city and state and country of residence.

Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages. I'm Dr.

Joseph Piper, President Emeritus and Professor of Systematic and Applied Theology at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

Every Christian who's serious about the Deformed Faith and the Westminster Standards should have and use the eight -volume commentary on the theology and ethics of the

Westminster Larger Catechism titled Authentic Christianity by Dr. Joseph Moorcraft.

It is much more than an exposition of the Larger Catechism. It is a thoroughly researched work that utilizes biblical exegesis as well as historical and systematic theology.

Dr. Moorcraft is Pastor of Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, and I urge everyone looking for a biblically faithful church in that area to visit that fine congregation.

For details on the eight -volume commentary, go to westminstercommentary .com, westminstercommentary .com.

For details on Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, visit heritagepresbyterianchurch .com,

heritagepresbyterianchurch .com. Please tell Dr. Moorcraft and the saints at Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia that Dr.

Joseph Piper of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary sent you. Hello, I'm Phil Johnson, Executive Director of Grace to You with John MacArthur.

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We're now back with Dr. Joseph C. Moorcraft III of Heritage Presbyterian Church in Cumming, Georgia, and we are talking about preaching.

What is it? What should it contain? And how should it be delivered?

And we have Annabelle in Sugar Hill, Georgia, who has a question.

And Annabelle says, when there may be people, perhaps even especially

Reformed people, who accuse you of teaching a social gospel, even though it's conservative, how do you respond to that charge?

Well, that's a good question, and I have been accused of that, but I'm not. I am the enemy of the social gospel.

The social gospel is a gospel that was invented, a non -gospel. And that was invented in the 1800s by liberals, by the way.

It was not invented by Calvinists. It was invented by liberals to bring about social change based upon their view that man is basically good and perfectible, and we can change man by creating state -supported, compulsive education and control the various aspects of society, i .e.

socialism. So, I'm as far away from being a social gospel person as you can imagine.

What I do believe, however, is as I was saying a little while ago, the spearhead of our preaching is not politics, it's not economics, it's not even the family.

The spearhead of our preaching is the living, reigning, world -conquering

Lord Jesus Christ. Paul was exactly correct.

I determined to know nothing among you but Christ and Him crucified.

If we start anywhere else, we'll get on track. But we, back in the you can watch the gospel of preaching change through the years, and as it changes in various ways, it gets weaker.

When preaching ceases to emphasize Christ, it becomes weak.

And that's what happened to much Presbyterian and Episcopalian and Methodist preaching in the late 18th century to early 1900s is they started focusing on purely secular things and did not emphasize the centrality of Christ and the authority of His word.

So preaching pretty much died in liberal churches.

In conservative churches, it died in that they limited it to personal piety instead of emphasizing that it applies to every area of life.

Whatever the Bible asserts to be true on any subject is true. Whatever the

Bible says happened, happened. It's divinely authoritative on everything about which it speaks and it speaks about everything.

And that's one of the great emphases of the Westminster Confession of Faith. It has all sufficient authority so that we're when

I was very, very young, I was in seminary and I went to an

American Baptist church in West Virginia. They're called Northern Baptists and they've been liberal for a long time.

And the preacher was trying to help me as a young seminarian and so he said to me,

Joe, I think I'm going to quit preaching. Well, that was a shocker.

I said, how long you been preaching? He said, I've been preaching about six years.

I said, well, why are you quitting preaching? He said, because I don't have anything else to say.

I've said everything I needed to say and I wanted to say and I don't have anything else in the

Bible to say. Well, I looked at him and I was just a green seminary student, but I thought, man, the

Bible has all kinds of things to say that you hadn't even begun. And I think it results from the fact that he no longer believed in the divine authority of the scriptures.

So preaching has faded and I think it gets to Satan.

Satan wants preaching to fail because he knows that preaching is the divinely empowered instrument that God uses to bring down all those high places raised up in rebellion against God.

And so we have parents, preachers must preach in their pulpit on Christian education.

And how responsible parents are to educate their children and take them out of the public schools.

They've got to teach them about how to create a nation and how to think in terms of creating nations and to renew our minds by the scriptures and everything about which it speaks.

There's just so much. I was talking to another good friend of mine who has a publishing house and he has published a lot of great

English Puritan books. So I went to talk to him one time and I said, brother so -and -so, are you going to publish any more

Puritan books? English Puritan. He said, we published them all.

He said, there's no more to publish. And I personally myself knew of hundreds and hundreds of English Puritan books preached to Parliament that he hadn't even dared to publish because they're not a spiritual preaching book, writing books and preaching sermons to politicians.

Some of the greatest sermons I ever read were preached to Parliament by John Owen and various others.

So I think one of the failures of preaching has been the failure of understanding theology, understanding the gospel.

We've lost the gospel in all this. Evangelicals do not realize that the gospel that they believe is true by and large is the gospel of medieval, medieval

Roman Catholicism. And you can see it in their writings.

It is not what was preached in the Reformation. It was what was preached in the

Middle Ages by the Roman Catholic Church. In fact, pick up where you left off after we return from our midway break, brother.

That's a very, very important point. And if anybody wants to join us with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

Give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence. We'll be right back. Don't go away. Armored Republic exists to equip free men with tools of liberty to defend

God -given rights against the twin threats of tyranny and chaos. If you own a rifle to resist tyrants and criminals, then you should own body armor and a med kit for the same reasons.

A rifle stops evil, a body armor and a med kit keep you in the fight and preserve your life.

Armored Republic is a body of free craftsmen united to create tools of liberty. We are honored to be your armorsmith of choice.

Civilian ownership of body armor is about increasing decentralized power and by comparison, reducing the advantages of centralized power.

The danger of centralized power is often represented by the word king. As Americans, we hate the word king.

Applied to any mere man. We are Armored Republic. And in a republic, there is no king but Christ.

Arm yourself with tools of liberty at armoredrepublic .com. Chris Arnzen here, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

I strongly recommend a church I've been recommending as far back as the 1980s. Grace Covenant Baptist Church in Flemington, New Jersey.

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Reading, preaching, and hearing the word of God, singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, baptism, and communion are the scriptural elements of their corporate worship performed with faith, joy, and sobriety.

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That's 908 -996 -7654. Tell Pastor Dunn you heard about Grace Covenant Baptist Church on Iron Sharpens Iron radio.

Hi, this is John Sampson, pastor of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona.

Taking a moment of your day to talk about Chris Arnzen and the Iron Sharpens Iron podcast. I consider

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It's such a joy to witness and experience fellowship with people of God like the dear saints at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Corham, who have an intensely passionate desire to continue digging deeper and deeper into the unfathomable riches of Christ in His Holy Word and to enthusiastically proclaim

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This is Pastor Keith Allen of Lynnbrook Baptist Church reminding you that by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves.

It is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast of the

Lord's blessing and knowledge of himself. Charles Haddon Spurgeon once said,

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Solid Ground Christian Books is honored to be a weekly sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. And allow me to highlight some books by Samuel Davies, or about Samuel Davies, because of the fact that my guest today,

Dr. Joseph C. Moorcraft III, had mentioned Samuel Davies as one of his favorite preachers from history.

First of all, you can get from solid -ground -books .com Samuel Davies, Apostle to Virginia, by Dewey Roberts, with a forward by my friend

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And that includes a chapter by Samuel Davies, the 18th century preacher, and also a chapter by a 20th century preacher who

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Moorcraft III, the late Dr. Greg Bonson. And there are quite a number of other authors whose chapters are included in this book,

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Before I return to my guest, Dr. Joseph C. Moorcraft III, as we continue our conversation on preaching,

I have some very important announcements to make. Folks, Iron Sharpens Iron Radio is in a real frightening financial situation.

We had a sponsor of the program who committed to recommit themselves to sponsoring the show for a year, and we were depending upon that fairly substantial sum of money to come in weeks ago, but due to a crisis of their own that they are facing that was unforeseen, we may have to wait until August or even later than August to receive any of that money.

So we are really in a bind. We are between a rock and a hard place, as they say, financially, and we're not even sure where our rent for August is going to come from.

So I'm asking you, please, if you have never given to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio before, please today make your first donation, and if you've given many times, maybe you give every month, please make today, if at all possible, your largest donation to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and you can do so by going to ironsharpensironradio .com,

click support, then click click to donate now. You can donate instantly with a debit or credit card in that fashion, and if you prefer mailing a physical check to a physical address the old -fashioned way from your post office, there will also be a physical address that appears on your screen when you click support at ironsharpensironradio .com.

If you desire to advertise with us as Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia does, well, send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com

and put advertising in the subject line. We can use your advertising dollars just as much as we could use your donations, which are both urgently needed.

Keep in mind, as urgently as we do need your financial help, and as desperate as we are for it,

I never want anybody in my audience giving less money to your own local church where you're a member in order to bless

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio with a financial gift. In other words, don't cut into the money that you have set aside and reserved for your

Lord's Day giving to your own church. Don't cut into that money in order to send us a financial blessing.

And if you're really struggling to survive and make ends meet, waiting to get back on your feet and more financially stable before you send us a gift, the

Bible is clear that we're primarily to use the money with which God has blessed us, which is still God's money. We're to primarily use that to provide for church and family, and providing for this radio show is obviously not a command of God, but if you do love this show and you are blessed above and beyond your ability to provide for church and family and you have extra money for benevolent, recreational, and even trivial purposes, please share some of that money with us if you don't want us to go off the air.

Go to ironsharpensironradio .com, click support, then click click to donate now. Last but not least, if you are not a member of a

Christ -honoring, biblically faithful, doctrinally sound, theologically solid church like Heritage Presbyterian Church in Cumming, Georgia, I have extensive lists of biblically faithful churches spanning the globe, and I have helped people in the

Ironsharpensironradio listening audience in all parts of the planet Earth find churches, sometimes even within just a couple of minutes from where they live.

So if you are in that situation, you do not have a Christ -honoring church where you are a member, please send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com

and put I need a church in the subject line. That's also the email address where you can send in a question to Dr. Joseph C.

Moorcraft III. Chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence.

And right before the break, Dr. Moorcraft, you said something quite startling, that there were 19th century

Protestants, if I'm not mistaken, who were actually preaching medieval

Roman Catholicism from their poultry. Yes, sir. In fact, 1619 is one of the great moments in the history of the

Christian church because the Synod of Dort, D -O -R -T in Holland, met to try and test a man and his followers who were preaching a gospel that they thought was different than the historic

Protestant gospel. His name was Arminius. And so they condemned him.

They said that he was preaching something contrary to the Protestant Reformation and they expelled him and all of his followers from the ministry.

What most evangelicals today believe was condemned as heresy by the

Synod of Dort. And we don't even know it. We've gotten so far.

So we need to study theology. We need to study what the

Bible really teaches. Study the Westminster Convention of Faith, the larger catechism, the shorter catechism.

And one other thing I wanted to bring out was there is a Greek word that is used in the

New Testament with reference to evangelism and preaching and teaching. And that is the word parousia.

Parousia is usually translated boldness or plainness of speech.

So that true evangelism, true preaching, always includes boldness in setting forth the truths of the gospel.

Which reminds me of one of my favorite stories about Samuel Davies. Samuel Davies was invited to preach before the royals in England.

And he goes and he preaches and in his audience were powerful men and women and even the king of England himself.

And as Samuel Davies was preaching, the king got bored and started talking to the queen.

And the royal people that were in the room were embarrassed that there was nothing they could do.

So Samuel Davies tried to continue to preach, preach as long as he could, even though the king was talking the whole time.

So after a while, Samuel Davies stopped preaching to the embarrassment of everybody in the room.

The king didn't notice that he stopped preaching. He was busy talking to his wife.

So after a while, the king realized that Samuel Davies had stopped preaching.

So the king quit whispering. And then Samuel Davies looks at the king, one of the most powerful kings in all the world.

And he said, Your Majesty, when the lions of the forest roar, the animals in the forest keep silent.

When the king of all the world preaches, the kings of men keep silent.

And so the king quit preaching, quit talking.

And that's the kind of preaching we need, powerful preaching. Preaching is not afraid to insult.

It's not afraid to turn people off. It does do it on purpose. But the

Bible speaks about the scandal of the cross. And so we must not do anything to ameliorate that scandal.

The Bible says the gospel is the savor of life unto life and death unto death.

And so if we try to preach in such a way to keep it from being a gospel of death unto death, it will no longer be a gospel of life unto life.

So preachers of the gospel must be courageous men, not afraid to put their lives on the line.

Were there any negative consequences to Samuel Davies after rebuking the king like that? I don't think so.

He was an American. And it was before the revolution, so there was not much they could do.

Samuel Davies is one of my favorite men. I even own a book that was owned by Samuel Davies.

Why did you seek to convince Armenians who accuse

Calvinists such as yourself for denying Romans chapter 10, 14 through 15, and they seem to act as if we do not believe in the absolute essential nature of preaching?

I did not understand that, so ask me again. The listener was basically asking that, how do we combat the false accusation of Armenians that we are denying

Romans chapter 10, 14 through 15? How then shall they come on him in whom they have not believed?

And how shall they believe in him whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher?

And how shall they preach except they be sent? There is a common, as our listener is saying, there is a common slander against we who are reformed theologically that we deny this, that our system of theology, since God sovereignly chooses whom he will save, and he regenerates those whom he will save prior to their faith, that this somehow negates the necessity of a preacher.

Well, if it wasn't for the sovereignty of God, it wouldn't be any use preaching. Somebody asked me, why pray if God is sovereign?

And my answer is, why pray if he's not? And without the sovereignty of God in control of everything and all of life, causing everything that he has planned to work together for good to those that love him, there's not much use in preaching.

Because then preaching would be something entirely produced by man, empowered by man, and it would be useless.

Only a sovereign God, only a sovereign Savior can cause to happen everything that he preaches.

Whatever Jesus preaches happens. That can only be said of a sovereign

God. Amen. Hallelujah. When it comes to the reformed understanding, the sovereign grace understanding, for lack of a better term, using the nickname

Calvinist understanding, even though we believe our teaching that we cherish is attributed to Christ and his inerrant word, and John Calvin was only a vessel that helped to beautifully clarify that message in the 16th century.

But when it comes to our understanding of preacher, doesn't or shouldn't it,

I should say, give the preacher far more boldness, because he is not worried about cleverly trying to convince people of something.

He's just preaching. That is true. Amen. Well, if you want to continue. That is true.

Let me recommend your audience some books by other preachers on preaching.

The one that I mentioned earlier called The Relevance of Preaching by Pierre Marcel, they will love forever.

Also, Lectures to My Students by Charles Spurgeon.

It's such a great book. Also, Preachers and Preaching by Martin Lloyd -Jones.

I don't agree with everything Martin Lloyd -Jones says, but there are some great things in that book,

Preachers and Preaching. One of the best books that I know of in helping preachers preach, develop a sermon, develop applications, and it talks about all the mechanics of preaching is by Robert L.

Dabney called Sacred Rhetoric. It is such a great book.

I have a series of sermons in my commentary on larger catechism called

The Reconstruction of Preaching, in which I try to go through every aspect of preaching to help the preacher learn how to do it.

How to go from exegesis, that is expositing Scripture, to the actual application of Scripture to the audience.

Every aspect of the mechanics of preaching. That may be useful for you as well.

Let me recommend that our listeners go to cvbbs .com, who sponsored this program.

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com, to order those books. Now, it's interesting, the

Pierre Marcel book, the only source

I know for that is an independent publishing of it. Do you know of any other?

No, the last time it was produced in English would be in the 1980s, so it would be hard to find.

It's not a long book, but it is a great book. It is available on Amazon, and it's independently published.

Uh -huh. Well, can you please, I know that some of our listeners may be wondering, who are your favorite living preachers today?

I know that you've had a lot of criticism against modern preaching, but I know that...

Well, like I said a while ago, you wouldn't know them. They are faithful.

Maybe I would. Yeah, you would know them. They are faithful preachers of small churches that expound the scriptures book by book every

Sunday. They have very small churches. One is

Wayne Rogers. Oh, yeah, I've had Wayne on the show, and Wayne... Yeah, he's out of Virginia.

Wayne preached at the church where I was a member on Long Island. Yes, sir.

Peter Bringey is another great young preacher. It has a very small church, but his preaching is extremely faithful and powerful.

Chris Strebel in Atlanta, Georgia. Yes. He preaches faithfully

Sunday by Sunday. So if you're going to go find a church, find a church where the preacher knows how to expound the word of God paragraph by paragraph, book by book, get in his church, encourage him, because that's the only kind of preaching that's going to do you any good.

By the way, when you mentioned Peter Bringey, are you speaking of the pastor of Covenant Family Church, the

OPC Church? I am, yes, sir. Yes. Have you ever had him on your program?

No, but I'd like to, and if he's listening, I'd like to. He's great. He spent the weekend with us the other day.

He's a great young guy, and he knows how to preach. Well, I will contact him, and for our listeners who are wondering where that church is, it's in Wentzville, Missouri, Covenant Family Church, an

Orthodox Presbyterian church. In Wentzville, Missouri. But I know of one famous preacher that you like, because you've mentioned him on my show before, and that's

Votie Balcombe. Oh, Votie Balcombe is a great black man, as you know.

Faithfully and boldly preaches the word of God. One time he and I were preaching at the same conference on the sufficiency of scripture, and after I'd preached,

I went to sit down to rest, and I felt this dark presence behind me.

And it was Votie Balcombe. And he said,

Joe, if you were only a Baptist, your theology would be perfect.

I think he is the greatest black preacher alive in the United States today.

And not only the black preacher, but he's one of the greatest preachers today. Amen. And he takes a lot of heat, even from...

And Frank Brito, who lives in Brazil, whom our church supports...

I've had him on the show. He's also a great preacher. I've had him on the show. Yeah, he's a great preacher in both

Portuguese and English, and he's reaching thousands of people in Brazil.

So there's a lot of good things going on today.

Oh, and another guy you've had on your show is Paul Abbott. Yes. Paul Abbott's a great

Reformed Baptist. So there are some great preachers out there.

They are great because they know what preaching is. And they're faithful in expounding the

Word of God paragraph by paragraph, book by book. And they do it boldly and without embarrassment.

And their concern is not pleasing men. It's pleasing the living

God. Amen. And don't theologically faithful men have to remember that it's not only the liberal men who are tickling ears with false teaching or with candy -coated preaching.

There are even Reformed men who are very careful about not giving an offensive message to their audience.

I know. Right. And could you tell us what have been your own particularly favorite sermons that you've preached, what the themes were, and perhaps maybe even more specifically, what you've heard from your congregation have been those.

Well, I have, of course, I've been preaching for many, many, many, many years.

And I have hundreds of sermons on sermonaudio .com.

And some are better than others. But the ones that have blessed me have been the ones where God worked while I was preaching.

See, God doesn't stop working in a preacher's heart when he leaves to study.

God continues to work in a preacher's heart while he's standing up in a pulpit preaching.

And some of the greatest things I've learned about the Lord, about the gospel, I've learned while I was preaching.

And which is interesting, it humbles you. Because some of the things I've learned,

I didn't learn after a long study in exegesis. I learned while I was in the pulpit.

And God does not stop teaching a preacher when he's in the pulpit. He continues to preach, continues to teach him and lead him and use him.

One time I had a sermon, I was preparing a sermon to preach. And I had it all, it was a good sermon.

It was well worked out. It had a good outline and everything. I was happy with it.

Except when I went to bed, I wasn't satisfied with it.

And so I went to bed thinking I was going to preach on the subject that I had announced.

But I wasn't satisfied with it. So early in the morning, three or four in the morning,

I got up and prepared a completely different sermon. Because I wasn't satisfied with the one that I had prepared.

Now that doesn't happen very often. And so after I preached the sermon that I wrote in the middle of the night,

I went to the door going out of the church building.

And there was a young woman that came out. I'd never seen her before.

And she came out of the church and she took my hand and she said,

Pastor Morecraft, I want to thank you for that sermon. Because it was a very good blessing to me.

It's answered a lot of questions that I had to ask. And so she gives me this piece of paper.

And on this piece of paper, which was written in the middle of the night, were all the questions that she had about some issues in the

Bible. And what she had written on the paper was the outline of the sermon that I worked out at four o 'clock in the morning.

That she had, God had led her to our church to ask me questions.

I didn't know who she was, but to ask me questions about the word of God.

And there was the sermon that I had prepared. Praise God. So God works even in the pulpit.

Amen. Your precious wife, Becky, highlighted on social media today a recent sermon of yours, the book of Revelation on the fall of Rome.

You want to give us a summary of that sermon that we should look up on Revelation 14, 6 through 20?

Yeah. Yeah, I enjoy preaching Revelation because it's such an important book and such a practical book.

And it's got to be understood. If we're going to understand the role

Christ plays in this world today. Preaching, I love preaching.

All of my sermons are about an hour long. I don't necessarily recommend that.

Because if you don't have a reservoir of truth to draw from, then your sermon will just be a repetitive statement of truth after truth.

So I'm not recommending that you've got to preach for an hour. You've got to have a reservoir of truth.

So that you can preach. And everything you say in that sermon will be fresh.

And not boring. And repetitive. Perhaps we could have you back on the show at some point to actually specifically address the theme of that message.

Since your wife loved it so much, the fall of Rome. From that text,

Revelation 14, 6. Yes, sir. It's such a great book.

And it's not that difficult once you know the basic outline and basic thing.

The best commentary on the book of Revelation has never been written.

It is CDs by Greg Monson. So go to Greg Monson.

Get his CDs on the book of Revelation. And listen to them over and over and over.

And do you know the source for that? Since, of course, Dr. Monson's not here.

What is the name of that new thing called the Monson Institute? Yeah, that's run by Apologia Church.

That's the one. That's where you can find it. And if anybody wants the website for that, it's

ApologiaChurch .com. ApologiaChurch .com. It's in Mesa, Arizona.

And they provide those resources for free.

Yeah, that's great. Monson was such a great preacher. Every word he used was carefully chosen to make sure it was the right word.

He was a good preacher. He wasn't just a lecturer or a scholar. But he was a good preacher as well.

There are some good preachers out there. I don't want to discourage people. There are some very good preachers out there.

They're not famous. They're not celebrities. But they are concerned with faithfully expounding the word of God paragraph upon paragraph.

And God blesses them for it. And we have to go to our final break.

Don't go to the celebrities. Go to the people that aren't famous and that are not celebrities.

And that's where you'll find the truth. And we have to go to our final break, so don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages.

It's such a blessing to hear from Iron Sharpens Iron radio listeners from all over the world.

Here's Joe Reilly, a listener in Ireland, who wants you to know about a guest on the show he really loves hearing interviewed,

Dr. Joe Moorcraft. I'm Joe Reilly, a faithful Iron Sharpens Iron radio listener here in Atai in County Kildare, Ireland, going back to 2005.

One of my very favorite guests on Iron Sharpens Iron is Dr. Joe Moorcraft. If you've been blessed by Iron Sharpens Iron radio,

Dr. Moorcraft and Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, are largely to thank, since they are one of the program's largest financial supporters.

Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming is in Forsyth County, a part of the Atlanta metropolitan area.

Heritage is a thoroughly biblical church, unwaveringly committed to Westminster standards. And Dr.

Joe Moorcraft is the author of an eight -volume commentary on the larger catechism. Heritage is a member of the

Hanover Presbytery, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone, and tracing its roots and heritage back to the great

Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. Heritage maintains and follows the biblical truth and principles proclaimed by the reformers, scripture alone, grace alone, faith alone,

Christ alone, and God's glory alone. Their primary goal is the worship of the Triune God that continues in eternity.

For more details on Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, visit HeritagePresbyterianChurch .com.

That's HeritagePresbyterianChurch .com. Or call 678 -954 -7831.

That's 678 -954 -7831. If you visit, tell them

Joe O 'Reilly, an Iron Sharpens Iron radio listener, from a tie in County Kildare, Ireland, sent you.

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That's SecureCommGroup .com. But today, I want to introduce you to my senior pastor,

Doug McMasters, of New High Park Baptist Church on Long Island. Doug McMasters here, former director of pastoral correspondence at Grace to You, the radio ministry of John MacArthur.

In the film Chariots of Fire, Olympic gold medalist runner Eric Liddell remarked that he felt

God's pleasure when he ran. He knew his efforts sprang from the gifts and calling of God.

He sensed that same God -given pleasure when ministering the Word and helping others gain a deeper knowledge and love for God.

That love starts with the wonderful news that the Lord Jesus Christ is a Savior who died for sinners, and that God forgives all who come to Him in repentance, trusting solely in Christ to deliver them.

I would be delighted to have the honor and privilege of ministering to you if you live in the Long Island area, or Queens, or Brooklyn, or the

Bronx, in New York City. For details on New High Park Baptist Church, visit

NHPBC .com. That's NHPBC .com.

You can also call us at 516 -352 -9672.

That's 516 -352 -9672. That's New High Park Baptist Church, a congregation in love with each other, passionate for Christ, committed to learning and being shaped by God's Word, and delighting in the gospel of God's sovereign grace.

Chris Arnzen here. I am forever grateful to Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service for their generous financial support of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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IRON. That's CVBBS .com. Enriching minds and maintaining the theologically reformed influence of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio through their financial support.

Now shipping worldwide. Welcome back.

And I want to remind our listeners, if you are a man in ministry leadership, don't forget that the next free

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Pastors Luncheon is going to be held Thursday, October 10th, 11am to 2pm, at Church of the

Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania, which is Perry County. We are featuring for the very first time

Dr. Joe Boot, who is a prolific writer, and he is a highly sought after conference speaker and the founder and president of the

Ezra Institute. And if you would like to attend this free event, send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com, and put Pastors Luncheon in the subject line.

Not only is the luncheon itself free of charge, but you will also receive by attending a heavy sack of free brand new books, personally selected by me and donated by Christian publishers all over the

United States and United Kingdom. All of it is absolutely free of charge. So if you'd like to register, send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com,

and put Pastors Luncheon in the subject line.

And we're now back with Dr. Moorcraft. And Dr. Moorcraft, we have

Andrew in Greenlawn, Long Island, New York, who has a question.

And Andrew asks, Earlier in the program, you were saying that preaching is not adequate unless it includes current events.

But if you're going through expository preaching, and the texts that you are dissecting and exegeting do not contain anything involving a current event issue, how are you supposed to include the current events in that message?

And also, and his second part is, and how is this different from the dispensationalist preaching we often hear where current events are often brought up?

It's a very good question. And the answer is, don't read anything into the text.

It's not fair. For instance, Isaiah said, here's a very political statement.

He said, In the year that King Uzziah died. So you have

Isaiah beginning a whole paragraph with the political subject, and that is the death of the current king.

You have all through scripture, all kinds of political statements.

Exodus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Leviticus. You have all kinds of civil laws that apply to political, every area of life.

In Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1st and 2nd Samuel, 1st and 2nd Kings, 1st and 2nd

Chronicles, etc. And all those historical books. You have the prophets addressing one king after another in his administration.

And then in Proverbs, you have a king teaching his son how to be a good king.

And then in the prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, etc.

You have prophets addressing kings and calling them to repentance. And not just kings of Israel, but kings of other nations as well.

And then in the New Testament, you have a verse that I love to quote over and over again by Jesus himself.

When he's on trial by Pontius Pilate, Pontius Pilate asks him a question.

Jesus has already been on trial by the Pharisees. And they've asked him theological questions, but Pilate's not concerned with theology.

He's concerned with politics. And so he says to Jesus, are you a king that I should be intimidated by?

And Jesus said, I am as you say. And then

Pilate continues to talk, and Jesus says, and let me tell you why you should be intimidated by what

I say. Because my kingdom is not of this world. It's of another place.

Now, he's not saying that Jesus, his kingdom is not concerned with life on this planet.

It's not a statement about the nature of his kingdom. It's a statement about the origin of his kingdom.

My kingdom does not originate with man. It originates in heaven, in another place.

So Pilate, you better be worried about my kingship, because it's not based upon man.

It's based upon the living God, and the weapon that my kingdom uses is the weapon of truth.

And then you have Paul and his epistles, like in 13th chapter of Romans, or 1

Peter chapter 3, where Paul gives the classic explanation of what civil government means and how it relates to Christ.

And then, of course, you've got the great book of Revelation, which is how

King Jesus destroys the enemies of Christ in the first century.

Apostate Judaism. Anti -Christian Rome. Because Jesus is the

King of all kings, and the Lord of all lords. So there is this, all through Scripture, it's not just once, but all through Scripture, there is this emphasis on how the kingship of the living

Christ relates to the kings of this present age.

And so it's not just concerned with private, individual instances in this life.

It's concerned with individuals, but it's also concerned with kings.

And we as Christians must understand that powerful preaching takes the

Bible as its authority. Takes the Bible as its example.

Preaches on how men can be converted. How Christians are to live in this world.

And how kings are to act as kings before King Jesus.

One time I was talking to a congressman in Georgia, and he was a

Republican, and he thought I was more influential than I really was.

So I asked him, how are you going to represent

King Jesus in the courts of this land?

And he said, I've never been asked that before. And I said, well,

I knew you hadn't. Christians must be courageous.

They must be bold. They must understand that Jesus is the only

Redeemer of God's elect, the Savior of the world, and the

King of kings and Lord of lords. And we must never present Him before this world as anything less.

Amen. And as far as Andy in Green Lawn, Long Island's question about how your strong counsel to include current events in sermons, how is that different from the same thing that is practiced by dispensationalists?

I'm not saying they're doing exactly what you are recommending, but they are very often bringing up current events in their messages.

And it's even been nicknamed newspaper evangelism, headline evangelism, that kind of thing.

Very good question. The difference is they don't have any answers, and I do.

The difference is that all they can do is make statements about what's going on and not have any real conclusions to offer the world.

You remember when David went to build an army, he went to the sons of Issachar because they were men who understood their times and who knew what to tell

Israel to do. If we have the answers because we believe the scriptures and we tell people what the answers are, and they're not the normal answers they get today from the newspaper, we will see a change of power from them to us because they have no answers.

We have answers in the word of God. And, of course, many times, if not most of the time, when premillennial pre -tribulationalist preachers are quoting from the headlines of the day, they are connecting it in an erroneous manner to the return of Christ, which they are typically claiming, at least the rapture, which is involving two returns of Christ.

But they're typically connecting it with the belief that Christ is coming very, very soon within our lifetime and likely within the year in which the man is preaching.

Yes, sir. That is the difference. And the dispensationalists and their people have a view of the future.

That just will not hold. That we believe that Christ is reigning now and that at some time in the future, he shall come again to complete what he has established.

Dispensationalists have no hope. They don't offer any real answers. They just tell you to wait till Jesus comes, and he'll burn everything up and start all over again.

Now, there is a blessed inconsistency, though, because not all dispensationalists do that, even though their eschatology might dictate that they should.

And I have to reiterate, I do have heroes of the faith that are dispensationalists, but I am not personally one.

And, Dr. Moorcraft, it is always a joy having you on the show, and I want to repeat to our listeners the websites that are very relevant to you and your ministry.

First of all, to find out more about Heritage Presbyterian Church in Cumming, Georgia, go to heritagepresbyterianchurch .com,

heritagepresbyterianchurch .com. To find out more about Dr. Moorcraft's eight -volume commentary on the

Westminster Larger Catechism, go to westminstercommentary .com, westminstercommentary .com.

And for all of Dr. Moorcraft's books, you can go to comprehensivechristianity .com,

comprehensivechristianity .com. Dr. Moorcraft, I look forward to your quick and frequent return to Iron Trip and Zion Radio, and I want to thank you so much for being such an exquisite guest, as you always are.

Yes, sir, my pleasure. And I want to thank everybody who listened, and I want you all to have a safe and blessed and Christ -honoring

Independence Day celebration with those you love, hoping that you do evangelize those that you know and love during the celebration, who do not know our

Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And I look forward to returning to the show on Friday, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater