Take Care How You Listen (pt.2 Supporter Appreciation Episode) | Behold Your God Podcast

Welcome back to part two of Take Care How You Listen, the Behold Your God podcast. I'm Matthew Robinson, director of MediaGratia, and I'm still here with John Snyder, author of The Behold Your God Study and pastor of Christ Church New Albany.

What we've decided to do, we really appreciate all the questions that have been coming in. Please keep those coming.

We're going to be happy to take those after they've built up for a little while and take one of these special episodes and address those directly.

What we've decided to do this week under this topic of Take Care How You Listen is to take something that George Whitefield wrote back in the early 1700s, mid -1700s, about how to listen to a sermon.

Whitefield gives six points that we want to go through and just talk about conversationally for the next few minutes.

But first of all, John, tell us who George Whitefield was. George Whitefield really is the central figure for what we call the

Great Awakening or what the British call the Evangelical Revival. He's the man that unites all the work he preaches in the

UK, he preaches in America. His theology really meshed well, a very

God -centered theology. He read a lot of the Puritans and really imbibed their spirit.

So he meshed well with the Jonathan Edwards on our side of the pond as well as the Presbyterians, Congregations, Baptists on his side of the pond.

What I think is great about this sermon is that we don't have very many sermons of Whitefield.

Most of those were lost, his memoirs, his remains, so to speak. His literary remains were lost and so we have under a hundred sermons.

One of these sermons is, as you mentioned, the explanation of how to listen to a sermon.

Here is the man that is considered by most to be the greatest English preacher ever telling us how to benefit from sermons.

Thousands of people would gather to hear Whitefield preach, right? One example is in early colonial

America, Whitefield preached in Philadelphia. Benjamin Franklin, who was very skeptical of the boasts that were being said about this man, he can preach to 20 ,000.

This is without amplification. Some said 20 ,000, some said 25 ,000, some said more, some said up to 70 ,000.

If you're looking at a sea of people, it's easy to misunderstand the numbers. Franklin did a very scientific experiment.

He went to hear Whitefield preach in Philadelphia and he measured out approximately how many people were there per square yard.

Then he measured out how far he could back up from Whitefield and still understand what he was preaching.

He came up with the estimation that Whitefield could be heard by 20 ,000 and 25 ,000 people at a time.

Whitefield oftentimes had more people listening to a sermon that were actually in that city population because people in the city would come but then people outside the city would come.

That's amazing. Why was a sermon like this needed? I didn't realize this was a sermon.

This is a sermon that Whitefield preached with six points about how to listen to a sermon. Why would Whitefield, this great preacher who's preaching all up and down the east coast of the

US and of course in the UK, why would he need to preach a sermon about how to listen to a sermon?

It might seem strange to us, but you do have to understand Whitefield's day. Whitefield is an Anglican and 96 % of England is

Anglican. So if you're a Baptist, Presbyterian or Congregationalist, altogether you form 4%.

So basically everybody's Anglican. In the Anglican Church, the homily, the sermon, tended to be a pretty short devotion.

Whitefield, following the Puritan influence, those men who had died 50 years before he started preaching but he was reading their books, he returned to a pretty significant use of Scripture in the sermon.

So Whitefield might preach an hour. He wasn't the only one doing that. But within the Anglican Church, that was a pretty new thing again.

So Whitefield and the Great Awakening men, the sermon formed the heart of how that movement went forward.

It wasn't based on testimonies or prayer meetings primarily.

Other revivals have been kind of centered around those. But the Great Awakening or the

Evangelical revival of the 18th century was really rooted in the preaching of biblical doctrine.

And that's one reason why it was so healthy and it went for so long and it impacted so deeply the cultures that it impacted.

So when that is the center of your worship service, then it's pretty important that people don't handle it in a wrong way.

So Whitefield felt that he needed to explain what are some right ways to approach a sermon.

Let's get into these then. Keys for getting the most out of what the preacher says. The first he gives is,

Come to hear them not out of curiosity, but from a sincere desire to know and to do your duty.

To enter his house merely to have our ears entertained and not our hearts reformed must certainly be highly displeasing to the

Most High God as well as unprofitable to ourselves. Yeah, and we find that in Scripture.

Think about Ezekiel, certainly an extraordinary preacher. I mean some of the sermons of Ezekiel, we're thousands of years later and when we read

Ezekiel, it grabs our hearts, it terrifies us. The scenes that he paints of God departing from His own people, withdrawing that wonderful sense of His presence because they prefer idols.

Scenes that are preached to those who are in Babylon already under the judgment of God. And yet even though it's a terribly dark day in Israel's history where they are being judged for generations of idolatry that they refuse to repent of, when

Ezekiel preaches, he's still a popular preacher. They still love to flock and hear him.

But what God says to Ezekiel is this, He tells them to beware because they are coming to Him like people come to hear a sensual, a gripping song.

Sensual song is such a powerful way to put that. I think about,

I mean I get to go to a lot of conferences because it's the work with Media Grantiae. I mean that's basically from January through the middle part of the year.

That's conference season. And it's a great blessing. But I talk with a lot of people and there are a lot of people there who are hungry.

They've come there, they've put their time and treasure aside and together for a year so that they can afford to go.

Their hearts are prepared. They're eager to hear a word from the Lord. But then there are also people who, it's almost like they're going to the

Monsters of Rock tour. And they're really excited. You would expect to see them with like a, they're wearing a

John Piper t -shirt. They're wearing a John MacArthur t -shirt. They can't believe they're getting to see their favorite band in person.

And I've often thought that that's a very dangerous way to approach preaching. To just go and hear what someone says because of a, as a sensual song.

Now that's in no way the fault of the person who's preaching. Those men are there with their hearts prepared and they're pleading with the

Lord to speak through them. But how we approach that, and it doesn't have to be limited to conferences certainly.

We can come hear our favorite preacher week in and week out in the local church.

And yet we come and the way that we hear is unprofitable to us because it's as though we want to hear a song to entertain us.

Yeah, another example in Scripture is King Herod, the king that put

John the Baptist to death. And in the book of Mark we read such a striking phrase.

Herod has been rebuked for his immoral choices. His wife who's part of that nasty situation wants

John dead. Herod doesn't want to kill John. He could, but he doesn't want to. And the

Bible says he enjoyed listening to John preach. That is really shocking because Herod's a wicked man and John the

Baptist does not pull his punches. And yet a wicked man can enjoy hearing a very godly preacher and it not change him.

And I think about Richard Owen Roberts who not many people would accuse of sounding like a sensual song when he preaches.

I mean, he's clearly been gifted with an itinerant ministry where the plowing ministry is very strong.

And yet he's told us about going to preach. He preaches for an hour and a half.

And a lady comes up and says, Oh, that was wonderful. You're one of my favorite preachers. You know who else

I really love to hear? Joel Osteen. He is such a powerful preacher. And so you think, why did you go out into the wilderness to see and to hear?

What is it about that? And the truth is we can approach almost like masochists.

We enjoy somebody to really clean our clock with a good preach. And, you know, we're going to hear a good sermon.

It's really going to take us behind the woodshed. And you can get some measure of pleasure from that, but it's not a spiritual thing at all.

And it's a very dangerous way to approach preaching. Well, Matt, also think about the fact that there are people now through the

Internet, you can hear the greatest preachers alive today. I mean, you can even hear the greatest preachers who were alive when we were able to record their voice.

So I can go online and I can listen to whoever I admire. So it could be an A .W.

Tozer or it can be a real flamethrower like a Paul Washer. And how many people will listen to Paul, not with the intention of obeying the word of God that Paul is laying out, but they listen to him because he is so bold.

And, you know, and their response is not this. Oh, God, it's me. What do you want me to do next?

Speak, God, I'm listening. But rather it's like this. Oh, yeah, Paul. Man, he ripped those guys' heads off.

Those people, those kind of churches. And there's a kind of, you know, there's that thrill.

And it has nothing to do with obedience. I mean, I think that when it's all said and done, what

Whitfield said here is clearly, it's easy to spot it. Does your attending the word that's being preached, does it produce obedience or does it only momentarily thrill you?

You know, I see guys will take little clips from incredibly powerful sermons and they just make a meme out of it because it's so powerful.

And it's like, oh, you know, he told him in your face and the sunglasses drop down, you know.

And I just think, man, we are playing marbles with the diamonds of God. The second thing that Whitfield gave in his sermon was to give diligent heed to the things that are spoken from the word of God.

He says, if an earthly king were to issue a royal proclamation and the life or death of his subjects entirely depended on performing or not performing its conditions, how eager would they be to hear what those conditions were?

Yeah, I mean, that's classic Whitfield, you know, so simple and so gripping. Another fellow that spoke along these lines was

Edward Payson. And we talk about him in the Second Behold Your God study. Payson up in Portland, Maine, a young minister, extraordinarily blessed in his ministry, prayer life, really sticks out even more than his preaching.

But in his preaching, he used very simple illustrations. And Payson said, we can tell whether we are subjects of the king or not by how we treat his word.

And so he, you know, and this is a time when this is post -revolutionary war.

And so Britain wasn't exactly the favorite of the people in America in the early 1800s.

So in the early 1800s, with that kind of anti -England attitude, Payson says this, if the king of England sent a proclamation to America, which is now independent, you might read it for curiosity's sake.

But you would not read it as if you must obey it because it's not my king.

And when we come to the Bible and we listen to a sermon with this thought in our mind,

I wonder what he'll say today, and I wonder whether I'll do it or not. Payson would say, you demonstrate that you lack evidence that you belong to that king because the king's subject may not know what the king will say, but we want to do what he says.

Yeah. Well, this one's interesting. Number three, do not entertain even the least prejudice against the minister.

Given Whitefield's clergy sermons, that may be hard to reconcile. Yeah, yeah. I mean, George Whitefield, early on in his early 20s, he's the most famous preacher in the

Western Hemisphere. And he's not an angel. He, you know, he's not above sin. And probably in the early days,

Whitefield was too quick to look at ministers who opposed the gospel as he preached it or opposed his way of preaching it, you know, traveling and preaching.

And he was, if there was criticism of the revival, and some things in the revival needed to be corrected by the

Scripture, and they were. But if people criticized that, Whitefield was pretty quick to say, you know, make sure you're not an unregenerate and, you know, a hypocrite and a minister.

But there were many, many in Whitefield's day who felt that the new birth was not required to be a minister.

If you were educated and you lived a moral life and you could explain a text and you could, you know, perform the ceremonies, weddings, funerals, whatever.

That's all that you needed. And Whitefield said, no, you're going to have to be born again to be a spokesman for Christ. And so he infuriated so many hundreds of ministers.

You wouldn't expect that kind of a bold young preacher to turn around and say to people, just because you see a minister is not perfect, doesn't mean you have a right to shut your ears and say,

I don't have to follow anything he says. Yeah. Well, the Lord Jesus gives us an example of that. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, so the Pharisees. Here you have the Pharisees. They live differently than they preach.

And Christ is pointing that out continually. Who in the history of humanity has more harsh things to say about Pharisees than Jesus of Nazareth?

The pinnacle of religious man is thrown into the dust over and over by the

Son of God. And yet Jesus says to the crowds, these people sit in the seat of Moses.

In other words, they're speaking to you. They're telling you what Moses said. They're speaking to you from the scriptures.

So you listen to what they say, but do not follow their pattern when they live. You know, there's some tension there, though, isn't there?

Because that's clearly true. We've made the point that when the word of God is preached,

God is speaking. And so we shouldn't despise God by saying, well,

I'm not going to listen to this person because, you know, personal prejudice. But at the same time,

Christ said, if I don't do the works that my father does, if I don't speak his word, then don't listen to what

I have to say. So how do we reconcile that? Yeah, I think it takes, you know, obviously it takes a spiritual wisdom.

So let's take the man that lives a life that he really, it's a double life. He says one thing in the pulpit, and we're not talking about a man like every genuine gospel minister who would say about his own soul, oh

God. He would plead like John Newton pleaded. Newton said, I pray that I might preach as I ought to preach and that I would live what

I preach. But Newton felt so often that he fell short in that. I haven't preached as I really longed to preach, and I have not lived up to my sermons.

And it breaks the heart of the believer. But we're not talking about that. We're talking about a man that lives a separate life.

And he says, well, as long as I say the right things here, and as long as the church is growing, it doesn't matter how

I live behind closed doors. Now that kind of a man is a very dangerous messenger. You know, because when we say that the preached word is the voice of God, the quote that you gave, the word of God preached is

God's voice to us. Yes, if it's the word of God. And oftentimes a man that lives a double life will twist that.

So he may quote parts of Scripture, but how he brings it to bear, it has no voice of God anymore.

It has no authority. Because as we know, the preacher in the pulpit, all right, we're not saying that everything he says is what

God says. He has a derived authority. As long as he speaks what the

Scripture says and the way the Scripture would have it spoken, then he has the authority of God behind him, even if he is a fake.

But that kind of a man is dangerous. If that's a man that a person willingly follows, that's my preacher.

That's the guy I like to listen to. Then I think that that's a very dangerous place.

I don't think that Jesus talking about the Pharisees means that that's what we're supposed to do. I think it would be more like this.

We come to a church. We see a preacher preach. Okay, we know he's not perfect, but we don't like what he said because it points the finger at me.

And so I dodge the arrow by saying, well, who's he to tell me what to do?

He's no perfect. He's not perfect. That's the easiest thing in the world to do. But if you look at the pattern of Paul as well, like to the

Thessalonians, he says, remember, you remember what I taught you? And you remember how I lived among you?

When he talks to Timothy, he says, take care. Make sure you have the right doctrine and take care how you live.

So obviously God intends that a parent guiding a child, a friend guiding a neighbor, a co -worker, a pastor guiding a church.

God brings the truth to bear on them through our words and our lives together. And that's the safest pattern.

That's a good segue into number four that Woodfield gives. Be careful not to depend too much on a preacher or think more highly of him than you ought to think.

Preferring one teacher over another has often been of ill consequence to the church of God. It was a fault which the great apostle of the

Gentiles condemned in the Corinthians. For whereas one said, I am of Paul, another

I'm of Apollos. Are you not carnal, says he? For who is Paul and who is

Apollos but instruments in God's hands by whom you believe? Are not all ministers sent forth to be ministering ambassadors to those who shall be heirs of salvation?

And are they not all therefore greatly to be esteemed for their works' sake?

Again, a particularly slippery slope there for us when we can hear great preachers on the web.

You know, we can just pull up our favorites. And I think Woodfield's warning can be applied in this way.

Ask yourself, why do you love that preacher so much? Why do you appreciate his preaching so much?

Sometimes we appreciate a man's preaching because we picked him out of all the preachers available in a town, out of all the preachers on the internet.

I picked the preacher that says stuff that I already think. So in other words, that preacher agrees with me, so he's right.

And he tells it the way it is. He doesn't coat it with candy. He's no kid gloves.

And that's a very dangerous thing. Really, we're not listening to the voice of God through a man anymore.

We're picking a man who will say what our voice will say. And it's a pretty dangerous thing when your pastor or your internet preacher and you are the only two voices that are guiding you spiritually, you know.

And you don't notice it because it's a lot of Bible mixed in. But it's really, that preacher talks about end times.

And that's what I like to think about. Jesus is coming again. And these people out here won't tell the truth. Or that preacher is against these people.

And that preacher is for this. So we pick our favorite things. And we value only the ministers who talk about our favorite things.

So that's a danger. The other danger is we could value a preacher for things other than, we could value the preacher for himself rather than for the fact that he stands for the king.

So I love the ambassador. Maybe his personality. Maybe his natural talents. But I forget to love that ambassador for love of the king he represents.

And we know that's happening in our hearts. When we show up at a church and another preacher is preaching that week, not the one we came to see, and our hearts just sink.

We think, why am I even here? Brother so -and -so is not preaching. So during the first hymn,

I'm just going to kind of quietly step out because Brother so -and -so is the only one I listen to. And you realize, you're not listening to the

Word of God through the Scripture and through the Scripture preached anymore. You're listening to your favorite people.

And so those are dangers. Yeah. You know, as a side note under this, I remember hearing about,

I think it was a professor either at RTS or PRTS, saying that a young man, no, in the beginning of a young first -year seminary class, he asks to list out three ministers that have had the biggest impact in your life.

And he said, and this was only a couple of years ago, he said that the list that he got back, it was

John Piper, John MacArthur, you know, Joel Beakey, Paul Washer. And there wasn't a single local minister that these men had ever met in their lives.

And so, you know, to think, well, I'm of this one, I'm of that one. It sure is sad when the local church and the minister that God has sovereignly put in your life as the overseer and the one who loves your soul and prays for you is despised for your favorite preacher on the

Internet. Yeah, yeah. Number five, make particular application to your own hearts of everything that is delivered.

Whitefield says when our Savior was discoursing at the last supper with his beloved disciples and foretold that one of them should betray him, each of them immediately applied it to his own heart and said,

Lord, is it I? Oh, that person's in like manner when preachers are dissuading from any sin or persuading to any duty.

How far more beneficial should we find discourses to be if they ask, Lord, is it

I? Than now they generally are. I mean, how many times do we think, man, I wish so and so was here to hear this.

They really need to hear it. Or I'm going to send the recording of this to the person that I was arguing with.

Yeah, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. I mean, I think of as a pastor, you know, and when you've taught, you stand up there and you look out there and some of the people that have been on your heart the entire week as you've been in the

Scriptures, thinking, God, how do I take these realities, these truths, and bring them to bear on the present situation?

Not just 2018, but the particular sheep you've brought us. And then you stand up and you look and your heart just sinks because the very people that you thought this will be life for them, it's exactly where they're at.

And you look out and they're not there. You know, and sometimes I just want to say, church over, guys, we're going home.

Like, I just don't have the heart to talk. It's not wrong to yearn for that person to be there.

The danger, of course, is that the enemy gives you a little nudge and you start thinking, man, if they would have heard that.

Oh, if they would have heard that, like, I could never have said it that clearly. I meant, you know, that's exactly what I wish I could have said last time

I was talking to my grown child, you know, my adult child. But you've got to consciously bring yourself back.

There'll be time later to send the recording. But during the sermon to plead with the

Lord, help me to be like Samuel, maybe, young Samuel. Here am I, Lord, speak.

You know, I'm listening. To say to God, it doesn't matter what you want to say,

I'm listening. You're the king, I'm the subject. You're the father, I'm the child. I didn't come today for you to fix all my problems and tell me what to do with all, you know, what am

I supposed to do in my family? What am I supposed to do at work? I've come to listen to the king and whatever he wants to say,

I'm listening. And I think that we would never regret coming to the sermon like that.

Yeah, we just have to avoid being a detached third party. So the preacher's preaching and we're hoping that the people are hearing it, but we're just back here watching the whole thing.

Like you said, we need to have the attitude, plead with the Lord that he would come and deal with us directly through his word.

So the final point that Whitfield gives is, pray to the Lord before, during and after every sermon to undo the minister with power to speak and to grant you a will and ability to put into practice what he shall show from the book of God to be your duty.

No doubt it was this consideration that made St. Paul so earnestly entreat his beloved Ephesians to intercede with God for him, praying always with all manner of prayer and supplication in the spirit and for me also that I may open my mouth with boldness to make known the mysteries of the gospel.

And if so great an apostle as St. Paul needed the prayers of his people, much more to these ministers who have only the ordinary gifts of the

Holy Spirit. If only all who hear me this day would seriously apply their hearts to practice what has now been told them, how ministers would see

Satan light lightning fall from heaven and people find the word preached sharper than a two -edged sword and mighty through God to the pulling down of the devil's stronghold.

Yeah. I remember reading an early, somewhat obscure Puritan pastor and his friend was asking him how his sermons were and he said,

The hunger of my people does more for my sermon preparation than all my hours in my study.

Now he wasn't saying, let's give up studying. We just stand up and kind of give whatever comes to the top of our head.

But a yearning, pleading group of people under a sermon, it's like it pulls the truth out of the servant of God.

And yeah, it would really, look, it would just be hard to imagine what the

Lord might be pleased to do if before, during, and after the sermon, not just the preacher, but the people were crying out to the

Lord, God, speak, we're listening. I remember in Logic on Fire, I think it was

Ian Murray, talking about what it was like at Westminster Chapel in those days of particular blessing when

Lloyd -Jones was preaching and he said that there was a sense of expectation among the people.

You know, we get together on the Lord's Day and it's such a joyous occasion. It's a little foretaste of heaven because we're gathered with the church of God, people we might not have seen much during the week.

Hopefully, we've seen some. We've gathered, had supper together. We've met together for Bible studies.

But by and large, we're together with the family. And so there is a real good desire to visit and to catch up.

But how different it would be, we don't want to make a spectacle of ourselves.

I remember hearing A .W. Tozer talk about how he preached the same night that Elvis Presley played in the other half of the same hall.

So you can imagine that. And if you've ever heard Tozer speak on a recording, you know what a great disappointment that can be because he sounds like an old 1940s baseball announcer, you know.

And so he said, well, and there was these ladies down front and they were praying and there was three or four of them on the front row and they was just bowing back and forth and saying, come on,

Lord, now, come on, let's go. Let's go, God. Come on, please now, just meet. And he said, you know, I knew what they was doing.

They was trying to work it up. And I wanted to say, sisters, if you want to see somebody work it up, just go next door and see old

Elvis and he'll work it up for you in a hurry. So we don't want to meet and we don't want to make a spectacle and we don't want to take away from the joyous time of gathering with the saints.

But if we did gather with a real earnest hunger and expectation that the

Lord would really meet with his people and with the realization that if he doesn't come among his church and work in the ordinary means, then nothing's going to happen that day.

What a difference that could make in the life of a body. Yeah, so six really simple, helpful things.

None of those are earth shatteringly new to us, but putting those into practice makes a big difference.

Well, thanks for taking time to go through this with us, this extended podcast. This is for you guys who've come alongside of Media Grantiae to help us continue to do what we do.

We're having a really nice time getting to talk about all of these things. These are things that don't tend to fit for John in sermon preparation.

These aren't thoughts that would fit together in a large study. John's working right now on the third study in the

Behold Your God series. We'll tell you more about that as that develops. But, you know, to have an opportunity to sit and think through these things, to talk about these things is a real blessing for me.

I know that it has been for John. And we really appreciate you guys making it possible.

If there are things that you would like to give us feedback on, if there are questions that you have, topics that you might want us to address, please do get in touch using that email address.

And as those accumulate, we'll take one of these times in these bonus episodes to really dig into those.