Laborers' Podcast- Expository Preaching

Welcome to the Laborers Podcast. Thank you for joining us tonight. Tonight we're going to talk about expository preaching.

Hope you'll stick with us. Welcome to the Laborers Podcast, which is a part of the

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Now let's join our laborers for tonight's broadcast. Welcome back to the

Laborers Podcast. The comment line is open, so even if you're watching later, leave us a comment.

Let us know that you're watching. Ask questions. If we can pray for you, let us know that too. We'd love to.

We'd be honored to be able to pray for you. Tonight on the Laborers Podcast, we've got Big John, we've got

Randy, and we've got Claude, the Happy Calvinist. How you guys doing? Doing well. Good.

What does that fantastic shirt of yours say, Rob? Well, I received it from a very special friend of mine who lives in eastern

Tennessee, and it says that I was a Calvinist before it was cool.

Amen. And I wear it proudly. I wear it proudly. Hey, at one time, and this goes along with this positive preaching too, when you grow up in a certain church and doctrines are not taught, different viewpoints are not taught, you only know of what you are exposed to, right?

Correct. So I had never heard of Calvinism. I never heard of the different types of eschatology.

On and on and on and on we could go. And the same thing is true with these points of a healthy church.

I had never heard that there were different types of preaching. I didn't know of church discipline, and you know,

I could go on and on with these things that I did not know exist in Christianity, in the church.

And Calvinism was one of them. I was teaching a Sunday school class, and I was exposed because of the early, early beginnings of social media and television.

I was watching some programs on TV. I don't know if you guys have heard of them.

Word pictures? Did you ever catch word pictures? No, I don't know what that is.

Okay, look who's with us. And there he is. What's going on guys?

Dwayne, welcome. How's it going? Good. Dwayne, the blue -collar

Calvinist. Yes, sir. Glad to finally join y 'all. Glad to finally join y 'all.

I'm sorry it took me so long, but most of y 'all are in a different time zone, and that's just how it works out for me when you get up at four o 'clock in the morning.

Well, we're glad that you're with us, and we're glad that you filled that empty box up there. But word pictures, you guys can look it up.

I think Mark, Mark Keller, may be the pastor's name that did these, and I was so drawn to these things.

But he was teaching Doctrines of Grace, Calvinistic ideas, and I even emailed him.

I was like, look, we're not robots. And he was gentle and kind, but he gave me a response.

But I downloaded John Piper's thing on TULIP, and that thing was thick.

And I went through that thing trying to debunk and say that Calvinism was not right.

But the Lord eventually led me in a different direction, and here I am today. But I'm so thankful for social media and all the different avenues and means

God is using now to expose people to these doctrines that I was never exposed to.

So I'm thankful. And the one we're going to talk about tonight is expository preaching. I'm grateful that I was exposed to this type of biblical preaching.

Did you guys have a similar experience to where when you were growing up, you were just exposed to the one style, didn't know that other styles existed, different types of preaching existed.

What was your beginnings when it comes to preaching? I didn't know.

I probably didn't really know that there was different styles of preaching.

But whenever I went to Bible college, I was introduced to the term expository preaching.

And I'll never forget what Brother Strapp said, Dr. Strapp said, when he was defining each type of preaching, expository, it said good biblical preaching.

And I thought that was so funny that there was a litany of definitions for the other types of preaching.

But he didn't have any for expository preaching. But they said good biblical preaching. But I do know some guys who teach in a different way than expositional.

And there's many that don't do it right. But there's some that do preach right that's not expository.

What about you other guys? What's your first exposure? Yeah, my experience was mostly topical.

Every Sunday was a different. It may be a series, for example, you know, the fruit of the spirit.

It may be a series on a specific character or whatever. But most of the time it's like topical.

Every Sunday there's a different verse, there's a different book. And we never really get that.

We never really get the whole picture of the Bible. You know, we never get the whole picture of what the author is saying.

You know, so in my earlier times even in ministry, I didn't have a full grasp of doctrine and theology because I was, you know, even in my early times of preaching, it was topical, you know, and when you're topical, you go to your favorite topics, the one that you're comfortable with, the one that you like, you know.

So that was that was my early upbringing ministry. Duane, what was your what's your first exposure to expositional or expository preaching?

Expository preaching for me the first time was, we're getting on about three years since I experienced expository preaching for the first time.

I grew up under different denominations and teaching the old

UPC Pentecostal on one side and the Southern Baptist on the other. Every church I attended was a topical church.

So of course, between the two I stayed very confused. When I stepped foot in a Reformed Baptist church for the first time,

I heard expository preaching and for the first time I started understanding scripture. Praise the

Lord. What about you, Fawn? I'm just I'm just glad to be here. Y 'all go right ahead.

I'm enjoying listening to y 'all. Well, we can go ahead and start the word association. I thought this would be a different approach to expository or understanding or teaching expository preaching.

I wanted to I wanted to do this topic so that we could continue to have it in our conversation to to expose it to those who are have not been exposed to it yet.

Kind of like we were who only knew of one way or one form or style of preaching.

Because I believe there's so many churches still out there that maybe have never even heard that this exists.

So I want to keep it on our tongues on our conversations. So when I say these words, we're just going to do word association.

You go after it and make the association with these words and expository preaching.

So the first one is theology. Also, hold on. Let me let me call time out.

So I've you know, I've not been here at a long time, too. So y 'all y 'all y 'all know if you've been regular on here, if you're just if you're new to the

Labor's podcast. So if y 'all get to preaching, we've got the keys ready. I've got the keys ready.

Oh, sweet. Oh, yes. All right. All right.

Y 'all just be ready. Well, somebody start us off, get us get us going with theology.

What does theology have to do with expository preaching? And. In one word, no, just go after it.

Oh, OK. Yeah, I think in expository preaching. You get the author's thoughts on that theology.

So if you're talking about justification by faith alone and you're looking at Romans, you're getting

Paul's complete thought on that theology versus going topical and you're going everywhere, you're going to get concise understanding of what what what what that theology is.

When I think about theology from an expositional point of view, I think about like the whole doctrine of something.

So in in a lot of ways, you can you can preach topically, expositionally.

We did at the conference. The topic was the Holy Spirit. Right. And there were different subject or not subject, but different old ministries or avenues that the

Holy Spirit is is working in. And we talked about him from an expositional point of view, though there was a topic to the otherwise a theme.

When I think of theology, I think about the full discourse of of everything. In other words, there's there's books of the

Bible that you can teach from expositionally the entire book. And they and while that book may be where you derive part of your theology,

I don't know of a single book that contains all of it. Right. So.

Theology is going to be something that. Extends beyond what one book inside of the

Bible would cover, it would be more of a whole picture. Before I think about anyone.

And so so the term the term itself, theology, that is the knowledge of God. So when we when we think about theology in the light of expositional teaching and preaching again, the we may get in.

Yeah, we'll get into that later, too. But, you know, that that combination of both teaching and preaching exposes that's that's where the term comes from.

It's a it's an expose or it's an exposition of the text of Scripture.

And ultimately, the text of Scripture points us to the Lord. Yeah, when

I think about theology and it comes to in association with expositional preaching, the way we understand expositional preaching is that we we do it consecutively.

We we stick with maybe verse by verse or chapter by chapter. And some people are going through books.

And so you don't miss theology when you do it that way. When you when you stick with topical or other means of preaching, you can maybe skip over some things.

But when you're going expositionally, there's theologies that are tough that you that you have to tackle that are addressed and brought up.

Sure. Right. Ultimately, that'll always be the case. For example, so we finished up back in October, November with the book of Luke.

You know, we've been in for four years. So what we did is a what we're doing now still yet is a topical exposition.

OK, it's a topical exposition. We're studying the significance and the value of preaching and the preaching of the word of God to God's people in and through the book of Ezra, which gives us context and the the the full it gives us context of the sermons of Haggai and Zechariah.

So what we're doing now is actually a topical expositional series through the book of Ezra, Haggai and Zechariah to understand them in full context.

So you can actually you can actually do both. Yeah, you can.

One of the things I was thinking about when you were talking about it, the teaching expositionally, sometimes we we tend to tunnel vision ourselves to a book and that book is is exactly what you think it would be.

It would be have have an author, an intended audience and so on. One of the things that we have to be cognizant of is that that's not an isolated event on an island.

So while the book of Acts is telling the story of how the Holy Ghost moves through the church in the first century and we see

Luke's depiction and his his recollection of all these things that's happening, that as a letter written to Theophilus at the same time, we have

Paul showing his side of of encounters with churches.

And then you have also the books that he wrote to those two churches during the same time that you could go into those books while you're reading the book of Acts and have a a fuller view of what's going on.

If you think about the book of of Corinthians, we've talked about the book of Corinthians a lot, both books.

You see where Paul's talking to Church of Corinthian and Corinth.

Or if you look at the pastoral epistles that he gives to Timothy and you'll see that some of these he's in jail during his time that he's depicted in the book of Acts.

So you can go through Acts expositionally. And miss a massive amount of the understanding of what

Paul is going through in Acts, just like you could read the pastoral epistles expositionally and still miss a great deal of the environment and the context that the book is written in.

And the only way you gather that is if you read the whole thing and know the text and then keep your keep your your timeline.

I hate to use that word because it starts bringing, you know, gives people vibes of different stuff. But the the timeline that the author is writing in or the timeline of the person's life in question is not an isolated event on an island somewhere.

He's affected by everybody, right? And everything around him. So in those cases, you can go line by line, verse by verse in a book and still miss humongous portions of theology because you're not capturing all of the story.

That makes sense. Mm hmm. Yeah. Dwayne, were you were you going to say something?

No, sir. No, I'm actually I was just listening and listening to men who have been in the subject a little bit longer than me.

OK, so art, any any association with you guys when it comes to art?

Yeah, I'll go ahead. I'll get up in on this again. One of my one of my favorite authors,

William Perkins. Right. So his book, The Art of Prophesying and the Calling of the Ministry. Very important.

The art and it's it's in the title, The Art of Prophesying. Right. The art of preaching. When we when we consider what we think about the terminology are the art of sermon preparation.

Right. The art of sermon preaching and proclamation and teaching. It it it truly does paint a picture of a great deal more than just going up.

And again, this is not again, we we all understand and know that without the word of God, there is nothing to be said by the preacher.

Nothing. We should never enter the pulpit to assume that we have anything to say or any anything of any value for anyone other than the word of God.

I will say this, however, in preparing the sermons, we should be not innovative.

That's a bad word. Not innovative. We don't have to be clever, but we should put time, effort and energy into as I believe it was

Vance Havner or A .W. Tozer once said, how we set the table makes a difference.

Right. You know, when when when we were growing up, you know, our parents cooking, making dinner for us and all that.

It may not have seemed like a big deal when we sat down at the table, but there was a lot of effort. There was a lot of energy and going into that food.

Right. When and I use my my mama for an example, when I was in high school, mainly, but man, nobody can make a

Reuben sandwich like my mama. Right. You know, you can go to a restaurant, get a Reuben sandwich and it could be a

Reuben like you get at home. Right. Because it's not going to have a flavor. It's not going to have the grease.

It's not going to have all those that you get at home. Right. It's not going to have all that love and passion poured into it.

And the art of preaching is that it's the man of God being so in love with with God and with his word and so plugged in to God and his word that when it comes when it comes to the preparation, it's more than just a a rope preparation where we just sit down and we say,

OK, last week this was the pattern I followed. So I'm going to follow that pattern this week. All right.

Patterns are not bad again. I'm not I'm not patterns and practices are good, but we've got to be willing and to be open.

To the spirit of God in our preparation, a man, spirit of God easens and and makes it so that when

God's word is delivered, that the congregation could tell if the pastor puts in effort.

Right. A pastor may get by. And I'm sorry, I'm not trying to hog.

I get by, you know, one one or two weeks, you know, and again,

I think we all probably have thought this or heard people say this right.

They'll say, well, it just seemed like there was something missing from the sermon this week. Well, sometimes that is the preacher's fault.

Sometimes it's the folks in the pews fault, not praying and preparing their own heart, their own minds.

But there is definitely an art when it comes to expository preaching in the preparation, that it's not just dull, plain, boring speech, but that it's mixed with passion, the passion of God, passion for God, the power of the

Holy Spirit, you know, so on and so forth. We have all those things and you can't you can't do without them. I agree.

Yeah, that was really good. That was really good. If I could jump in real quick. Um, um, the art.

So there is an art in not only in the preaching, but also in the preparation, right?

So if you go to an expository, if you're going, for example, if you're going through a book, you know, like john was saying, you want to know the author, you have to know the intended audience with the authors trying to communicate by the

Holy Spirit, etcetera, etcetera. And also when it comes to the art, um, every every expository sermon needs to also be self contained, right?

And I'm gonna use a movie analogy. So if I'm going to the movie and, um, you know,

I know a couple of years ago, Marvel Cinematic Universe was a big thing. And, you know,

I don't want to go to this movie having to have seen that. I have to have seen the previous eight movies to understand what

I'm looking at, right? Um, with expository preaching, if someone if if someone comes in and you're in Luke chapter five, right, they should be able to understand that sermon without having to been there from chapter one to chapter four.

I agree. The art that you know that we have to have when we're communicating this, that, you know, we give the recap, we give, give the people where we are, how we got to this chapter or this verse or whatever.

But it also should be self contained as well to minister to the people, um, and edify the body.

So there is an art as well. Amen. Amen. All right, brother

Dwayne. Yeah, yes, sir. Yeah, I was actually trying to find the guy's name right now.

But, uh, forgive me, I have forgotten the gentleman's name. Um, at the

G three conference, not too long ago, there was a older pastor that got on the platform.

Um, and then off on a lot of other pastors, um, talking about too many pastors in the, um, reformed world are getting behind the pulpit and just teaching and they're not preaching.

Um, they're losing that art of preaching. Um, and I, and they're probably doing that trying to, um, you know, practice expository teaching.

Um, you know, like you said earlier, you, you, you, y 'all just got through with Luke for what? Four years, correct?

Right. Um, we actually just got through with Luke. We know, but with my pastor that I serve under, um, uh, you know,

I'll give him credit, um, through three years of teaching Luke. And I could see how that would get very monotonous.

That's, that's not an easy thing to do. There is a huge, that is an art. It is an art in itself to, to pick apart those scriptures line by line, um, for years on end.

Um, and do that weekend after weekend. Um, I would say, um, I would rather have a topic to talk about than have to do that.

If I was sitting behind a pulpit, I won't lie. Um, uh, you know, but, um, however, you know, um, like I said,

I'll give my pastor credit. He, he never stopped preaching through that. Um, I understood by, uh, the, the points he would emphasize that he meant them.

There was emotion behind it as a preaching. He wasn't trying to, um, give us some emotional experience, but he never preached without emotion, even though it wasn't the lead of his preaching.

Um, the teaching was preaching, but the emotion was always there and you could tell he, he believed what he was telling us.

Um, and therefore our attention spans were better. Um, we weren't in a lecture room.

Um, uh, just trying to grit through a professor that was, you know, to get a good grade kind of a thing.

And I think we've all sat through sermons like that before and it gets very old. Um, I, I hated school.

I don't want to go back to school on Sunday. So, um, you know, there's a reason

I'm the blue collar Calvinist. So, but, uh, there's a good reason behind that, but you know, so the art of preaching, um, uh, in a, in an expository fashion is, um, extremely, extremely important, important for, um, for me as someone who does not stand behind the pulpit, but instead sits in front and in that congregation looking eye to eye with my pastor.

Um, if he was just teaching through the book of Luke, um, I, I, he would have lost me a long time ago.

I'll just be honest. But however, I remember what was being said,

I remember what was being taught and, um, and, and, and I can go back and, and I can read something and I'll remember the emphasis he put on that and I'll go, why did he put emphasis on this?

Um, so yeah, there is a, a art that, um, can only be, uh, delivered by a pastor who was called into the ministry to do expository preaching.

It is, it is not something that you just get up and do or can learn in a college classroom. I do not believe.

I agree with that. Uh, I, I would think I'm going to have to kind of combine two, two bullet points,

Rob, unless you want to go ahead and take art by yourself and then I'll, I'll transition to the next one. Yeah.

Let, let me make one comment and then you can transition to the next one. Uh, was you going to combine instructional and teaching together? I was going in and combine art, instructional and teaching.

Nice. But I'm going to try to, I know that that's big swing. That'd be fantastic.

Um, the only thing that I was going to say was I, I've not been in a position yet in my life where I've, I have preached consecutively

Sunday after Sunday. I was in a position once where I was preaching consistently.

And so listening to what Randy was telling us about, um, having some containment so that you didn't have to be there, you know, previously to understand everything that was going on.

I really took advantage of John when I was able to teach or, or preach, you know, consistency consistently.

Um, because, because he says in his books, I write these things.

So, so he kind of gave me a, an overall guideline when I was going verse by verse and it was almost like cheating.

He kind of tells you, this is, this is why I'm writing the book. You know, so you, you could go through that, that chapter, those verses and you could pull out, you know, what he was, what was going on specifically there, but you also understood why he was writing that too.

And so I appreciate it going, going through John and him helping me out in that way.

So like I take, uh, I teach Wednesday night, more or less line by line, chapter by chapter.

But on Sunday I typically go, uh, with a, with a topic and I break that topic down expositionally.

And that's, if I were honest with you, that is not my favorite way to preach, right?

But what it does do is there'll be folks who don't show up every Sunday morning.

And, and you have to know if you're going to, if you're going to do anything with art, then you have to know your audience, right?

So I have an audience that is mostly repetitive on Wednesday.

I can count on most of the same people. So if we're, if we're going for the law of averages, if we're going for, how can

I communicate and I don't have to worry about it being contained in every single message I can,

I can say, okay, next week we're going to finish this topic. And I can expect 99 % of the people that I tell that to will be there the next

Wednesday, God willing, right? On Sunday morning, I don't have that option. Sunday morning, if I could get all the people that go to my church to come to church at the exact same time, we'd have a good size crowd on Sunday morning, but I can get 75 to 80 % of everybody and people that were here this week will not be there next week for some reason.

So it's difficult when that is the way that your, your congregation goes to teach the exact same way on Sunday morning.

So when I take a topic like, uh, I'm not gonna say what

I'm gonna preach on Sunday yet. We'll leave it alone. But if I take a topic like I did last Sunday and I preach on that topic, it will be the portion of scripture that I use.

I will do my very best to use that as much of that book as I can.

And if there's another book that is layered on going on at the exact same time, I will try to include as much as that.

Now, you know, you do have a timeline, right? That you, everybody says the same thing.

Preach as long as you want to. They don't mean that. They do not mean that. They're, they're lying to you.

Yeah. The wife, the wife of the husband who says, preach on preacher.

Yeah. It always sounds the same way. Take your time.

The, uh, the thing is that I want to, I want to, to be between 30 and 45 minutes.

That requires me to do something that I'm not good at. And that is to, to learn the text, learn the sermon outline.

I, I, I'm going to be reading a lot of scripture. If you ever come to any service that I've ever had the opportunity to speak at, you're going to see me read a lot of text.

And that's because the more text I read, the less likely I am to mess this up. So whenever I'm teaching and whenever I'm instructing,

I'll, I'll do my best to learn the text so that as I'm reading the text, the, the things that I've learned are forevermore coming up in front of my mind.

As I'm reading the text, it is, it's like becoming clear to me that the, uh, the, uh, the obligation that I have during this sermon.

And when I get done, I can look to you. I can look you eye to eye, face to face, even if I have to walk down there where you're sitting and I can talk to you without reading from a lecture, a set of notes.

I have no problem with notes. Take all the notes you want to, even take them with you to the pulpit if you need to, so that you can keep track of where you're going.

Don't sit there and read from the page. Know the material studied and show yourself approved so that when you show up, you'll be that workman worthy of this, how you can stand there in that, in that place and you can have understood the text as best as possible.

You can talk to these people eye to eye and you can engage them.

You can engage their mind. There's a lot of being said without words, right? The way, the way you're talking to somebody about the, about a portion of tech, uh, you take a book of the

Bible, take Ezra. And whenever you start talking about how Ezra setting up the temple with the walls in ruin, and you know that Nehemiah is coming in at the same exact time,

Ezra's there and they're building the wall up. You can think about how exhausting this, this task is and what these people must be going through to sit while the entire law was read to them during that period of time.

You can look at people in their facial expression when you've been talking for 20 minutes and realize you couldn't hack it.

If, if you can't listen to me for 20 minutes, try to break down this portion of text. These, these people stood until it was over with and heard the whole thing read, uh, no, the text don't, don't know the text to teach the sermon.

Just like you don't study for a test you take, you'll, you'll, you'll forget what you took a test about.

If you, if you go to a college and you want to be a mechanic, you can go ahead and learn how to take a test to pass public speaking.

If you want to, but you'd better not skip out on engine building. You better learn the text and know the thing better than just to take the test.

So many people get up behind a pulpit on Sunday morning and treat it like it's a test that I've learned enough to preach this lesson.

No, no, the text can be changed by it and take that as a Charles Spurgeon said that he threw more sermons away on Saturday night than he ever preached in his entire life.

But whenever he read a portion of scripture that so changed his mind or wrecked his soul and sent him to his prayer closet, that's what he give his church was stuff that tore him up.

And, and he no doubt knew the text whenever he went to that pulpit so that it wasn't cracker juice mixed up with salt and trying to swallow that down.

You know, it was seasoned with love and compassion and it was pretty much the exact same thing

Paul said a while ago, right? That's why he's the preacher among preachers in this group.

I'm just the old guy again. I'm glad to be here with y 'all. Before cell phones, before smartwatches, did any of you guys, were you ever in a service where somebody set the alarm on their electronic watch for 12 o 'clock?

I have been in, I was in services years ago and people would set their alarm on their electronic watch.

This was before cell phones and smartwatches and it would go off every Sunday at 12 o 'clock. That's hilarious.

And sad at the same time. Yeah. My first pastor, uh, after I got saved, uh, he was a church of God pastor and, and, uh,

I won't say his name cause I didn't tell him I was gonna say it, but he, uh, he said he was, he was preaching at a church one day and, and he could tell that everybody was just, it was homecoming and everybody was really excited about the fellowship afterwards.

I was ready to eat. I was ready to, to get the sermon over with. I guess they had a, uh, a battalion of people in the back, you know, ready to break out the, uh,

Tupperware or whatever, you know, and, uh, he said he could tell they, they just wouldn't have been interested in what he had to say.

He said, you know what, let's go ahead and finish the thing. Let's go eat. And it's like, all right. He said, he said he never went back and was never invited back.

You know, he could tell he was, they were, uh, they were over the sermon before it happened.

They just showed up to celebrate. Let, let me combine these next three and then we'll do the next three.

After that biblical application and context, pick all three or one of the three in its association with expository preaching, you said biblical application or context.

Um, yeah. So I think with the Wayne says something earlier, as far as the passion of the preacher, um, and also, so, so in, in, in biblical exposition, um, it's not just, um, like he said, uh, given a lecture, right.

You're not just given the context. You're not just giving the original thought of the author and building the structure of, you know, the ancient

Israel or Corinth, or you're not just doing that, but you have to give the people.

Why is this important and why is this important to you? Right. So if you're a pastor of a church and you're familiar with the concern, you can, uh, you're familiar with what's going on in the church, um, you know, certain situations, you know, you, you, you are better equipped to minister to the people.

Now, if you're, if you're itinerant preacher, you know, you don't really know the congregation, God can still use you, but it's going to be different from a pastoral perspective.

Right. Um, so for example, I preached on James chapter five, um, couple of weeks ago in the earlier part of chapter five, it was the judgment of God.

Um, he was, he was talking about the judgment. That's going to be on a poor, on the, uh, the rich that's oppressing the poor.

And then, um, that's versus one through seven, one through six and then seven through 12, he's encouraging the ones that are being oppressed.

So I divided into the judgment. So my first point was the judgment of God.

And the second point was his encouragement. And so even my wife told me, so she said that first half of the sermon, she said it was tough.

I mean, it was, she said, I like the second half, but she said the first half was tough because my church, they're not, they're not used to hearing about the judgment of God.

Right. Um, then I used to hear, and that's what expository preaching does. It's whatever the text says, right.

Whatever the text says and, and, and they could see. And I think, um,

Claude said it, you know, if you're not faithful to the text, they will catch it, right.

They will catch it. It's easier for them to catch it. And one of the things expository teaching does is it teaches the people how to study.

Amen. So one of the things, one of the things that I like is when I'm reading the text that I'm giving my points and I'm preaching or teaching, they should be able to say, oh,

I see that even if they didn't see it before, but they could look at the tech, they should be able to look at the text and say, okay,

I see where he got this point from. Right. Um, now if they don't see it, then, then it may be an issue on communication or it may not be there.

You're just, you know, you read the text and you just went way left, right. And they will be able to catch that. So it teaches the congregation how to study the

Bible, how to read the scriptures, how to, when they go home on their own, how to dig in, how to dig into the text.

And I think, um, and to understand the text fully and how to apply it, um, um, to their lives.

So I think, um, that's one of the benefits of, of expository preaching. You know, kind of to echo something that you said, expository preaching is saying what the text says.

So therefore it prohibits a pastor from getting on his hobby horse. That's right.

Uh, you know, he, he's on this, whatever it is, and he's learned this new doctrine or, you know, some of us who've learned these new doctrines or who've been exposed to where, you know, we're talking about Calvinism, I'm an expository preaching and what they've tagged as being in this cage stage, you know, a pastor can get in a cage stage and have a hobby horse and, and want to, you know, bang on something week after week.

But if you're expository preaching, you know, like Randy said, you've got to say what the text said, not what

Robert says, you know, what, not what I'm on at this. Yeah, go ahead. Can I make a confession?

So every, it seems like most of, most of you guys are Calvinist except for John, I think.

Right. That's right. Okay. So me and John are not, but you, but you, but you, so everyone here believes in eternal security.

Amen. Yes. Yeah. Okay. So if I say yes. Yes. Okay.

Well, no, I mean, I believe you can lose your salvation. Okay. So nevermind. Nevermind. I was going to make a point, but I'm going to make a point anyway.

Yeah. So I was, I was on the fence with eternal security and even as a preacher.

Right. Um, I leaned a little bit more to you can't lose it. Um, and I was on a fence, but one time

I had to preach, I think John six, where Jesus says, um, if you come to me, you will never hunger thirst.

And that text really was last. And so me going to the pulpit, I said, I've been wrestling with this thing for so long.

I have to, this text is very, so wrestling with that text kind of put me over to not kind of, but it did put me over to, um, um, to eternal security, because for me,

I have to be faithful with the text, right. And it was no longer being on the fence. The text said what it said.

So, um, so sometimes some, like it's why the story of preaching as well can challenge you in your, um, you know, challenge you in your beliefs.

Um, it could tell you in your doctrine, your theology, um, it could challenge you not being on the fence and just, um, you know, like Paul said,

I, I, I shun to, to teach you the whole counsel of God, you know, just picking and choosing what you like, but it's like, okay, this is, you know, the congregation may not like it, but Hey, you know, this is what the text talks about homosexuality.

This is what the text says. You know what I'm saying? So you just gotta, you say whatever the text says. You have to let the, you have to let the word of God speak and, and do your, and do your dead level best to just stay out of it.

That's right. I mean, that sounds easy to do right until you're standing there and you say something that is clearly written in scripture and your whole church looks at you and says,

I think that's not right. I was like, why is it not right? You know, to explain to me where I went wrong, which is one of the things.

And one of the reasons why I typically, even if I'm using the topic will stay expositional because this is not up for private interpretation.

It has to mean the same thing to everybody at all the time. It has to, that's one of the, that's one of the things that makes it worthy of being in scripture is that it's timeless, right?

So if I give them my understanding based on what the text says,

I can be wrong. That's right. I can most assuredly have all the best intentions and give them a wrong meaning behind the text.

If they're doing like I've asked them to do, they're taking notes and they can go home and they can compare what

I've said with the notes they've taken and look at the scripture and, and they can verify or determine if I'm wrong.

And if the, if I'm wrong, I'm pretty open and you know, I've kind of got a very transparent church and that I, I give you the floor.

If I've said something that you can say, I've done something wrong, let's hear it. Because I'm not,

I'm not perfect. Right. And as if I've made a mistake, I don't want to walk in error whenever it's so easily repaired.

Right. And all it takes is, is me being, being taught or showed the correct way.

So I mean, that's why we have Calvinist on this crew and Armenians on this crew or whatever kind of critter

I'm supposed to be called is, is because you can only, you can only take the scripture as far as God allows you to understand it.

And you have to walk out that conviction. And that's, that sounds real wishy -washy to some people, but you can't know what you don't know.

That's right. You can't expect somebody to know something that you don't know, nor can you expect somebody to live out your convictions as best as what you see in scripture.

Well, take for instance I'll give you an example of something real quick. Hebrews five,

Hebrews five talks about Jesus being the, the, the, the internal priest that the great high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.

Yes, sir. Good job. Thank you. That's why we need preachers here because the people, the pews are speaking, we need help, but, but you know, discerning that for the first time for me was really, really hard because when

I went through it, I almost read it like a Catholic probably would read that, um, going through talking about, um, priests that offer sacrifice.

And I was reading that as in the epistles as a present tense, something written to the modern church.

And I'm knocking myself in the head going, this isn't right. You can read my sticker. I don't believe that.

So it was driving me absolutely nuts. And so I, I read that at work and I got home and I got my wife and she read it correct, but she still couldn't make it make sense to me.

So I called my son in who's an adult and, uh, he got the gift of reading and reading scripture and pulling things out a little bit better than I do.

So I pulled him in and, uh, and, and he was, we were able to sit down and decipher that.

And, um, that's the thing is with scripture, we, we, even when we're reading in context and we're trying to keep it in context, if our, if we just take it for what we read the first time, we can take it wrong and we can say it wrong and we can preach it wrong.

So when you find something that seems to be, um, contradicting, contradicting other teachings throughout scripture, know that you're probably wrong and you need to do some homework and you need to talk to your family or those you trust around you and you need, don't just leave it there and let it lie and stay confused.

That's, that's, that's just saying, I'm going to live in ignorance and let, leave it well enough. Um, uh, when, uh, that's, that's not what expository preaching teaches you to do.

Um, and that's just, you know, nonsense. I mean, why live in confusion?

Why let scripture sit there and contradict itself? Because if it's doing that, you know, you're wrong.

You're right. Well, that's, that's a beautiful example too. And I'm glad you just used a portion of scripture.

What that does is that protects the pastor because I can,

I can get up there and in my own flesh could take a portion like that portion of Hebrews as an example, right?

And we could, we could butcher that seven ways from Sunday and make it look as if though somehow another, uh, the office of priest exists as a higher level than other

Christians or something, right? Super saints, whatever you want to call it. You could do some other stuff with it that I dare say, because it's so heretical and you're going to stand in condemnation for that.

You just, you just, you just will go ahead and accept that if you're pastoring and you're watching this because you saw it said expositional teaching and you wanted to have some ammunition against, uh, people that don't think the way that you think.

And you're, you're topically preaching to somehow another exalt your ideas above everybody else's or trying to build up a congregation that, so they'll pay you a bigger salary or whatever.

You're going to have the blood of these people on your head. That's right. As there's no bones about it. Uh, Jesus said it would be better that you not be born than you'd lead astray people with the text.

He, he is harder. He is harder on heretics inside of his own countrymen than he was the heretics of the

Samaritans. He's been harder on nobody than, than false prophets and false, false proclaimers of the gospel out there.

So it's my, it's my urging to you. If you're doing that to repent of that nonsense immediately to just stop, let the text speak for itself.

And what you can do is you can say, this is what the book says. If you don't like it, then a thing

I can do about it. I can take you to the one who wrote it and you can take all your complaints and grievances to him and you can, and you, and I encourage you to do so.

Take it to that customer service branch. All I can do is tell you what the book says.

And for me, the reason I stick expositionally is because I don't trust myself to give you my interpretation of it and use my interpretation of it as if it is equal to what

God's word says, because it's not, I can be wrong. Amen. I just want to say real quick how much

I appreciate hanging out with you guys and you guys ministering with me. Um, Randy and Dwayne, uh, the longer you hang out with us, you'll, you'll come to realize that it depends, depends on which doctrine that we're talking about.

I may be, I may be the, the, the lone Ranger, the odd man out.

And then the next doctor and we start talking about, I may be, you know, one of many and somebody else's the odd man out, but we love each other.

And we, um, we talk through those things that we believe differently. And I, so I appreciate hanging out with you guys so much and doing this together with you.

Can I add, can I add just a little bit more on that? I know we're running to the end here, but, uh,

I will make a bold statement here and say that the old Testament prophets were expositional preachers holding to the definition that they spoke the word of God as it is.

Amen. My chapter 23, the prophet by the word of the

Lord, by the burden, by matter of fact, that's a big term there by the burden of the word of the

Lord is speaking to the lying prophets. Just what John was addressing there. He said, therefore,

I'm against the prophets declares the Lord who steal my words from one another. Behold, I'm against the prophets declares the

Lord who use their tongues and declare thus says the Lord. Behold, I'm against those who prophesy lying dreams declares the

Lord and who tell them and lead my people astray by their lies and by their recklessness when

I did not send them or charge them. So they do not profit this people at all declares the

Lord. When one of this people or a prophet or a priest ask you, what is the burden of the

Lord? You shall say to them, you are the burden and I will cast you off declares the

Lord. And he goes, I mean, I mean, I'm talking about I'm razors cutting to and backwards and forwards going just here and they're strong words.

And these are the same. This is the same idea. This is the same.

This is the same urgency. I know that's one of the words next on the list down the list there. But this is the same passion.

This is the same declaration. This is the same truth. It does not change in the same.

It will be the same. And we are just better off obeying the word of God, the word of God, applying the word of God, letting the word of God shape and mold our thoughts and our ideas than rather trying to shake

God's word to our thoughts and our ideas. I mean, it's frustrating because the congregation suffers when they do not have the word of God.

Preach, prepared and preached and taught to them, I started to say preached and teached by your nose when

I'm when I asked, but still yet the body of Christ suffers when that does not happen because they get malnourished when you get malnourished, if you keep going in that same course, you'll just end up dying.

It is the role, and I know this ain't about pastors, but it's about expositional preaching.

But as a pastor, it is the role of a pastor to give his people that the

Lord has put him there for no other reason than to feed his sheep, to give them a steady, consistent, rich diet of the word of God so that the congregation can know

God, so that the congregation can know Christ, so that the congregation can know the

Holy Spirit. And by knowing God, by knowing Christ, by knowing the Holy Spirit, they are able in turn to worship

God acceptably with reverence and godly fear, as the Bible teaches us. Amen.

Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. This will be our last question, and each of you can have an opportunity to answer it if you want to.

But I'm going to ask you specifically, I'm not just going to give you a word association. I'm going to ask it in a specific way because we've already said expository preaching is not lecturing.

It's not just teaching. And so it's not just those things. It's something else.

So when I say these words, I'm sure all of you would agree in the affirmative that these words are necessary.

So let me say them, then let me ask the question in a specific way. Proclamation, urgency, declaration, passion, authority, exhortation, affections, fire dash, light and heat.

All those words combined, I'm sure all of you would agree in the affirmative that those things mark preaching.

But let me ask you in this way, we all have different personalities as preachers.

So will passion, urgency, proclamation.

How would that look different in different men with different personalities?

The urgency and passion may look one way in one man and differently in another.

How would you describe that so that so that somebody is not comparing themself to another pastor?

You know what I'm saying? Yeah, if I could go. So so so what

I've learned, so I used to be an itinerant preacher. Before I became a pastor at my local church, right, and one of the things

I've learned is as a pastor, I contextualize the people and in return, the people contextualize the pastor.

So the past, so the people knows how I express passion, they know how

I express anger, how I express patience, et cetera, so they know my expressions.

Right. So it will be different. And I'm the associate pastor of my church, so they know my passion is different from the past passion of my pastor.

Right. He has a different way of expressing the same feeling that I do. I'm a little bit more.

I'm a little bit more expressive in my presentation, but so so the audience know that, but also in expositional preaching, your expressions has to also be faithful to the text.

Right. So if the text is an encouraging text, then your tone and your disposition should be encouraging.

Right. If God wants to encourage or if Paul is encouraging Philippians, you know,

I shouldn't be angry in my presentation. That's not that's I may be saying the same.

I might be saying the right theological words, but my expressions and my emotions doesn't line up with the text.

Right. So an expositional preacher is not only the words that need to line up, but my demeanor, my position, my my emotions, even my passion.

Right. You know, my passion has to fit as well.

If it's if it's a plea for repentance, a plea for to to repent and to turn to Christ, you know, the wrath of God is coming.

Then my my expression needs to match that. I can't be calm and lackadaisical.

Oh, you know, just repent whenever you want to just repent. No, it has to it has to fit the tone of the author.

So I think the personality will be contextualized by the congregation. And also the personality or the emotion should be shaped by by the by the text, the tone and the emotion should be shaped by the text.

It's a good point. Yeah, agreed. Where there's urgency in the text, there should be urgency in the in the in the preaching of that text.

Right. Is that what you're saying? Absolutely. Absolutely. I 100 percent agree with that.

I said it in a lot of words, but yeah, that's what I meant. That was good. Well, and so, you know, just echoing that, do you think the word genuine genuineness is relevant here?

So what I heard what I heard you say, Randy, was so what the text says, express what the text is expressing, but it's express it in a way that you normally you would express encouragement.

You would express like how Randy would and people will people will know.

They can tell when it's genuine, it's genuine, Randy, it's genuine, big John. Yeah. And here's the thing, when you when you're spending time in it, study it right and you're studying and praying, you're going to feel what they feel urgency.

If I'm studying and I'm sensing the urgency and I'm, you know, I'm thinking about the people in the in the congregation, the unsaved people or the people that's, you know, kind of on the fence, then

I'm feeling the urgency even in my prayer time, even in my study time. So that's going to show on the pulpit, you know, if I'm if it's an encouraging text, you know, encouraging people to suffering,

I'm having in my mind the people in the congregation that's going through it, that suffering. And so I'm praying for them as I'm preparing my sermon.

So that's going to come out even in the presentation because it's it was real in my study.

It was real in prayer. And so it's going to be real in the presentation as well. That's right.

You know, speaking on genuineness, being genuine,

I'm going to use the charismatic church on this a little bit, and I'm going to use you,

Big John, as an example. Now, you'll be OK with this, I promise. So I've seen snippets of you at your church preaching in your church.

And and yeah, I mean, you have some different opinions and different views on things, and that's for another time or whatever. But I would not question you being genuine from what

I've seen of you here and watching you and your snippets on Facebook. But when I go to a charismatic church or look at like Greg Locke, I would question the genuineness there.

When people have to add add to scripture by adding a show, by adding tricks, by adding things like that, they're now they're plugging.

They're not so much worried about an expository message or the message itself, but they're worried about the emotion that they're going to trigger in the person and grab them by and grab them that way, you know.

And at the same time, how the charismatic church has done a really good job of grabbing people emotionally.

And I'm not accusing you of that, Big John. I haven't seen that in you, so don't take it that way. I don't take offense. OK, you know,

I would say the Reformed Church has done a horrible job in a lot of cases and some issues, you know, with the exception of a few.

You know, when Paul Washer walks on the stage, I start repenting before he talks usually. So, you know, but I'm talking about you.

Exactly. And, you know, but when you see someone, you know, there's a way to tell if someone's genuine with their preaching and expository preaching will definitely reveal that.

Absolutely. If they're if they're doing it without emotion whatsoever, they're just going through emotions, in my opinion, if they're behind a pulpit.

Yeah, they they need to go teach in a classroom somewhere, in my opinion. That's just the way I feel about it.

But if they're preaching solely for the emotional charge of it, then there's there's there's no genuineness to that, too.

So it could go either way, to be honest with you. And that's how

I receive it when I see those styles of preaching and how I look at it. If there's not a a genuine if there's not genuine teaching backed up by emotion to show that you truly believe what you're teaching, then then and but it's off real far one way or if it's all real far.

And it's not those two things aren't meeting each other in the middle. There's there's I question how genuine that message is.

Yeah. Well, there there are one, two, three, four, six more questions on my list.

And I'm sorry that we did not get to all the questions. Matt, I'm sorry that we didn't get to your questions.

We barely got through the word association part of it. So if if anybody wants to add your questions to the comments, hopefully one of us can can address those in the comments.

So we appreciate the questions. We appreciate participation. Appreciate everybody that's watching. We really do.

I'm sorry. Yes, sir. Would you mind to share the gospel tonight? And the

John, we close with some prayer when he finishes. Sure. Absolutely. Jesus Christ is our only hope.

There is no other way. We are a people that are all of us are born in rebellion to our creator.

All of us are made in his image and we have all perverted that image. We have all sinned against the infallible.

So every one of us, there is no hope outside of the death, the burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

There is no understanding of there is no understanding of this life and our purpose in this life without knowing that first coming to the acknowledgement that we are depraved in our sins is the first absolute step to humbling yourself, to receiving the gospel, to receiving and understanding the depths of the sacrifice, the depth of the sacrifice that was that was paid.

Forgive me. I wasn't prepared to do this. But. There is there is no hope outside of Christ.

There there is. We are we all did in our sins and our trespasses and anything outside of that is a is a lie.

Sir, we're all serving something. And if anything other than Christ is a false

God, whether that God is you are some type of radical cause or whatever it is, that is your

God. You have a God, whether you believe in one or not. But there is one true

God and you are made in the image of him and. To reject him and to reject this message is the continuing of the hardening of your heart.

And I ask that you if you're if you're hearing this and you do not know

Jesus. That you take time that you open the gospels that you reach in there, you look at the evidence.

It's not a blind faith is an evidential faith. I do not sit here hoping that I'm right.

The evidence is pointed clear physically and spiritually. I know the evidences.

They are there. And if you do not know Christ, I guarantee you, you can message either any one of us guys on this feed tonight on this live stream.

And we'll talk to you more in depth about that. I know I will. But outside of Christ, it's eternal damnation.

And the scariest part to me about eternal damnation, I'm not going to try to scare you with a fire like a fire.

But it's an eternity knowing that you had an opportunity to be with your creator.

And you said no. That's what scares me more than anything.

So on that, man, just reach out to us because repenting and turning from your faith in Christ was the only way.

I mean, we come to you in Jesus name. Lord, I want to thank you for the time that we've had here together.

I thank you for your gospel. I thank you for the salvation that you've given us.

Lord, if there's somebody who listens. Either not live or another time and they don't know who you are,

I pray that you would draw them to you. And save them as only you can. Lord, for those who share the gospel on a regular basis at their church,

I pray that you put conviction on them to to share what your word says. And to be and to be a people of your word.

And that's it. I thank you for the opportunity to be with these men.

I pray that you bless their families. The sacrifice of their time for the for the laborers who are who are laboring right now and can't be on the podcast.

I pray that you be with them. For all those who watch, I again.

I ask that you be merciful. I'm suffering with us. We'll be careful when it's all said and done to give you the praise, the glory and the honor, because you're worthy of it all.

It's in Jesus name, I pray. Amen. Thank you, brother, so much.

I appreciate you guys and I love you. Thank you all who watched. We appreciate you as well.

Thank you for your support. And until next time, we hope to see you real soon. God bless you for joining the laborers podcast.

Remember, Jesus is King. Live in the victory of Christ. Speak with the authority of Christ and go share the gospel of Christ.