The Prophetic Office

Welcome to No Compromise Radio. This is Luke Avendroth, not

Mike. Is that that funny? I thought, Mario and I thought it was a blast.

I didn't know it was so hilarious. It's usually Mario and I sitting here just laughing at our own jokes. Now we got

Luke here. I'm glad to have you watching today. My name is Mike Avendroth. Super glad to have Luke. We did the last three shows and Luke, thanks a lot.

I appreciate you, your ministry. It's fun to have a son who's a Christian, who's a pastor, similar theology.

In many ways, we're friends and so I appreciate you. I love you. Thank you. I love you too. I didn't, you know what?

I thought he said similar in theology. Like there's maybe some little differences. Yeah, because I brought this up because he's a

Christian nationalist. What? You're glad he is. This is a cool, it is a cool sword though,

I will say. You gotta have a license to carry that in California. When boys come in here to the study of the office and they see that, man, they can't wait.

It's pretty heavy too. I think during the, probably 10 years ago, I got it for maybe 20 bucks.

It's a letter opener. I thought, I just need to have this. I like it. I'd buy it for 20 bucks. I would too. And I have the skull.

I think the skull was $29, the ceramic skull. Real human skulls go for about 2 ,400. So this is only ceramic.

Maybe I'll just keep yours when you finally go to be with the Lord. I know, well, how's this gonna work? Because if my library is worth, pick a number, 10 ,000, $40 ,000, who knows what, how are you gonna divvy that up with your sisters?

I'm the firstborn son, so I get everything. Double, you get double.

Well, I get all in the library. So today we are not going to talk about growing up in a pastor's family.

We did that three messages ago. We're not going to talk about a great new church, pretty new, Redemption Church, North County.

Luke and the others are preaching through the book of Mark. Current events we talked about last time, just kind of issues in evangelicalism, just skimmed the surface.

And then today I like to talk about preaching because I love to be preached to.

I love to preach. God loves preaching. Jesus was the prince of preachers.

Dick Lucas once said God had only one son and he made him a preacher. And I'm thinking, wow.

I mean, of course, when we think about the Lord's death, very, very important, right?

It's a gospel truth and it's a sacrificial death. It's a predicted death.

It's a death that assuages the wrath of God. It's a death that affects, right? It doesn't make possible. It actually reconciles and makes redemption.

Of course, we're going to talk about the death of Christ. That's important that he could raise himself from the dead, John chapter 10.

That's important, of gospel importance, of first importance. But when you think about a mediator, Jesus, the mediator, then there's that what

Calvin called the threefold office, prophet, priest, and king. And so we tend to focus on the priest part.

Only one aspect of the priest part, sacrifice. He himself was a sacrifice, but priests also pray.

And we think, oh, the Lord Jesus prays for us, Hebrews chapter seven, spirit of God prays for us,

Romans eight. Then the king, right? That there's tyrants out there,

Satan's out there, evil forces out there. So don't you want a king to vanquish your foes?

Don't you need a priest to pray for you and to die for you? But I think often, Luke, and then

I'll land this plane on this monologue at the beginning, the prophetic office of Jesus.

First of all, we think prophecy to pro, you know, the prophet just talks about future things, but we are ignorant people.

We are people that need teaching. We are people that need to have God's mind revealed because who has descended to tell us things about who

God is. And so today I want to talk about preaching and how important it is, and that office of prophet that Jesus has.

What do you think of that so far? Yeah, I think it's great. And I mean, just think about the prophetic ministry of the

Lord Jesus, that he is not just the prophet. He's not just the ultimate prophet who's better than Moses, better than Elijah and Elisha, but he is the word itself, the eternal word who takes on flesh.

He's the one who was in the abysm of the father. He's explained him. He's clearly shown him to us.

He's come down from heaven, as you mentioned. And then even just, I was thinking as you were talking, the amazing nature of the

Lord Jesus, that he's not just the word, he's the prophet. Yes, he's the word, but he's also the word that is yes.

All the promises of God are yes and amen in him. And although this is not exactly the context of what

Paul means in that passage, but ultimately it's God's yes to a sinful world.

He is God's yes to a people that have forsaken God, chosen their own way, gone astray.

And yet God has still shown us his love in Christ. So I think we can't really overemphasize that.

Jesus as prophet, not just priest and king. Well, I was trying to quote a verse that I couldn't quite quote exactly.

So when that happens, Luke, I usually just look it up to get it right. Or you can just do the Hebrews and say somewhere it says. That's right.

He does do that. No one has ascended, John 3, verse 13, into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the son of man.

And Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness. So must the son of man be lifted up that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

So we want to talk a little bit about preaching today. Maybe Jesus, the preacher, and you can find that in red letters, right?

Is there anything inherently wrong with the red letter Bible? Just - No, I don't think so.

But people can kind of go astray from the red letter Bible because they think these words are more important when should like all the epistles that were written by apostles, obviously.

There's all red letters. They're the sent ones. Jesus sent them to go write those. Or just the Old Testament. Yeah. So maybe you just like red font.

Yeah, I just want the whole Bible to be red. Both ways, to be read and to be read. Yeah, oh, there you go.

Uh -huh, that's exactly right. You know what? This is just a side note, but this is ADHD radio, and that's just what we do here.

Tell us about the Connect Bible because there are some words in the Connect Bible, CSB translation that are green and some that are blue.

You know what I'm talking about? Oh, the Benjamin Glad Bible. Yeah, I think, well, I don't remember which one is which, but one of them is allusions.

So the Old Testament, not only explicitly quoting scripture or sometimes perturbing it and bringing a new sense out of it or explaining an original sense or whatever, there's also the allusions back to an event or an institution in the

Old Testament as well. So I think the new CSB, it's called the Connect Bible.

Connect Bible has both of those. What did I call it? I think that's what you said, too. Oh, okay, good. The Connect Four Bible, that's what

I thought you said. So before we talk about the call that we have to preach and 2

Peter 4, verse two, preach the word in season, out of season, be ready to, easy for me to say, preach the word.

Be ready in season and out of season. Reprove, rebuke, exhort with great patience and instruction.

Before we do that, I still wanna talk about Jesus the preacher a little bit, because you think, oh,

I get to follow my dad. He was a preacher, and it's wonderful that I, Luke, get to be a preacher. You know, there's a little bit of that.

And think, wait a second, I get to be a preacher and my favorite person in the world, the

God -man, Jesus, he was a preacher. I get to be a preacher. And I get to say the same things he does, that is to say what he's told me to say.

I love Luke 4, verse 43. But he said to them,

I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to other towns as well, for I was sent for this purpose.

And he was preaching in the synagogues of Judea. I was sent for this purpose. Now, there are other purposes that he was sent for, but one of the purposes, he was sent to preach.

And part of that, maybe, Luke, you can elaborate on, don't people that are healed physically still die and face

God? So what's the importance of preaching when it comes to the ministry of the Lord Jesus and eternal ramifications?

Well, I think the importance of preaching is part of the mystery of Christ's coming, at least to the disciples.

They think this is great, we're having a revival, everybody's coming and being healed. And just like the paralytic man, he sees this man's greatest need as the forgiveness of his sins.

And as Paul says, faith comes through hearing and hearing through the word of Christ.

The gospel saves, but it saves through the word. And we have a tendency in our day to disconnect the word and the spirit, the written word and the

Holy Spirit, and act as if they're in opposition to each other, instead of seeing that God accomplishes his purposes through the spirit, by the word, that he uses the word to grant new life, to regenerate.

It's his saving word that he sends out and heals, as the psalmist says. So yeah, I think it's integral to the ministry of Jesus because it fits the ultimate mission of Jesus to live a perfect life and to die the death that we deserve, suffering the covenant curses that we brought upon ourselves.

He can proclaim that that is what he has come to do. And I was just thinking of, even in Psalm 22, which we know is about the

Lord Jesus as he dies on the cross, in verses, beginning in verse 22, he says that, he says this, "'I will declare your name to my brothers "'in the congregation,

I will praise you. "'You who fear the Lord, praise him, "'all you descendants of Jacob, honor him, "'revere him, all you descendants of Israel.'"

And Augustine and others take that passage, not just to see the Lord Jesus as the preacher himself, but when the preacher preaches today, when a preacher faithfully opens the word, it's not just that he is preaching

Christ, but it's actually that the Lord Jesus himself is preaching himself to his people.

In the midst of the assembly, he is giving of himself to his people, nourishing them, giving them the strength that they need to stand until that final day when he comes to bring them to himself in glory.

So I thought that was an interesting point that Augustine brings up about that passage. Well, to chime in a little bit, since you've mentioned the book of Hebrews often, that's quoted in the book of Hebrews for that very thing.

And you're thinking, wow, that is amazing. The brilliance, the awesomeness,

I don't know what kind of word I'm looking for, but you just think, wow, I will declare your name to my brothers in the congregation,

I will praise you. Praising the Father along with Jesus, something we probably don't think about that often.

We're talking about preaching a little bit, specifically Jesus the preacher. Luke, let's talk some about,

I think it was Warfield channeled through Sinclair Ferguson.

And I believe it was Ferguson talking about, let's say Mark 4 or Matthew 8 and 9, passages about the power of Jesus.

I'm more familiar with Matthew 8 and 9 in the moment, even though I preached Mark 30 years ago. When you're a young pastor, you should preach through Mark.

Anyway, not in chronological order, but in a kind of an emphasis in chapter 8 and 9, here's the power of Jesus.

And you think lepers, cleanse, he even touches them and water and oceans and supernatural.

And he's just powerful over everything. Tell us a little bit about Warfield and Sinclair who stepped back and say, yes, he's powerful.

And the text is teaching that. But what does that passage tell me about the Savior himself? What do you think about that?

It sounds good. I didn't know about that, but I knew about the idea, but I didn't know. I don't, I'm not sure what you're referring to with Warfield and Ferguson, but.

Well, it's because you were working all morning moving the wood for me today. That's right, yeah. No, remember we had talked about it in the past.

And it was, what does that tell you when Jesus with power cleanses the leper?

Well, it tells you that he's also compassionate, that he cares about people and he has ultimate power, omnipotent power, and yet he didn't have to touch him, but he's compassionate.

And when was the last time that guy ever got touched? Everybody runs away, unclean, unclean, and here the clean one touches the unclean.

And instead of becoming unclean ceremonially himself, Jesus cleanses the man. And so don't you want a savior that cares for you and watches you and protects you?

So when we're preaching about Jesus having power, I also want to be reminded, what does that tell me about who he is?

The person and work of Christ. Now that makes sense? Yeah, it makes sense. Tell me what classes you're going to take in the spring semester.

I think I'm taking, well, you're putting me on the spot, ecclesiology is one of the classes probably

I'll disagree with the most. And then I'm also taking Christology, prophetic books, and a few other classes.

I can't remember off the top of my head. All right, have you had Hebrew before? Yeah, I've taken Hebrew. Aramaic? I haven't taken

Aramaic, no. Okay, what's the difference in terms if I were going to study Hebrew and Aramaic, what would I say is similar or different?

Well, I haven't taken Aramaic, so. Or else I could tell you. I thought maybe you would know. I know that Aramaic's in the

Bible too. I'm glad your Hebrew is better than mine because I never really did well with Hebrew, but I think spending a few months in Israel has helped you.

Yeah. How do you say yeah in Hebrew? Can, at least modern Hebrew.

That's right, that's right. So now let's talk about on No Compromise Radio, not just Jesus the preacher, but what we're supposed to be doing.

Luke, what about preaching and teaching differences? If you got up to teach a

Sunday school versus you got up to preach a sermon, what would be the difference? Not necessarily content, but you can include that.

What would be the difference even stylistically, volume, pauses, outline?

I mean, I probably have lots of people who watch that do teach the Bible in one way, shape, or form, but is it something different when you preach?

I think these are all the questions I'm supposed to be asking you as the altar preacher. I'm not even done with seminary, but it seems like it should be different that when you're preaching, it's obviously it's something special ordained by God where Christ is being given to His people.

They come in struggling with sin, suffering under persecution or trials just in the hard providences of life, and they need to be pointed up or to fix their eyes on Christ and what

He's done and to be equipped and encouraged to continue pressing on. So obviously in the back of your mind, you always have that.

So hopefully, I know I've done this before, so mea culpa, chief of sinners, but you hope that your preaching is gonna be not as much teaching with all the details about every

Greek or Hebrew word and more fixed on that purpose of how this passage points us to the

Lord Jesus and how it encourages us to obey as well often. And then teaching, I think I probably just wouldn't think about it as much.

I'd just do whatever I want and explain everything that I wanted to. Yeah, I think that's good. I think when you preach, maybe there's different volume, pausing, who knows what, but I think

I put more on the cutting room floor than I would if I was teaching. Yeah.

That is to say, if I've got 20 pages of notes for a teaching class, I probably have 10 for a preaching class or something like that because I just don't need to be all the, it's not a

Greek exegesis class. In Greek exegesis, what does every one of these words mean? What is a gnomic aorist? What is a objective genitive?

Here, I don't need to say that. I could say it's a command, continuous or whatever.

You said something about, you should be asking me the questions. Do you have any questions for me about preaching? I don't. Not that I haven't asked before.

That's right. All right, well, then let's come at it from this perspective.

When you listen to preachers, what are you listening for?

That is to say, if you had to teach somebody how to listen to a sermon, one of those 15 -year -old guys at church that are all excited.

Pastor, how do I listen to a sermon? What might you say to them? Well, I think of different things because I want to preach better.

But I think for them, I would encourage them to have those biblical principles in mind that this is not, probably my old view of preaching is it's just kind of a glorified

Bible study where if I learn some things, great. And I sort of sit there in judgment over the preacher.

And I guess it could sound self -serving, but I would probably tell them that's the wrong posture to a sermon.

You know, we don't want to have just roast pastor for lunch every Sunday. Critique everything. Yeah, where I instead, of course, there's times where we might disagree with things and we should examine the scriptures.

But preaching, when the word is preached, we should receive it in the spirit in which it's preached.

We should receive it as the word of God, not as the words of men, if it's faithfully exposing scripture.

So I think that would be my first encouragement would be to listen as if God has a message for you each time that you're being preached to.

So that probably is the first thing I think of. Love it. Tell me in the culture of many places in America, including

San Diego County, probably people are coming from churches with maybe really peppy music, upbeat music, maybe

Hillsong, Bethel music, very emotional, maybe lighter on lyrics and more on the beat and maybe the instruments.

I find many times, Luke, that people will come to BBC and we're probably, you know, a little more stale than you might be in terms of, you know, hymns and this, that and the other.

We have people coming and they'll say, you know, I don't really like the music that much, but I'll put up with it for the preaching.

And then over time they go, you know what? We're kind of glad our kids are learning hymns, right? We're glad for that.

If someone said to you, I'd like to come to the church, we love the preaching, but we don't like it that there's no fellowship area, kids area, we don't like the music, how would you encourage them to keep coming?

I think I would encourage them to just prioritize what God has prioritized. So one of the marks of the church, if you think about the three marks of the church, even in the

Belgic confession, you have the right preaching, not just right preaching, but preaching of the gospel, the administration of the sacraments and the use of church discipline.

And so, you know, those should really be our emphases for evaluating a church, not necessarily everything else.

It's not wrong to want a nice building or any of those things. I would love to have those things, but ultimately we should be evaluating what

God has said creates a church. And it could be, as it has in years past, it could be in the catacombs in Rome, it could be in secret places.

But I would say to someone ultimately, if one of the other people in our family was looking for a church and they moved to a new area,

I'd say you should look primarily for the preaching first and for those other things, the right use of the sacraments and church discipline beyond programs and other things like that.

And don't you think, Luke, in most churches, when the preaching's right, that is Christ -centered, redemptive historical, verse by verse, whole counsel of God, Christ for pardon,

Christ for power, law from the hand of Christ, all these things, when that's right, doesn't the music then become right?

In other words, doesn't that train the musicians and others to say, you know what, here's what we're learning and now we want the songs to mirror and reflect that.

Right, if you just walk into people that lead music and say, I want Bethel out, Hillsong out,

Maranatha out, whatever the flavor our brand is, that's kind of more difficult, right, with artists and folks like that versus I'm just gonna start preaching.

And by the way, before you know it, it happened here. I mean, Charlie Crane is very adept theologically. Early on, 30 years ago, we sang all these songs that we probably shouldn't be singing, but the level of teaching was here, so the level of music was here.

And I'm just saying in preaching, so goes preaching, so goes the music in terms of content and origin.

Do you guys sing Bethel songs? No. Why not? I mean, if you type in Bethel, Bethel problems or something, there's plenty of, yeah, problematic things theologically.

How about Hillsong songs? I don't think so, no. Would you ever listen to a Hillsong song at home? Not unless you were playing it.

I don't really listen to that kind of music usually. What kind of music do you listen to? I listen to podcasts and audio books mostly, but sometimes

I listen to Gregorian chants. Seriously? In classical music and jazz, sometimes some punk maybe.

Who's your favorite jazz artist? John Coltrane? I like John Coltrane, Miles Davis. I like some swing too.

I don't know. All of it. Well, I know where the punk stuff comes from, but I don't know where the

Gregorian chants come from. Maybe your mother. I don't think so. Yeah. All right, today we're talking about preaching.

A little bit more about preaching. You'll know, Luke, that I regularly say to preachers who would like to teach verse by verse, don't preach too long.

That is to say, over 50 minutes. I mean, there can be exceptions. You got to finish Mark 16, eight or something.

But do you think, I mean, do you take that advice? Do you, when you're preaching around 40 minutes, 45 minutes, what's your philosophy of preaching length?

Because some people think, I mean, I thought, I can preach 60 minutes. That means I'm a great preacher. Like I, Paul, and a whole 60 minutes on it.

What are you preaching these days? Well, I would like to be preaching for 42 to 45 minutes, but that's part of the,

I'm a young preacher thing that I'm trying to figure out. But I don't think, I think I would, if I could wave a magic wand and every one of my sermons would be 45 minutes,

I would be happy. But I think usually if I go longer, it's because I'm not prepared. Well, one of the things -

Like I should be. Maybe some of the people don't know, besides having a wife and a son and one on the way and full -time seminary and a job and preaching most

Sundays, it's difficult. Yeah, it's busy. It's good though. As my dad would say, you never met my dad, did you?

No. He would say, grandson, it puts hair on your chest. Maybe we can't talk that way anymore.

We're talking about preaching today. Who would you listen to if you were going to listen to a preacher? I know you may listen to podcasts and things like that, but who would you listen to and say,

I like his preaching? I think probably my favorite preacher, even though it's not the same style, is probably Sinclair Ferguson.

I just really appreciate his emphasis on who the Lord Jesus is and some of the things you were bringing up earlier.

And then I think just the way that he gets to the main point of the text, he does a good job, not just going through verse 24, now verse 25, now verse 26.

So I think if I had to pick my favorite preacher, it'd probably be Sinclair. I like watching preachers and I like listening to them.

And he regularly holds his elbow. Oh, I didn't notice that. And he's the only guy that I know who is an elbow holder.

And it's effective. I'm going to start doing that. When he starts holding his elbow. Tell the people who are watching and listening the

Sinclair Ferguson story of behind the scenes at the Shepherds Conference when you were serving behind the scenes. And some of the non -English speaking people wanted notes and he didn't have notes.

Do you remember that story? Sorry, no, I have no idea what you're talking about. I remember that story. And I think you told me the story that he didn't have notes for his main session at the

Shepherds Conference, plenary speaker, but they needed to have his notes translated into Spanish. And so he just sat down in one of the cubicles upstairs at Grace Church and then wrote out his sermon for the people in Spanish so they could translate it.

I didn't know that. Sounds like a nice guy. Yeah, very nice. I keep trying to get

Sinclair here and tempt him with all kinds of golf course things and everything else, but I haven't been able to get him here yet.

You were too little to probably remember. It was in 2000 and Kim and I and you and Haley and Maddie was just very tiny, went to London.

And then we spent some time there with Grandma Evie. I remember the first day we sat on one of those red double -decker buses because we were trying to stay awake after the overnight flight.

And then we drove up to Scotland. Steve and Lisa, my brother -in -law and sister -in -law were there.

And so we drove up to Scotland and I wanted to know if Sinclair was preaching because he had taken over Eric Alexander's position at St.

George's Tron, Glasgow. And so I called and just left a message and said, will

Pastor Sinclair be teaching Sunday night? Because we were going to go to a different church in the morning. And then I got the call from Sinclair.

He returned the call. Yes, I'll be preaching on Sunday night. And then I'll never forget, and this is good for us to be reminded to serve other people.

We went to the service and he walked up into that pulpit up the stairs, pulpit shaped like a wine glass for communion.

Oh, really? And we're singing songs. And afterward, I wanted to talk to him.

And you'd think he'd want to talk to a lot of people that were his own flock and everything, but he came right up and said hello and greetings.

And I said, we were the one that called. And I said, I'm a new pastor in New England and I'm preaching through Mark verse by verse and I'm having a hard time with application.

What do I do? Some of the things doesn't seem like it's very applicable to the church in terms of things that they ought to do.

Maybe think yes, but not do. And he wrote those commentaries. Let's study Mark, let's study

Hebrews. And he looked at me. I wish I could give you the Scottish brogue. He looked at me and he said, Mike, is there anything wrong with showing people the glories of Christ every week?

What'd you say? What could I say? But I didn't put that into practice for years to come, but that stuck in my mind.

Is there anything wrong with hearing the glories of Christ every week? Sometimes when you hear a sermon, you ought not to say,

I need to do something. I need to think about something, or I need to repent, or I'm learning something new about who

Jesus is. When you first started dating Hannah, when I first started dating your mom, I wanted to know every little thing about her.

What made her happy, sad, what she liked, music, food, what she enjoyed.

And I just wanted to get to know her better, right? And that created a closeness and a communion and this tightness because we knew each other intimately.

It's like, I just want to know more about Jesus. And isn't heaven going to be great? Because we'll keep learning and learning and learning.

My guess is we'll keep learning all of our days in heaven, if there is a day. Are there days in heaven?

Sounds like it. So I'm glad you tuned in today.

We talked about Jesus, the preacher, then our own preaching. God had only one son and he made him a preacher.

Mike Ebendroth has only one son and God made him a preacher. I'm very thankful for that. I don't love the parallel, but.

Uh -huh. You know, God made you a preacher. Yeah, I know, but the whole, yeah. By the way, I'm so thankful Luke is a preacher because I failed to teach him so many other things.

I'm not a mechanic, I'm not a car guy, I'm not a computer guy. And so if Luke wasn't gifted with preaching and teaching, people would look at me going, what kind of parenting did you ever have?

What did you ever do? But now people think I actually did something, even though God gifted him and I was just the instrument.

Thanks for being on, Luke. It's been a joy to have you and look forward to seeing you in California. And it's been neat that the

Lord has given you many blessings, just enough to kind of get you through tough times and difficult times to say, it's definitely worth serving the