Don't Preach Like Rick Warren (Part 2)

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, but we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry.

Preaching That Honors God Rather Than the Audience

My name is Mike Abendroth, and I am talking today about preaching, listening to sermons. I love preaching. I love to hear sermons. By the way, if you ever ask the question, what do I like to listen to?

To whom do I listen? I, of course, listen to S .O .S. Johnson. I've been listening to him for several years, and when I get on the bicycle, this is good biking weather. Well, not today, it's raining today, but when I am on the bicycle, I love to listen to sermons.

Maybe the last 15 minutes, if it's been a long ride, I might put some Pandora music on. But I like to listen to sermons, so S .O .S. Johnson. I like to listen to John MacArthur. Reminds me of Grace Church.

I think about faithfulness through the years, gospel fidelity. And lately, I've been listening to the entire series, I don't know how many messages, 15 or something like that, from Jesse Johnson. I met Jesse at Grace Church, and then preached with him at Brannon House's Worldview Weekend.

And I thought, you know what? He's been preaching through judges, and I'd like to learn more about judges. I've been fascinated with the judges, and Ehud, and Eglon, and Debra, and Cicero, and Jael, and Manoah, and Samson, and Delilah, and all these people.

And so Gideon, and Othiniel, and Barak. So I listened to the entire series. You ought to do that. Now, Jesse's not paying me money, although he should. Just type in Jesse Johnson. Jesse the Body Johnson.

Emanuel, he's in Virginia someplace, and you can pull up his judges' messages. You ought to listen. So I love to listen to preaching. And who else have I been listening to lately? Lloyd-Jones, there's the new app for your phone.

Martin Lloyd-Jones Trust, you can listen to Lloyd-Jones now free through your iPad. We're trying to get a no-co app. The good news is we want to do the app, the bad news is we don't have the app. I don't ask for money, so we're sunk.

We're stuck. If you'd like to go to Israel, though, I will say you can give money to this because it'd be for your own trip. Israel, February 15th, 2015. We'd love to have you go. You have until October 1st to get your deposit in.

Go to nocompromiseradio .com, and at the top right-hand corner, Israel 2015. I hope you are going to the Shepherd's Conference next year, the big one on inerrancy. I hope to do that. So we'll just get back from Israel.

We'll say hello to our family for a couple days, hop back on another plane, and get to the mothership. Get back to the conference of all conferences. So I was talking last time about preparing sermons, and I've noticed, of course, there are 10 different types of sermons, and we could talk about exegetical, expositional, textual, verse-by-verse, verse-and-verse, verses that are verses, verses-other-verses, but if I just had to boil down sermons that are coming from most evangelical churches, there's man-centered preaching, and then there's God-centered preaching, Christ-centered preaching.

Now, there's a blend. There's a mixture. There's, on the line of the polls here, we could get in between, and it's 40 man-centered, 60 God-centered, 100 man-centered, 100 God-centered, but just in general, those are the two different kind of orbits regarding preaching.

Most churches, sadly, and I'm not saying this because we're the only good church in the area, although we're the only good church in the area, just kidding, but most churches are man-centered in their preaching and their delivery, and you see that demonstrated by how they approach the text, how they approach the audience, how they exegete the audience first, how they're concerned about how the audience feels and relates and the brokenness of the audience and how they need a pick-me-up for the week because it's been a bad week, and now let's start off the Monday with a good thought, thinking good Gary Smalley thoughts.

Let's show some videos. I think there's a church locally here that played that nail, the woman with the nail on the head, and let's play that as an illustration of something, just awful stuff. I think I've said awful a lot, so let's change the description.

It's really asinine is what it is, but since this is no-compromise radio, I guess I can say some of those words, and so there's man-centered preaching, and then there's God-centered preaching, and of course, which one do I want?

Well, I might want man-centered preaching if I'm thinking immaturely, if I'm thinking in the flesh, but if I'm thinking biblically and I go back to the Bible, to the first prophet Moses, as he's called, or any other prophet from Malachi, Elijah, Elisha, Jesus, there's almost a determined disregard for the people as the primary audience.

Now, of course, they're talking to the people, and when Paul is preaching, he wants them to be reconciled to God. He has a desire for their salvation. He wants the best thing for them, that is reconciliation with an offended God.

I understand that, I get that. I'm not trying to say you shouldn't love the people you're preaching to. You know, it's easy to love to preach, but to love the people you're preaching to, and if you love them, won't you address some of these things?

What I am saying, though, is if you think about God first and faithful to the text and honoring authorial intent and showing people where this passage fits in the big picture between creation and consummation, with redemption in your message, then we need a good dose of man-centered preaching hardly.

We're already getting that. And so, you know, it's funny to me, you don't have to tell people to be good and be a good neighbor. I mean, that's pretty much, everybody knows that. That's built in even to our conscience.

But we do have news that people can't get from their bosom, their gizzard, or anyplace else, and it's external, and it comes from the Bible, and it's good news about God. It's good news about his salvation.

It's good news about his son, and it's good news for us, yes, but it's good news. And so, I just cannot stand man-centered preaching. That's the seven and a half minute intro, man-centered preaching.

You ought to run from. Now, there's a right way to leave a church, and there's an awful way to leave a church. There, I said awful again. But you ought to be at a church that's preaching with a high view of God and a high view of scripture and a high view of preaching, and not a church that runs sermons through the filter of, as I talked about last week, eight questions to ask when preparing your sermons written by Rick Warren on pastors .com.

He has eight questions that help him prepare for sermons, and so I just want to say these are eight ways not to do it. Are there some little bits of truth in this article? Well, I'm not saying there's not, but this is a paradigm shift.

This is a philosophy of ministry that is completely man-centered, and it flips everything wrong side up, and the bad news is people love it. People want two services of this, three services of this, four services of this, but you shouldn't like this kind of preaching.

If you're mature, you will quickly recognize this is not gonna be helpful, and I have temptations that are huge and grand and intense, and I need doctrines that are bigger. I need views of God that are bigger than my temptations.

I don't need this kind of watered-down pep talk, gruel, you know, basically in my mind, in my opinion, it's been Norman Vincent Peale, Robert Shuler, and then Rick Warren, and of course, I'm not a betting man, but it seems like Francis Chan would be the next one to take over.

If I had to make a wild prediction, wild prediction of the day, Francis Chan would take over at Saddleback. I don't think it'll happen, but I guess it just wouldn't surprise me, and so you have these men, one after another after another, and of course, Rick Warren is smart, and he understands terminology, and he isn't going to be as blatant in his description of things, or his delivery, or his methodology, but when I read this, I just think, this is exactly the opposite way I teach the men at European Bible Training Center and at Southern Seminary.

This is the exact opposite way. This is the way not to do it, and so just in review, to whom will I be preaching? And so you're trying to picture the people in your mind first and get the attention with people about what they value, something unusual, or something that threatens us, and so instead of exegeting the text first, you exegete the audience, and how do you prepare?

He said, when preparing your sermons, this is question one, to whom will I be preaching? Great question, but wrong answer. The question is, to whom will I be preaching, and that is the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.

I want to honor them. This is my offering. This is my love gift to the Father, Son, and Spirit as I am a commissioned preacher. I don't mean commissioned by men. I mean by them. I have an offering for them, and by the way, this bleeds into evangelism too, doesn't it?

I hope you have a desire for unbelievers to be saved and you want to show love to them, but I hope before that, prior to that, on top of that, at number one priority, I have a message that I want to give that pleases the Lord, and if these other people are pleased, great.

If they're not, I'm still pleasing the Lord. What's their main motive in preaching? To honor the Lord. Question two, what does the Bible say about their needs? Oh yeah, I have to listen to the last one because I just cannot go over that again.

It's going to make me bugged. Three, what is the most practical way to say it? And he misquotes John 10. 10, Christianity is a lifestyle, and so you got to think about how to teach people how to live.

That's what Jesus did. He's always practical with his doctrine. Four, what's the most positive way to say it? Okay, so I've got something that I need to say. How do I say that? Alexander the Coppersmith didn't do me as much good as I wanted him to do.

There's just the language, the language of soldiering, the language of enemies, the language of false teachers. How do I positively say it? I don't know who thinks that way. I don't know who talks that way.

When I have to go to someone's bedside and they have terminal cancer, and I was at someone's bedside this morning, and they have terminal cancer, and I talked to them, I didn't say to myself, and I know this is not a sermon, but this is the same philosophy, but I didn't say to myself, what's the most positive way to say this?

I just thought, you know, I love this person, and I wanna make sure they're ready to die, and so I said to the person, you're gonna die. Are you still believing in the Savior that you've believed in for the last 20 years?

Yes, I am. How do you know, are you afraid to die? No. How do you know you're going to heaven? Because the Lord Jesus paid for all my sins. I said, isn't it wonderful that we have this great risen Savior who has shown his love towards us at Calvary, showing his love for us now?

Even though you're dying, you're still gonna praise him, and you're gonna say, do you know, I love him because he first loved me. What's your favorite song? And then he tells me his favorite song. What's the most positive way I can say something?

That's not what I ask. What's the most practical way to say it? That's not what I ask. How can I be the most faithful to the text? Biblical fidelity, authorial intent. That's what I'm after. These are all man-centered.

Back to my main theme again. God-centered, man-centered. Man-centered is, how do you feel? What's the way I say it? How to be practical? Number five, what is the most encouraging way to say it? Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Sometimes you encourage, of course, 2 Timothy chapter four, when you preach the word in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort. That word means to come alongside, like the comforter, like the pericle, to come alongside in comfort, with great patience and doctrine.

So much for his doctrinal scud, against doctrinal scud, earlier in number two. I wanna encourage people when I preach, but I encourage them not by putting them in the center. And even with worship, worship isn't about us.

Worship is about the Lord. And so when I'm preaching a sermon, it is an act of worship. And I am trying to honor the Lord with my worship. This is my worship to God, faithfulness in my preaching, showing them Christ Jesus once again, the wonder of the universe, that the God-man would die on behalf of sinners like us.

Representative, substitute, this is an amazing thing. Of course, Jesus died for sinners, but he also died for the Father. He died for the Spirit. You know, there are so many things that I could talk about.

It just really bugs me when we've got these people that just eat up teachers, who give them man-centered sermons. Where do we ever get the impression that a good sermon, Warren asks, must make the people feel bad?

Preaching just a weekly highlight of the sin of the week, then you need to go back to the drawing board. I'm not going back to any drawing board where I gotta draw something up. I'm under a mandate. I'm under a commission.

I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus. 2 Timothy 4, verse one. This is not some game. This is not how big can I get my church and how can I influence people, positive thinking and friends and relationship.

When the church is persecuted, we're gonna find out how these big behemoth churches, full of people, you know, reminded me of, I just was in Africa, where you have starving kids and their bones are sticking out, except their stomachs, their stomachs are distended, bloated.

That's a picture of the church today, isn't it? Huge, bloated, five services, but they're starving from the inside out. It's a sign of death. It's a sign of starvation. Small little limbs, but a huge tummy that's just bloated and distended.

Clarity, Simplicity, and the Danger of Overtechnical Preaching

Number six, according to Rick Warren, eight questions to ask when preparing your sermons. What is the simplest way to say it? What's the simplest way to say it? Spurgeon compared preaching to the bucket in a well.

If there's anything of value in it, it will appear bright and reflective. If there's nothing in it, it appears deep, dark, and mysterious. Simple does not mean superficial, shallow, or simplistic. It is a Christ-like skill to make profound truth understandable in simple terms.

What's the simplest way to say it? I do think that this would probably be the one I agree with him on the most. But most seminary preaching, they get out of seminary, they're in seminary, it's too technical.

If you're an evangelical and you are a pastor and you're studying and you're looking at subjective genitives and objective genitives and gnomic heiress and things like that, that can be too much of the truck being backed up and just dumping data on people.

By the way, that just gives expository preaching a bad name. And if you're a pastor, you ought not to do that. And if you're a congregant and your pastor does that, well, pray for him. He's probably new and I'd rather have that than just some feel-good, pick-me-up, fire-walking Anthony Robbins deal.

We do want to say things simply. But when I have questions to ask when I'm preparing my sermons, I don't think this is on my top eight. You say, yeah, Mike, it shows. But I have to give him credit. You should say things simple.

But I think, I could be wrong, but in my opinion, that this is one more man-centered way. I've got to be simple so they can understand it, simple so they can grasp it, simple. Now, if you're talking about simple so they can understand what reconciliation is and simply say it, of course.

Personal Testimony Versus Heralding the King's Message

Number seven, what's the most personal way to say it? What's the most personal way to say it? People relate to stories. The most powerful form, Warren goes on to say, of advertising is still the personal testimony.

That is why while the Pharisees spoke in footnotes, Jesus told stories. Wow, see, I never knew that. You know, every book I write, I want footnotes. And they push them to the back for endnotes, for simplicity.

I'm still bugged, I want footnotes. Jesus told stories. And it's imperative to be transparent and confessional in our preaching. The greatest communicators drop the mask and get personal. That may be true that the greatest communicators in the world do that, but biblical heralds don't because they have a message from God.

The herald doesn't share and give a testimony. The herald goes to the king and the king says, by the way, I've got some news. I've given these people in my kingdom land, food, grain, protection, wives.

And we don't really, we're running out of grain. And so there's gonna be a new tax. And so the herald runs out to the people and says, well, you know, it's been a good year, but things are a little tight.

And you know, the way I feel is the same way you feel. And, you know, before we revolt or anything like that, this is what we should do. And this is how we should go about it. And I like it any better than you do.

And let me just tell you a story about what happened to me once. Well, the bottom line is we should probably pay more taxes. It'd be good if we all did that together. Now, does that sound like a herald to you?

The herald gets the message from the king and the king's message is, I've been good to you, but I need you to pay more taxes. And the herald runs and he doesn't use we language. It's second person imperative language.

You pay more taxes. Does the herald have to pay more taxes? Yes. But he didn't say that because he's heralding the message of the king. He's the mouthpiece for the king. As Aaron spoke for Moses, we speak for the king.

Pay more taxes. That's directly contradicting this drop the mask and get personal. Now, if I get up and preach a message, husbands love your wives like Christ loved the church, it's a big gulp for me because I don't love my wife that way.

I want to, but I am a number one, shame, shame, shamedly though, sinner when it comes to that. And so if a pastor gets up and says, this is hard for me to preach because I so fail in this area, but the text is the text.

Let me now preach it to you. Well, I can live with that because I've probably said that. But second person imperative preaching, you must think this way. You must not think that way. You ought to do this.

You find the best preachers in all the world. They're all second person imperative preachers. Predominantly that. Say we once in the pulpit of sermon and then repent. Don't say it again. George Whitefield, consider your souls.

See, that's implied second person. You must consider your souls. Consider your souls. Harold has the overtone of a military victory and you send a runner to the front and you're a general and the runner observes we're winning and the runner comes back and then the runner says to the king, we are winning.

We win. You're winning. See? See the difference between the we and the you? King, you're winning. Of course we're winning, but king, you're winning. And so when we start saying communication, transparent, confessional, I don't want it to be about me.

I can't get myself out of the way fast enough. I don't want it to be about me. I want it to be about Jesus. By the way, a side note, this is why multi-campus churches, I don't want to sin in front of the congregation, but when I do something that I ought not to do, I hope the church says, I see that with my own eyes.

I better pray for him. He's a man like us. And I think, I'm glad he tells me about Jesus. That's what I'm after. What if you just have a video screen? Somehow you start thinking that is Jesus. He is the savior.

Interesting Preaching That Still Stays Christ-Centered

He is the deliverer. He is the redeemer. Number eight, what's the most interesting way to say it? Okay. He says, while a sermon should never be reduced to a mere comedy routine, it's okay to be funny.

You don't have to be dry to be spiritual and we should never be afraid of being interesting. Okay. That one I agree with. I never say to myself, I'm going to be funny. If I'm speaking at a conference, a family conference, I might put something funny in there.

But Sunday mornings, I don't script in humor, although there is some humor because it's just talking that long, it's bound to come into play. But I don't say, well, you know, what's the difference between Benny Hinn and a dog?

Well, a dog can heal. I don't do that. Interesting people. That's one of the things I love about John MacArthur. He just reads a lot. And so people who read a lot are interesting because they read about things all across the world, all across the eons, and they are interesting people.

So there should be some interesting things when it comes to preaching. Hey Cicero, you come in here and lay down your head and I'll give you some milk. You wanted water and put your head right down here and then in goes the tent peg.

You know, there's drama in the scriptures. That's for certain. If you want to know how not to preach, then you can go to pastors .com. If you want to know how to preach, you could listen to Sinclair Ferguson, you could listen to S. Lewis Johnson, you could listen to John MacArthur, or even these days I've been listening to Jesse Johnson.

And so those are the folks that have been on my iPad. I touch, I preach. My name is Mike Abendroth, this is No Compromise Radio. You can write us at info at nocompromiseradio .com.

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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