The Laborers' Podcast- The Preaching in a Healthy Church

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Please join the gang in our new series concerning Biblically Healthy Churches.

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Hello and good evening. Welcome to the Laborer's Podcast. We've got some new things to introduce to you this evening.
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This is the newly named Laborer's Podcast, formerly the Pastor's Panel Podcast, but we wanted to broaden our horizons and be taught by other men who may not be holding a pastor position or be ordained, but are well versed in scripture and God has given them wisdom and we want them to share that with us and teach us.
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So we're glad to change the name for the better purposes of reaching people with the gospel and with the truth of God's word.
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I'm thankful to have Tyler with us. Tyler is new to the podcast and we're thankful that he is here and hopefully he will continue to join us in the future.
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We've got Claude with us and we've got Dan with us. I'm so thankful for these men and what they bring to the table and what they share.
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Another new thing that I wanted to share with you guys, I think I'm probably going to have to take this overlay off, but we have a new website.
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Yeah, I'm going to have to take it off real quick. There's our new website. If you would like to go visit our website, it tells about who
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Truth and Love is, when you can join us, how you can contact us, speaking, and then there's our laborers podcast, abolishing abortion information on that, churches and ministries.
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All the other guys, this doesn't reflect them. This is my personal website and ministry.
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You can check out those that I recommend and suggest. Dan, how do you say your church's name?
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Oneonta. Oneonta. Oneonta.
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There you go. I recently put Oneonta on there. We've got Here I Stand Theology Podcast on there and we've got
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Bread of the Word on there on the ministry list. I'm proud to have those guys on the ministry list and then the eschatology series that we did recently.
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Those YouTube videos are on there. Check out our website if you get a chance.
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We'd really appreciate it and appreciate your input, your feedback.
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What is the address? Yes, the address. Thank you, Claude. Truthinlovenetwork .com.
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You can do the www .truthinlovenetwork .com. Check it out and give us some feedback.
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Now, without further ado, I told Claude that I had something for him and I wanted to bring this up before we get into our topic this evening.
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Claude does a podcast called Here I Stand Theology Podcast. If you've watched it before or if you've listened to anything that Claude does, every now and then
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Claude will bring up this question to his guest, which he hasn't done here yet, which is okay.
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He brings up this question. He poses it between this gentleman and this gentleman, who would win in an arm wrestling contest?
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I wanted to pose the question, where did that come from and why did you start asking that question?
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Honestly, as an icebreaker, because I was so nervous starting out the first game.
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I thought, we got to do something to break the ice. Otherwise, I'll just lean over and throw up in the garbage can.
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It's just something fun, especially when you talk to the bigger name guys.
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By the way, I'm going to be put together since you said that. I had
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Wilson on a while back, Doug Wilson. It was the day before his debate with James White.
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I asked him, if you and James White had arm wrestle, who would win? It was the normal fun stuff that went back and forth there.
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Have you got to watch that debate yet? I did. Have you watched it, Dan? I watched the first two thirds of it.
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You watched Jared Longshore's introduction, right? The two men. How about you,
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Tyler? I keep wanting to call you David, my brother -in -law, but how about that? I have not caught that yet, no.
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Did you think back to this? If not, go back to it. Jared Longshore, when he says, now, it was decided, back in the back, who would go first by an arm wrestling match?
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I'd ask Doug Wilson if he'd send me a picture or something. He said, I'll do what I can. I think that was a veiled reference to what
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I asked him. I called it when I heard it. You're the first person that I thought of.
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Your name's getting out there. They know who
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Paul Granger is. I doubt that. I don't think Doug Wilson remembered it after the fact.
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Well, I'm going to carry your challenge over to this podcast.
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I thought maybe, behind the question, I thought, well, Claude, he's trying to bring some manliness back.
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He's trying to bring masculinity back to Christianity. That's true, too. Here's my pullover from the
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Here I Stand Theology podcast. I'm laying down a challenge. I'm challenging anybody that wants to, in the podcast world.
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I'm up for an arm wrestling contest. There's my challenge.
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If anybody wants to answer, they can contact us. I'll send you some pics when we're done here.
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I'll text all of them to you. I'll text them to all y 'all. We're going to begin tonight a new series on what a healthy church looks like, healthy aspects of a church, things that we should be looking for in our church, working towards our church.
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Of course, we're going to be pulling from scripture because that's where we get our cue.
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That's where we get how God wants us to do things.
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How we know we have a healthy church is if we are pulling what we do from scripture and letting scripture be our guide.
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Tonight's topic in the beginning of this series is going to be preaching. If you've only been to one church your whole life, you may think that there's only one form, one style of preaching.
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It may be harder to believe now that media has gotten so big and is so easily accessible that you've got preachers on the internet everywhere.
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You can listen to podcasts. You can listen to sermons, videos.
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Sermons are everywhere. There was a point in time where you went to your church and that's the only style, that's the only person that you heard your whole life.
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I can say that was in our lifetime. The internet come along,
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I think while me and Claude and Dan were growing up and alive. We were pre -internet and post -internet.
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We've seen the progression, but it's I believe from scripture.
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Preaching is vital and it's important. Not just that, it's how
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God wants us to preach. We're just going to ask some simple questions. We would like to ask you, those of you who are watching, to ask these questions along with us.
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Listen to our answers as we try to pull from scripture, what we believe the
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Bible says about preaching, what kind of preaching we should be listening for in our churches, and then move forward with that information.
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Here's the first question that I want to pose to you. You guys just jump in there.
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If you feel like somebody's finished and you have something to say, just jump right in and answer the question and give us your insights.
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The first question is, why do we hear preaching in church every
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Sunday? I know that there's expectations of certain things being in church.
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You know that we're going to sing. You know that we're going to take up an offering.
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At some point, we're going to have communion or the Lord's Supper. There's just certain expectations that you have when you go to church.
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One of the staples is that you're going to hear some preaching of somebody talking about God's Word and standing in front of you and preaching.
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Why is it that that's one of the staples, one of the things that you can expect every Sunday in church?
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I'll start. That'd be good. The Belgic Confession, Article 29, gives us the marks of the true church.
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We see that listed out in the Belgic Confession. We believe that we ought to discern diligently and very carefully by the
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Word of God what is the true church. First of all, it's important for us to understand what is the church.
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The Belgic Confession lays this out very plainly for us that we're separate, that we're unique from all other sects in the world today,
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S -E -C -T -S. We've already stuck our foot in our mouth about inclusiveness and deconstruction, and now here we are talking about sex on the podcast.
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S -E -C -T -S, sex groups in the world today. So they are very clear in this article in the
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Confession. We're not speaking of the company of hypocrites who are mixed with the good in the church and who nonetheless are part of it, even though they are physically there.
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They go on. The true church can be recognized if it has the following marks. The church engages in the pure preaching of the gospel.
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That is the first identifying characteristic of a biblical church.
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So why do we, to stop short here, why do we expect to hear preaching every
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Sunday in church? Because that is the defining characteristic of the church. Every organization and every group is proclaiming a message.
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They're proclaiming a message, no matter how you look at it, long or short. They're proclaiming a message, and the responsibility of the church of Jesus Christ is to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ and to proclaim the
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Word of God according to and measured by the Word of God itself. Jump on in there,
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Talyn. Well, you mentioned the confession. I'm not too familiar with that one, but I am a huge fan of the
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Westminster documents, and I love the way that the shorter catechism starts, what is the chief end of man, meaning what is our greatest purpose?
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It is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. And the second question kind of builds on that principle and asks, what role has
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God given us to glorify him and enjoy him? And that the only role that he has given us, it states, is the scriptures contained in the
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Old and New Testaments. And the bottom line is the God of the Bible is a
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God of words. We are, by nature, we're visual people.
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We think in pictures and movies and stuff, but God has revealed himself to us in words.
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And sometimes that's strange. Sometimes that's difficult. It takes a different level of work because we want the pictures, we want the movies and the visual representations, but God speaks to us in words.
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Amen. And you're kind of talking about general revelation versus specific revelation.
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Correct. And so we can know God visually. Even scripture says that through creation, it speaks of his existence.
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But then this specific revelation, God in his kindness, which he didn't have to do in his kindness, he gives us through what
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Tyler was saying, through words, who he is. And that's how we can have a personal relationship with him.
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And that's how the Holy Spirit, that's the means of the Holy Spirit of growing us in holiness is through his words.
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Amen. And so I think you're absolutely right. God has got up words and that's how we know him.
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And that's how we grow. Totally agree. Dan, you have anything to add on that one?
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Not really. They did a pretty good job on it. The other thing I would say is that one of the reasons why we do, or at least should, because I've been in churches before where you didn't hear preaching every
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Sunday. Usually on a Sunday where you think there would be preaching like Easter or Christmas and they have a cantata instead.
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But why we should hear preaching every
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Sunday is because God commands it. He commands that one of the things that we do in worship is to proclaim his word, to read, explain, and apply the scriptures to our lives.
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It's a part of, not the whole thing, but it's a part of what discipleship is. It's a discipleship as a corporate structure.
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What do we, as the people of God, how do we act? How do we do? What do we believe? What shouldn't we believe?
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It comes all from the word of God. And then we take that as a body, apply it individually, and then encourage one another towards those things, either towards right belief or staying away from an error or like practice or staying away from a practice.
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That's in Timothy somewhere, correction, reproof, or I forget.
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The word of God is profitable for doctrine, for proof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto every good work.
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How many? Every. Every. All right. Every. Oh, was that preaching? Was we preaching?
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Oh, my. I mean, again, of course, the scripture teaches us this, but this is another reason.
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This question here is another reason, just going along with what the other guys have said here, is why it's important for churches to be confessional.
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It's important for churches to hold to a robust, rich, theologically sound confession of faith because it helps the church members to understand and to know the importance of biblical doctrines in a systematized fashion.
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I want to go back to something else that was brought up, and I think it's okay that we talk about it, but since you just said that, talking about the importance of the church being confessional, expound on that just a little bit more because a lot of times, and this is just from my experience, that this isn't,
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I don't mean to paint with a broad brush and point out everyone.
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I'm speaking from personal experience, things that I've seen along the way. So some of the things that I've seen is you'll talk to a pastor, you'll talk to church members and say, what do you believe?
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What's your statement of faith or whatever? But it seems like, figuratively, we'll say it's in the filing cabinet, and we don't really, especially the regular attenders, the church members, have no clue what our confessions are, what our doctrines are.
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So expound on what you mean by that and how important it is for every member to be aware.
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So the importance here is this, is number one, we're called, again, going back to the scriptures, to be able to give a reasoned defense of our faith, why we believe what we believe.
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So of course, we must start with what we believe. That's been an unspoken, but the why we believe what we believe, that's been largely just cast aside and thrown down.
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And the thing about a confession, a biblically sound, theologically rich confession, is really, it's no different than the preacher getting up and preaching a message on Sunday.
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If he is studied in the word, right, and he's comparing scripture with scripture, a confession is just simply a restatement of what the scriptures say.
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And people will say, well, I will never be able to memorize scripture like so and so, like this person or that person, right?
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But at the same time, when they've got a confession, they've got something that they can kind of set side by side with the scripture and say, well, this is what the scripture says.
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And by the way, the preaching that we hear every Sunday in church, that's exactly what the church members should be doing.
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They should be taking what they've heard preached and setting it right up beside the scripture.
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They need to be backtracking and looking at every scripture reference that the preacher gives.
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They need to be going home and reading the chapter before, the chapter of, and the chapter after to test, making sure what he was saying, his application, is what the
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Bible says. So that's what a confession does. It just simply restates what the scripture says.
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So Tyler, if you have somebody that says, we don't need a confession because people have a tendency to hold it up, you know, on equal level of scripture or higher than scripture, or we just have the
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Bible. What would you say to those folks who kind of push the confession aside?
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And by confession, you know, Claude mentioned the Belgian Confession of Faith. Tyler mentioned the
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Westminster Confession of Faith. Some people may be more familiar with the Baptist Faith and Message 2000, 1689
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London Baptist Confession. So you've got multiple different confessions out there. So what would you say to somebody,
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Tyler, that, you know, feels like there's a temptation to elevate a confession equally with scripture?
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That's definitely a valid concern. I can understand the logic there. I've actually been there personally, and I would certainly be the first to say that the
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Westminster Standards are not scripture. They are certainly not on par with scripture. At the end of the day, this is just another tool.
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It's something that takes the big concepts of the Bible and breaks it down into smaller statements that we can easier wrap our heads around.
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I've been in churches where we didn't have the Westminster Confession of Faith, but we had bracelets that said, what would
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Jesus do? Yeah. We had these little simple statements and kind of ideas that we could try and trace back to the scriptures, and we can argue over different examples and stuff, but the point being that what would
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Jesus do is this is like a basic question that builds off of what we know from scripture.
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I would say that in a sense, that is like the confessions and the catechisms and those statements of faith.
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And two, would you agree with this? One of the ways that I view a confession is like gutter guards at a bowling alley or boundaries that kind of keep us in line so we don't get off the railings theologically.
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Would you agree with that? I love that illustration. Thank you.
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Dan, let me go back to you on a different question, something that kind of was brought up earlier, but I think it's okay for us to talk about.
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I'm not afraid of hitting touchy subjects because I've been in situations where a pastor has had to make decisions with the music director.
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Are we just going to have a song service today and forego the preaching? Or the preacher even gets up and he says, the
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Lord laid on my heart that we just need to have a song service today, so I've just picked out some hymns, and we forego preaching.
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And I think we can talk about this without hurting feelings, but these are one of the conversations that I've seen people get their feelings hurt over.
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But I think it's, theologically, I think it's a good conversation to have. So Dan, why is it important not to forego preaching and just have a song service?
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Or why is it important not to neglect the preaching of the word? Well, there's a lot of different reasons.
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I'll start off by pointing us back to the story in John six, where Jesus is talking to a whole bunch of folks and he takes them off and they leave.
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And then at the end, he's looking at Peter. He says, Peter, are you going to go too?
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He goes, well, why? Why would I go? No, you are the one who has the words of life.
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That's why, that's the importance behind why we preach every
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Sunday, is because who else would have the words of life? Now we can go back and look through the history of the church, all the way back into the
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Old Testament. You look at the command for them to, at their psalm assembly, stand, read the scriptures, explain them to the people after they'd lost the scriptures and then gone away into exile.
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They came back and Ezra and Nehemiah did the same thing. They stood there, exposited the word of God to folks.
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Paul's exhortation to Timothy, he says, I think it was Timothy, maybe it was Titus. Either way, it was good advice.
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Until he comes, read and explain the scriptures to the people. Like the verse that Brother Claude read earlier, that scripture is sufficient for everything, life and practice.
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One of the aspects of worship is recognizing God's place as supreme and who he is.
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He's creator. He's sovereign. He's Lord. He's God. He's all the things wrapped up into one.
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So to hear his words proclaimed by someone every Sunday, it's life giving as long as the preacher is preaching properly.
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Otherwise it can get very dangerous very quick. That's why it's important to preach each and every
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Sunday. I'd also make the same argument for the Lord's supper, but we're not talking about that right now.
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If you're going to sing every week and you're going to preach every week. It's a good conversation.
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It is. Let's jump onto the next question. And Claude, I'm going to address this one to you because of the audio that you just played.
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The next question is what is the difference between preaching and teaching? I know culturally, most of us, even people outside of the church, they have an idea or a thought of what preaching sounds like.
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And I think hence the audio button that we just played with the organ music, because culturally we have an idea.
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This is what I think, or this is what I associate with preaching. So biblically, what is the difference between preaching and teaching?
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I would say the best, simplest statement that I've ever heard is a quote from Martin Lloyd -Jones.
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Preaching is logic on fire. Teaching can be, again, it can be any information.
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It can be how to change your oil. It can be how to do this, how to beat the crowds at Walmart, how to go on, whatever the case may be.
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Teaching is not unique to Christianity. Neither is preaching, again, when they're separated.
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But the heart and the soul of the gospel, like Tyler said, is the written word.
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Dan quoted that passage from John. Everybody went away.
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Jesus said, will you also go away? Peter said, to whom shall we go, for you have the words of life.
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So there's nowhere else for us to go. But if we wanted to make a distinction,
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I would say that it is the fervency, the passion with which one communicates the scriptures.
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I posted something on Facebook the other day about people preaching casually.
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I had a church member actually text me and say, so what do you mean by that?
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Because again, it goes to one of your other questions, that really goes into the styles of preaching.
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Some people think if you ain't getting loud, you ain't preaching, right? Some people think you ain't communicating the truth.
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And then on the opposite end, other folks say you're not communicating the truth effectively if you are getting excited.
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Amen, Jonathan. If you're not getting excited. But there really is a balance because just like with the keys, right?
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Folks really and truly what they're looking for when they're looking at a church nowadays or for the past,
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I don't know, as long as we've been alive, we can't speak for anything else. But really they're looking, is that preacher going to move me?
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Does the tone of his voice fit what I like to hear, right? Or is he all bark and no bite?
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Because really you've got, again, I know these are country terms, but you've got extremes on both sides.
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You've got preachers that are all bark and no bite. You've got preachers that are all bite and no bark, right?
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They're the snap and pops, but they ain't a stick of dynamite. And that balance as a pastor personally,
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I think really has to be carefully had, right?
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There is nothing wrong with tears. We ought to shed tears. We ought to be broken.
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We ought to be grateful and thankful for what the Lord's done. But we don't have to have those tears for it to be a demonstration of the spirit and of the power of God.
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That is done and accomplished by the word alone. So Tyler and Dan, if you could give two more adjectives,
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I believe I heard Claude tell us or use the adjectives urgency, fervency.
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So Tyler, what are two more adjectives that you would describe preaching or how you could describe preaching?
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Well, as I was thinking on that, that's kind of a big question. I found myself in the book of Jonah because I try to dig into some of the languages and ask questions with that.
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And I found myself in Jonah 3 when he was preaching in Nineveh. And that word that usually gets translated as preached in Hebrew is kara, which is a little hard to render.
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It's basically QR. The best way we can plug that in is kara. And kara basically means to cry.
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It's a very intense emotional word. It means to cry out aloud. It's a roar.
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It's a very, there's a lot of passion built into that word. So I would say passion.
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When you say kara, the picture that came in my mind was Claude with the nunchucks.
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I was thinking Dan, what other adjectives would you give to describe preaching?
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I would say reverence and unction. Reverence first, because you should be about half ready to throw up when you climb into the pulpit to preach.
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And I've done a bunch of it, but every single time, as I'm walking to the pulpit, it's like, ah,
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I can just, there's the door. I can just scoot on out real quick and everything will be all right. Every single time you go, you realize because of the seriousness of what we're talking about before, you're the one who's standing and proclaiming the words of God.
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So now you being in that situation, you say something that's wrong or you encourage people in a wrong way, or you just blaspheme
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God on accident. You're the one who's there to encourage his church.
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Like that's scary. And unction, I don't even know how to define that one.
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But like Jeremiah 20 verse nine says that if he said he wasn't going to speak in the word of the
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Lord anymore, I think it's 20 I may not be. If he said he wasn't gonna speak in the word of the
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Lord anymore, but it was like a fire caught up in his bone. He couldn't stop from speaking.
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He had to get it out. And so there's a, I think unction kind of takes reverence, respect, the idea of God being holy, a fervor, passion, and understanding a sense of urgency.
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It takes it all and kind of rolls it up into one. Because if you have any one of those adjectives without the others, you're missing something.
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And really, you can't do any of that rightly without the power of the Holy Spirit. So reverence, humility, and unction.
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Before we go any further, and we're just two questions in, I'm gaining an even greater sense of the importance of preaching within the church and preaching every
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Sunday. I'm seeing the picture of how important preaching is. And so let me pose this question to you and whoever wants to answer it is free to answer it.
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There's criteria. When we go to look for a church that we want to attend, there's criteria that we look for.
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And a lot of times you'll hear, well, they have something for my children. That's probably the number one that I hear most of all.
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Where should preaching, and I'm prefacing the next few questions with this question, because we're going to be talking about purpose and style next.
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But where should preaching fit on that list of criteria when you're looking for a church?
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It can be close to the top. I don't know if you'd want to put one above the other, but you want to have about,
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I don't know, we look for about three things. And if those things aren't there, then we don't consider it.
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Is there a proper church government there? Are the elders and pastors, are they qualified?
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And how do they preach? Do they preach the word of God? So if you have the basic structure is okay, and they believe in the word of God, obviously it would be top up there.
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And then if they preach well, I mean, just stick it out if you got to.
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I mean, there may be issues, but I mean, that's kind of rare nowadays. So I don't know.
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I would look for all that, but I don't know. I'd put all of them kind of on the same. If you're missing any one of those things, best you can.
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Sometimes circumstances dictate otherwise, but yeah. So what if we get that backwards?
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This particular church has something for my children. They have children's programs and preaching is on the back burner, or it may be not even on the list at all.
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What's the negative effect when our criteria list priority is prioritized wrongly?
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Well, do they actually have something for your children then? That's probably the best answer that I could have gotten right there.
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I wholeheartedly agree. So, but at the root of your question, when folks are looking for all these other things, children's ministry, youth ministry, whatever, was that this at the heart of your question?
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Yeah. Was it that they're seeking these things above the truth of the scripture that makes it out of whack?
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Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And preaching is just not, maybe even on their radar.
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You're right. And I would say children's ministry and the music are the top things that I've seen over the years and I think is a trend really.
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And I would, let me just look right in the camera. I would say if you're looking for a church that's got good music and the preaching is slack, you need to check yourself.
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If you're looking for a church that's got something for your kids above the preaching of the gospel, you need to check yourself because as a
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Christian, again, it goes back to the proper foundation, the proper instruction being given.
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And that comes from the classroom and the pulpit.
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That comes from there. Now the music should be theologically sound, but that goes into your styles really.
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You've got your preaching styles. Everybody's got a preference, right? They want this or they want that. When we were, the three of us, with the exception of Tyler, because he's just a young man, but we're saying the three of us here.
38:31
Yeah. Right. We grew up where we saw churches where they actually had wars and came down to a reconciliation and agreement where, you know what, we'll have a traditional service at eight o 'clock in the morning and then we'll have a contemporary service at 1030 and we'll make everybody happy.
38:53
But that's the problem. Church is not meant to make everybody happy. Church is not meant to be shaped and fashioned and we're not to cater to customers who are seeking to have their own self -seeking pleasure fulfilled.
39:09
The Church of Jesus Christ is about proclaiming the message of God's Word to God's people so that God's people can be enriched and edified so that God's people can know
39:19
Him. I apologize if I seem serious here, but so that God's people can know Him and know
39:26
Him more because it's in knowing Him better that we love Him more, that we're able to rightly worship
39:33
Him, that we're able to rightly reverence and honor and respect His holy name.
39:42
And I'm going to try to stick what Tyler said right in that noggin.
39:49
If you're looking for a church that has something for your children, then preaching is going to be at the top of the list.
39:58
It's going to be at the top of the list. And then not just children, but all the other things that Claude mentioned as well.
40:04
It's so good. Such good stuff. Thank you guys. So let's jump to the next question. What are the different purposes of preaching?
40:14
Tyler, you want to jump in there? Absolutely. I think one great example of what we ought to be aiming to do in preaching, we find in Ezekiel chapter 3.
40:28
Ezekiel's an interesting book. There's a lot of, a lot of it's these really vivid visions that you kind of have to think about a little bit.
40:35
But I was pretty captivated with the first couple of verses in chapter 3. And God says to Ezekiel to eat the scroll and then go and preach.
40:48
Because Ezekiel had the scroll in his possession, but it wasn't within him.
40:55
And so for him to go out and proclaim, thus saith the Lord, he had to internalize the scroll.
41:02
And I think that one of the key purposes of preaching, as opposed to teaching, is teaching puts the scroll in front of us, in our possession, but preaching aims to put it within us.
41:15
Amen. That's fantastic. Dan, what would you add to that?
41:21
What are the purposes of preaching? I've always thought of it to be about four of them.
41:29
To encourage, warn, rebuke, or remind or instruct people of the scriptures.
41:36
If you go through the preaching event and you've accomplished that while obviously holding close to the scriptures and telling people about Christ, just keep on with it.
41:49
Amen. Paul, do you have anything to add to that?
41:55
Purposes? I'm just saying amen. I'm saying amen and amen and amen. Me too.
42:01
That's the truth. By the way, that's biblical too. For folks that are watching this and that you're a member of a local church, when the word is preached, the proper response is to say amen.
42:16
And it could be that you can't say amen because you don't know. But when you know, you're able to agree with it or disagree with it.
42:24
That's right. So say amen to your pastor this Sunday. And even us
42:30
Presbyterians. That's exactly right. Hey, again, it ain't about being
42:35
Presbyterian or Baptist, right? That's right. What was it Spurgeon said about his mother's prayer?
42:42
He said, we knew how gracious and kind that the Lord is to us, but I never would have expected something to the effect that he would have gone exceeding and abundantly above our wishes and made me a
42:56
Baptist. That's good.
43:07
I know at least Claude, you're familiar with him because we talked about the true church conference.
43:14
And I listened to one of Jeff Noblitt sermons in the past. I think he was preaching through Ephesians and he was telling his congregation, look, we're not trying to get through Ephesians.
43:26
We're trying to get Ephesians through us. And that's very similar to what Tyler was saying.
43:32
You know, the purpose is to get it within us. That's very, very insightful.
43:39
Very good. So we want to look for purposes when we're in our churches, when we're listening, when we're searching for church, we want to think about the purposes of preaching and are those purposes happening there?
43:58
And then next, our next question leads us to another identifier of the kind of preaching that we should look for.
44:06
What are the different styles of preaching? Claude, do you want to jump in?
44:12
What are the different styles? Oh, I see. Throw me under the bus. So of course, basically different styles, right?
44:21
There's calm, cool, and collected, right? There's climbing on the backs of pews, excited, right?
44:29
I mean, honestly, if you've never been...if you've never got to...never been exposed to these...Robert,
44:39
you had mentioned this earlier, to various styles of preaching in churches. It's good for you to experience at least once, right?
44:47
So different styles, you know, you have the...it goes without saying, right?
44:55
That the man that stands behind the pulpit, when he stands...uh -oh, that's not inclusive,
45:01
I know, but that's biblical. The man that stands behind the pulpit, he may, you know, stand up straight and tall and may enunciate every vowel and syllable, and it's just...it's
45:15
like listening to Sinclair Ferguson, as the meme said, describe toast, right?
45:21
It's beautiful. It's just...it's so calming. Then you have folks who will, you know, just get excited, right?
45:29
They can't contain themselves, but like Dan quoted from Jeremiah earlier, right?
45:37
Jeremiah said, I'm not going to say anything else about the Lord, right? And then his word was in me like a fire shut up in my bones.
45:45
It could not be withheld. There are the boisterous preachers in history.
45:52
George Whitfield, one of the great evangelists, right? One of the great evangelists of the early...I've
45:59
referred to it as the early years, but he was a great orator, but not in the sense that the orators of his day were, where they were, you know, just monotone and level and able to tell everything.
46:16
George Whitfield described those men of his day who were like that, he called them velvet -mouthed preachers, right?
46:25
Because he was one, too. He had a stage presence. His voice, you know, could rise and swell and do whatever.
46:32
So you've got those styles, and again, style does come into play with people's likes and preferences.
46:39
You can't fault people for having likes and preferences, but we can hold people to an account that they are responsible to discipline themselves and to say, you know what?
46:52
This may not be my style of preaching, but it's sound, and I'm not getting sound theology from the one who outwardly seems like the one
47:07
I should be getting it from because he's speaking in a certain way. It's not about how we speak.
47:13
It's what we speak that matters, the truth. Yeah, and before I move on,
47:20
I think you touched on something, Claude, and we want to speak truth, we want to speak truth and love, but we want to speak truth, and just as important as our topic is tonight, the subject that we're talking about tonight, just as important as that is, it's just as important to talk about the qualifications of the person who is presenting, and you were right.
47:46
According to Scripture, one of those qualifications is that it's a man, and we want to speak that and say that lovingly, but we want to speak the truth, and I think we all hold the conviction that that is the truth of God's Word there, and then we also want to include the other qualifications that we find in Timothy and but that's just as important,
48:11
I think, to go along with this topic. Tyler, Claude talked about styles, but what are the different kinds of preaching, and I'll give you the first one that comes to my mind so that you kind of know the direction that I'm going.
48:28
So, one of the kinds of preaching is topical. So, what are the different kinds of preaching that you've heard of or studied in the past?
48:38
So, I'm aware of two, one being topical, and the other being expository, and topical is,
48:47
I think, often more common in a lot of churches these days. I've been at a lot of churches that did topical preaching that it's they're driving home a particular topic.
48:59
It's often something that they've chosen ahead of time, months, maybe a year in advance, and it's just kind of sticking a bunch of passages together that line up with the topic, and that can either go really well or it can be very forced.
49:17
I think there's a right way to do topical preaching that is simply letting the text speak for itself, but personally,
49:26
I'm more of what's called expository teaching, which is just exposing what's in a particular passage and just striving to let the text speak for itself, like with the
49:38
Old Testament when you read Ezekiel 3 about eating the scroll. What does this have to do with anything?
49:46
And we break that down. Why did Ezekiel have to internalize the scroll?
49:52
And we try to flesh that out and how this fits into the gospel and what
49:59
Christ did on the cross and through His resurrection and all that bringing everything full circle.
50:08
Dan, are there any other kinds of preaching that you've heard of? There's a type called a running commentary, and basically what you do is you pick a passage, and as you read it, then you go back through it explaining every nook and cranny as you go through.
50:26
You get to the end, maybe you apply it, maybe you don't, maybe you sprinkle a little application in along the way.
50:35
But instead of pulling out all the main ideas and themes from the text and then proclaiming those in your own words, you're more or less relying really heavily on the text of scripture itself to actually provide your substance.
50:50
And by that, I mean like your outline and the words that you say.
50:55
So, I mean, it's similar to expository, but it's more like if you're given an oral commentary on the passage more than proclaiming the passage to the people who are in front of you.
51:12
So, it's more... Would that be more like a lecture style? Yeah.
51:19
You think of it like a lecture style. I found out that when I was much younger,
51:26
I don't know, about 10 years ago, that's actually what I did, because I was so scared of screwing something up that I would just go through and stick with the text.
51:33
And it was probably a good thing for me. I have a big mouth, big foot.
51:41
So, stick with that until you're able to formulate the ideas from the passage and pull together the themes and draw it out of the text and be able to plant it in the minds of the people in a rememberable way, which
51:54
I would call more expository preaching. But running commentary is kind of...
51:59
I mean, you could tell people exactly what's going on in the book of Judges and not bring it back around to Christ and not tell how it fits in the rest of the context, because all you're doing is talking about what's there as far as words and syntax and the story itself.
52:20
Any other ones? There are. I don't know what they are.
52:26
Okay. Yeah, I can't remember all of them either. There's quite a few. I've heard of one called textual preaching.
52:38
My list, I'm trying to recall back from looking at Haley's Bible and book, if you've heard of that.
52:47
One of the ones that he lists is textual, and that's... I think that's a pretty common style of preaching that a lot of people hear in Southern Baptist churches, where you have a pastor who reads a text, and then you have his sermon.
53:06
And they're kind of maybe two separate things. And he may allude back to the text a little bit throughout his sermon, but I think he described that kind of as textual.
53:20
And if I'm not mistaken, a long time ago, I heard that Haley's Bible and book before a certain evangelical evangelistic association.
53:35
You got to hold up. It depends on what year you have. So you got a new one before a certain evangelistic association took it over.
53:44
Haley's Bible handbook included... Zondervan? Before Zondervan took it over?
53:51
There was a certain evangelistic association that took it over. This was the story that I had heard.
53:57
And before that, they included expository preaching. But after that, they took it out.
54:04
And I can't remember the other. There was like three in there, textual, biblical, and maybe something else.
54:12
Have you heard of any others, Paul, that you want to include in the list? Yeah. Okay.
54:20
So there's two others, exegetical, which is basically expository.
54:28
And then there's narcissus, a phrase coined by Chris Roseborough, which all of the popular preachers are narcissists.
54:38
They narcissist themselves into the text. Which really, it's the word eisegesis, right?
54:46
So exegesis is drawing out of the text what's there. Eisegesis is reading into the text, which is a challenge when all that a church does is preach topically, because it's very easy for the preacher to get on his hobby horse every week, week in and week out.
55:07
But the thing about expository preaching, exegetical preaching, is that organically, everything's addressed.
55:16
Everything. Murder, adultery, drunkenness, abortion, whatever the case may be.
55:23
When you go through the text, it may take 10 years to get to everything, but everything's going to come organically.
55:32
It's not going to be forced. It's not going to be awkward. The only reason that we've got to feel sick, and by the way,
55:38
Dan, I'm so thankful to hear you say that about getting sick every week. I mean, I'm that way, literally.
55:44
Every Sunday, I'm sick before I go, and I'm glad when it's over.
55:50
Folks wonder, why are you so tired? You only preached 45 minutes today, right?
55:56
Thank you, Lord, that it was a short sermon today, right? But folks don't realize that the emotional toll that a preacher goes through, because when a pastor really loves his congregation, he wants them to have the right things, and he's always in anticipation and considering what he's going to say, how people are going to argue against it, but it's an emotional drain.
56:38
This is why it's important. I know it's a sad note, but pray for your pastor.
56:44
Man, nobody knows what he's going through. Nobody knows what his family's going through. Pray for your pastor's wife, because man, oh man, there's so much there, but that's neither here nor there, but yeah, so eisegesis and exegesis, yeah, but that really goes into expository.
57:06
Yeah, and thank you, Claude and Dan, for explaining the weightiness, and you should be able to get that from your pastor, how they feel the weightiness, which is another reason to pray for them, and just to clarify, because those were some big words, so I just wanted to clarify for somebody who may be listening that may not be familiar with those words.
57:33
Again, exegesis is pulling out of the text what it says, letting God speak to us.
57:39
Eisegesis is putting into the text what you wanted to say, and then that newly coined word narsegesis.
57:48
That's Chris Roseborough, by the way. That's right. That's reading yourself, not just reading what you wanted to say, but that's reading yourself into the text.
57:58
One of the big examples is the account of David and Goliath, and you're
58:06
David. You're reading yourself into the text. You're saying, you're David, and Goliath is the sin in your life, and you need to throw some stones at it.
58:17
You want to insert yourself into that text. I think you'd be one of those Israelites up there pooping himself.
58:23
That's right. So I think this next question is going to take us where we want to go with the discussion of the kinds of preaching.
58:40
So which style, well, we won't say style, which kind of preaching that we just talked about best accomplishes the purposes that we talked about earlier?
58:53
We'll probably have a consensus here, I feel. Balanced and biblical. You need to have both.
59:04
Yeah. I would say, really, if you can take all of the types of preaching, minus narsegesis and eisegesis, you can take all the rest of them and meld it into one sermon, that would probably be the best, because you've got the expository nature.
59:22
You actually want some solid teaching, and you're standing in proclaiming and taking in your boots, and hopefully they will be too.
59:30
So you mix it all together, throw it all together. If you want to, as far as starting with a topic or starting with a passage of scripture,
59:43
I would err on the side of caution and start with a passage of scripture, because otherwise you can try to, on accident, cram an idea from the
59:52
Bible into a text where it didn't come from. You were right, but that didn't come from there.
59:59
It came from nowhere. Which you're just falling into eisegesis there. Right. So start with a passage of scripture and then roll with it, the whole thing.
01:00:10
Run a commentary, expository, gather the themes that make it a topical thing, but stick right with that text.
01:00:19
And here's why. Because people are so different. And you've got little kids, old peoples, poor people, rich people, big people, little people, whatever kind of people there, and their brains work different.
01:00:36
Think through things differently. They have different life experiences. So you need to hit all of that in order to be able to communicate to them effectively.
01:00:45
Amen. You're not going to be able to communicate effectively talking about Greek words and Hebrew words with the children that are in our church, because the children in our church are seven and below.
01:00:57
They're like, what's Greek? They have no idea. They're going to be able to relate to a theme or a story or an analogy of some sort that explains the books in a way that it drives their home for them.
01:01:10
Whereas somebody who, we've got a lady in our church who holds a doctorate in mathematics.
01:01:15
I mean, she really likes the analytical stuff when you get into the nitty gritty of the text. So for her, that's what she wants.
01:01:23
And you've got all of it. So you've got to give all of it because you're there to preach to the congregation.
01:01:29
Amen. And you're there to communicate effectively the truth of the word of God.
01:01:39
Would you all agree that the main diet that we should be looking for is mainly expositional, expository?
01:01:50
Undoubtedly. And using Tyler's terminology earlier, when we use the words exposition, expositional, expository,
01:02:02
I like to use the same word that Tyler used earlier. You have a pastor who is exposing, pulling away the curtain and is exposing what the text says, what
01:02:14
God is saying through the text, that specific text. And here's a question that comes to my mind that I find different answers on.
01:02:27
And we'll try to wrap it up here in just a second. Application in a sermon.
01:02:33
I've heard in the past, John MacArthur is one of the, if not the greatest expositor in our time.
01:02:40
And I think that I've heard in the past that he's not big on including application in his sermons because he feels like that's the role of the
01:02:47
Holy Spirit. But I've also heard other great pastors and teachers say that they do want to include application in their sermons.
01:02:57
So where do you guys fall on that? Oh, I sprinkle it throughout.
01:03:07
The way that explained to me for preaching, because I was just a dumb guy that just ended up at the
01:03:15
Bible college for some reason. And a preaching professor said, Dan, I want you to just understand this.
01:03:21
Your job is to read, explain and apply the text. That's it.
01:03:28
It's like, so cool, let's do this thing. So if there's a point where you can make application during the body of your sermon, do it.
01:03:39
If you need to build a case and then at the end of it, bring it home, do it. If you can do both, better.
01:03:49
Yeah, application needs to be there. It also needs to not be so specific that it doesn't apply to everyone.
01:03:56
It doesn't need to be so broad that they leave thinking, oh man, I'm really excited.
01:04:02
What are you going to do about it? I don't know. And the application needs to be expositional as well.
01:04:14
It needs to come from that specific text. Right. Yeah. The application is not me saying, hey,
01:04:23
I think you should do this. So I'm going use this text to try to prove my point. The purpose of application is because this is what the word of God is saying.
01:04:36
And in your life, that means it should look like this or this or this. That's the instruction.
01:04:44
That's the instruction part of the Timothy passage. Instruction, reproof, rechecking it against the scriptures, rebuke, right?
01:04:54
What's wrong and what's right. And then repentance, right? And so continually we're made and molded, sanctified.
01:05:04
That's the work of the Holy Spirit. I think part of the meaning of the text is the application.
01:05:11
I've been teaching through Romans since like October. And I've been, when you get through those first couple of chapters, they are heavy doctrine and Old Testament references and all this.
01:05:23
And then you get to chapter 12 and his Paul's writing becomes very choppy, very direct.
01:05:30
He's drawing out very specific application. There's been application through Romans 1 through 11, but with chapters 12 through 15, it's very intentional.
01:05:41
It's very obvious what he's doing. And so there were times where he was, as Dan was saying, sprinkling it through.
01:05:47
And there are other spots where he lathers it on. And so I think there's a little bit of give and take there.
01:05:55
Yeah. Well, Tyler, I'm going to give you the last word if you would like to answer this question.
01:06:01
And then Claude, if you'll share the gospel after that, and Dan, if you would close us in prayer after that. So we want to speak to the person that is evaluating new information or they are looking for a church and we've convinced them that preaching needs to be at the top of their priority list.
01:06:23
So could you summarize how you would counsel someone who is looking for a church, they prioritize preaching at the top of their list, what they need to be looking for based on our conversation tonight?
01:06:40
Well, I think as we've gone into detail, one of the big things is how they handle the word of God.
01:06:49
Are they seeking to point everything back to the gospel and try to bring what
01:06:55
Christ, who he is and what he did into a greater realization through every nook and cranny of the
01:07:01
Bible? Are they keeping the word of God in the center? Is everything that they are offering to you rooted and anchored in this book?
01:07:22
Claude, would you share the gospel with us? Yes. Scripture says that we're born in sin, shaped in iniquity.
01:07:30
Because of Adam and Eve's sin in the garden, we have inherited a sin nature which separates us from God.
01:07:38
But according to the scriptures, Jesus Christ was born of a virgin, came in the likeness of sinful flesh, born under the law, the same law that humanity has been subjected to their whole lives, the law of God, and never been able to fulfill.
01:07:56
Christ completely and perfectly lived out the law of God in the flesh, him being fully
01:08:03
God and fully man. And he took upon himself the iniquity of us all, according to the scriptures, when he hung on that cross at Calvary.
01:08:13
He who knew no sin became sin for us, the Bible says, so that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.
01:08:22
And so, the call, it's not a request, it's a call. Repent of your sins.
01:08:29
Believe on Jesus Christ. By the way, Jesus Christ not only died on the cross, was buried in the grave, but on the third day, he arose and he ever lives, ascended to the right hand of the
01:08:41
Father, where he, according to Hebrews, ever lives and makes intercession for us as his people.
01:08:48
So, if you do not know where you stand in eternity, you'll go to one of two places, heaven or hell.
01:09:01
There's a heaven to gain, as us old country folks say, there's a heaven to gain and there's a hell to shun.
01:09:07
But Christ died for your sins. Believe on Jesus Christ and be saved today.
01:09:15
Dan, I'll turn it over to you, brother. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for our time together.
01:09:21
We pray that you would give us a hunger for your word, respect for preaching, and that we would find ourselves in a body of believers this
01:09:31
Sunday, listening to it, listening to your words. Pray that you would work in each one of us to know you more, to love you better, and to live our lives as we ought to.
01:09:41
We love you in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. All right. Thank you, gentlemen, for being with me.
01:09:46
Thank you guys for watching. Remember that Jesus is King. Go live in the victory of Christ. Go speak with the authority of Christ and continue to go out there and share the gospel of Christ.