Give Me Jesus, Not Self-Improvement (w/ Chris Gordon) | Theocast

Hi, this is Justin. John and I recently took a trip to California and were invited by Chris Gordon, who is the host of Abound in Grace Radio and also the pastor of Escondido United Reformed Church to spend some time together and do some recording.

And so the content of this episode is the first part of that lively and enjoyable conversation. We cover the topic of preaching

Christ, particularly over and against a different kind of preaching that tends to overemphasize application and even self -improvement.

We talk about what matters most in a church and finding a church where you can get the goods every

Lord's day. We hope you enjoy the conversation. Stay tuned. If you'd like to help support Theocast, you can do that by leaving us a review on iTunes and subscribing on your favorite podcast app.

You can also follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Plus, we have a Facebook group if you'd like to join the conversation there.

Thanks for listening. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ.

Conversations about the Christian life from a Reformed pastoral and covenantal and confessional and all kinds of all that.

Hey, this is what we're trying to do. We're trying to clarify the gospel. We're just trying to make this intro even more wordy. Clarify the gospel and reclaim the purpose of the kingdom.

And that's definitely what's going to happen. Because we're not clarifying this intro, amen? That's right. Your hosts today are Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in the beautiful state of North Carolina, specifically

Asheville. And I am John Moffitt, pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee. And Justin and I recently took a trip to California.

And part of that trip, we got to, as you already heard in the intro, we got to spend some time with Chris Gordon. And man, was that enjoyable.

I mean, we spent a lot of time just before we even sat down to record, just getting to know each other.

And it's so refreshing, as I'm sure, Justin, you can say, that to be around a brother who loves the gospel, who loves ministry, who's excited about preaching

Christ, it is so refreshing just to sit there and just learn and receive and soak in, and we got the opportunity to go to his church, hear him preach, take the

Lord's communion. And so anyways, it was a really good trip. Yeah, we knew of Chris and of Abound in Grace Radio, but we didn't know him personally.

And there are good things that do happen on social media in our day. And so Chris saw on social media that John and I were headed out to California for the

Westminster conference and to do some other events and things. And he hit us up and was like, we should definitely connect while you guys are out here.

And we are really glad we did. Like you said, definitely feel like we have met a good friend and just a like -minded brother in Chris.

Had a great time hanging out with him at a couple of different points during the trip and really had a blast recording with him.

We spent like two hours talking about a number of different topics in his office on a Sunday afternoon.

We had a lot of laughs, a lot of brotherhood and fellowship in the gospel.

I know those are like really Christian -y words. I apologize for that, but man, just a good time. I mean, my soul was encouraged, you know, and I felt bolstered in the faith and thankful to have been able to talk about this stuff we talked about with Chris.

So I look forward to doing more with him down the road, potentially. Yeah, for sure. We definitely would love to do some more recordings.

Anyway, so stay tuned. This first episode is lively. It's fun. A lot of laughing, a lot of gospel.

So, and we've got some more comments for you at the end of the episode. So we'll see you guys there. Enjoy. All right.

Well, thanks for tuning into the program today. It's always great to have our listeners listen to Abounding Grace Radio.

And today we are in studio with some dear friends of mine.

It hasn't been long time friends, but now I feel like I've been following you for a while. So that counts.

Well, that's true. I've been following you guys too. It's like, we'd never talked and I, uh, these guys were coming to the

Westminster conference here in Escondido and, and they put it on Twitter. Like, you know, we've got to tell everyone where we're going.

That's what we do. Right. So I, I reached out to Mecca. This is the

Mecca of the reform world. Escondido is the place. I think it means hidden. So you got to find it in some language.

Yeah. Um, so anyways, I reached out to you guys. And, uh, I said, listen, we got to meet, we got to connect and I would love to do a program with you.

So what this kind of is today, maybe we should introduce ourselves. I'm Chris Gordon. And, uh, you are across from me,

Justin Perdue and John Moffitt. And we should, you know, we should do this. John Moffitt, pastor of Grace Reform Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee.

Yeah. I am Chris Gordon, pastor of the Escondido, Escondido United Reform Church. And I am,

I'm Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina, two Baptists and a reformed guy, walk into a dope study and have a conversation.

We do have to talk about the study a little later on that we have to talk about. I'm good. I'm, and we'll talk about the 10th commandment and I'm free.

I'm free game, whatever you guys really, so we're, we kind of tried to decide here whose turf we're on and I was like, we're, this is neutral.

We're just going to like banter back and forth subjects and you guys will do with it. What you do on your excellent program, excellent program.

I give it props and say, you guys are just fabulous. I, I think you guys are necessary today.

And so many, and that program is called Theocast for anybody. Yes, shameless.

No, I just, I, in case people don't know, it's like, well, which program are you for? Well, you know, you were just in worship here in Escondido and I saw like all my people running up to you.

So obviously you get listened to largely and widely out there. So that's great.

I mean, you guys are doing, you're doing wonderful, classic reform stuff. And we'll talk maybe about the

Baptist stuff a little bit, but, but I mean, it's great. I'm, I'm really thankful for what you guys are doing and your commitment to it, to, to confessional reform doctrine in a day where, you know, people would say that just doesn't work anymore.

Make confessionalism great again. That's right. Exactly. So, so anyways, um, where do we begin?

Where do you want to begin? Well, I mean, we just heard an amazing gospel sermon where Christ was extolled.

So I'd say we start with the preaching. Yeah. We'll talk about preaching. What is that? Yeah. What is preaching?

Yeah, well, it was, so obviously we had lunch with you guys today and another great pastor and, um, it's, it's interesting when you get around men who love

Christ and know what preaching is for, uh, it's refreshing. One of the things that I do at our church, because we have so many evangelicals and just people from broad perspectives that ended up coming in,

I always ask them this question in membership class. What's the difference between preaching and teaching? Yeah. And people don't really know. They don't know.

And so sometimes people come into my Sunday morning service or our Sunday morning service, and they're expecting teaching because that's what they've kind of been around.

Like really, and we'll talk about evangelicalism later, but they're expecting a running commentary and teaching aids.

And so they want outlines and things like that. And I said, no, actually, um, the, the purpose of preaching is to give you

Christ and to persuade you that Christ is sufficient from all of scripture. Yeah. Amen. I, I might start by saying we're called to preach the law and the gospel.

We'll talk more about the law and the gospel later, but if in a word, man, we should seek as preachers of the word to extol the excellencies of Christ and give him his person, his work to the saints.

Yeah. And even in application, this is something we could maybe riff on later. Cause I hail from a world where application is

King sometimes. Right. And it's still my world too. Okay. And we wish one application.

Right. And, and there are pastors all over the place that I think in ways that are, are really, uh, man, heavy burdens to bear in sermon preparation are agonizing our application.

Right. And we're all for application. Yeah. But the first primary great application of any text is to apply

Christ and the gospel to the hearts and minds of the saints. Right. Right. And the applications, you know, they flow at first off, they flow out of the text.

That's right. Oftentimes, you know, what we have are our guys coming up and trying to be creative. I mean,

I'm sure you guys have talked about this a million times, you know, with the step stuff and trying to figure out how best to reach the people.

It's not, I think this is what Paul's talking about. When he talks in, in first Timothy about, you know, that the preaching is done in and Corinthians and the demonstration of the spirit and power, there's no power in a certain kind of ministry today.

And I even think it goes, gets down even to what we were talking about. What is preaching? I mean, it's, is it just a chatty discourse, a chatty talk of a guy getting up, you know, patting you on the back, strolling around on the stage, trying to make life good for you?

Is that, is that really what preaching is? I, I feel like I've said these things, you guys so many years now,

I mean, I would think, okay, this is all figured out, but it's not, it's just not right.

So it comes with like preaching itself is a proclamation, right?

And it has a herald already behind it. We can talk about like how far people abuse authority.

I mean, that happens and we can talk about certain figures, but there is a sense of, you know, this guy's really bringing me, bringing me something from the text that I need to know and hear, especially about salvation, about Christ, about gospel, about good news, right?

Exactly. And it's news that is to be received, to be trusted, believed, rested.

I think in most evangelical churches, when they show up, they don't believe there's something supernatural happening, that the spirit is coming and is using the power of his word to convict, to console, to cleanse, to create within us a new heart, to, to bring to us a fresh anew of his, of his grace and his kindness and his mercy.

So when people hear sermons, they're thinking, give me a TED talk. You know, they wouldn't say entertain me.

That's not that that's unspiritual, but give me a nugget, teach me, lead me in that direction. As far as like when

Justin and I were sitting there this morning as pastors, we don't often get to sit and just be a congregant. You know, we do, but we still have to minister because those are the sheep that which we care for.

We're elders in our congregation. But today was so refreshing because I sat down going, I am going to be fed. And I saw you stay awake.

We were, we were happy to be here. And yeah, we often don't think in these terms either, that we are receiving the

Lord Jesus Christ in the word, in the proclamation of the word and our faith as we have

Christ heralded to us as the, like we heard today, the hope of the new heavens and the new earth heralded to us and the comfort of that and the certainty of that because of what

Christ has accomplished for us. It's all about what he did. It's not about what we do. When we hear those things, our faith is sustained and confirmed and strengthened.

So if I can, 1 John 5, 13, I write these things to you who believe in the name of the son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life.

John Calvin, in his commentary on 1 John, on this verse, he says, notice though, how disciples are confirmed in the faith.

It is through having the office and the power of Christ explained. And then he says that it is, he goes on later in the paragraph to say that it is therefore the duty of any godly minister to extol as much as possible, the grace of Christ, so that being satisfied in that, we might look to nothing else.

You know, and that, that ties into John 20 when he's commissioning, basically the mini commission there.

It's not really a mini, but it's anticipating the sort of great commission. But in, in John 20, he speaks of the coming of the spirit, but then he says, you know, you go out, what is

Jesus focusing on and telling the disciples to emphasize? It's the forgiveness of sins.

So, you know, Calvin, Calvin on that verse says something really powerful. He says, um, many things are undoubtedly contained in the gospel.

So there are many things we could talk about when we talk about the gospel, but the primary objective, which the ministry of the gospel is intended to achieve is the forgiveness of sins.

And then he goes on and says, if we want to be faithful ministers of the gospel, we must give our most earnest attention to this subject.

All heathen philosophy talks about how to improve you. Yeah. And he says, but this is what makes

Christian ministry and preaching unique. Yeah. Is that the particular goal and aim of the forgiveness of sins?

And I'm sure you guys have gone through acts. I mean, it is amazing how focused these guys are amidst persecution, political problems, you know, don't preach it.

They are so intent on staying focused on the ministry of preaching the gospel. That's right. They're in a hostile world.

That's right. They're preaching the person in the work of Christ for the forgiveness of sins. Like you just said.

Yeah. Yeah. Very interesting. They're not really speaking to the social and political situation. Yeah. I'll throw in an author on a century, a little hot of a hot topic.

I think we had made this comment earlier today, or I may have leaned over and said something to you. But when we're talking about the sufficiency of Christ and knowing who

Christ is and, and the person work of Christ, when we think about something like the chosen,

I've heard so many people tell me, oh, I've just learned. And I've been able to engage. And there's just like this personal connection there.

What you're telling me is that the scripture is lacking something that you have to get outside of scripture to know who

Christ is and that's dangerous. Yeah. We've seen these phenomenons all throughout. I mean, you know,

I think I'm a little bit older than you guys, but I'm at least grayer, you know, so I don't know if that means wisdom or not, but today we'll say it is, but yeah, but I mean, just think, you know, remember what they did to the passion of Christ, you know, remember how that was celebrated as like the greatest evangelistic tool ever.

You know, we stood back and say, well, if that's true, where is it today? That's right. You know, it just didn't, it didn't endure where, you know, where's your purpose driven life today?

Where's the prayer of prayer of J -Bez today. We have all these gimmicks. We've got all this stuff that comes and goes and we should have learned our lesson by now.

So like, you know, we've already critiqued this stuff, but the newest thing comes. That's right. But you know,

I was preaching through Hebrews one and that's where you guys landed today in Hebrews 11. But when I started, I titled my sermon

Hebrews one, Jesus still speaks today. Yeah. How so? It's like when

Paul was saying, you know, Jesus came and he preached to you.

That's a shocking statement when he's talking about that in the epistles, he's preaching to us through the minister, the ambassador that he sent to make known the gospel to you.

He is still speaking to you. The question is, what are you looking for? Right.

Are you, are you looking, whose voice are you looking to hear? That's right. Right. Yeah. Well, I was going to say in second,

Peter, Peter, blatantly says everything that you need to know about God and about how to live for God has been given to you.

There's nothing outside of this that you need. And that's, we hear that and we're like, yeah, yeah, that's nice.

But we don't really believe that. Um, I'll just say this, Peter and Paul are very clear.

And even James, they're very clear to say Satan has tactics and this is going to sound brutal, but I don't care. I'm going to say it anyways, things like the passion and chosen and the purpose driven life.

Um, what makes a good lie? A good lie. It's 99 % true.

There's enough truth in it. Absolutely. It's truth mixed with error. So that gains traction amongst the faithful. That's right. Right.

So, wow, that sounds right. That sounds right. And so he doesn't need you to, to deny God. He doesn't, he just needs you to believe something that's a little bit off.

And obviously I love golf, but if, if, uh, if a putt, a 20, 20 foot putt is just a centimeter off, it'll end up 20 feet in the wrong direction.

And that's what happens is a lot of times is as men who are trying to people bring people back to the word, we can sound like we're crazy.

Come on guys. Back off a little bit. Are you kidding me? The passion of the Christ was this amazing movie.

It's done. It's so good. Mel Gibson is doing a follow -up. I don't know if you guys know that. Yeah. I just saw that. I just saw that.

I did not. Yes. Yeah. We're going to get to do the critique again. Can you believe this? Yeah. Anyways, go ahead.

Yeah. You know, we used to say in the old, in the old tradition, you know, that the minister who comes is the

Vox Dei, the voice of God. And I know that's been abused. Right.

I know, you know, we, we've got some people like that's Roman Catholic, but I couldn't agree with you more. Yeah. I mean, you know, when a man, you know, how beautiful are the feet of those sent?

You know, not everyone sent, because another thing you got to say today, you know, I remember, I remember the ministry sign on the church years ago, you know, pastor and said, everyone, this is another problem that we deal with today because what we've done is marginalized.

What is absolutely happening when the minister stands up there and he proclaims the word of God and, and any sort of reformation throughout history where we ever see a great recovery in the church, where there is real spirituality, real response.

It's always been because the pulpit was put back up, not taken down to, for a plexiglass, you know, or a stage that's, that's always been,

I mean, this is Nehemiah eight, right? And this is, this is what, I mean, today, this is, isn't it crazy.

Can you have the famine in the land and have the word of God in your hand? You know, is there a famine of the hearing of the word today?

You know, it's, it's a crazy time we live, but we've got to continue to emphasize this to the next generation.

The preaching of the gospel, Calvin used to say so clearly the preaching of the gospel, where Christ is preached, there is the true church.

Amen. I'm preaching through Romans right now. And Paul's introduction to that letter is pretty epic.

The way he begins it, talking about, he's been set apart as an apostle for the sake of God's gospel.

And he says, it's God's gospel, which he promised beforehand through the prophets and the Holy scriptures concerning his son.

So the gospel concerns the son who descended from David, according to the flesh, who's declared to be the son of God in power, right?

By the spirit at his resurrection, Jesus Christ, our Lord. And he says, so, you know, he, we preach him right.

To bring about the obedience of faith throughout the nations for the sake of Christ's name. Then he goes on to say how much he longs to be with the

Roman Christians. And then right there at the end, before he gets to that thesis statement that we all know so well in 1 16 and 17, what does he say?

He longs to come and preach the gospel. This is something for, I know for us that we've, this may be a little bit different for you,

Chris, in your context, but maybe not something we've had to talk about a lot over the years. Speaking to evangelicals.

I think a lot of people in evangelical churches assume that the gospel must be proclaimed for the sake of the non -believer who's in our midst and for the

Christians amongst us, right? We need to get about the business of preaching the Christian life and how to be more godly, uh, how to maybe in some cases improve ourselves, whatever.

Uh, but for us, like, look, no, the saints week in and week out need

Christ heralded to them because we're bombarded by a million things during the week. The world preaches a different word.

The enemy accuses and preaches a different word. Our conscience, our flesh all preach a different word, and we need to come and hear

Christ for us on the Lord's day. And I know for our, our podcast, that's been something that we've talked about a lot over the years because again, the assumption is something else that, ah, yeah, we've got the

God, of course, of course, the gospel, of course, Jesus, but it's kind of a footnote, right? It would, it would assume that, I mean, if, if that were the case, that that was the intention and design of ministry, it would say something like, you know, the gospel is the power of God for conversion.

That's right. And then that would be the end of the story. And then we would have to go do what the evangelicals are doing.

Just talk application the whole time. But you know, that's not what the calling is. The gospel is the power for the whole of the

Christian life, right? Well, even in seconds, Peter, he says, the reason you're not obeying is you forgot the gospel.

I would challenge you and the reason you're ineffective because you have forgotten that you've been cleansed from your former sins. Yeah. I mean, even when

Paul says in Ephesians four, walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, he's, that's a reference to the gospel. The first three chapters of Ephesians, I would challenge anybody.

Uh, the New Testament, New Testament epistles were written to be read to the congregations, to preach to the congregation.

I challenge you to read a New Testament epistle where the gospel really isn't either began or in its, before it reaches halfway point, even in the book of James, because some people like, well, yeah, what about James?

James actually references the gospel quite often. I just preached to that book. And so it's amazing to me if a man can get up and preach the word and if it doesn't result in leading them to Christ's sufficiency in the gospel,

I don't think you preached a sermon according to the New Testament. I mean, you haven't preached the Christian one. No, it's like sermon, like Spurgeon says, go home preacher and come back until you are ready to preach

Christ. And so you have something worth saying, right. And I'm going to make a little bit of a shift here. But when you think about this guys, um, a lot of our listeners on both podcasts will hear this and they're like, yeah, but I'm in a

Bible church or I'm in a whatever kind of church and there's despair. Like they hear us and they're like, we agree, we agree, we agree.

But they're in despair because they, they're not either can't find a church that's like this or they, you know,

I, I, I feel this cause we get contacted a lot of times that guys, I agree what you're saying, but what, what do I do?

My pastor doesn't preach like that. And it, to me, it's disheartening. And I just want to stop for anybody that's hearing this and they're like extremely frustrated.

I want to be sympathetic to that and say, listen, we understand part of the reason for this podcast is to hopefully spark pastors to encourage them to trust the sufficiency of preaching and the sufficiency of the gospel.

If you're new to Theocast, we have a free ebook available for you called Faith vs. Faithfulness, A Primer on Rest.

And if you struggled with legalism, a lack of assurance, or simply want to know what it means to live by faith alone, we wrote this little book to provide a simple answer from a

Reformed confessional perspective. You can get your free copy at theocast .org

slash primer. Yeah. And I think, I mean, you raise a really good point,

John. It's, you know, the question is, is motivations for why we do what we do. And there are a lot of people who indeed are in situations where, you know, and that, that leads to that important question, which maybe we can circle back around to, you know, when is it the right time to move on?

It's the right time to leave your church. When's the wrong time? Those are, those are always important question. When I did the Ligonier conference, it was amazing how that question, even in the question answer period came up, it's still a big burden.

We get it a lot. It's just a big burden, but I see the, you know, it's interesting. Maybe this reflects our different traditions.

You know, I would say I'm probably in the more established Reformed tradition. What I see frequently, and I see everything in Southern California, I see what you just said, it's

Southern California, you know, where do I start? So, you know,

I see that I see, but, but what I also see is another sad phenomenon.

It's like what the prophet said years ago, the prophets prophesy lies, the priests rule by their own authority and my people love it.

In other words, there are a lot of people who will listen to this podcast and say, amen, amen.

I mean, you guys are right on. Amen. And they'll go back to sit under something that is not only harmful for them, but harmful for their children.

That's right. And the question is, is why? Because they have a great children's ministry and an amazing band.

Sorry. Yeah. And I think that that's exactly right. I mean, there's pressure. Usually couples aren't united on these things and, you know, you got to walk carefully that together.

But I also think there's other issues that have to do with tradition, culture, family, that as Jesus constantly dealt with, you know, take up your cross and follow, you know, what does that look like in the context of church?

It looks like finding a church where you lead your family to the, to the waters of life, and there are situations where we're not willing to do that because we're afraid of offending family or culture, or, you know, this is my church building

I was baptized in, or this has always been this way for me. And it's,

I mean, we could just go through a load of issues. I think that is more common than we realize.

No, I would agree. You know? Yeah. And then on top of that, there's, then there's the challenge of the person weeping saying, where am

I going to go? That's right. Sure. You know? So let's continue the preaching conversation, but I'd love to talk about Christ centered preaching or preaching

Christ from all of the Bible. Before you do that, I just have one comment. I want to jump on that and then jump all over it.

Yeah. One of the, if you couldn't feed your family physically, are you going to just sit there and complain about it?

You would be worse than an infidel because the Bible calls you to provide for your family. So you're going to probably end up moving to a nearby city or a place that, you know, you can provide for your family gainful employment.

Why is it different for the spiritual nourishment of your soul? And I would say it's actually more important for you to take a pay cut and degrade if you need to, to make sure that the spiritual nourishment of your family is cared for.

We, I think it's upon us to train people for that way. I'll just say this.

I was a college pastor for 10 years and I had students graduating and I told them, don't take a job unless you know, there's a church there.

And that was one of the things I really tried to help them understand because it doesn't matter how good the pay is if you don't have a community there for your soul.

And, you know, I want to get to Justin's, we got plenty of time to stay on that.

I know you guys, we're kicking it for the afternoon, man. Just stay for a while. Stay in Escondido. The water's nice, right?

But then we've got the other problem of what I see is the flight today to Idaho or whatever it might be, you know, and on their minds are, you know, the politics are bad, you know, this, this and that.

I'm going to go get some space, get some land and, and be free, you know, and, and whoa.

Because clearly Christians have to homestead. You know, so this is just common where we deal with this, especially in California, you know, have people really thought through that question, you know, from both ends of the spectrum, what is most important where I am and where I'm going is, you know, and, and, and we deal with this constantly is, is that great question?

Is there a church there that's going to minister? Well, have we even thought about that? Is that first and foremost on people's minds, you know, and while we're on this topic,

I agree with John, we understand that when we tell people in your calculus, in terms of where you're going to live in your calculus, at the top of that, it needs to be that you have a church that preaches

Christ, right? Where you're going to receive Christ. We understand that that's difficult for people to hear sometimes.

And it's not just that simple for people to pick up and move and things. And we're sympathetic. And at the same time, we stand by what we're saying here.

And I think we all can testify to the value of having a local church where we do receive

Christ in word and sacrament week after week after week. And if you're missing that, it's a big deal.

I tell people often, so we are confessional Baptists. We'll get to that later. I tell people a lot.

The thing to look for in a church is what is the church's message? And by that,

I don't mean the sermon itself, but what is the church's message? What is the message that permeates every aspect of that church?

And if that message is Christ, his sufficiency, his person, his work, Christ for you, and you're going to receive him in word and sacrament, that's a church worth going to and being a part of.

That is the most important thing by Miles. So as a confessional Baptist in the city where I am, if our church did not exist,

I would be at a PCA church or I would be at potentially a confessional

Lutheran church because there's a good one. And that's what I'm saying. Because there aren't other Baptistic works in the city where I'm going to feel like we're going to go here and my wife and my children are going to get the goods every week and myself as well.

But this is where the most important thing to me for, for people out there is find a church where you're going to get this message.

Live as sojourners, but live as one who's, who's traveling through. Right. So, right.

All right. So let's talk about preaching Jesus. Shall we? From all the Bible? I mean, what's the purpose of church if we're not doing that?

We all agree we should do that, right? Okay. Yeah. But yeah, we, we, we, I've never found an

Evangelical who would disagree with that. Welcome to Theocast. No, it's a bounding grace radio.

Sorry. How would you, how would you put that together? Neutral, Chris. What happened to neutrality? It's neutral.

Are you a bounding cast? We've been doing the same stuff. I just was a little earlier than you. I think, and then I got tired.

You beat us great. You guys are, you guys are young and energetic. Oh my goodness. You're not that much older than me. I've got a lot of gray hair.

I think you got me like two years. I got like four on you. I think I'm 41. I'm 45. Okay. You got four of me.

Yeah. You're so much wiser. Okay. All right. I'll, I'll kick this off.

When you say, if you were to walk up to any preacher on the planet and you would say, we need to preach

Christ, what are they going to say? Agree. Yeah. Of course. What does that mean? What does it mean?

That's where we're at. Yeah. Okay. So we're going to talk here about preaching Christ from all the

Bible and inevitably in a minute, I'm assuming we're going to get into the law and the gospel.

Absolutely. Yeah. And I want to give one advertisement here and I'll say this again. If churches are not preaching

Christ the way we're about to talk about it, you have lifeless, powerless churches.

Oh my goodness. Mic drop. All right. I'll go ahead and lead with this. I'd go stronger, but okay.

They're not a church is what you're going to say, right? They're not a church at all. I'm going to lead with this though, because this is at least something that I have experienced from,

I don't know, in the past, my background, where I hail from. Right. So you get a lot of guys that champion

Christ -centered preaching and what they have been trained to do and what they do is they, they get into the pulpit.

The first of all, it begins in the study, right? They're serious about their preparation. They're, they're working hard. They're diligent conscientious.

That's all good. And they're mining the text for things, authorial and original authorial intent, all of this kind of stuff.

They're concerned with these things. And none of these things are inherently bad. I mean, don't hear us say, you know, that don't hear what we're not saying.

Right. But then what we get in the pulpit often is a lot of good things said about the passage.

A number of good things may be said in the realm of wisdom and prudence. And then somewhere in the sermon, because we want to be gospel centered, we want to be

Christ -centered, we slip in the plan of salvation or some form of the metanarrative, like plan of salvation being this, maybe like a

God, man, Christ response formula, or we get the metanarrative, you know, we get creation, fall, redemption, consummation, or restoration, however you want to phrase it.

And we think that we've preached Christ. And respectfully, I would just say, brother, no, you have not done that.

I think for me, I've said this in a number of contexts. We'll say it today and see what you guys think. In sermon preparation for me, the question that I'm going to ask, regardless of which of the 66 books

I'm in, is where does this text stand in relation to Christ? Because a lot of guys ask, how can

I preach Christ from this text? Wrong question. Where does this text stand in relation to Jesus? Better question.

Because then we're going to be preparing and preaching the entire message through the lens of Christ. That's right.

And we've got a chance, you know, and it's, it's not like hokey and weird. And we're like, you know, it's like the

Bible's a where's Waldo book. And Jesus is Waldo. Like, that's not how we do this. Yeah. It's like giving a eulogy of a person and talking about something that happened within their life, but never actually connecting it to the purpose of that person's life, you know, it's kind of like, we're here to talk about this person.

And you talked about this Dodgers game and what the score was and who put the Rome run, but why was that relevant to this person's eulogy?

I mean, that's similar to what happened. You know, we saw churches canceling. Church landed on Christmas on, on Sunday, right?

That's our day of worship, right? They're canceling. It's like missing the birthday party. We're going to celebrate

Christ by not celebrating Christ. So, you know, it shows the hypocrisy.

I think, um, you know, I know this seems so basic and maybe

I've just gone over it, you know, and maybe I should say up front in light of what you guys are saying, I think there might be a reaction against a sort of stereotypical or a straw man, maybe even straw man presentation of Christ of Christ centered preaching, but it may not even be straw man.

It may be that this is what some have done and have done great damage to it by saying, you know, they preach the law and then at the end of the sermon, but you can't do it.

Jesus did it all. It's first use of the law only. Yeah. And I think it's just something to be aware of up front.

I've had to deal with this with training of seminary students. They want so, so desperately to preach

Christ. And then you get this sort of artificial formula that comes out in this artificial formula triggers people.

And then you get, you know, pastors who are more of the legal persuasion who, you know, we'll get beat up on this point.

And then they think that's what Christ centered preaching is. And so they respond, they react and we're saying, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Right. We, we, we're going to go back to Luke 24 for a minute. And that's what I was saying earlier, like Luke 24 is the passage, you know, but it's interesting in Luke 24.

What I don't think people recognize is that when Jesus came up to those guys on the road to Emmaus, it says their eyes were kept from recognizing him.

Supernaturally. Well, yeah. And part of that may have been super. I've always debated on that.

Like every year I've gone back and forth. Like, I think I take a different position every year. Is it supernatural or actually was it because they thought he was going to redeem

Israel, they had a wrong conception of what Christ was actually going to do and accomplish, and therefore it's kind of jointly, they, their own hearts and eyes were blinded because they should have, she should have known that.

You could still call that supernatural, just not the direction we want it to be. Yeah, exactly. The blinding of Satan. Yeah, right, right, right.

But it's interesting, you know, when you ask the passage, when you ask of the passage, how did that, it seems to me the problem in that passage is how were eyes open?

It seems to me that's the fundamental question of Luke 24. How were eyes open?

Say more brothers, say more. We're here for it. Well, and then, and so, you know, they're wrestling through this and he comes along.

He's the great teacher, you know, what things? And I just love that question. What things? Yeah. What things? And I know it's like, what do you, what do you, what do you mean?

Were you, did you not see all this? You know, and they, they work through their problem. And then, you know, here comes this just great passage, right?

Oh, foolish ones, slow of heart to understand all the prophets have spoken, ought not the

Christ to have suffered. Right. Um, and to enter into his glory and beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them and all the scriptures he preached, he proclaimed, he interpreted, he wrestled through the scriptures.

I don't know where he went to probably Joseph, but anyway, all the things concerning himself. But if you follow this passage, how does he open their eyes?

It's a big point of this passage. He goes down and he does two things here.

Um, when you go down to verse, um, um, 26, so they drew near the village to which they were going.

He act as if you were going to go further, but they urge him strongly saying, stay with us for it's toward evening.

The day is now far spent. So he went in and stay with them when he's at the table. He took bread and blessed it and broke it.

Oh, that's kind of a, that's interesting formula. That's very interesting. We know that formula and he gave it to me. Then their eyes were open.

Bam. So he preached the cross from all scripture and he, the institution of the supper, it's emphasizing the formula there.

Boom, boom. Exactly. And then, I mean, boom, bro, our eyes are open and he does it again. Yeah, I know.

Our elders had this conversation several years ago from this text, the exact same thing that you just pointed out.

How were these guys eyes opened? And it is, it's through him opening and we're going to, I'm going to go to verse 32 in just a second, but yeah.

The proclamation of, of himself, his work, and then the table, it's word and table.

Right. In verse 32, they said to each other, did not our hearts burn within us while he talked with us on the road, while he opened to us the scriptures.

How did he do that? How did he open to them? The scriptures, he opened the scriptures by teaching them from all of the scripture about himself.

Right. Right. And then later on, we obviously get the words too, that he says in verse 44 to his disciples, these are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the

Psalms must be fulfilled. And then that's, that's all of it. And then follow the next verse. Then he opened their mind, their understanding.

So it's eyes and understand the scriptures. And this has to happen every week.

Yeah, that's right. I've heard multiple, multiple pastors and commentators, and I've said this myself. I wish we would have known what

Jesus said there. And as you guys are talking here and I'm being, I'm being reviewed, yeah, but I'm going to review all of us right now.

If we really believe our theology and we really believe what scripture teaches us,

Luke saying, you already know what he said, right? Because all of scripture is about Christ.

So Luke's like, I don't have to tell you, you already know. And many, as I'm sitting here,

I was just, this kind of dawned on me. Like why Luke left it out. It's kind of one of those moments where it's like, come on guys, this is because Jesus rebukes them and like, you should have known this.

I love how it, even though John says is that you search the scriptures because you in them, you think, and Jesus says they're of me, right?

You think in them, you find eternal life. That's right. They that bear witness about me. And so to every preacher out there, I just want to say there's,

I don't want to be crude here, but there's kind of like this duh moment of like, Hey guys, if you're not preaching the gospel from all of scripture and that the good news is of me from Genesis on, then it's wrong.

Well, Hey, you, if you believed Moses, you'd believe the prophets because Moses wrote of me.

Well, I hope that was enjoyable for you. We, we enjoyed it. It was a long conversation and we had to cut it up into multiple episodes, which, you know, was worth it.

And, uh, for those of you who might be listening for the first time, we do a second minute, a second podcast called Semper Ephraimanda, where, uh, this is for people who have partnered monthly to support us and they're excited about seeing the gospel go out with all kinds of the types of media that we do through video, audio books, uh, articles and things like that.

So we do a second podcast and we also have an app where we interact with everybody that podcast called Semper Ephraimanda.

So we're going to talk a little bit more about our trip and some special events and stuff that are coming up. And so if you would like to learn more about joining, uh, that particular ministry, you can go to theocast .org.