Preacher: Preach the Word (Part 2)

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Welcome to The Dividing Line. My name is John Sampson, filling in for Dr.

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James White as a guest host here on the show today. It's a delight to come to you and talk about something

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I believe is very close to the heart of the Lord. We're talking about the preaching of God's Word.

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Just before we launch into that, I've just been writing my second book.

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It's about to be published by Solid Ground Christian Books. It's a bit like the process of a mother giving birth to a child,

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I think, whereby you labor, you study, you think you're done, and then you realize there's another month needed to get it fully done.

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And then the process begins of sending the manuscript to the publisher, and they make some suggestions.

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Maybe they do, maybe they don't. Maybe they like some things. They might want to maybe change one or two things. But then the process begins.

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Last night I received a picture of the cover of the new book.

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I don't know if you can see that, but it's The Five Solas. It's a little exciting to see the little development stage by stage of the book being in publication.

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You can actually pre -order it if you're interested by going to my blog site, which is effectualgrace .com.

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All the details are there. I'll give you a link to the place where you can pre -order the book, which

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I believe will be maybe my most important thing I've done.

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In terms of writing so far, just a clear presentation of the solas, why they're important, how they harmonize with one another, how they're essential for understanding the

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Christian faith and the gospel. And what was a real blessing to me is in my mother going to be with the

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Lord just a few days ago, three or four days before that, the manuscript was read to her, and she was in a lot of pain, and it brought her a lot of comfort.

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That's a joy to my heart. The gospel assures us and all Christians of how we're in right standing with God.

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When you're nearing the time of your departure from this earth, there's nothing better than hearing the gospel again.

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Give me justification by faith alone one more time, because it's so, so necessary.

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You cannot inculcate it more on the conscience than is possible. Luther had it right.

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You can't stress it enough. So excited about that. Also, I've had some emails saying, are there anything

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I can point to in the way of resources on preaching? And what I did today on the blog site was link to four dividing lines

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I've done in the past quite some time ago on hermeneutics. Hermeneutics was a

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German soccer player. No, hermeneutics is the science of biblical interpretation, and so important we go to the passage and know what it says from its context.

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And how do we go about that? I talked about that in four different programs, and there's links. If you just go to today's date, if you're listening to this after the day that this is being live streamed and recorded, just go to today's date on the blog site and you'll find it.

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Hermeneutics and Preaching Resources is the title of it. And there's also some material that I really highly recommend, three different lecture series, one by Dr.

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John MacArthur and Steve Lawson together, and then two by Dr. Steve Lawson on preaching, and one of them being

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Preaching the Psalms, which is a specific course he did at the Master's Seminary.

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I recommend them absolutely. It'll take you from A to Z, if you're from Europe, A to Z, regarding how to go to a passage and then make your own observations and notes and the process involved in bringing sermon delivery.

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Very, very, very good. I talked with Rich before the program, at least on Facebook, and said, is it possible to play something?

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And we kind of decided the best thing to do is give out some homework.

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Yes, give out some homework, a homework assignment in terms of a recommended video to watch.

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And I would encourage anyone who's in any way involved in communication in terms of your workplace, or especially in the ministry, to watch something.

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And it's from a secular source. It's one of those TED videos. And if you go to YouTube and look up The Transformative Power of Classical Music by Benjamin Zander, maybe just write that down,

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The Transformative Power of Classical Music by Benjamin Zander, you'll see a gentleman who will take about 20 -21 minutes to teach on music.

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The presenter is this Benjamin Zander. I don't ascribe to anything of his political views, his secular views.

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I don't even know them. But in this 21 -minute video, which has been viewed more than 2 million times, you can see this man is passionate about classical music.

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And I believe we as Christians should be able to learn from anybody. And in the area of common grace, this is a communicator par excellence.

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He's a master communicator. He's absolutely convinced that everybody in the world is interested in classical music.

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They just don't know it yet. And it's fascinating to watch how he takes this audience through his teaching, hands -on teaching, and his whole body, his whole face, his whole hand expressions, his voice, everything's involved.

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And he communicates. And why I would recommend this is for anyone who's involved in communication, we should be able to learn from anyone.

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I learned a lot from watching that as to how we can be so absorbed in the material that we are then able to express it and bring other people into what we're excited by.

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It's so important that we're excited by the material. It's not going to be the case that you're not excited, but the people who hear you will be.

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That's not how it works. His passion is obvious. His energy is obvious.

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He knows his subject intimately. He loves it deeply. You can tell that.

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And he's absolutely convinced, utterly convinced that if you listen to what he's saying, you'll have the same view he does.

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His optimism is contagious. And he believes classical music is going to be embraced by anyone.

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They just don't know it yet. Much more could be said. But I listened to that, and I watched that, and I thought about my own teaching style.

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And we're all different, different personalities for sure. But can I learn from him? And the answer is absolutely.

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If I'm energized and excited by the gospel, it will show. And I think the greatest sin of a preacher is to make the most interesting and exciting message in history sound boring.

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I think that's sinful. I don't believe God will say to us, well done, good and boring servant.

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You've been boring over a few. I'll make you boring over many. No, our job is not simply to impart information, but we communicate the joy of knowing

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Christ. And we do so with more than our words. And this man,

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Zander, uses his whole body as an instrument of communication, and he can't help it.

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What's in him in abundance, he's got to let out. It was D .A. Carson, I believe, who once said, people don't learn what you teach them.

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They learn what you are excited about. And I think that's very much the case.

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In talking about preaching, it's important that we as the people of God take

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God's view of the Bible as our starting point. And we see Jesus' view of the

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Bible very, very clearly had the highest view imaginable. Not one jot or tittle of this law will be unfulfilled.

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Everything will come to pass. Have you not read what was spoken to you by God? Jesus said, when quoting the

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Old Testament, the book of Exodus at that point in the Gospel of Matthew, had the highest view.

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And if we have and embrace that high view, it will be seen in how we treat the

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Word of God. A lot of churches have a correct view of Scripture in terms of their confession or their creed, what they put on a website.

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But if you go to a service and you see how they handle the Word of God, if they even have it at all, that tells you how much they honor the

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Word of God. And I believe the Bible should be central in our worship. And I believe we should take

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God's Word, which says, give yourself to the public reading of Scripture. I believe it's 1

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Timothy 4, 13, where we find that. And therefore, Scripture should be read.

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It's not assumed that everybody can read, and that's certainly the case in Christian history, very much the case.

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And so the only time some people ever heard the Bible was when it was read in the assembly.

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And that's vital we understand that. But if we're going to read the Scripture, we should give ourselves to it.

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In fact, that's what the Scripture says, give yourselves, give yourself to the public reading of Scripture.

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So I want to kind of ask that question, how much time in our thinking do we give to preparing the reading of the

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Scripture? For some, it seems that they get up and read, but they haven't read the passage before.

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They're stumbling over every third word. They've not read the passage before the service.

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And there's not enough emphasis given. And again, that's one of the ways we show that the Bible's valuable to us by how we treat it in the service.

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And so there's either in many churches not enough emphasis, or the Bible is not even read, or often it is read, but it's read badly.

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And that shouldn't be the case. In fact, I believe the reading of the Scripture is the only perfect part of the entire service.

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We don't always sing perfectly. We don't always harmonize perfectly in our singing.

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We mess up at many points that you can't ever say, really, that was a perfect sermon.

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But the Word of the Lord is perfect. The Word of the Lord is flawless. And I believe we should practice our reading.

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And so I would encourage anyone who's reading Scripture, if you're a preacher and you're reading the text, look at the text, be familiar with the text.

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What I do oftentimes is print out the text in a larger font than I would find in my

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Bible. And I would mark on a piece of paper, because I've enlarged it, words that I know

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I'm going to find hard to read publicly, because they're just hard words to say. For instance, names, cities in the ancient world.

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Work at getting it to the point where you don't have to stumble. You know that you're going to come across that word, five words from the word you're reading, and you're preparing your mind mentally.

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I'm going to be able to say, Ahasuerus, or whatever the word is. And you're ready to say it, rather than, and you're stumbling all over the place.

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Again, it shows you haven't given preparation time to the reading of Scripture.

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If we're devoted to Scripture, let's treat the Bible the way it should be treated.

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When we talk about understanding the Scripture, understanding what it is, it's

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God -breathed material, 2 Timothy 3 .16. All Scripture is breathed out by God.

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If that's the case, or basically we should say since that's the case, the center of every

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Christian sermon should be the gospel, what the Bible proclaims.

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And for any sermon to be biblical, there should be two things that are components, and that is law and gospel.

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God's law is God's commandments, his word to us where he tells us to do certain things, be holy as I am holy.

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And the law of God always slays us. It always shows us God's standard, and it shows us, it reveals to us the fact that we have not kept that standard.

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And that's why we need the gospel. And there are parts of our Bible that are law and parts that are gospel.

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And sometimes you'll find both law and gospel in the same verse. It's not as if all the

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Old Testament is law, all the New Testament is gospel. No, it doesn't work like that.

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There's law and gospel in the Old Testament, and there's law and gospel in the New Testament.

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Law is God's commands, his precepts, what he tells us to do. And gospel is

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God's remedy for all of us who have fallen short of God's standard, and that is the

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Lord Jesus Christ in his life, his death, his burial, his resurrection, and the fact that we're brought into right relationship with God by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.

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That's the biblical gospel. I remember in a certain church,

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I was just walking by. In fact, I was going to go see one of the elders, and the elder was actually involved in preaching preparation, training students.

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He says, come on in, John. I said, okay, and sit on the back row. And then he said, give us some feedback.

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And actually, I listened to two different speakers who were speaking for 10 minutes, and then were going to be assessed by this elder.

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He was encouraging the preaching ministry, and this was not on a Sunday. It was like a Tuesday afternoon, and these people came in, and he was giving them a preaching class and giving them a critique.

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And he says, John, have you got anything you'd like to add? Well, I said, let me listen, let me watch, and I did so.

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And this gentleman who was up front for 10 minutes brought very, very good sound teaching in his sermon.

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And they said, well, come on, John, give him something he needs to work on. I said, well, okay.

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Here's what is a problem. Everything he said was found in the text.

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Can't argue with it. In fact, the sermon, I remember the subject was on make the full use of your time, make the best use of your time, for the days are evil.

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It's a verse found in the book of Ephesians. And I said, everything he said was true, but he did not bring gospel in at all.

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In fact, I sat there thinking, you know what, I should make better use of my time.

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I can't think of a single day in my life when I've used the full day as I could have done.

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There were seconds when I was not thinking of God, thinking of the Bible. My mind was wandering.

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How many of us can say I've lived this 24 -hour period fully to the glory of God?

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No. But that's the standard. That's the law. The law says make the best use of your time.

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Have you ever done that for a single hour, for a single day of your life? Well, the answer is no.

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And that's not good news. The law of God slays us. And what we need then is to use that text and then make a beeline for the cross.

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And the cross is the remedy for guilty sinners who fail to keep God's law. And so any sermon should bring out the fact that God's standard is that we make best use of our time, but we don't do it as sinners.

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And that's why the wonderful gospel comes in of what Jesus has done for guilty sinners who violate the law.

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And I just made the point that everything that he said in that sermon was great, cannot in any way fault him.

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He said it so well as well, but there was no gospel. And without the gospel, it's not a true

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Christian sermon. I feel that way about Christian movies. I don't believe the

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Chariots of Fire movie from way, way back is a Christian movie.

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There's moralism in there. There's talk about a guy who made a decision because he wasn't going to do certain things on a

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Sabbath, but there's no gospel in there. There was no presentation of Jesus, the cross and justification by faith alone.

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And I've said that before, and people don't like it because it's one of their favorite movies, but for it to be a Christian movie,

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I think it should have the gospel. Just a thought. For a sermon to be

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Christian, I think it should have the gospel. And so in going to the text, for instance,

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Ephesians 6, we were in the verses five through nine last time

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I was preaching. It's about relationships in the workplace, bond servants and masters.

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There's nothing of the gospel in the text, not in those particular verses, not in those verses, verses five through nine.

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So we go to the text, bring out what's in the text. And we say where this text is in relationship with the rest of the

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Bible. And the fact is none of us have ever had fully holy relationships in our lives, whether it be in the workplace or anywhere else.

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That's why we're sinners and that's why we have need to go to the cross and see what Jesus has done for us as guilty sinners.

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So I hope that's helpful because I believe that every preacher needs to bring law and gospel into the message.

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Make the best use of your time. Yeah, but I haven't done that. Okay, preacher, tell me what to do. Run to the cross, flee to Christ.

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I believe every sermon we should call sinners to repentance and faith.

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Mark Dever said this, the gospel should be at the heart of our sermons and the sermons at the center of our churches.

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And I fully agree. Regarding understanding the scripture, one of the things that we need to understand,

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I think most do, is the fact that the chapter and verse divisions we find in our

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Bibles were added long after the originals were first penned.

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When did the chapter and verse divisions in our Bibles take place? Where did they come in?

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Well, when scripture was originally written, there were no chapters or verses. These are man -made additions to our

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Bibles and they came a whole lot later. Actually, it was Stephen Langton, an archbishop of Canterbury in England, who added chapter divisions into the

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Latin Vulgate. That was around 1227 AD. My research has informed me that a

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Jewish rabbi by the name of Nathan divided the Hebrew Bible, what we

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Christians call the Old Testament, into verses in 1448 AD.

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That's a long time after the original, wouldn't you say? Then Robert Estienne, also known as Stephanus, divided the chapters into verses in his

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Greek New Testament in 1551. And the first English translation to make use of his verse divisions was the

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Geneva Bible of 1560. Think of that. The first English translation to make use of verse divisions was the

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Geneva Bible back in 1560. That's something of the history behind the chapter and verse divisions.

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The question then is, was that a good thing? My answer is yes and no. There's pros and there's definitely cons.

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The pros, well, it's helpful because if the preacher is going to the book of Isaiah and he says to a congregation, three, four hundred people, let's turn now to the scroll of Isaiah or the book of Isaiah and go to the passage which says he was wounded for our transgressions.

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How many people could find that if there were no chapter and verses? They'll be just looking at Isaiah and page one, page two, page three, trying to find the thing.

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Very, very hard. But with chapter and verses, we're able to find them very, very quickly.

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They're very helpful. If he said, let's find the suffering servant passage, could we all do that?

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But he can just say, well, let's turn to Isaiah 53, and in just a few seconds we can find it.

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But there's a downside. And the downside is, actually a major downside, is that these divisions make it especially easy for us to look at a verse in complete isolation with no reference to the context.

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And many pages could be filled with examples. Last time I mentioned Philippians chapter four, verse 13.

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I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. And that's a verse that you find on T -shirts.

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And it's been interpreted falsely to mean that Christ strengthens us to achieve any human endeavor because he he with him, we can do all things.

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I can do all things. All things means all right. But that had a context.

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I remember someone saying that they're going to win this particular race because Christ was going to strengthen them to do that.

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And they were standing on this verse as a promise from God. Well, what happens if there's another

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Christian in the race believing the same verse? Here's the problem.

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That verse teaches nothing of the kind regarding that power to win a race for the glory of God.

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That's not what the context is telling us. It's about going through the trials of life, good times and hard times.

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First 10 of that chapter, I rejoiced in the Lord greatly that now at length you've revived your concern for me for you are indeed concerned for me, but you had no opportunity.

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Not that I'm speaking and being in need, speaking of being in need for I've learned in whatever situation

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I am to be content for I know how to be brought low and I know how to abound in any and every circumstance.

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That's the context. I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need.

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I can do all things. What things? Facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need.

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I can do all things, all these things, whatever comes at me in life. I can do it all. I can go through it.

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I can do all things through him who strengthens me. So verse 13 has a context which if ignored leads to a false interpretation.

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So the correct interpretation is whatever the circumstance, whatever the situation, whether in hardship or in much provision and abundance, whether there's plenty or whether there's a time when we're experiencing hunger or great need,

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God's grace is more than abundant for us in Christ. He'll strengthen us so that we can endure whatever it is we have to face, whether it's cancer or good health, you can go through it all through Christ who strengthens you.

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What a blessing that is. I mentioned Isaiah 53, and again, it's a reference to God and his suffering servant.

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If we look at the context, the passage actually starts speaking of this servant in 52 verse 13, not chapter 53 verse 1.

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And so again, the verse divisions are not inspired by the Holy Spirit. And if you're just turning to Isaiah 53 1 and start reading there, you miss a lot of what is revealed about the servant if that's where you start.

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There you go. So it's good that we've got chapter and verse divisions, and it's bad.

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They're a blessing and they're a curse. And when we forget context, misinterpretation is inevitable.

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And we should be vigilant about that to avoid that. Let's go back to 2

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Timothy 4. We were there last time here on the dividing line. We're talking about expository preaching.

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And just to go over some things again, the point of the passage of scripture should be the point of the sermon.

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In other words, the passage of the Bible shapes the message rather than the message shapes the passage.

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This comes out of our view of scripture. It's a commitment on the part of the church of Jesus Christ to hear

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God's word. The reformers had an expression in Latin, which translated into English was a church reformed and being reformed, but that's not the end of it, by the word of God, according to the word of God.

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The church is to sit under the word and submit to Christ in his word.

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This is where his rule is seen. This is his scepter. The word of God is Christ's scepter on earth.

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This is where he rules. We need to understand that. 2

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Timothy chapter 4, we talked about the word there for preach, which can be translated herald.

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And we need to move on from simply the task of preaching to what kind of preaching should we be engaged in?

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I think it's fair to say that some of the scripture lifts us up. It lights us up. It gives us information, understanding, revelation of the character of God.

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Some scripture tells us that we need to hold on to truth. And some scripture tells us that we need to be fired up and be corrected.

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So there's many different dimensions to the scripture. And when we're talking about expository preaching, we mean not just preaching, but the preaching of the

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Bible. We don't need more preaching if it's just the average everyday running commentary on society.

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We want to hear what God says. We want the preaching to be filled with the meaning of the text, understanding the text, and applying it to our lives.

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We are to set forth the meaning of the passage, explaining it. There should be information.

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Yes, it should be instructive. It should be explanatory. But it also should be interpretive.

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It should be interpreted so that we can understand it in our context, what it means for us. That's application.

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There should be an exposure of the text to the people rather than exposing something else to the people.

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If it's not the Bible that's being exposed, it is something else. John Calvin said this, the explication of scripture unfolding its natural and true meaning while making application to the life of the congregation.

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Preaching is the public exposition of scripture by the man sent from God in which

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God himself is present in judgment and in grace. J.

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I. Packer, the true idea of preaching is that the preacher should become a mouthpiece for this text, opening it up and applying it as a word from God to his hearers, taking only in order that the text itself may speak and be heard.

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I don't believe the preacher has anything to say apart from the word of God. It's really preaching is letting the text talk, letting it talk.

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The word of God preached should be speaking to the mind, challenging the thoughts of people rather than simply being emotive, seeking to, through the use of poetry, change people's affections so that they leave feeling something different.

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No, they should think something different. That's what repentance is. It's a change of mind.

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You've been thinking a certain way. God's word comes in, challenges that and says, give up that thought.

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Think God's after him. The herald has come and has proclaimed what

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God says. Submit to it. That is how we submit to God, by submitting to his word.

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I believe a preacher should be engaged in understanding the flow of language.

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He should be a wordsmith. That's the tool of his trade. He should have near him a thesaurus so that he's not using the same word over and over and over again, but he's using language that is enriched.

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He should be able to converse and not just be repetitive, repetitive, repetitive.

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It should be very much involved in the sermon preparation that he's thinking of words that are similar to the one he wants to use to say much the same thing.

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He should use proper grammar. He should be using compelling language.

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We don't always get it right, but there should be a desire to do so. We're honoring the king when we do that.

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We're honoring him. Martin Lloyd -Jones said, preaching is logic on fire.

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It's theology coming through a man who's on fire. We're taking what we know about God from the scripture, and it's being poured out from the preacher as he looks into the text, and he sees what's in the text.

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We need to be balanced. If it's all exposition but no preaching, it's just information, it's like a lecture, and it's not preaching.

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We're actually then making librarians rather than disciples, and that's not what we're after.

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All head and no heart produces all hearing and little doing.

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We're not here to bring an encyclopedia kind of knowledge to people, but it should be passion on fire, logic on fire, information that has gripped us, and we're gripped by the message ourselves, and that's what we're conveying in the sermon.

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So if it's all exposition and no preaching, that's not good. That's out of balance.

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If it's all preaching and no exposition, it's a lot of hot air. It's loud, but there's no life.

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It's shallow. It's superficial. It's all surface level. It's all style, but no substance.

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You think of some of the things you and I might have heard, and you think, what was all that about?

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It was just the guy's very good at saying not much at all.

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That's an abuse of the pulpit. Being balanced is expository preaching, both.

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It's the pulpit where there's illumination and fire. There's illumination and heat.

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There's light and heat, light of the understanding of the Scripture, but the passion of God by the power of the

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Holy Spirit taking place, and there's no separation between the two. Some people think that to get into doctrine is to quench the

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Holy Spirit. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Holy Spirit leads us to know the truth, true teaching, true doctrine about Jesus, yet we should be fired up by what we know about Jesus and passionate in our worship, and what's in the pulpit will spread to the pew.

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If there's a mist in the pulpit, there's a fog in the pew.

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There should be clarity. There should be a man walking to the pulpit saying, I don't know everything about everything, but I know this text.

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I've mastered this text, and I'm being mastered by the text, and let me loose.

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I'm going to give them God's Word. If they don't like it, okay, the Bible says preach the

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Word in season and out of season. When they like it, and there's good fruit, and you're seeing it, and when they don't like it, doesn't seem to be much fruit, and they're running away and throwing stuff at you.

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A lecture can be given at any time, but a sermon must be delivered with an imperative now.

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This is what God says. This is what God says now. Respond now. I used to quote the

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Scripture that says today is the accepted time until I read it again, and it says now.

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Today could last a few more hours, but now is now. Deal with it now.

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I believe that the preacher should be, after he's got the text settled in his mind, what it's teaching, what the meaning of it is, that's not the end of his preparation.

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That's just the first stage. He should then be working on how do I say this? How do I say it in terms of the audience that I have and will have before me when

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I preach this? God gives no rewards to boring preachers.

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I think it was Steve Lawson who said, God gives no rewards when it's the bland leading the bland.

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It's true. Spurgeons said now. Compel them to come in, the

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Scripture says. Luke 14, 23. There's a now element of preaching that's not involved when there's merely a lecture taking place.

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And in 2 Timothy 4, we find nine imperatives, and I just want to go through them.

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When we gather together as the church of God, we're gathering to hear the herald of God proclaim the

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Word of God. And our worship is taking place, not merely when we're singing the hymns, but when we're attentive to his

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Word. That is just as much the worship of the people of God. Some people have the idea, well, the worship element of the services are singing, and then we have preaching.

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No. For the congregation, but also for the preacher, this is worship.

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We're worshiping God as we're proclaiming his Word. We're proclaiming the awesome majesty of God here.

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Preaching is in the very heartbeat of the life of the church, or it should be.

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Jesus never said, go into all the world and mime the gospel. There's nothing wrong with mimes.

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There's nothing wrong with drama, but the gospel includes words. Words, it's news, and it has to be heard.

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And the criteria by which we'll be judged is not how many show up to hear you, but did you preach the book?

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And I know that's what's going to be asked of me and all preachers when we stand before him. He's going to ask, did you do what

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I said? Did you say what I said? Or did you just like an evil way to cut off from the people what was given to you on the plate and say, oh, no, they won't like carrots.

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I'm going to take that off the plate. Give them what I've given them. Preach the Word because God himself is watching you.

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That's 2 Timothy 4 verse 1. I charge you in the sight of God, in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead.

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What solemnity there. And by his appearing and his kingdom, preach the Word. It's an exclusive task.

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We're not commissioned to preach anything else. But the word.

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Second, it says, be ready in season and out of season. That means always when you're welcomed and when you're rejected, when your message is welcomed, when your message is rejected, when you're finding it convenient and people like it.

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And when it's not convenient, you know, going in, they are not going to like this. You'd be locked and loaded with the word of God.

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Stay at your post, Timothy. Stay at your post, son. Give them the word of God.

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Third, reprove. That's what you find in the text. Be ready in season and out of season, reprove.

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That really is to expose wrong thinking, wrong teaching, wrong doctrine, wrong behavior and saying, that's not true.

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It's right to reprove and say, that's wrong. Four, rebuke.

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Calling it out for what it is. Rebuke. It ought not to be this way, saints.

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Five, exhort. Urge the proper pursuit.

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Exhort. Come on, guys. We need to do this. We're moving away from what's now been exposed and we're going to do this as a people now.

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From this point on, let us be people who do what this verse is saying.

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God has summoned us to do this. Six, it says, do it with great patience.

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Oh, that's so hard for us. We want people to do things immediately and we call them to do it immediately.

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But in terms of understanding, I know there's some things I needed to study a long time before the penny finally dropped, to use a metaphor.

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We need to be patient with people, with great patience. You speak with urgency, yet you're patient with people.

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We love God. We love his truth, yet we love people and we come to where they are. We're not compromising when we do that.

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We're saying, this is God's standard and I'm going to keep giving this to you, but I'm going to be patient with you.

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You haven't quite seen it yet. All right, let's go to the passage again. Let's go to another passage that teaches the same thing.

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Be patient, Timothy. Be patient, minister of God. Number seven, be sober in all things.

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Don't be intoxicated, in other words, with the spirit of the age. Don't tickle the ears.

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Don't allow yourself to be conformed to this world, even in your preaching.

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Inside the professing church, there's many, many ideas, but you be sober. This is not saying that there's no place for humor.

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In fact, I think there's a lot that we miss in our Bibles because we're not brought up in the

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Hebrew language or the Greek language. We don't see Jesus doing what he was doing in that culture.

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In fact, one of the things I learned about the first century was that there were many stories told about shepherds as jokes.

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Jesus often used shepherd stories and then turned everything on its head by saying, and that's what

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God's like. He'd start off a story and they'd say, oh, this is amazing. Jesus is telling us a human story.

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There's this shepherd. All right, let's gather in, folks. There's a shepherd story. He talked about a shepherd having a hundred sheep.

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You know what he did? This guy who had a hundred sheep, he lost one. One went astray and he left the 99.

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Wow, that's funny, Jesus. Then Jesus turned it on its head and said, God's like that, in going after one of his sheep that's gone astray.

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He made a point, but he was using humor. We miss that because we're from England, America, Australia, wherever we're from.

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We're not in the first century culture. Eight, endure hardship.

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Timothy, it's coming. They're not always going to like you. Bear up under pressure.

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Stay at your post. That's your assignment. That's your pulpit. Stay there and you proclaim the word of God.

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If they have to carry you out, let them do it, but let them do it with you proclaiming the word of God.

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Number nine, do the work of an evangelist. Here, I think the context is even amongst your own flock.

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Don't assume that everybody that's hearing you is a full -blooded Christian. Make sure that you're proclaiming the gospel in everything you're saying,

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Timothy. Preach the word. The word is the message of the cross.

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It's the message that Jews find objectionable, as do the

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Greeks. Jews want signs. Greeks want wisdom.

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The only people that are going to really enjoy what you have to say are the cold, who love the message of the cross.

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It's an offense. In fact, if a preacher can preach what he preaches at some club, some secular club, and it does not offend someone, he hasn't really proclaimed the gospel because the gospel is offensive.

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You go in there knowing it. Endure hardship.

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Do the work of an evangelist. Fulfill your ministry. Say it all. Throw it out there.

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Hold nothing back. Leave nothing unsaid or undone. Leave it all out on the line.

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Oftentimes, a preacher, at the end of his message, people come and talk to him, and he's absolutely mentally exhausted.

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They have no idea because they probably haven't preached themselves, but they are absolutely exhausted.

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They've laid it all out there. It's really the case that if they're just able to just converse to the point where they can remember everything they're hearing, they're a better man than I am.

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I say to people, okay, you're telling me something about Tuesday. Could you write that down for me? Because I know I'm going to forget that before I go home.

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They think, you're going to forget that before? Well, it's only a 15 -minute drive to home. How are you going to forget it?

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Because I'm exhausted mentally. I've thrown it all out there. I've been on this like a hawk all week preparing this, preparing my heart.

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Mentally, I've just thrown everything out there. Now, I need to just stop and regroup and have a little nap perhaps, but all true preaching leaves it all out there.

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I've said what God says. They may walk away and like it. They may walk away and not like it, but if they're going back with their

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Bible, the verses, the passages I've read is going home with them and before God, I gave them what the passage says.

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If they've got a problem with it, their problem is with God, the author of the scripture, because I mastered the text.

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I interpreted it correctly as far as I know with all the help available to me. I believe

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I've nailed what it says. I've said what it says. They go home with the

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Bible telling them what the Bible says. Not my opinion, not my jokes, not my poems, not my ideas, not my creativity, but the word of God, the word of God, the word of God.

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Now, one of the benefits we have in our day is that there are a lot of helps around that were not around hundreds of years ago, sometimes even 50, 60 years ago.

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There's some great commentaries around. The mistake we often make as preachers is on a

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Sunday after we've poured ourselves out, Monday comes and we start the long, arduous journey up the mountain to Sunday morning next week, and we think it will save a little bit of time by going to a commentary first.

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Let's find out what Martin Lloyd -Jones says or R .C. Sproul or James Boyce or someone else that we might enjoy reading.

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That's a big mistake. I find when I've done that, when I've gone first to the commentary, my mind is now in the track of Martin Lloyd -Jones, and I can only see in the text what he's brought out of the text.

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It's so important that we stay for the first two, three, four days just soaking in the text ourselves and then getting the help we need on understanding what the original language is saying.

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I'm not a Hebrew scholar or a Greek scholar. I can read some Greek, but I don't pretend to be an expert in that, but I lean on those who

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I consider trustworthy in the area of scholarship.

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But then I do go to the commentaries, and sometimes what you find there can be really, really helpful.

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I brought with me one of the tools I'm using as I'm going through Ephesians. It's a commentary on Ephesians by Richard Phillips.

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It's a pretty new commentary, and I learned something by reading this.

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It's in the passage I was just recently preaching on Ephesians 6, verses 5 through 9, where it's talking there about the slave and master relationship.

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I had to explain that the word slave there has a connotation in our thinking that's very different from what a slave was back in the first century, and I explained all that.

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I hope I don't need to spend minutes on that right now. But in one little insight, it brought just amazing clarity to me, and I thought,

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I would never have known that if I just think it's just me and Jesus. God, reveal your truth to me.

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Reveal it to me. No, God has also given you gifted teachers as his gift to the church.

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Ephesians 4 says that. He's given apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers.

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They're gifts from the ascended Christ, and they're not just people in our own day. It's people who through the centuries have written down their understanding of Scripture, and we're say, let's see what they saw in this text rather than just starting as if we've got to reinvent the wheel.

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No, there's hundreds of years of the great minds of the Christian faith pouring themselves over the

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Scriptures. Let me just read what I read in this passage, and I thought, oh, that's so helpful in this commentary.

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On this passage, no doubt Paul would prefer for Christian masters to free their slaves.

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When he sent back the runaway Onesimus, he asked Philemon to receive him no longer as a slave but more than a slave as a beloved brother,

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Philemon verse 16. But more important than the removal of this or any other social injustice is its transformation through the grace of God.

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One place to see this is Romans 16. So here's a commentary on Ephesians 6, but he says we see what's taking place much more clearly if we look elsewhere, and Romans 16 is a passage that really helps us.

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Here's what he says. Here, Paul gives personal greetings from Corinth to various people in the

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Roman church. At one point, Paul must have taken a breather for the scribe taking his dictation, inserted his own greeting.

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And in the sermon, the last one I did, I said, who wrote the book of Romans?

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And there was a brief pause, and then people said, Paul. But I said, turn to Romans 16 and verse 22, and it's actually a man called

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Tertius who wrote Romans. Now, Paul was the one speaking, and Tertius was the scribe, if you like, making what was the words that he was hearing appear on the papyrus or whatever it was he was writing on.

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I, Tertius, who wrote this letter, greet you in the Lord. And I said, you can really annoy people by saying, who wrote the book of Romans?

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And if they say Paul, say, nope, Tertius. But it was Paul's words. In the next verse,

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Paul resumes, Gaius, who is host to me into the whole church, greets you. Erastus, the city treasurer, and our brother,

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Quartus, greet you. Now, that's not too much to us, to our

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English ears. We don't really hear what's taking place, but here's what the commentary says. This little gathering tells us much about the early

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Christians. Gaius, or Gaius, must have been a rich man since he hosted the apostle and the church met in his home, and since he had at least four slaves.

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Hear this. Erastus was a high government official. Archaeologists have found an inscription of his name on a public sidewalk in Corinth.

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I didn't know that. What about Tertius and Quartus? It turns out that slaves in Roman households were named according to their position.

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The top ranking slave was Primus, which means one. Secundus, you can guess what that means, was number two, followed by Tertius, which means three.

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Quartus means four. Quintus means five, and so on.

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This tells us that Tertius and Quartus, in Romans 16 verses 22 to 23, are the number three and number four slaves in Gaius's house.

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Yet, they are not left out by Paul, just as the slaves in Ephesus are not left out of this epistle.

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He's writing to them, Ephesians 6, 5 through 9. In the flesh, they might be master and slave, but in Christ, it was our brother,

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Quartus, who's the fourth slave in the house. No wonder

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Paul could say that in the church, there's neither Jew nor Greek, there's neither slave nor free, there's neither male nor female, for you're all one in Christ Jesus, Galatians 3, 28.

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Imagine what a difference this would have made in this one household, just as Christ will change our homes and workplaces.

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Donald Grey Barnhouse imagines an interview with Tertius and Quartus about the difference it made to them.

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He has them answer this way. One day, Paul came into the house of our master, Gaius.

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We saw a great transformation in him. Gaius was transformed. He began to be kind to us.

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Soon, he had Paul tell us about Christ. For two years, Paul lived in Corinth, and he came to our house often.

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We got the bread and the wine ready when the crowd came on Sunday. It made more work for us, but it was delightful.

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They broke the bread, and we began to eat from the same loaf as our master.

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They filled a chalice with wine, and our master sipped it and smiled as he handed it to us.

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Day after day, everything was transformed. He put his hand on us and cried as he spoke of the grace of God that had saved us all.

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He said that he was our master, but he realized that he had a master, Christ. He wanted to treat us the way

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Christ treated him. Love transformed our lives.

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Do you see? As I went through this particular commentary, I thought,

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I would have missed all that if I just had my own thoughts left to my own self.

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I would never have come up with that. We don't know what we don't know. That's why it's important to be reading others, and that serves the congregation because it allows us to find out what others have mined on the same scriptures.

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But don't start there, preacher. At the end of your time of study, say, now what has others said and written on this?

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What I do oftentimes by Friday, I've really got a grip, I think, on what the passage means.

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But then I start listening to others who've preached on the same text. Thankfully, in our day, you don't have to send off and get something in the mail.

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You write for three days, it gets there, three days comes back, and a week later, you can download things so quickly.

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What a blessing that is. I remember in the days of cassette tapes, it took weeks to get hold of material.

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Now we can download six or eight sermons and have them ready. My car has become my university since I was about 18, and I spend maybe five, six hours every week listening to Christian teaching.

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I don't know what's going on in the pop culture. I don't really know a lot of what happened in the mid -eighties through to today in terms of music, but I think

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I've made a good use, not the best use because there were times when I didn't have anything going on at all, but I've used that time to listen to others who've gleaned from the

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Scriptures. Make the full use of your time in that way. I'd encourage that. Be listening to people who are good communicators.

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I remember going to a class on preaching, and in the first five minutes, I thought, I don't think

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I want to come back because at best, I'm going to become as good as the man teaching me, and he's bored me already.

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After three minutes, I'm looking at my watch. No, I want to learn from the best.

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Why is a good communicator a good communicator? Assess that. Learn from that, and that's why we talked at the beginning about learning from people even outside the

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Christian faith who have common grace in that area. We're out of time for today.

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There's much more we could be talking about. Yeah, the

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YouTube video I mentioned at the beginning. Go to YouTube and look up Benjamin Zander, Z -A -N -D -E -R, and it's about a 21 -minute video.

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I think that's enough to help find it. If not, just call

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Richard, his home number, and he'll help you with that, but I did say it at the beginning, and we don't really need to repeat it.

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You can go back to the beginning and hear it again. My name is John Sampson of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona.

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The blog site is effectualgrace .com, where I talk about some of the resources available for preachers and hermeneutics.

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It's been a joy to come to you today. Be praying for Dr. White on his travels.

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May God be with him, keep him safe, and give him mighty power in the Holy Spirit as he debates and preaches around the world.