May 28, 2024 Show with John Samson on “Expository Preaching: How It Reveals the True God & the True Gospel”

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Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer
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George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend
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Jim Thorpe, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,
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Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.
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Proverbs, chapter 27, verse 17, tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.
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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.
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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.
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And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,
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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet
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Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.
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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 28th day of May of 2024.
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I trust you all had a blessed Memorial Day weekend, and that you had not only opportunities to enjoy feasting and fellowship and enjoyable, memorable times with your family, friends, and loved ones, but that you also had opportunities to remember the fallen soldiers who gave it all to provide the freedoms we take for granted in this nation.
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And also, we hope that you had opportunities to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with all those that you know and love with whom you are sharing this holiday.
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But today, before I introduce to you my guest and our topic, I just want to remind you that the next free, biannual
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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Pastors Luncheon is coming up next week already. It's Thursday, June 6th, 11 a .m.
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to 2 p .m. at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania, which is
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Perry County, Pennsylvania. And for the very first time, we are honored with the privilege of having
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Dr. Joel Beeky as our guest speaker. He is the founder and chancellor of Puritan Reform Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
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And not only is this event free, not only will you get free admission and free lunch, but every attendee receives one and possibly two heavy sacks of free brand -new books, personally selected by me and donated by generous
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Christian publishers all over the United States and United Kingdom. Everything is absolutely free at the insistence of my precious late wife,
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Julie, who launched these luncheons with me back in the 1990s when
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I was still living on Long Island. And we continue these luncheons in tribute to my precious late wife,
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Julie, and in loving memory of her. So if you would like to attend this free event on Thursday, June the 6th, 11 a .m.
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to 2 p .m. at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania, send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com,
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chrisarnson at gmail .com, and put Pastor's Luncheon in the subject line. But today we have a returning guest, a very dear friend of mine and a very generous supporter of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.
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His name is John Sampson. He is an author. He is a former Word of Faith Pentecostal pastor and televangelist who converted to Reformed Baptist theology and cessationism.
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And now he is the pastor of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona. Today we're going to be addressing expository preaching, how it reveals the true
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God and the true gospel. It's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor John Sampson.
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Oh, thank you. It's great always to be with you, Chris. Well I'd like you to first of all give our listeners an update on your health.
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I have already since promoting this interview with you in social media been getting contacted in various ways, emails, texts, social media posts, private messages, people requesting as to the current status of your health.
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They had heard of your prayer requests in the recent past regarding your health.
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So if you could please explain, as much as you care to explain, about your health condition and what the updates and praise reports might be regarding that.
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Yeah, I'd be glad to. On Sunday, March the 10th, 2024, just a few months back,
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I approached the pulpit to start the service and couldn't really get my breath.
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And someone looked at me and said, Are you okay? And I said, No. And within moments,
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I was down on the floor. People saw that I was falling and somehow caught me before I fell.
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But I was immediately just completely out of it. And if you can imagine, it was a little bit chaotic.
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People were saying, Is there a doctor in the house? And thankfully, someone actually was just visiting from another state, happened to find us online the night before.
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And I think that was just miraculous right there. Plus, someone with him who was a nurse who was visiting.
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And so I was in immediate care right there. And I was out for maybe 45 seconds or a minute, but didn't look like I was coming back, looked like I actually died.
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A medical team arrived and they did their various medical procedures.
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And one guy said, I think you're dehydrated. That's all this is. Well, that wasn't true.
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And then I was rushed to hospital and they assumed I'd had a heart attack. And this was all after about three weeks before having this horrendous infection that had left my jaw completely locked.
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And I was in hospital for that. And so this was just a couple of weeks, maybe three after that.
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So this was the second time in hospital. I was told with that, that I'd had a mass and it was taken over my face and had made my face on the right side three times the normal size.
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And I was told, yeah, a mass, very sorry. It was kind of the speech you never want to hear.
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And I thought, maybe do I have three days to live or five the way this is taking over my face?
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So all of that was before. Then this was told it was a heart attack after a few tests and was about to go for a procedure in the hospital.
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10 minutes before the procedure, a man who I'm just so thankful for came into the room, kind of burst into a hospital room and asked a series of questions.
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And to cut a long story short, said, we're going to cancel that procedure on your heart catheterization of your heart.
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And we're going to just give you some a CT scan of your lungs. That's what saved my life.
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Wow. Because they found out my lungs, both of them were filled with clots. And so I'd suffered a pulmonary embolism.
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It's not really a term I'd known too well before then, but there are different shades of that.
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I know a number of people who've had that. Mine was what they call a saddle pulmonary embolism.
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And one in four survive a normal one. The one
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I had, it's just, again, amazing that I'm surviving and have survived.
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And yeah, what happened after that was various procedures and they, without going into all the details, just a long, long series that would cause recovery.
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And I'm three months into that. And the normal span of time of getting back to so -called normal is between three months and two to three years.
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And we're at the two and a half month time right now. And I didn't know if I'd ever be preaching again.
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I had involuntary twitching going on in the upper part of my body. And it was heightened whenever I went near the church, believe it or not.
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Wow. Subconsciously, certainly not consciously. Consciously, I think it's a wonderful place to go to.
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Subconsciously, my body was reacting. That's the place where we were traumatized or I was traumatized.
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Wow. Yeah, there was a couple of attempts of even going to church and I couldn't do it.
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My body wouldn't stand up to it. So I've actually been preaching the last three Sundays and taking it easy, not doing anything else in the service.
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My fellow elder is doing the other part, which he stepped up to the plate just so brilliantly.
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But that's the update. I'm up and around and just thankful to be alive. And my dear wife has been through the mill, not knowing if I'd survive even the night at times.
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But I'm here and preaching the word. Praise God. And everyone who knows and loves you is delighted to hear that praise report.
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And I'm going to request, obviously, that all those listening continue or begin for the first time to lift up Pastor John Sampson of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona, in prayer that he would be very soon completely recovered of this health crisis and that Romans 8 .28
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would prove to, once again, to be a genuine promise of God and that my dear friend,
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Pastor John, would begin to quickly witness, experience, and take hold of tangible evidence that our
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Lord is working even this for His good, because He is certainly among the cold of God who loves
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God and is cold according to His purpose. Thank you,
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Chris. Thank you for all that. We would really appreciate to hear ongoing updates from you.
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Well, now tell our listeners about King's Church in Peoria, Arizona. Yeah, it's a
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Reformed Baptist Church. We hold to the 1689 Confession of Faith, the
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London Baptist Confession of Faith. And we started in our home and branched out and now rent a facility on a
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Sunday. And we've seen some amazing folk come in. Just I feel they're the best church in the world, but other pastors would disagree.
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Just love the folk. Love the folk. And we're very encouraged by what we've seen.
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In fact, through this time, the level of unity is just off the charts. Everybody, if you can imagine that service, it wasn't ever going to be a normal service after what happened on March the 10th, and they just turned it into a prayer meeting.
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And I'm just very grateful for the family of God being the family of God in more than name only.
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So I love those people, and they seemingly love me, and they're behind me.
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It's a great place to visit if you're in the area, in the Phoenix area. And it is a
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Reformed Baptist Church. Yes. And if anybody wants more details about King's Church in Peoria, Arizona, go to kingschurchaz .com,
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kingschurchaz .com, and God willing, we'll be repeating that later on in the program. Well, as I've already announced, today's topic is a topic we have addressed before a number of times on Iron Trip and Zion Radio.
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I don't believe I've ever addressed it with my guest today, John Sampson, but this is actually a more focused conversation on expository preaching, where we are highlighting how expository preaching reveals the true
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God and the true gospel. And if you have questions about this topic, submit them to chrisarnson at gmail .com.
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chrisarnson at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the
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USA. Please only remain anonymous if your questions are of a personal and private nature.
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Perhaps, for instance, you disagree with your own pastor and elders over something we are addressing today, and you don't want to draw attention to your identity publicly at this point.
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Well, that makes sense. And maybe you're even the pastor. You disagree with your fellow elders over something we're addressing, or your denomination, or what have you.
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Whatever the case may be, if it's personal and private, feel free to make your question anonymous.
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But if it's a general question, please give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence. Well, as always, when we have a topic and it involves a term or a word that may be unfamiliar to some in our audience,
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I know that the vast majority of Iron Trap and Zion Radio listeners are likely Reformed and are very familiar with the frequent repetition in their own congregations of the term expository preaching.
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But there are those that are not from our background. There are also those that are new Christians.
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In fact, I was very encouraged just a few days ago to get an email from somebody who described himself as a baby
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Christian who is being edified and growing in his knowledge of the
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Lord through my guests and topics on this show. But there are even non -Christians who are listening, and they don't know what expository preaching means.
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So why don't you give us a definition of that? Yeah, you'll hear in the word expository,
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I'm sure, the word expose. And what we're exposing in preaching of this kind is the text.
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We, as pastors, hopefully are spending our time studying the text rigorously, making sure we've got a true interpretation of the text.
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And then we take the meaning of the text and expose it to the congregation, to those that hear.
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So the meaning of the text becomes the message of the sermon. Which is why sometimes it's called exegetical preaching.
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Yes, exactly. And that can happen with topical preaching.
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I know you read C .H. Spurgeon, and he would be in Isaiah one week and John's Gospel the next.
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But in expository preaching, what we're doing is something different. He was able to, because of his knowledge, go to texts by themselves, but bring out the meaning of the text in that context.
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He had that kind of brain that allowed him to do that. Just by way of background, my upbringing as a
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Christian was in a very strange church. I look back and think there were many great things
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I learned there, but a lot of things I had to unlearn as well. But the idea was, you don't know who's going to be preaching at this particular church any given
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Sunday. And by the way, it could be you. How much notice would you get?
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You wouldn't get any. It would be, you feel your hands shaking a little bit, and you think that's the
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Holy Spirit. And yeah, it was a very strange environment, but it allowed me as an 18 -year -old to preach.
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Sounds like Plymouth Brethren or something. You know what? It was exactly that. It was a
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Plymouth Brethren congregation that had now encountered the
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Holy Spirit, as they would call it, and now were charismatic. But they had the Plymouth Brethren baggage, if you like.
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And so to say it was topical was an understatement. You have no idea where the service is going.
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You don't know if you're going to be involved in some way. Later on, I would, after seminary, begin preaching and would be very topical.
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By Tuesday, I'm thinking, what am I going to preach on Sunday? And therefore,
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I was studying. But by Friday, I should have an idea. By Saturday, I definitely should have an idea and then could change it all because of a restless night on Sunday morning.
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And now this is fresh from the Holy Spirit, so to speak. That was my background.
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Looking back, I shudder at that, but certainly want to allow for topical preaching. But I believe the mainstay of the church would be to go book by book and verse by verse through our
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Bibles. And we're going to hopefully get into why that's the case. But that's what expository preaching is.
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It's not just taking a text and showing the truth of it in its context. That is expository preaching.
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But what we're usually referring to is verse by verse. You start at chapter 1, verse 1 and go through to the end of the book.
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And I've come to understand that's what the Holy Spirit inspired. He inspired chapter 1, verse 1 before he did chapter 1, verse 2 and chapter 1, verse 3.
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And he has things to say that we wouldn't normally go to topically.
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We as pastors and preachers usually have our topics we want to talk about.
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But expository preaching allows the Holy Spirit to help us to talk about and preach what he has inspired.
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And the Bible says all Scripture, as you know, is inspired, breathed out by God.
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And so this is a method that is simply taking
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God's word at face value and verse by verse, going through the text. And every Tuesday, you know what you're going to be preaching the next
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Sunday because it will be the next verse or the next passage. And after the pulmonary embolism
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I had, we were in verse 19 through 22 of Hebrews chapter 10.
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That was the passage that I preached the week before. And after two months, picked up again with verse 23.
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Well, you are certainly a Reformed Baptist. And we are.
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I'm sorry, brother. That's what we do. That's right. Well, we are going to our first commercial break and send us an email if you have a question to chrisarnsen at gmail .com.
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Doug McMasters here, former director of pastoral correspondence at Grace to You, the radio ministry of John MacArthur.
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That love starts with the wonderful news that the Lord Jesus Christ is a Savior who died for sinners and that God forgives all who come to him in repentance, trusting solely in Christ to deliver them.
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That's nhpbc .com. You can also call us at 516 -352 -9672.
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That's 516 -352 -9672. That's New High Park Baptist Church, a congregation in love with each other, passionate for Christ, committed to learning and being shaped by God's word and delighting in the gospel of God's sovereign grace.
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That's royaldiadem .com. Don't forget to mention Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. We're now back with John Sampson, pastor of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona, and we are talking about expository preaching and how it reveals the true
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God and the true gospel. And our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.
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We have Andrew in Brooklyn, New York, who asks, do you know of people recently in your church that were brought out of false belief systems through your expository preaching?
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Well, there are so many false teachings that it would be hard not to think of certain people as the answer to that question.
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Yes, there's a lot of folk who become members of the church and in the process of the interview before they become members,
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I or my fellow elder will ask, tell us how you came to Christ. What was the story behind you coming to Christ?
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And they say, I was actually converted here because I had been at a particular church and never heard the true gospel.
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It was always assumed or I never heard it, but I've heard it here and I've come to Christ here.
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And this is people who've been in, quote, the church for maybe a decade and a half or so.
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And that's happened a number of times. So it's not only people that come out of cults, but false religions and included in that is
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Roman Catholicism. And yeah, we've seen that for sure. And expository preaching allows the preacher to go to the text, but it also allows the
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Holy Spirit. And this is something I wanted to stress. It's an honoring of the Holy Spirit in that the
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Holy Spirit didn't simply or merely inspire verses. He inspired books.
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There are 66 inspired books in our Bible in the
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Old Testament. We have 39 in the New Testament, 27. Add that up, you got 66.
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These are the very words of God. And he's inspired books and he inspired verse one of chapter one and then verse two.
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And then as we continue reading chapter four, verse eight and chapter four, verse nine and going through the
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Bible that way sequentially, that's a key word that would sum up what we're talking about when we talk about expository preaching.
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You now get to subjects you wouldn't normally gravitate towards as a pastor, but it's good for the people because it's the
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Holy Spirit's diet. If you think of the word of God as our food, it's the Holy Spirit's agenda rather than the preacher's.
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And that's what I've come to see. And so you do address the deity of Christ. You do address salvation by grace alone, through faith alone in Christ alone, because the text takes you there and it gets the preacher off his hobby horse.
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I was just talking about that a little before. There are eight maybe messages that are in his heart.
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He wants people to know, but the Holy Spirit has more than that to say to the people.
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And he has inspired the word of God. And this is last Sunday. I was preaching about hell because that's where the text takes us.
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It's not something you'd normally do if you have this idea.
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Well, I can't mention this because people will not really like it or else they might be offended.
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And when we actually go to texts that speak to what the Holy Spirit wants us to talk about, it could be offensive.
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But I found this, the goats will obviously leave, but the sheep will love it. And with many people, many churches, the idea is what can we say that will bring them back next week?
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Whereas Jesus told people the truth and folk walked away and he didn't say, look, just read
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John 6. He didn't say, look, we'll be giving away bicycles next week. I'll do better next week.
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I'll please come back. No, he turned to his own and said, are you going to go away too?
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Yeah, and it's interesting that as far as the Armenian Calvinist divide in the body of Christ, the very thing that Jesus said that was the straw, the final straw that broke the camel's back with his disgruntled hearers that made them walk away and never return was when he said, no one can come to me unless it is granted to him by the
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Father. Yes, you know, as someone who didn't used to, but now embraces the doctrine of election because it is there in our text, it's not a hobby horse for me.
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And it's not that people can complain, oh, there's Pastor John again. He wants to talk about this all the time.
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I am able now to go to the text and when it's there in the text, I preach it and then
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I move on to the next verse and people can tell it's not a hobby horse. It's not just something
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I have to talk about. I want to talk about it because the Holy Spirit has revealed that and he has the right as God, the
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Holy Spirit to say this will be the diet of the people of the church.
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And that's what I feel I'm submitting to rather than I'm dictating. There's a big difference. As a topical preacher,
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I can dictate what people hear. And there are times when it's good to bring out, say, a message on the doctrine of the
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Trinity, but you can't just do that from one verse. And so you would be topical at that moment when you're talking about the
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Trinity, because there's not one verse that just spells it out. You have to go to many verses and many passages.
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But the normal diet of the church, I believe, is healthy when we, as if you think of waiters waiting on tables at a restaurant, we're not on the way from the kitchen taking certain things off the plate saying they won't like this.
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We're actually just taking what has been handed to us and passing it on to the people so that no one messes with the food.
37:55
So basically, for clarification's sake, what you are saying is that when expository preaching is the manner with which the scriptures are expounded from the pulpit every week, the intention of the pastor and the church is that eventually, and this is going to take a long time, it's going to take years, but the concept is that every verse of the
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Bible will be exegeted eventually. I mean, you could be in one chapter for months.
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You could be in one book for years. But at the same time, the intention is to go verse by verse, chapter by chapter, book by book, every
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Lord's Day, with the exception of it's Christmas. You want to have a topical message on Christmas or what have you.
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Or if there's a unique event that has occurred, like what happened on 9 -11 back in 2001 when the
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United States had the most severe attack from a foreign enemy on our soil, you might want to have something topical, obviously.
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But other than those exceptions, you're going verse by verse, and therefore, the phrase you used before, hobby -horsing, is less likely, especially if you're exegeting.
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And very often, even to unbelievers, it can be obvious when somebody is doing the opposite, exegeting, when they're inserting things that are not there.
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So that's where you're coming from. And it was laughable that just,
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I think it was yesterday or the day before, someone on Facebook said that Calvinists do not preach all of the
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Bible. They selectively preach on the text that they think favor their viewpoint and ignore the other verses.
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And my response was, that's patently absurd, slanderous, and ridiculous, because Calvinists are the ones that are most well -known for expository preaching.
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And therefore, every Reformed church that I have ever been, especially where I've been a member,
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Calvinists don't hide from the verses that may, on their surface, especially when they're isolated, may appear to be favoring an
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Arminian view of the will of man, or someone coming to a saving faith through their own free will.
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It may appear that way until the whole counsel of God is taken into consideration. But on the other hand, you have those that do not believe in or even hate the doctrines of grace who will avoid, you know, texts that involve predestination and election, like the plague.
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In fact, a humorous story that's actually tragic, but you can't help but laugh about it.
41:12
I know a brother who came to the doctrines of sovereign grace.
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He came out of an independent, fundamentalist, King James -only, non -Calvinist background.
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His father -in -law is a vehement anti -Calvinist and also a pastor.
41:36
Before he had the courage to admit to his father -in -law that he had become a believer in the doctrines of sovereign grace, and he was actually just looking for the best moment to spring that on his father -in -law because he knew what kind of damage it would do to family relations, his father -in -law asked him, so what are you preaching on this
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Sunday? And he swallowed hard and said, well, we're going through Romans 9.
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And his father -in -law said, wait a minute, you have got to preach through that book all in one sermon like you're ripping off a
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Band -Aid. You can't dwell for a long period of time in that book because people are going to get the wrong idea and they might wind up believing in Calvinism.
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So here you have a fundamentalist who believes in the inerrancy of Scripture, and yet he is afraid of the very words that the
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Lord in his sovereignty has breathed out in his Scripture and is treating passages as something to be avoided and to be terrified of.
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That's exactly right. There's so many benefits to preaching consecutively through books of the
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Bible, and one of those benefits is that the congregation usually can remember what was said the week before and maybe even the week before that.
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And so it's harder to take verses out of their setting, out of their context, because you're living with a congregation.
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You're saying verse 20 says this, but it can't say that if verse 19 says this. And so it's a safeguard for the pastor, but it's also a safeguard for the people because they're getting the verses in their context by definition because no verse has been left out in the run -up to the passage that's currently in view.
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So there's so many benefits to it. I really believe that steady diet, the normal diet of expositional, sequential preaching means that we're submitting to the
43:56
Bible in its context. We have a listener question from Barry in La Vista, Nebraska, and Barry asks, how specifically is expository preaching uniquely able to reveal, as your theme presented today, the true
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God and true gospel? Obviously, topical preaching can do that too. You might have a sermon specifically on the deity of Christ or the
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Trinity, and you might have a sermon specifically on what is the true gospel, but what makes the expository element something uniquely revealing in these aspects?
44:46
That's a great question. Let's talk on a broader scale about the
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Christian community. There's a radio station called
44:57
K -Love, and I was new to the United States, having come from England, and was thrilled that there was such a thing as Christian radio over here.
45:08
But it didn't take me two or three days before I realized there's kind of an agenda there, and then
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I realized it's actually in their theme, positive, encouraging K -Love.
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Well, what's wrong with that? Well, it became obvious to me that only positive things would be allowed.
45:28
Only positive things would be allowed through the filter. That's the filter through which any message that's ever going to be shared on that network is going to happen.
45:41
The idea is people want to feel good about themselves, and so they even have Bible verses of the day.
45:48
There's nothing particularly wrong with that. But again, the filter would be in place, only positive verses, because that's what the whole station is about.
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Now, I don't want to just simply target K -Love, but it's really something that's in view in many churches.
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The entire service, the philosophy of ministry is, what can we say that's going to grow our church, that people will want to come back?
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And grow them numerically, not necessarily in their knowledge. That's exactly right.
46:24
Yeah, and so the Bible speaks not only of the goodness of God or the kindness of God, but the severity of God.
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That's Romans 11, 22. And verse -by -verse exposition takes you there because that's the
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God of the Bible. On Sunday, just as an example, we were talking about hell because that's where the
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Bible passage was taking us. And I was making the point that in a K -Love environment, you couldn't have the passage in Revelation 20 either read, ever on the air.
47:04
I've not listened to everything they've ever put out, but I find it hard to believe they've ever put that passage or certainly the verse at the end of that passage in Revelation chapter 20 on the air as the verse of the day, which talks about people being thrown into hell.
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I mean, how can you do that? And imagine God who is only loving people, wants the best for people, ever throwing someone into hell.
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No, that's incompatible with the only idea that's coming across the airwaves.
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God just is, he loves you so much. And he's just so thrilled you've turned out as well as you have.
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He's got these wonderful plans for you. And if you imagine that God on the day of judgment saying, you know,
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I love you, this hurts me more than it hurts you. But this is for your good, you jumping into the lake of fire.
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Even when you say that, you think that's ridiculous. And that's the point, it is ridiculous because the
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God of the Bible is not only a God of love, rightfully so we preach that, but he's also a
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God of judgment. And no one who hears Caleb as their only diet will fear the
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God that's being portrayed. Amen, amen.
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Well, why don't you, obviously, we could do a whole week's worth of programs or a whole month's worth of programs on what is the true
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God of the Scripture and what is the true gospel of the Scripture. But why don't you at least give us a summary definition of how that would be presented, both the true
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God of the Gospel or the true God of the Scripture and the true gospel of the Scripture. Yeah, well, obviously, you can't do all of that all the time in every sermon, but I believe every sermon there should be the law of God presented and the gospel of God presented.
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The law of God, which tells us what God commands us to do, how we have failed to live up to the commandments that we're obliged to live up to, and we need a
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Savior. And the message of the Bible is God, the Holy Trinity, in sovereign, colossal power, created the world and created man in his image.
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Man being male and female with a view to man glorifying
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God in all that he thought, all that he did, all that he said. But man defied
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God in the garden and has sinned and death has spread to all men, as Romans 5 makes clear.
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And we are sinners born into this world estranged from God. And yet God, rather than judging the entire human race, which was within his total rights to do that, loved this world in this way.
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He actually sent his son, the Lord Jesus Christ, into this world, born of a virgin who lived a sinless life, perfectly fulfilling the law of God that we never kept.
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And then on the cross, dying for, as the substitute for sinners, dying for those sinners who had wreaked havoc on God by their actions.
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What love is this? It's amazing love that God loved the world this way.
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He sent his son into the world so that anyone who believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life.
51:08
He died on the cross for our sins, rose again from the dead, is now at the place of all authority in this universe, the
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Lord Jesus Christ and the messages. Anyone who calls on his name in repentance and faith will be saved from the wrath and the anger we deserve.
51:28
When we talk about salvation, it's because of a God who is holy as well as a
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God who is love. And God in his holiness has to punish sin or else he's not just.
51:43
And God will never compromise who he is. And so who he is demands that sin is punished.
51:50
And it was punished for sinners on the cross for all those who'll trust in him.
51:56
And we are saved, the Bible says in Romans 5 and another place in the
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New Testament, saved from the wrath of God. Not merely saved from a poor self -image or from a poor success rate in our business, poor feelings about ourselves, but saved from the ultimate calamity.
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That's what we mean when we talk about saved. When a sports person talks about a fight in the boxing ring and says a boxer was saved by the bell, there's nothing eternal going on there.
52:30
It just means he'd have lost the fight, but the bell sounded just before the referee was to count to 10 and the man's gonna be regarded as knocked out and then loses the fight.
52:40
He was saved by the bell. The goalkeeper makes a save in the game of soccer.
52:46
We understand that little calamity being saved.
52:52
A goalkeeper makes a save and what happens is he saves the team from going another goal down.
52:57
But in an ultimate sense, being saved is to be saved from the ultimate calamity. And that's facing
53:03
God on judgment day and getting what our sins deserve. So Jesus took what we deserved.
53:11
The evil due to us came upon Jesus on the cross and the good due to Jesus is made available to us so that our sins were transferred to Christ on the cross and his righteousness that kept the law perfectly is credited to the account of anyone who believes.
53:32
So call upon the name of the Lord and be saved. Saved from what? Saved from God, from God in his wrath.
53:41
And whose idea was it? It was God. God in his love has provided the ultimate savior to save us from his own wrath.
53:51
And we have to go to our midway break. Don't go away. We'll be right back. Chris Armisen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio has had a long -time partnership with our friends at CVBVS, which stands for Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.
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Hello, my name is Anthony Uvinio, and I'm one of the pastors at Hope Reformed Baptist Church in Quorum, New York, and also the host of the reformrookie .com
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Thanks for helping to keep Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio on the air. Hi, this is
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John Sampson. Pastor of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona. Taking a moment of your day to talk about Chris Arnson and the
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Iron Sharpen's Iron podcast. I consider Chris a true friend and a man of high integrity. He's a skilled interviewer who's not afraid to ask the big penetrating questions while always defending the key doctrines of the
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I believe this podcast needs to be heard far and wide. This is a day of great spiritual compromise.
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And yet God has raised Chris up for just such a time. And knowing this, it's up to us as members of the body of Christ to stand with such a ministry in prayer and in finances.
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I know it would be a huge encouragement to Chris if you would. All the details can be found at ironsharpensironradio .com
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This is Pastor Bill Sousa wishing you all the richest blessings of our
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Charles Haddon Spurgeon once said, Give yourself unto reading. The man who never reads will never be read.
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Mention Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Before we return to our conversation with John Sampson of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona, we have a couple of very important announcements to make.
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Go to ironsharpensironradio .com, click support, then click to donate now. Last but not least, if you're not a member of a biblically faithful,
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Christ -honoring, theologically sound, doctrinally solid church like King's Church in Peoria, Arizona, pastored by my guest today,
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John Sampson, well, no matter where in the world you live, I have extensive lists spanning the globe of biblically faithful churches.
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01:13:25
God and true gospel. Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.
01:13:30
Give us your first name at least, city and state of residence, and country of residence if you live outside of the good old
01:13:39
USA. And we have Terrence in, and I hope
01:13:45
I'm not mispronouncing this, Maumelle, Arkansas, M -A -U -M -E -L -L -E, and Terrence wants to know, is it possible for a pastor to be overly investigative on expository preaching, where it could take several
01:14:11
Sundays in a row for him to get past a few sentences of the Scripture, and he may wind up, if he is taking so long, being guilty of eisegesis, where he's inserting things that aren't even there?
01:14:27
That's a very good question. I'm not sure it's possible to study the
01:14:36
Word too much. However, I would say this. If someone is taking, say, 18 years to go through the book of Isaiah, it's a big, long book.
01:14:51
Or Isaiah chapter one. Right, that's right. And if they've spent so, so, so long in a particular book, there are other books of the
01:15:03
Bible that are equally inspired, and that could lead to an imbalance. I remember a funny story.
01:15:11
I heard of it. There was a man who lived in Florida who had just been in a church for nine years, going through the book of Genesis in his church.
01:15:20
The pastor had gone through the book of Genesis, took him nine years. He moved to another state and found a church in his area that was like -minded, and went there the first Sunday.
01:15:34
And the pastor got up and said, we've now finished our trek through Ephesians.
01:15:40
It's taken us four years, and now we're starting probably an eight or nine -year trek through the book of Genesis.
01:15:50
And his heart sank because he'd just spent nine years going through Genesis, and now there was eight or nine years ahead of him on the same theme.
01:16:00
And he went up to the pastor afterwards and said, you know, I've just had nine years. And he said, well, we're just starting right now.
01:16:08
You might need to find another church if that's a problem to you.
01:16:13
But if all we do is spend our time in one book, we're not getting the entire Bible, obviously.
01:16:19
So that would be the only danger. I don't think it's a problem to spend a lot of time in one particular passage if we're unveiling what's there in the passage.
01:16:31
But there should be some sort of pace that allows us to get through the book before 80 % of the members die.
01:16:42
Or commit suicide because they just can't take it anymore.
01:16:49
Now, I would think that this also calls for pastors and preachers to prayerfully examine their motives behind this.
01:17:05
They may be trying to show off their knowledge of the original languages, for instance.
01:17:12
It might be something that is causing them to take so long going through a short series of verses and taking so long to get through a chapter in a book.
01:17:25
They're just over -examining things to boast about, aren't
01:17:35
I a brilliant exegete? Aren't I a brilliant logician?
01:17:41
I know the original languages and you don't. Ha ha. That kind of thing. That should be something that preachers and pastors do anyway, right?
01:17:51
Examine their motives behind what they're doing. Yeah, that is exactly right.
01:17:57
And in the crucible of prayer that's hopefully taking place in the pastor's study as well as the study of God's word, both of those things are not in opposition to each other.
01:18:08
Hopefully in the prayer life, there is this desire that the people get it. But it's more than just a data dump.
01:18:16
Preaching is more than just bringing out what's in the text. It's also applying it.
01:18:22
And it's saying, ladies and gentlemen, because of this, you should.
01:18:28
And there's the application. And sometimes the application is just to stand in awe of God.
01:18:33
That's a massive application. You grab hold and you glimpse and you see the majesty of God that is revealed in the text before you.
01:18:45
And part of the application is stand amazed at who our God is or stand amazed at the grace of God for sinners that this text is revealing.
01:18:57
But there should be this ongoing operation in the heart of the pastor that says, all right,
01:19:03
I know my people. They need this. I need this. And what is the this? God as he really is and the gospel as it really is.
01:19:13
And let's make sure I'm bringing that out in the text. But there should be some sort of pace whereby people do have hope that we'll get to the end of the verse by this time next year.
01:19:28
We have Judge in Henderson, Nevada. And Judge says there seems to be a disagreement amongst those that are fans of expository preaching.
01:19:41
There are some who say regardless of what text we are in, we should conclude our messages by making it clear to our listeners that if they have not yet embraced
01:19:53
Christ as their Lord and Savior, that this is a matter of great urgency.
01:19:59
They must cry out to the Lord for salvation. But there are some who will say that they can rightly stick to an
01:20:07
Old Testament passage and never bring that kind of a thing up in that particular sermon.
01:20:13
Where do you land on this? I think to try to quote
01:20:19
Spurgeon at this point by memory, he would talk about England and say in any town or hamlet, there's a way to get to London.
01:20:30
There's a road to London. And the idea is it doesn't matter where you are in the scripture, even if you're in Ecclesiastes and talking about wisdom, there's a way to get to Christ from that text.
01:20:44
It may not be obvious. You might have to pray a lot and study a lot, but there's a way to get there. And so in every sermon, in fact, my wife and I went and visited a particular church and loved what was said, but went away shaking our heads a little bit because actually more than a little bit, because there were hundreds of people in the service and there wasn't a clear presentation of the gospel.
01:21:12
And I believe in every Bible -based sermon, there will be the law that tells us what
01:21:18
God demands and how we've not kept up to that demand, but also the gospel. And I believe that's what makes it a
01:21:25
Christian sermon. Otherwise, we've just got moralism. We've just got things to do, things to improve our lives, things that would help us.
01:21:37
But the pastor, the preacher should always understand there could be people in that service and usually are who don't yet know
01:21:47
Christ savingly. And in our day, when you have the sermons recorded on YouTube and they go out beyond the walls of the church, even beyond the city or town and state and country even around the world, how much more should it be the case that in every sermon, there's a road to London, there's a road to the gospel and we get there from whatever passage we're in.
01:22:13
Excellent. And we have a question from Glendale, Arizona that's very similar to that question.
01:22:21
How far is Glendale from where you are, just out of curiosity? Actually, my wife and I live in Glendale, Arizona and our church is in Peoria.
01:22:30
It's just a 10 -minute drive from where we live. So Peoria is right next to Glendale. Great. Well, Frenchy in Glendale, Arizona, and if you don't have a biblically solid church of your own already,
01:22:43
Frenchy, I would strongly urge you obviously to visit King's Church in Peoria.
01:22:50
But Frenchy asks, do you think no matter what text you are going through as far as expository preaching is concerned, it is always very wise to include texts from both the
01:23:05
Old and the New Testament in every sermon? I'm not sure that you could lay down that as a law, but it's certainly a very healthy thing to do.
01:23:18
In other words, you go to a text, and I did it this last week when we're in Hebrews chapter 10, and we're able to say, now this is something that's been brought out in the
01:23:28
Old Testament here. And then other parts of the New Testament here. And you just do that because one of the things you do as you go verse by verse through your
01:23:39
Bible in preaching is you model to the congregation how to study their own
01:23:45
Bible. And so they're seeing where you're getting your points from. They see that as you're quoting
01:23:52
Hebrews, because that's where you are, you're also quoting John, and you're also quoting
01:23:57
Isaiah. And they're realizing that the Bible is a consistent whole by the way that you are preaching.
01:24:04
So I think that's a very, very good thing to do. I don't know if you can demand it in any preaching that there has to be a quotation from the
01:24:13
Old Testament if you're in the New, but it's always a good and healthy thing to bring out the fact that the
01:24:19
Bible is one consistent message. And the New Testament is not in any way in opposition to the
01:24:27
Old or the Old to the New. There's one God who has inspired all of it. SPROUL JR. I'm assuming, and perhaps you will disagree with me, but I'm assuming it would be even more important when you're going through the
01:24:41
Old Testament in expository fashion to make sure that the New Testament is quoted.
01:24:48
RONAN HARRIS. Absolutely, yeah. And I think that's the way to read the Old Testament is in the light of the
01:24:54
New. An illustration I've used before is I have my study here at my home right now, and sometimes
01:25:03
I forget to put the light on right above where I'm reading. And my wife comes in and just out of habit turns it on.
01:25:13
And I say, that's so much better. Thank you. Thank you so much. And what she's saying is, read whatever you're reading with the light on.
01:25:23
And it helps your eyes, but the fact is it helps you see what you're reading.
01:25:30
And it's true in terms of our understanding of the Old. Because Christ has come, that blazing light of the
01:25:37
Lord Jesus and what he's revealed and what his apostles have revealed allows us to read the
01:25:44
Old in the light of the New, which is exactly your point. We read
01:25:49
Isaiah with Jesus and his finished work on the cross in mind.
01:25:56
Same with Genesis, same with Exodus, same with the Psalms. And so we see Christ in all the scriptures.
01:26:03
In fact, it's Jesus who told us that. So why not? In fact, it should be our whole motive.
01:26:10
Let's see Christ in this text. He's not in every verse, but he's the theme of all scripture.
01:26:17
And he is able, as we're studying, to show us himself, even in familiar stories that may not have been so apparent to us.
01:26:28
Oh, I can see Christ here because of what he has revealed in the New. So that's always a good thing.
01:26:34
And I believe it should be a, you said it's even more important. I would totally agree. It's so important.
01:26:41
We don't read the Psalms with the light turned down, but with the light fully up, like a dimmer switch, turning it all the way and seeing the
01:26:50
Psalms in the light of the coming of Jesus Christ and what he has revealed in the New Testament.
01:26:56
Amen. And what you just said reminded me, and I hope
01:27:02
I'm not going to get too many people upset with me today, but one of my most serious disagreements with our exclusive psalmody friends is that they never sing praise to the second person of the
01:27:23
Trinity by name. Of course, they are praising the Trinity because God was always triune, even in the
01:27:30
Psalms in the Old Covenant, but it is preventing the church from singing praises specifically in the name of Jesus, which is what you just said just reminded me of that.
01:27:48
Yeah, I would agree. I can't for the life of me see how praising
01:27:53
God in the light of Calvary, this side of the cross could be something that grieves him.
01:28:01
No, never. And of course, I believe, and I'm sure you would agree, that it is very wise and good and healthy, and some would say even obedient to the
01:28:13
New Testament to include the psalms, psalms and spiritual psalms. And some churches, you will never hear the psalms sung.
01:28:22
That's true. Yeah, that's absolutely right. Let's see here.
01:28:29
We have Zachary in Hueytown, Alabama.
01:28:37
And Zachary says, can you name at least a handful of your favorite modern preachers who are known for expository preaching?
01:28:50
Yeah, I'd be happy to do that. R .C. Sproul has left the scene here, but has left us a wealth of expository preaching.
01:28:59
Obviously, someone like John McCullough, is known for that as well. Steve Lawson, Vardy Barkum.
01:29:07
It's kind of the folk I enjoy listening to because they are expositors.
01:29:14
James Montgomery Boyce, again, someone who's no longer with us. His sermons, his commentaries, which are really his sermons put to ink, continue to benefit me.
01:29:28
And so many are now available online. You're asking in our own day.
01:29:34
These are well -known names, but there's people that I enjoy who may be less known.
01:29:40
There's a pastor in Covenant Baptist Church, Denton, Texas, called Pastor Jeff Weissner.
01:29:47
W -I -E -S -N -E -R. He's someone who's, again, an expository preacher.
01:29:54
Oh, wow. I was in Denton once in my life, but I wasn't there.
01:29:59
I was at the Denton Bible Church for a conference that they had. Yeah. I've got a quote of his that just relates to this topic.
01:30:11
And he talks about sequential expository preaching. And he says, through ever -changing personal and cultural conditions over a long period of time, he may not address all, he's talking about the preacher, or even most of our present and pet concerns, but it, he's talking about preaching sequentially, expositionally, it will reinforce for pastors and congregations that, first of all, our present concerns cannot be our only concerns.
01:30:44
I thought that's so helpful to say that. And he says, secondly, that we're often concerned about all kinds of things we should not be so concerned about.
01:30:54
Thirdly, that there are all kinds of things that we are not concerned about at all, but should be.
01:31:00
And finally, that some of our chief concerns may not actually deserve to be chief among our concerns.
01:31:08
And what expository preaching does is it repostures us, this is again his words, under God's word, so that we no longer demand, what does
01:31:18
God's word have to do with my life? But humbly submit, what does my life have to do with God's word?
01:31:26
End of the quote. I think that's very, very helpful to see. Sometimes we're concerned about things we shouldn't be.
01:31:34
And when we're going verse by verse through our Bibles, we are going to address things that we should be concerned about.
01:31:42
I wouldn't normally gravitate on a Sunday morning to deal with the issue of marriage and divorce.
01:31:50
I probably wouldn't do that for that setting. But when it's in the text and you know it's coming, you have to prepare for it.
01:31:57
And it's the Holy Spirit's agenda. He wanted that written. Same with Romans 8 and Romans 9.
01:32:03
One of the things I had to understand in my transition from my former
01:32:09
Arminianism was, the God I'm going to deal with in heaven inspired
01:32:15
Romans 9. I might say I prefer this verse over here that I think says something different.
01:32:21
Actually, it doesn't. If you write, I understand it. The God of the Bible is consistent in all that he has revealed.
01:32:29
And the God we're dealing with authored Romans 9 and 8 and 7 and 11 and 10, all of the
01:32:36
Scripture. And so understanding that I have no right to say I prefer this verse to that verse.
01:32:43
I'm going to preach this rather than that. What expositional preaching does is it forces the preacher to take
01:32:49
God's agenda because that's what he felt. That's what he believes is the best diet for the sheep.
01:32:58
And by the way, folks, since Pastor John just mentioned that he had converted from Arminianism to the doctrines of sovereign grace, you can hear
01:33:11
Pastor John's testimony on Iron Sharpens Iron radio from our archive of past programs.
01:33:23
And you'll have to go through a long list of MP3s of John Sampson because we have had him on the program many times.
01:33:33
But type in the search engine at ironsharpensironradio .com Sampson, S -A -M -S -O -N.
01:33:40
And a whole bunch of these interviews will come up, including the very first year that we were on the air after relocating from Long Island, New York.
01:33:55
Well, we first launched the program in 2005 on Long Island, but we relaunched in 2015 and on June 4th, almost to the day, that's an anniversary of Pastor John's involvement with Iron Sharpens Iron radio.
01:34:16
That would be a ninth anniversary. But on June 4th, 2015,
01:34:24
Pastor John Sampson discusses his journey out of the Word of Faith movement. And so I hope that you folks will take advantage of that on the archive of ironsharpensironradio .com.
01:34:40
And let's see. We have Charlene in Wisconsin, Long Island, New York, who says, what is the bare minimum of the gospel that we have to present and declare that would be considered the true gospel?
01:35:04
There are disagreements amongst Reformed Christians as to whether or not Arminians possessed the true gospel.
01:35:11
Some say they don't. And would make them, obviously, not even our brothers. Some say they do, but they just speak of it and teach it in a very flawed way.
01:35:23
Where do you land on this? So there's a couple of questions there. One is, what's the bare minimum that you have to include in the gospel?
01:35:31
And number two is, is the Arminian gospel false or is it true with some flaws?
01:35:42
That's a great question. I think you've got to start with what is the mandate of God that we would come under as we present the gospel.
01:35:56
And it's got to be true for the theologian, but also for the little six -year -old.
01:36:01
I mean, little children enter the kingdom of God. And you and I don't usually walk up to them and make sure they know the finer details of the tulip.
01:36:15
We're simply talking about— Speak for yourself, buddy. I'm only kidding. That's right, that's right.
01:36:22
What do you mean you're not an inferlapsarian? I'm sorry. That's right, that's right. Yeah, and secretly, you know, grandparents are sending
01:36:32
Calvin's Institutes to the six -year -olds, you know, without the parents' knowledge.
01:36:40
No, the basics are— Total depravity for kiddies. Okay, I'm sorry.
01:36:45
Right, right, yeah. It has to work at that level.
01:36:51
There are nuances that hopefully over time someone will come to learn. The six -year -old becomes seven and eight, and by 15, hopefully knows more than they would have at age six if they're in a church environment.
01:37:05
But at root level, I think there's enough of the gospel for someone to be saved in a non -minion environment under a non -minion message if all they're saying is, we've sinned against the
01:37:17
Holy God, Jesus has gone to the cross for sin, he rose again from the dead, and anyone who repents and trusts in the
01:37:26
Savior will be saved. He's alive right now. Call upon him. That can be said in a non -minion setting and in a reform setting where we go wrong, any of us, is if we add works to the condition of our salvation.
01:37:46
And Ephesians 2, 8 and 9 makes it clear, it's by grace you have been saved through faith and that not of yourselves.
01:37:52
It is the gift of God, not as a result of works so that no one can boast.
01:37:58
And there's an inconsistency in the Arminian viewpoint that while they speak much of the grace of God, and rightly so, they say it's their choice that got them in.
01:38:15
Now, if their choice was the difference between them going to heaven and going to hell, they're actually saying something they did got them in the kingdom.
01:38:26
And where we would rightfully say is, look, even the faith that we express in Christ was
01:38:32
God's gift. It wasn't innate in us. It's not something we brought to the table of redemption.
01:38:38
What we brought was our sin, not our great humble heart, not our subtle heart that was able to be malleable and change.
01:38:49
And we, in hearing the gospel and our twin brother next to us who didn't, the difference was I humbled myself and my brother didn't.
01:38:58
No, we would say it's all of grace. And so to rightfully understand the gospel, I would put you in what we would theologically call the reformed camp.
01:39:08
But I believe many people have this inconsistency. If you take their wording to its logical conclusion, you'd have to say you're trusting in your works to get to heaven.
01:39:22
Fortunately, they stop short of saying that. Or at least their wisdom or something or their intellect.
01:39:28
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But usually when you talk to them, was it you, your wisdom that got you in?
01:39:36
They'd say, no, no, no. And that's because they're hopefully a genuine Christian. Right. But they don't cross that line.
01:39:44
But logically, they have to trust in something in them that was different.
01:39:52
But they usually come up against that wall and then retreat from it, thankfully, which is why
01:39:58
I believe so many of them are genuinely saved. J .I. Packer once said that all
01:40:03
Christians are Calvinists on their knees, because when people pray, they are, if they're praying rightly and if they are truly born again, they're praying, realizing that God is in complete control and they're giving
01:40:18
God 100 percent of the praise, honor and glory for every blessing. And even if that may be inconsistent with their theology on paper, yes, it's they are recognizing something, even if it's unconsciously.
01:40:35
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And to your point, the fact is, as I went on my journey,
01:40:42
I realized as I was hearing the Reformed talk about salvation from the
01:40:49
Bible, my response in my heart, at least, was, well, I've got my verses, you've got your verses.
01:40:56
And what I've come to see over time was, I misunderstood my verses. Right, right.
01:41:01
And the doctrines of grace are really, a lot of the doctrines have to do with the invisible things that have occurred that have provided salvation and made it possible.
01:41:21
Like, for instance, we don't see predestination in election. We don't see
01:41:29
God drawing His elect unto Himself other than the fact that we see physically what those people who are being drawn are thinking and how they're behaving.
01:41:40
And when we see a person coming to Christ and we hear their profession on the outside, if you're not taking the whole counsel of God into consideration, it looks like they, through their own free will, have chosen to follow
01:41:57
Christ. What we don't see is the fact that Jesus had to give them a new heart first.
01:42:03
Because, yes, because in the book of Romans, it's very clear that we cannot please
01:42:09
God in the flesh. And therefore, if presenting to Christ a faith that saves us is pleasing to Him, that possibly cannot be conjured up from our hearts of stone.
01:42:25
It requires a heart transplant by God, and that's something that's invisible.
01:42:32
It is. And that's what John 3 brings out so clearly. The wind blows where it wishes.
01:42:38
And so it is. Anyone who's born of the Spirit, it's the sovereign work of God. We don't see the wind.
01:42:44
We see the effects of it. We see the leaves going past the window.
01:42:49
You realize, oh, that's come off the tree because it's blowing wind. So it is in the kingdom of God.
01:42:56
We see the results, but we don't see the Holy Spirit opening up the heart, which is what he has to do.
01:43:04
He opens the heart so that we receive. All we're conscious of the fact is I didn't want
01:43:09
Jesus. Now I do. I made a choice for Jesus. And yet our
01:43:15
Bible instructs us, the reason you chose Christ is because God chose you and has done something on the inside of you that was miraculous.
01:43:25
He's brought you to an understanding of your sin and a realization of Christ as the perfect Savior who finished the work on the cross for us.
01:43:36
Yeah, you just talked about the opening of the heart, which reminds me of that precious text in the
01:43:43
Scripture, Acts 16, 14, in regard to Lydia.
01:43:49
Yes. A woman named Lydia was listening to Paul. She was a seller of purple fabrics from the city of Thyatira and a worshiper of God.
01:43:59
And the Lord opened her heart to respond to the things spoken by Paul. Nobody saw the
01:44:06
Lord opening Lydia's heart, but they did see her respond to the things spoken by Paul.
01:44:13
Yeah, so true. And we think we can open our hearts. And if you think about it, biblically, it's likened to the heart of stone being taken out and a new heart being put within that now beats to know
01:44:31
Christ. And if you think about it, a heart of stone is a heart that does not want the true
01:44:38
God and the true gospel. We'll love something other than the true God and we'll hate the true
01:44:45
God and we'll not embrace him. So what happens is a change has taken place.
01:44:53
We now love what we didn't love before. Well, think about it. Someone with a stone heart, because they don't by nature want
01:45:02
God, they're not asking for this transplant. They're not asking for the heart transplant.
01:45:08
They love their sin. So what God does is he opens the heart under the hearing of the word of God and the influence of the word of God by the spirit of God so that in hearing what we probably didn't even want to hear, we now want what we didn't want because God intervened to give us the new heart.
01:45:30
And one of the reformed ways of expressing this is regeneration. Regeneration precedes faith.
01:45:37
Unless someone is first born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. He cannot enter it.
01:45:43
And we have to go to our final break. Don't go away. We'll be right back. Armored Republic exists to equip free men with tools of liberty to defend
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01:46:54
Chris Arnzen here, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.
01:47:08
I strongly recommend a church I've been recommending as far back as the 1980s. Grace Covenant Baptist Church in Flemington, New Jersey, pastored by Alan Dunn.
01:47:19
Grace Covenant Baptist Church believes it's God's prerogative to determine how he shall be worshiped and how he shall be represented in the world.
01:47:27
They believe churches need to turn to the Bible to discover what to include in worship and how to worship
01:47:34
God in spirit and truth. They endeavor to maintain a God -centered focus and to protect worship from the intrusion of carnal entertainments and distractions.
01:47:46
Reading, preaching, and hearing the word of God, singing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, baptism and communion are the scriptural elements of their corporate worship performed with faith, joy, and sobriety.
01:47:59
Discover more about Grace Covenant Baptist Church in Flemington, New Jersey at gcbc -nj .org.
01:48:09
That's gcbc -nj .org or call them at 908 -996 -7654.
01:48:18
That's 908 -996 -7654. Tell Pastor Dunn you heard about Grace Covenant Baptist Church on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.
01:48:42
It's such a blessing to hear from Iron Sharpens Iron Radio listeners from all over the world.
01:48:49
Here's Joe Riley, a listener in Ireland who wants you to know about a guest on the show he really loves hearing interviewed,
01:48:57
Dr. Joe Moorcraft. I'm Joe Riley, a faithful Iron Sharpens Iron Radio listener here in Atai in County Kildare, Ireland, going back to 2005.
01:49:07
One of my very favorite guests on Iron Sharpens Iron is Dr. Joe Moorcraft. If you've been blessed by Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr.
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Moorcraft and Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia are largely to thank since they are one of the program's largest financial supporters.
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Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming is in Forsyth County, a part of the Atlanta metropolitan area.
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Heritage is a thoroughly biblical church unwaveringly committed to Westminster standards and Dr.
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Joe Moorcraft is the author of an eight -volume commentary on the larger catechism. Heritage is a member of the
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Hanover Presbytery built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone and tracing its roots and heritage back to the great
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Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. Heritage maintains and follows the biblical truth and principles proclaimed by the reformers, scripture alone, grace alone, faith alone,
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Christ alone, and God's glory alone. Their primary goal is the worship of the Triune God that continues in eternity.
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For more details on Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, visit HeritagePresbyterianChurch .com
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that's HeritagePresbyterianChurch .com or call 678 -954 -7831 that's 678 -954 -7831.
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If you visit, tell them Joe O 'Reilly Iron Sharpens Iron radio listener Matai and Councilor Kildare Arlen sent you.
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I'm Pastor Keith Allen of Lindbrook Baptist Church, a Christ -centered, gospel -driven church looking to spread the gospel in the southwest portion of Long Island, New York and play our role in fulfilling the
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Great Commission, supporting and sending for the spread of the gospel to the ends of the earth. We're delighted to be a part of Chris Arnzen's Iron Sharpens Iron radio advertising family.
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At Lindbrook Baptist Church, we believe the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the inspired word of God, inherent in the original writings, complete as the revelation of God's will for salvation and the supreme and final authority in all matters to which they speak.
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We believe in salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. This salvation is based upon the sovereign grace of God, was purchased by Christ on the cross, and is received through faith alone, apart from any human merit, works or ritual.
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Salvation in Christ also results in righteous living, good works, and appropriate respect and concern to all who bear
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God's image. If you live near Lindbrook, Long Island, or if you're just passing through on the
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Lord's Day, we'd love to have you come and join us in worship. For details, visit lindbrookbaptist .org
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That's l -y -n -brookbaptist .org This is Pastor Keith Allen of Lindbrook Baptist Church reminding you that by grace, you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves.
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It is the gift of God, not a result of words, so that no one may boast of the
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Lord's blessing and the knowledge of himself. Chris Arnzen here.
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I am forever grateful to Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service for their generous financial support of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.
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But that's not the only reason I love them. CVBBS .com carries the finest and theologically -reformed literature from 16th -century classics like Calvin's Institutes, 17th - and 18th -century
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IRON. That's CVBBS .com. Enriching minds and maintaining the theologically -reformed influence of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio through their financial support.
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Now shipping worldwide. Greetings.
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This is Brian McLaughlin, president of the SecureComm Group and supporter of Chris Arnzen's Iron Sharpens Iron Radio program.
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SecureComm provides the highest level of security systems for residential buildings, municipalities, churches, commercial properties, and much more.
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We can be reached at SecureCommGroup .com. That's SecureCommGroup .com.
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But today I want to introduce you to my senior pastor, Doug McMasters, of New High Park Baptist Church on Long Island.
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Doug McMasters here, former director of pastoral correspondence at Grace to You, the radio ministry of John MacArthur.
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In the film Chariots of Fire, the Olympic gold medalist runner Eric Liddell remarked that he felt
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God's pleasure when he ran. He knew his efforts sprang from the gifts and calling of God.
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He sensed that same God -given pleasure when ministering the word and helping others gain a deeper knowledge and love for God.
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That love starts with the wonderful news that the Lord Jesus Christ is a savior who died for sinners and that God forgives all who come to him in repentance, trusting solely in Christ to deliver them.
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I would be delighted to have the honor and privilege of ministering to you if you live in the Long Island area or Queens or Brooklyn or the
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Bronx in New York City. For details on New High Park Baptist Church, visit nhpbc .com.
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That's nhpbc .com. You can also call us at 516 -352 -9672.
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That's 516 -352 -9672. That's New High Park Baptist Church, a congregation in love with each other, passionate for Christ, committed to learning and being shaped by God's word and delighting in the gospel of God's sovereign grace.
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God bless you. Welcome back. Folks, I also want to remind you that this program is paid for in part by the law firm of Buttafuoco &
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Associates. If you are the victim of a very serious personal injury or medical malpractice anywhere in the
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United States, call 1 -800 -NOW -HURT, 1 -800 -NOW -HURT or visit
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Dan Buttafuoco's website at 1 -800 -NOW -HURT .com, 1 -800 -NOW -HURT .com.
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That's the law firm of Buttafuoco & Associates. Please make sure you mention Iron Sharpens Iron Radio when you call.
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John, I would like you to now summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today before we go off the air.
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I'd love to. I think the person of Jesus Christ is the most amazing person to encounter in this life.
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And we encounter him not by going up to a mountain and trying to have some kind of experience of him, but in and through and by his word.
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That's where the Holy Spirit reveals the Lord Jesus Christ to us.
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So whether we're reading or whether we're under the preaching of God's word, we encounter
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Christ. And what has been the whole theme of this time together is we want
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Jesus Christ in his fullness. We want God in his fullness. And we get that by means of the special revelation of God's word.
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We cannot put into words our esteem for it because it is
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God's inspired word. Just think of that. God in this world has revealed himself and we do ourselves the greatest favor when we come under his word and learn of our
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God. I want to know him. I want to know him more. And that's the heart cry of anyone who truly is born again of the
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Holy Spirit. But we know him not by an experience, but by his word. And so it's really all worth summarizing here is let's give us the word.
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Let church be the place where the pillar of truth is heralded. The church as the pillar of truth heralds the word of God.
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And we do that, I think, best. Though topical preaching can be certainly utilized by the exposure of the people to the word of God, which is what we call expository preaching.
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Amen. Well, I want to remind our listeners of my guest's websites.
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First of all, if you live in or near Peoria, Arizona, or you have family, friends and loved ones who do, or if you're just traveling through there, perhaps going on vacation, go to kingschurchaz .com,
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kingschurchaz .com. And if you want to purchase the books that have been written by my guest,
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John Sampson, you could go to the publisher's website, solid -ground -books .com,
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solid -ground -books .com. One of those books is The Five Solas Standing Together Alone.
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And that book is also available in a Spanish version. That's the perfect kind of book where you should buy at least a case or more because it's a short read and you could have your church make them available in the lobby in a track rack or on a shelf somewhere where they're very visible to the visitors there.
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The other book published by solid -ground -books .com by John Sampson is
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Twelve Whatabouts Answering Common Objections Concerning God's Sovereignty and Election.
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That's solid -ground -books .com. I want to thank you so much,
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John, for being such an extraordinary guest as you always are. I look forward to your return very soon for another interview.
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I will continue to pray for your health and that you continue to get stronger and healthier and fully recover.
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And I'm trusting that my listeners will do the same. I want to thank everybody who listened. And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater