Discussing Expository Preaching with Pastor Brian Borgman

Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist. This program is dedicated to helping you better understand the word of God and the doctrines of grace. The Bible tells us, do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who is no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.

Get your Bible and coffee ready and prepare to study along. Here's your host with today's lesson, Pastor Keith Foskey.

Introduction to Brian Borgman and the Value of Expository Preaching

Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist. My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist. Today is a special interview day on Coffee with a Calvinist. I have with me Brother Brian Borgman. Brother Brian Borgman is the founding pastor of Grace Community Church in Minden, Nevada.

He has written articles for the Southern Baptist Theological Journal. He has written articles for Revival Journal and the Gospel Coalition. And he has also written several books, including Spiritual Warfare, A Biblical and Balanced Perspective, My Heart for Thy Cause, and Feelings and Faith.

He holds degrees from Biola University, Western Seminary, and Westminster Seminary. He's also a member of the Fellowship of Independent Reformed Evangelicals, a organization that our church is also associated with.

So this provides for us a connection, not only in preaching, but also in overall ministry. And on a personal note, I have listened to Brian Borgman preach probably more than any other pastor that I know, and that includes R .C. Sproul, and everybody knows that R .C. Sproul is one of my favorites.

Many years ago, I came across a series he did on church history, and it was very helpful to me. And since then, I have listened to him almost weekly as a part of my own devotion and study. He has over 2 ,800 sermons on Sermon Audio, having given expositions of several books of the Bible and on countless topics regarding the Christian walk.

He's also received very high praise from one of our preaching elders, Brother Mike Collier. Everybody here knows who Mike Collier is. And years ago, I was preaching, and I mentioned Brother Borgman in a sermon, and he came to me after, and he goes,.

"'I love that guy.

"'If I had a choice to listen to him or John MacArthur, "'I would choose him.'". So he gets high praise not only from me, but also from Brother Mike Collier, and everyone here knows how much Mike Collier loves preaching and loves to preach.

So, Brother, I wanna thank you for being on the program.

Well, thanks for having me.

Yes, sir, and I hope that wasn't, I promise none of that was flattery. All of that was genuine and from the heart. And I remember when you joined FIRE, I was excited, because I got the email that they, you know how they send the email to ask?

And I was like, yes, please take this guy. Well, since I consider you to be an example of solid expository preaching, I wanted to spend our short time today talking about the value and the process of expository preaching.

And for folks who aren't preachers, don't tune out, because this isn't just for preachers, about preachers, but this is for everyone, because my hope is that this is gonna give some insights into the work that's done.

A lot of people only experience the 45 or 50 minute sermon on Sunday, and they don't realize the mining that goes into preparing that meal. It really is, I think of it oftentimes like a chef. All the work that goes into preparing a meal, nobody ever sees it, they just taste the food.

And so today we're gonna talk about the preparation of the meal, what that's like. But before we do that, I wanna ask this simple question. Can you tell our listeners how you came to know the Lord and how you knew that you had been called to preach?

Conversion and the Call to Preach

Sure, so I was, I think, about 12 years old. I've been raised Catholic, very devout Catholic, altar boy, whole nine yards. And my mom came to Christ when I was about maybe 12. And then my dad came to Christ, and that actually made a huge impact on me because my dad was such a devout Catholic before that time.

And so at about 13, I started reading the Bible just out of religious duty, thinking it would help my conscience and made my conscience worse. And the Lord brought me to himself when I was about 13 years old.

And it was memorable, and I look back on that as a monument in my life of his grace. And about, at age 14 or so, I just had this overwhelming desire to serve the Lord, to keep following Christ and doing whatever he asked of me.

And really sensed, as strange as this may sound, really sensed a very strong call to ministry at about age 15. And that shaped my teenage years. It shaped what I did in college and seminary and so forth.

So that's it in a nutshell.

Awesome, awesome. When it comes to the question of how you came to know the Lord how you became a preacher, a lot of preachers talk about their call, and they kind of seem like maybe it's like a mystical thing.

I remember when I knew it's what God wanted me to do, but I didn't hear a voice from heaven. And I think some guys are waiting for that. How would you, if somebody came to you and said, I think God's calling me to preach, but I don't know, because I'm not hearing a voice.

And how would you respond? And what would you tell him? Well, you understand what I'm asking. What would you say?

Yeah, well, I mean, I think that the first thing I would do is I'd say, look, there's two sides of the horse that you could fall off of. On the one hand, you could fall off of the mystical side, and the other side, you could fall off on the rational side.

And when I think of church history, I think sometimes Spurgeon, as much as I love and admire Spurgeon, I think Spurgeon's view of the call could lead towards almost a mystical idea. On the other hand, someone like R .L. Dabney had a view that really led just to very rational deductions about the call.

And I think that what you have is an internal and external element to the call. The desire has to be there. If a man does not have the desire, I mean, 1 Timothy 3 .1, he who desires the office of overseer desires a good thing.

So that desire has to be there. Woe is me if I don't preach the gospel. 1 Corinthians 9 .16. But that actually is not enough. And unfortunately for a lot of people, it is enough today. But there also has to be, in a sense, the external call, which of course is the recognition of the church, of a person's gifts, and really the support.

And I don't mean just sort of the sentimental, oh, we think you're such a fine guy and you'd make a wonderful pastor, but actual assessment, especially by the elders. Is this man gifted? Does this man have the character of life?

And so I would say look for both the internal and the external elements, and certainly don't, really don't move ahead unless both of those things are present.

Weekly Preaching Schedule and Consecutive Expository Sermons

Great, thank you. Now, when it comes to your preaching schedule, I'm gonna jump right into the question of how you do what you do. How many times during the week do you actually preach a different message?

I don't know if you have multiple services where you're preaching the same message. How many sermons do you preach a week?

Yeah, well, two or three. For years, it was actually like four or five. But the older you get, the more you realize that you can't keep up that pace forever. So I have wonderful fellow elders and one of them takes the PM service, but I find myself preaching, preparing two to three messages a week.

That third may include Sunday school or something like that. But, so two sermons a week for sure.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I remember listening to you, because I've listened to your series in Galatians. I've listened to you in Acts because those were both books I was preaching through.

And so I would listen to you as I was reading other commentaries and things. I promise I didn't copy you. But I certainly have quoted you a number of times. I think I remember you would preach in the morning and then in either the afternoon or evening, it was the same moving on through the text.

Like a lot of guys like me, if I'm preaching through Genesis, it's on Sunday morning and my evening services are different. But it was like you were just going from one to the next. Is that right?

Yeah, yeah.

I do that often.

Did that help your people to just stay in the same text all the time? Did you find that was beneficial or were a lot of people missing stuff because people who missed the evening service? I don't know, I'm just curious.

Yeah, no, I think that most of the time for me, so on rare occasion, I would say that there were a series that would be morning and we have an afternoon service instead of evening. And so sometimes I would have a series that was designed just to go straight through.

But most of the time when I carry over into the afternoon, it's just because I didn't finish in the morning.

That's great. That's nice. Well, can you walk us through, can you hear me?

Yeah, I can hear you.

Okay, I thought I heard something.

I can hear you.

How Expository Sermon Preparation Works

Can you walk us through your normal routine for preparing a message? Like for me, I'm an early week. My Sunday morning starts on Monday morning. So when I come in the office Monday morning, I'm studying, preparing, and if I don't have my manuscript by Wednesday, I'm worried because that's my method.

Everybody knows that. The first three days of the week are my time preparing for Sunday and for other things. What's it like for you?

Yeah, so normally what I do is I start on Tuesday and because I do primarily consecutive expository preaching, I'm not wasting any time thinking about what I'm gonna preach next. I know what I'm gonna preach next.

And so for instance, right now I'm preaching through Romans and what I'll do is I will spend time on Tuesday mornings going through, actually just exegeting the text, not looking at any commentaries or anything like that.

I teach a Greek class on Tuesday afternoons, and a lot of times that ends up being the text that I'm gonna be preaching. That's the text we'll go over in class. So I'm able just to spend a tremendous amount of time just in the original text and just really marinating in it, looking at grammatical connections, looking up words, paying attention to the syntax,.

Stuff like that.

And I find that that ends up being absolutely crucial for me for the next step, which then I will basically outline the passage. And that would be after just digging and digging and digging, then I'll come up with an outline.

And most of the time, I would say that the shape of the text, the grammatical shape of the text is what shapes my outline. And so I'm always trying my best. In narrative, it's a little different, but in epistolary literature, the shape of the text provides the shape of the sermon.

And so then once I have that outlined, then I start doing my commentary work. And the reason that that is, in a sense, third down the line is because, one, I don't wanna be, let's say, unduly influenced by a particular commentator before I've had a chance to dig into the text.

But then also having been sort of soaking in the text, it enables me to interact and to read the commentaries more critically. I know what I'm looking for. I, you know, if in the event that they bring something up that I may have missed, very helpful.

So there's a quality control to that. And then once that's done, I will actually just do a preaching outline. I never manuscript my sermons. It's just an outline, typically about a three-page outline.

And so I try to make sure that I'm done by Friday. And the reason is, is I don't like to actually have no gap between having finished studying and preaching. I like to actually kind of sit on it a little bit because then when I go back to it on Sunday morning to my outline, I'm gonna go through, I'm gonna highlight, I'm gonna make notes, I'm gonna, you know, do things on the paper that will help me.

A lot of times coming to it freshly after having a day or two without looking at it gives me sort of fresher eyes to see, because I have to realize that the people listening haven't lived with the text all week like I have.

Amen.

So am I presenting this material in a way that is going to help them see what I see without just making a bunch of assumptions?

Amen.

You mentioned commentaries, and I appreciate what you said there. They're sort of like a check and balance after you've done your critical work. I do have one question. You said you teach a Greek class.

Is that at the church, or are you in a seminary teaching what's?

It's at church, and we have, it's been going for over 20 years, so I've got some people in that class that probably know Greek better than a lot of seminary grads.

Choosing Commentaries and Letting Exegesis Lead

Awesome, that's great. Well, how many, I know that, you know, when I'm listening to you, I think I remember when you were preaching through Acts, you would reference, oh, who was it? It was one particular commentary that you referenced a lot, and I can't remember who it was, but how do you choose your commentaries, and am I breaking up?

You're fine, you're fine.

How do you choose your commentaries, and what's the, how many do you think are important to have? I mean, I've heard different ones, like Steve Lawson said, like he uses 14 different commentaries, but, you know, is there a magic number for you, or?

No, actually not at all. So what I'll do is when I start a new book, I will accumulate as many good commentaries as I can, and then I sort of look at it like a baseball manager. I'm gonna see which ones are really helpful to me, and I'm gonna weed out the ones that aren't really playing that well.

And so they kind of get put on the bench, and so what I basically will do is I may start out with 10 or 12, and then what I end up doing is sort of getting down to typically four or five, right about in that range.

If I'm in a particularly difficult text, obviously my reading will be wider, I'll be looking at journal articles and things like that as well. I'll pull some of the other guys off the shelf that maybe, you know, haven't had a chance to play in a while.

But I really, and this is certainly no criticism of Steve Lawson, he's a great preacher, but I do think that if you have a handful of the better commentators, you get to a point where you're not really reading anything that's adding anything once you get past those top four or five guys, right?

Gotcha.

You know, so you just kind of end up reading the same thing over and over from different points of view or whatever. And so I try, you know, so like right now with Romans, and I typically have an order that I'll go in from, you know, most helpful and so forth, and, you know, so I'll make sure I have good exegetical commentaries.

And that really is what I'm gonna do in terms of commentary work. I don't really spend much time reading, let's say like expository type commentaries. I try to spend more time doing, you know, reading critical commentaries or exegetical commentaries because that's, to me, I mean, I may get help from, let's say, something like the Reformed expository commentary in terms of an illustration or something like that.

But most of the time, it's not gonna help me preach the text. It's my exegesis that's gonna help me preach the text.

Amen, and it was Gordon Fee. I remembered it while you were talking. That was who you would often reference. You would say, I don't always agree with him, but he's got good things to say. I think I know the answer to this question, but I think it's good for other people to hear it.

The Priority of Preaching in the Life of the Church

When it comes to preaching and the overall priority of ministry, and, you know, people prioritize a lot of different things, whether it be music, entertainment, you know, which I know what, I feel like I know what you'd say about entertainment, but things like evangelism outreach and things, where do you think preaching falls in regard to the overall priority for the church?

What, you know, is this... I think you understand what I'm asking, maybe.

Yeah, yeah.

The way that I think about it is I don't think of priorities necessarily like, you know, this is first, this is second, this is third, this is fourth. I think that I look at it more like you have a circle and you've got a center,.

You've got a hub.

And the hub of church life is preaching. The hub of pastoral ministry is studying and preaching and teaching. You're gonna have other things that sort of move in and out of that closer to the center over time.

So, you know, like this morning, I had every intention to just simply, you know, just start getting into Romans, and I don't even actually have lost track of how many phone calls I've had dealing with just a barrage of things, and even had to put you off for 15 minutes to finish one up, you know?

Yes, sir.

And so at that point, you know, if you just think of it as the hub, everything else is gonna rotate around this. That doesn't move. Preaching the word is the hub of the life of the church. It's what gives vitality to everything else.

You know, if you want a church that is full of fellowship and outreach and love and service and all of those things that we value, those people have to be fed and motivated by the word of God, or else you just end up having, you know, Kiwanis or a Rotary Club or something.

Wow, amen. That illustration of the hub and the preaching of the word, someone will hear that again from me. That was a great illustration. That was a good one. All right, well, I'm gonna ask you a couple of quick questions, and then I'm gonna start drawing to a close, because I know you do have other things to get to today, and I've appreciated so much all the time that you have given.

What was your favorite book to preach through so far?

I mean, that's hard to say. I mean, I had decided many, many years ago that I wouldn't preach Romans until I turned 50, and so started it when I was 52, and I'm loving Romans every bit of it, but I would say probably the top ones for me have been Genesis, Ecclesiastes, and Romans, and then probably Galatians.

Amen.

Since you're in Romans, I know we don't have time to go through this, but a quick answer to this, because I'm hearing more about, you know, I know the new perspective is not new anymore, but do you ever look at N .T. Wright's stuff when you're considering, or do you feel like he's so far off on justification?

Yeah, so, I mean, this probably won't sit well with some of your listeners, but I will look at Wright on occasion, not regularly, but I think that Wright actually, I mean, first of all, he's a good scholar.

I don't think anybody can doubt his scholarship, and so I don't like his view of justification. I think it's, charitably, I think it's incredibly fuzzy. Yes. Of course, you can't be fuzzy on justification.

I think that he's hard to tack down exactly when it comes to forensic justification, but his book, for instance, on the resurrection of the Son of God is actually an excellent apologetic work defending the resurrection.

So I do find him exegetically interesting at times, and so if I have time, I may look at him. I would say that I'm in Romans 5 .10 this week, and I say I probably have read him maybe three or four times in 79 sermons.

Oh, okay, and like I said, that wasn't planned. That wasn't even on my list, but you mentioned Romans, and I just finished preaching through Galatians. So the question of the new perspective came up a lot, and who was Paul really addressing?

Was it the Judaizers? Were they really making the arguments that Luther said? So that's why it was on my mind, and I had to ask. So what is, okay, two things, and we'll be done. What's the best sermon you've ever heard?

Not by you, but the best sermon.

And I didn't mean that.

I could ask you what's the best one you think you've ever preached, but what sermon sticks out in your mind if you said I want everybody to have heard this sermon? Do you remember?

Memorable Sermons and the Power of Preaching

Yeah, I would say without doubt, there are three sermons that I've heard in my life that have made an enormous lasting impact on me. One was by a pastor, William Hughes, who's originally from Scotland.

He pastored in Florida in Coconut Creek for a number of years, and then he went back to Scotland. And he preached a sermon that I heard probably 18 years ago, 20 years ago, on Judas Iscariot. And it made, it was a profound sermon.

It was preached at Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey. The other one that I would have to put into that category was a sermon that was actually preached by Al Martin on the cry of dereliction, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

It was one of the most powerful evangelistic sermons I have ever heard in my life. And, but one thing I will say about what makes sermons memorable, Jonathan Edwards made the comment that, and this is in one of his works on revival, that the impact of preaching is not necessarily the fact that you're able to remember points and so forth.

The impact of preaching is basically the divine encounter you have through the word preached. So what you remember about sermons is not necessarily the details and the points. What you remember is how God used it in your life and how it impacted you.

And I would totally agree with that. And I would say that the third sermon that fits into this category was preached by a pastor from Ireland by the name of Ted Donnelly. And he preached a sermon to pastors on you endure for discipline from Hebrews 12, seven.

And I remember just the way that the Lord had dealt with me in that sermon. And so those would be the top three most memorable sermons in my life. I've heard many memorable sermons, I've heard many great preachers, but those would be the top three.

Excellent, excellent. Well, the last thing I'm gonna ask of you, and I want you to, for a moment, remember or remind everyone that's listening that sometimes we have unbelievers that listen to this program.

And I sometimes get messages from people who do not know Christ. And since you are a preacher of the gospel, and I know you love the gospel more than anything, if you could take this last minute or two and share, imagine you're on an elevator, you only have a minute or two to share Christ.

Can you share Christ with our audience and then we will close?

Sure, sure.

I mean, if you are actually an unbeliever and you've sat through 20, 25 minutes of listening to somebody talk about preaching and you've made it this far, I want you to know that that is not an accident.

Amen.

God has kept you drawn in for this moment. And what you need to know is that the scripture tells us that we're helpless. We're helpless to help ourselves. We're helpless to save ourselves. We're powerless, we're weak.

And we don't like to look at ourselves that way. But the Bible also says we're sinners and we're ungodly and we're enemies. And we desperately need the grace of God. And we desperately need the forgiveness of God.

And that comes only through the Lord Jesus Christ. And Christ has done for us what nobody else could have done and certainly what we could never do for ourselves. And so I would just urge you, if you're not a believer, look to Christ and look to Him as the Son of God and look at Him as the only, only solution for your sin-sick soul.

And the scripture gives you wonderful promises. If you believe on the Lord, you will be saved. And whoever believes in Him will not be disappointed and I have walked with Jesus since I was 13 years old, I'm 53.

And for the last 40 years of my life, He has been absolutely faithful, absolutely merciful and I could not imagine living one day without Him.

Amen.

Brother, thank you so much for being with us today. Thank you for your continued faithful service to your church and to all of us who listen to you on Sermon Audio. That has been a blessing to me, to our elders and of course, to all the people who do listen.

I wanna again, thank you so much who are our listeners for listening in today to Coffee with a Calvinist. I know this has been a little bit longer than normal but I hope that you have been edified and encouraged by our conversation.

And if you have any questions about what we've talked about, please know that you can send a message and I'd love to talk to you either on a future program or maybe through email correspondence. So if you're a listener and you have a question, please feel free to send it in.

Thank you again, Brother Brian for being with us today and thank you audience for listening. Again, my name is Keith Foskey and I have been your Calvinist for today. Thank you for listening to Coffee with a Calvinist.

May God bless you.

Thank you for joining in for today's episode of Coffee with a Calvinist. Keep in mind, we have a new lesson available every weekday morning at 6 .30 a .m. on YouTube and Facebook. If you enjoyed this lesson, please take a moment to respond by hitting the like button, leaving a comment and subscribing to the channel.

On behalf of Pastor Foskey, thank you for listening. May God bless you.