Hear The Word Preached!

This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. To access other sermons or to learn more about us, please visit our website at graceedmonton .ca.

Preaching the Word and Hearing the Word

Well, if you were here with us last week, you'll remember that we spent all of last week considering the topic of preaching God's Word. That was the title of the sermon itself. Preach the Word of 2 Timothy chapter 4 and verses 1 through 5.

And if you were here, for those of you who weren't here, you might be amused to know that as I sometimes do, as I probably do every single time, I got carried away. And I preached three quarters of the sermon and I thought it best for the sake of our church and for the sake of everyone's sanity that I not preach a 90 minute or a 120 minute sermon.

And so what we did was we left the bulk of the application from last week's message for today, which is going to make, I think, for a very interesting sermon, a very application-rich sermon. And what this means then, as we study God's Word today, is that we're going to be turning our attention from looking at the act itself of preaching the Word, what I'm doing right now, preaching the Word of God, and we're going to turn our gaze now to what it means to be listeners of the Word.

And so if you were sitting here last week going, well, this is a great theology of preaching, but what does it mean for me? I'm not a preacher. I'm sorry you had to wait an extra week, but we're here now.

And what does it mean then that in this church and in every church that regulates its worship according to the Word of God, that we preach and that we hear the Word of God? And I would venture to guess, as we broach this particular subject, that many people in this room have at least a partially imbalanced view of what it means to preach and hear God's Word.

And I'm speaking about you, speaking directly to you, that many of us are overdue, very likely, for a significant overhaul in the way that we think about hearing the preached Word. And what I mean is this, that when we think about the priorities of the local church, when we meet together for worship, I think many of us would be the first to run to the front of the line and to stand there at the front and to affirm that the preaching of God's Word is an essential and a non-negotiable element of God-pleasing worship.

Almost all of us would agree that when we regulate God's worship according to God's Word, that necessitates that the act of preaching the Bible must then take primacy, must take the supreme place in every single one or amongst all of our worship activities on a Sunday.

I think if I were to give most of you a drum and tell you to go and beat the drum of sola scriptura for the rest of the day, you would do that. The Reformation motto, Scripture alone, and I'm grateful to God for it, that this church that you love the Word of God and that you agree, I think most of you are here because you agree that the preaching of the Word is important.

Even if it's not worshiptainment, even if it's not the most flamboyant or attractive thing that might be out there, we believe in preaching the Word. Yet I wonder how many of us feel just as strongly about the vital and indispensable importance of hearing God's Word preached.

I'll put it into a bit of perspective for you. I want you to think, do I actually, what I'm about to describe, do I affirm this? Do I affirm it the whole way or do I affirm it only part of the way? How many of us have the expectation that the preacher of God's Word should go to great lengths to prepare a biblically faithful, a robust, an accessible and a doctrinally sound expository sermon when the church meets on Sunday?

How many of us, these are rhetorical questions, expect the preacher to painstakingly labor at his exegesis, even to consider the original languages, to consult commentaries, to prayerfully agonize over how one can illustrate and apply a given text?

How many of us, when we come here on a Sunday, expect that the man who is preaching at the front might labor over that text for 10 hours or 20 hours or, I don't know how he does it, but John MacArthur, 40 hours, for days or for even weeks?

How many of us expect that the preacher has lost some sleep in preparation for that sermon on that given Sunday? That he had to make real sacrifices to prepare just a single sermon for one week for God's people?

I would say that most of us, for most of us, that such an expectation is appropriately hardwired into each and every mature believer in a healthy church. That it should be that way. That when a man comes up to the front, you should have absolutely the expectation that that man has prayed over the text, that man has studied the text, that man has agonized over the text, that man has woken up in the night and thought, I must add this to my sermon tomorrow.

That he's been driving in his car, thinking about this, oh, that's a great point, I need to include that, to dictate it to his phone as I do, or to write it in a notepad. You ought to expect that when you come to hear the word preached, that that word has been carefully prepared, accurately, so that when the man who stands behind the pulpit speaks for God, in a sense, that he is speaking accurately the truth of God's word.

And yet while many of us, I think, have a good and a proper expectation of the effort that should be expended to proclaim God's word, I think that we are guilty, many of us, of loading the scale only on one side of the equation.

How many of us would confess that while we have great expectations for the preacher, we have almost no expectations, zero expectations for how we hear that word on a Sunday? How many of us leave a sermon and go, that was a good sermon, or that was a bad sermon, and yet how many of us also say, I listened quite well during that sermon, or I was a very terrible listener during that sermon?

How many of us evaluate not only the preacher, but the efforts of the listener? How many of us must sheepishly admit that we come to hear God's word preached with about as much preparation or forethought as we would going to the movies with our friends, where we expect to sit passively, to be entertained, and to consume something that has been produced for us?

And I would ask you, how many of us leave the weekly worship of God in the midst of His people, poorer because of our impoverished attitude towards hearing God's word? I think that such a scenario is all too common, and it's been all too common for far too long.

The late J .I. Packer, a British theologian who was a good friend of Martyn Lloyd-Jones, and in some ways an associate of his in some labors, he said this, he said, we complain today, and we hear this, don't we?

We complain today that ministers do not know how to preach, but is it not equally true that our congregations do not know how to hear? It's been said by one church historian that in all of his research, he has not found in the last 200 years any records of a church teaching the saints how to listen to a sermon.

That we know how to evaluate a good sermon, we know what makes for good preaching, but we don't know what makes for good listening. And yet, if we were to go through the Bible together this afternoon, what we would find is this, that there are, and I did a study this week on it, there are countless imperatives, commands in Scripture to listen, to hear, to take heed.

And those exhortations, those imperatives far surpass the imperatives to preach. In some ways, nature itself testifies to this, that the Lord has given us one mouth, and twice as many, or two times as many ears.

That the Lord wants us to hear his word, to hear him. The church is desperately in need of being taught how to listen to biblical preaching, both for the personal benefit of every Christian, and for the glory of God in the world.

And so that's what we're going to do today. I know it's been done since that church historian wrote it, but we're going to add to the list of another church that has taught on listening to the word in the last 200 years.

And we can count ourselves perhaps still amongst the minority. But this afternoon we're going to look at what it means to hear God's word, to be a hearer of God's word, and to be a doer of God's word.

And as noted at the beginning, this is going to be an extended section, essentially, of application from my last sermon. And so, we've talked about critiquing sermons. If one of the critiques you've leveled against me at various times is, the man, he goes through the text, he talks about the languages, he talks about this and that, and then he leaves very little for application.

Well, today, we're going to turn that on its head. We're going to look at the text, we're going to find everything that we do find from the basis of Scripture, but it's going to be a very application-rich sermon.

And today, what I'm going to do to complement what I did last week, is I'm going to issue you six practical exhortations for expository listening. That's what I want to do with you today, is I want to make you not just listeners, but expository listeners.

To be skilled in handling the Word of God as a listener as well. And so, as we study this brief passage in James, I'm going to give you six quick and dirty points. They are quicker than my last quick points, I promise.

And I'm going to equip you to be more faithful hearers of God's Word. And so, let's again direct our attention to James chapter 1. We're going to bounce around a little bit here, but we're going to start in verse 21, and it reads like this.

Therefore, put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted Word, which is able to save your souls. The first exhortation that I want to issue to you, number one, is this.

Prepare Your Heart for the Implanted Word

Prepare your heart. That when God's people come together to worship, and this is done not nearly enough, we need to come as those who have prepared our hearts to hear the Word of God. If we're going to yield any lasting and truly spiritual benefit from the preaching of the Word, we must come every Sunday with the spiritual readiness to receive that Word.

In James 1 .21, he demonstrates that he's giving us here now, instructions that are not merely to compel us to be better listeners in the general sense. If you look at verse 18 and 19, or excuse me, 19 and 20, oftentimes we will hear that quoted, in a sense, plucked out of its original context.

And most of us would, hearing it outside of the context, think, well, simply this text is telling us we need to hear more, speak less, and be angry less. But verse 21, in fact, gives us the context and beyond.

That certainly, that is a great instruction to heed. That we should speak less. The Proverbs say that those who speak less seem intelligent even if they aren't. If you want to be deemed intelligent by people, speak less.

If you want to control your vessel in honor, if you want to pursue holiness and righteousness, then be angry less. Listen more. But the principle idea that James has in mind here, in this whole paragraph, in this first chapter, if we look at verse 21, is this.

That he reveals that he wants God's people to be better equipped to hear, and notice this with me, receive the implanted Word of God. In some ways, this little paragraph is an instruction manual for what it is to hear the Word of God, perhaps read in the form of an epistle that maybe James has written, to hear it read in the assembly of the church, to read it aloud or to read it alone in your room, and certainly to hear it preached on the Lord's Day.

And immediately after he delivers this plain command to hear, to be quick to hear, I want us to see that he includes an important qualifier, that we are to hear. Yes, we're to be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger, but there's something that we need to do.

Before we can hear and receive the Word of God for the eternal benefit of our souls, we must make careful preparations, and we see the preparations that he lists here. The preparations that James has in mind are these, to put away two things.

He says, all filthiness, and number two, rampant wickedness. And this language, if we're familiar with the epistles in the New Testament, is no doubt familiar. You've heard us talk before about taking off and putting on.

And every Christian, when we come to hear the Word preached, when we even approach the reading of the Word in our daily Bible reading, we are to take something off in preparation for our time. And in this case, it would be like taking off a dirty change of clothes that we must take off, put out, and throw away.

And what James has in mind here is sin and the unsanctified aspects of our lives that are going to crowd, that are going to dull our hearing of the Word of God. And James tells us the two things, to put away all filthiness.

Translated literally, that word filthiness, it means dung or excrement. It refers specifically to evil actions, to acts of evil. And in an idiomatic way, in the Greek-speaking world, it also sometimes referred to as earwax.

And so if our kids aren't listening to us, and we say, you know, take the wax out of your ears. This is the same word, take that filthiness out of your ears. And so what James is exhorting us to do when we prepare to hear the Word of God is to, in a sense, take a spiritual Q-tip and to remove the filthiness from our lives, to remove the perverse sin that is going to impact our ability to hear God's Word.

And then at the same time, it's not merely enough to put away evil actions. Many people put away evil actions on a Sunday before they come here. But James also tells us that we're to put away all wickedness.

And this refers to evil intentions. And so when the Christian comes to hear God's Word, we're not to come unprepared. Or to use the example, we're not to come like we would go to a movie theater with our friends.

What am I going to see? What am I going to hear? I don't really know. It really has no bearing on my life. But no, instead what we are to do is we're to remove the spiritual wax from our ears to prepare our conduct, our behavior on the outside, yes, and also to prepare our hearts.

The unprepared hearer of God's Word comes to the gathered assembly on Sunday, not ready to hear God's Word because his ears are full of wax. With the filthiness of his own evil deeds clinging close to him, and a heart polluted by his own sin.

But we must come prepared. I've often thought, and I was speaking with our brother Sam a few weeks ago about, there are times when I come, right, and I don't preach. That I come just here and I might just sit here.

If Lowell's leading the music, I might get the benefit of just sitting entirely. Maybe I just come up to lead the pastoral prayer. And one of the things that I have noticed is this, that when I come to preach, I am preparing my heart all week.

All week, I am ready to go. And I find oftentimes that the dullest I ever am, you'd think maybe it's the opposite, that when I come and I have no responsibilities whatsoever, I would have had all the hours in the day to pray and to be ready.

But those are the days, those are the days that it is hardest to be ready, to be warmed up, to be ready to sing, and to pray, and to hear the Word preached, and to live that Word preached. And so I recognize that while my experience is very different from yours, I can empathize that for many of you, you have not been preparing a sermon all week.

And so you come with hearts that are not yet prepared oftentimes. That you come with hearts that are still cold. And yet, what James is telling us here is that we must prepare. That if you are finding that you're getting nothing out of the service, you're getting nothing out of the singing, you're getting nothing out of the preaching, you're getting nothing out of the fellowship, before you begin to...

And you can find many faults with all of these things in our church, I assure you. But before you begin looking for those faults in this church, perhaps look for a moment at how you are preparing yourself.

A 19th century preacher who we're well acquainted with, he said this, we are told men ought not to preach without preparation. Amen. I really am not fond of hearing those guys who like to get up and they say, I just wait until God speaks to me in the moment.

I think most of them, the main thing he is speaking is ahs and ums. But he says, we're not to preach without preparation granted, but we add men ought not to hear without preparation. Which do you think needs the most preparation?

The sower or the ground? I would have the sower come with clean hands, but I would have the ground well plowed and harrowed, well turned over and the clods broken before the seed comes in. It seems to me that there is more preparation needed by the ground, needed by the hearer than the sower, more by the hearer than by the preacher.

So brethren, are you coming? I ask this question to you on the Lord's day, prepared to hear God's word. And how do we prepare? I used the analogy a few weeks ago of an athlete. How does an athlete get ready for game day?

Do they get ready on the day of the game? Or do they get ready on the day before the game? Noah, if I can ask you a question, when does Connor McDavid get ready for the big game? The morning before? I would venture to say that Connor McDavid gets ready the week before and the month before and the year before.

And that all summer he is preparing for a game that's going to happen the following June. And such is the way that Christians should approach our preparation for worship, that we should have not just a game day attitude, but a game day lifestyle, where every single day we are keeping close accounts with God, that we are abiding in Christ, and that we are bearing much fruit, that we are walking in a manner worthy of Him so that as we walk in on Sunday, it's not like I have to pump my own tires for half an hour to get ready, or that you just start to get warmed up as the service ends, but that you come in hot and ready to go already.

Also, I think it's very helpful to walk before God with a clear conscience. How many of us, our prayer lives and certainly our worship lives, and in many respects our Bible reading is impacted by an unclear conscience, a conscience that is weighed down by secret sins, weighed down by besetting sins.

And one of the ways that we prepare is by living in continuous repentance, living in continuous confession before God. As often as we do, we like to tell you the text that we're going to be preaching from at least one week in advance.

I'm sorry you don't have that for next week, but we will announce it in advance. But read the text, warm yourself up to it. In fact, I love when I hear people who have read the text in advance and have even read some commentaries on it in advance, so that I know that they will hold me accountable.

Hold me accountable by knowing what the passage says at least at a basic level before you come. And then I said it a few weeks ago, and I will repeat it again because I think it needs to be repeated, that we are not disembodied souls, but that things like sleep and eating well before worship on the Sunday is an important detail.

That you are not going to be well prepared. You are not going to get the very best out of the sermon, out of the singing, out of anything, if you're up until three in the morning the night before playing who knows what with your friends.

But to say like, I believe it was John Owen when he was meeting with the king, Sir, I must depart immediately after dinner. And the king said, who in the world could be more important, or what in the world could be more important than an appointment with the king?

And he said, because tomorrow morning I have an appointment with the high king of heaven. That every week we come to God to have an appointment with him to hear from his word through a lowly and unworthy servant like me.

And you need to be ready for that. If I told you you were going to meet the president tomorrow, or the prime minister, depending on your opinion, you might not be that prepared, I'm not sure. But one thing's for certain, if it was a president, or a king, or a prime minister that you deeply respected, oh, you would be ready.

You would have your clothes laid out the night before, they would be ironed, ladies, your hair would be done, your makeup would be perfect, everything would be in place for that meeting. How much more meeting with the living God?

And as I've said, if you come not prepared, don't stay home. If nothing else, come that you might be prepared for this evening, for tomorrow, for next week. Come prepared, but if you're not prepared, come.

John Owen says this, and we should come, I should say, with a sense of expectancy. He said, to make a pretense of coming unto God, and not with the expectation of receiving good and great things from him, is to despise God himself, and to deprive our souls of all benefit thereby.

Let's come prepared. Number two that I want to put before us is this, pray in advance. Now, we don't find this in the text, but I would say that this needs to be, in a sense, its own category of preparation.

That we pray, or that we prepare in advance, and we pray in advance. And we pray, I think, for two principal reasons. One, because prayer is effectual. That prayer does, in fact, change things. That if you are praying for the preacher, I trust the Lord.

That if you are praying for the preacher, I will preach a better sermon when you have prayed. I think about, we've heard the story of Spurgeon, and when he was asked, what is the power behind your preaching?

And he walked them into what they called the boiler room. The meeting where everyone prayed for the service before the service took place. And he said, this is the source of my power. I remember hearing a story where Paul Washer was telling that in the morning, their pastor had preached, and they thought his sermon was excellent, but they wanted his evening sermon to be even better.

And so a group of men hung around the church, and before the evening service, they all sat by the pulpit on the steps, and they just prayed. Oh Lord, that you would speak through this man. And they said he preached one of his best sermons that night.

Oh, I would wish that the Lord would help me to preach one of my best sermons empowered through your prayers. Or that Sam, in two weeks time, or that our brother Ty, next week when he brings a historical sermon, that that would hit with an oomph because you have prayed.

And so, how ought we to pray? Who should we pray for? Let me say, pray for the preacher, as I've already said. And this is biblical. In Ephesians 6, in verse 18, Paul said, Make supplication for all the saints and also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly as I ought to speak.

Philip Riken says this, he says, Most churchgoers assume that the sermon starts when the pastor opens his mouth on Sunday. However, listening to a sermon actually starts the week before. It starts when we pray for the minister, asking God to bless the time he spends studying the Bible as he prepares to teach.

In addition to helping the preacher, our prayers create in us a sense of expectancy for the ministry of the word of God. This is one of the reasons that when it comes to preaching, hear this, congregations generally get what they pray for.

What are you getting? Are you getting what you've prayed for? I love what the Dutch reformers used to say, and you've heard this if you were around when I was teaching through church membership. They said, Pray me full, and I will preach you full.

Pray me empty, and I will preach you empty. Are you praying the man who is ministering the word of God full every Sunday, or are you praying him empty, and therefore are you leaving empty? And let me encourage you to pray beginning in the middle of the week.

Pray as early as you can. If you can, I remember having a contest with one of my previous coworkers where it was an annoying little contest, but the goal was this, to send them a Christmas carol as early as possible in the year.

And so sometimes it would be September 1st, and I would call them and play a Christmas carol on the phone, and the whole idea was to beat the other person in welcoming in Christmas, and it was a joke.

I don't think we should play Christmas carols in September. But see if you can't beat the preacher in his own preparations. Say, I'm going to pray for that guy long before he even starts. If I know that he's preaching in three weeks and he's already thinking about it, I'm already behind.

I already need to start praying. Or if you're praying for me, pray for me on Monday while I'm resting, getting ready to prepare the following day. Oh, obey us in your prayers. Pray for the listeners. In 2 Thessalonians 3, 1, Paul said, finally, brothers, pray for us that the word of the Lord may speed ahead and be honored as happened among you.

Oh, if you have benefited from hearing God's word and you're thankful for expository preaching, you're thankful to hear the word of God, the gospel of God, and you know there are people who are perhaps not there yet.

Oh, pray for them that the word of the Lord would speed ahead so that it would be honored in their hearts just as it has happened among you. In his book, Expository Listening, it's one of many good books on listening discernance, the author Ken Ramey, he says this, nothing creates a more explosive, electrifying, life-changing atmosphere than when the lightning bolts from a spirit-empowered preacher hit the lightning rods of spirit-illumined listeners.

Oh, pray for the illumination of the word and then pray for yourself. If nothing else, pray for yourself that the Lord would speak to you through the preaching of his word. And perhaps nothing in all the world changes the tides in our own hearts like making something a priority through prayer.

And we've seen that many times, haven't we? If I'm talking to someone who says, this person grinds me in all the right places, in all the wrong ways, they know every button to push and they push them daily, my counsel for you, the counsel I've given to my children is to pray for them.

And pretty soon you will find yourself interested in their welfare, loving them. It will change the tide of your heart. And so if you come every week, cold, dull, tired, then pray for yourself that he would change the tide.

Active Listening and the Noble Bereans

Number three, active listening. And we see this in a variety of places. In verse 19, know this my beloved brothers, let every person be quick to hear. There are many areas in our lives where we are active listeners, where we know that we need to be active listeners.

A good example of this, I think of our brother Ty who's studying law. If you were to go into a lawyer's office and you have the expectation that that lawyer is going to read the will of your great grandmother who had a massive fortune and you've got a lot of bills to pay and you've got a mortgage and you've got kids and school tuition and whatever it is.

And you're going to listen very, very carefully. You're going to be an active listener as you prepare to hear the will read. Is my name in the will? What could potentially be coming to me? That might sound vain, but I think it's true if you were invited to that lawyer's office.

Well, how much more does the Lord have for us in his word every single week? If you were to be given $10 million in some settlement or in some inheritance, what a good thing that would be, but that does not even hold a candle to the riches of God's word that are inherent in his word.

One commentator says, James places the accent on listening. It is the person who listens intently to the word of truth who progresses in godliness. And I want to take us to an example, a good biblical illustration of what it means to listen actively.

So let's turn in our Bibles to the book of Nehemiah. Nehemiah chapter 8, and in verse 5, we see this picture of the nation of Israel standing before the presence of God, as it were. They've just returned to the promised land.

They're rebuilding Jerusalem. And there's this earnest moment where all of God's people are going to hear the word delivered to them. In many respects, it is an expository sermon that they're listening to.

Just to show you what I mean, in Nehemiah 8, in verse 8, it says this, they read from the book, from the law of God, clearly, and they gave the sense. That is, they read, they explained, they applied, so that the people understood the reading.

This might be the first expository sermon in the Bible. And how did the people treat this preaching of the word of God? Well, in Nehemiah 8, verse 5, just a few verses earlier, it says this, and Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people, for he was above all the people, and as he opened it, all the people stood.

Why did we stand today? All the people stood, and Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God, and all the people answered, Amen, Amen, lifting up their hands, and they bowed their heads and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground.

There are other descriptions of that crowd, but here what you have is a group of people standing in reverence of the reading and the preaching, the explaining of the word of God, and there we see their earnestness, saying Amen, Amen, not just a mumbled Amen, but an Amen, Amen, lifting up their hands and bowing their heads in worship of the Lord.

How many of you, if you were to assess yourself, when you come to hear the word preached, and I understand that I am not the most charismatic preacher, I'm not John MacArthur, I'm not R .C. Sproul, who can preach without notes for 24 minutes exactly, leaning on his pulpit and never looking at his notes and telling you stories from church history and waxing eloquent about all these different stories in the Bible, but regardless of my faults or the faults of some of the brethren who preach here regularly, if you were to evaluate your own listening, your own expository listening, when you come on Sunday, do you come to actively listen to the word preached?

Or do you come just to sit there passively, to rest a while until the time comes to sing again, to check your text messages, to leave a message for your friend's Facebook, their Facebook post, to like something that they've shared, to listen to an expository sermon, to listen to the word of God faithfully preached, even from the very best preachers, is a demanding task.

It requires all of your energy. It requires your focus. In many respects, to listen to an expository sermon is not just a monologue. It is interactional. There are days that I look out at you, brethren, and I know that you are tired, and it just brings me down sometimes.

And there are days when you're nodding and you're saying amen and you're following me and I feel like I have nothing good to say.

And you bring me up.

Are you an active listener of the word of God? A man, John Elmer, a 16th century preacher, he once noticed that his congregation was falling asleep as he was preaching. His listeners were becoming listless.

And so what he did, and this speaks again to the times of some of these preachers, he grabbed his Hebrew Bible and in the middle of speaking in English, he began to read out of his Hebrew Bible.

And immediately,.

Everyone's attention was perked. And then he looked at them. As they all looked at him, he looked at them and he said, how is this that you pay more attention to an alien language, a stranger's language, than when the truths of God are given to you in English, in your very own language?

He said,.

You will listen attentively to an unknown language and yet you neglect the teaching of God's word so easily understood in your own. How many of you must admit that you are a sleepy listener? That you come here not to actively listen, but just to passively sit?

How many of you are looking for what a term I used a couple weeks ago, worshiptainment? Where you want to be fed cotton candy for the entire service. Something that will just melt on your tongue rather than being given a full four course meal with carbs and vegetables and proteins and dairy and there's milk for the babes and there's wagyu steak for the maturest of the believers.

To be an effective listener of an expository sermon takes work, it takes practice, it requires your attention, it yields great benefits, but it demands something of you. God commands us to love Him.

With all of our heart,.

Our soul,.

Our minds,.

And our strength. He did not create these organic supercomputers. That's what we have. You know, AI, they're working very hard to make AI do what your brain can do very, very naturally. God has given us these organic supercomputers.

Not just to deal with the one plus ones and the two plus twos of the Christian life, but to do calculus, the calculus of the Christian life. When our son was being homeschooled, there were times when he wasn't giving his best effort, and I would tell him, God has created your brain so marvelously, so wondrously, and in language that a three-year-old, a four-year-old can understand, I told him this, your brain is like a race car.