Hear The Word Preached!

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October 1, 2023 | Shayne Poirier preaching on James 1:19-25

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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.
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Well, if you were here with us last week, you'll remember that we spent all of last week considering the topic of preaching
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God's Word. That was the title of the sermon itself. Preach the Word of 2
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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,
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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.
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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,
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I think, for a very interesting sermon, a very application -rich sermon. And what this means then, as we study
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God's Word today, is that we're going to be turning our attention from looking at the act itself of preaching the
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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
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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?
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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
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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
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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
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Word. And what I mean is this, that when we think about the priorities of the local church, when we meet together for worship,
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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.
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Almost all of us would agree that when we regulate God's worship according to God's Word, that that necessitates that the act of preaching the
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Bible must then take primacy, must take the supreme place in every single one or amongst all of our worship activities on a
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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.
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The Reformation motto, Scripture alone, and I'm grateful to God for it, that this church, that you love the
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Word of God, and that you agree. I think most of you are here because you agree that the preaching of the
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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
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Word. And yet I wonder how many of us feel just as strongly about the vital and indispensable importance of hearing
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God's Word preached. I'll put it into a bit of perspective for you, and I want you to think, do
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I actually, what I'm about to describe, do I affirm this? And do I affirm it the whole way, or do
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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?
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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?
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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?
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How many of us expect that the preacher has lost some sleep in preparation for that sermon on that given
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Sunday? That he had to make real sacrifices to prepare just a single sermon for one week for God's people?
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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.
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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,
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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,
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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.
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And yet while many of us, I think, have a good and a proper expectation of the effort that should be expended to proclaim
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God's word, I think that we are guilty, many of us, of loading the scale only on one side of the equation.
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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
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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,
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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?
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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?
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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
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God's word? I think that such a scenario is all too common, and it's been all too common for far too long.
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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?
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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And those exhortations, those imperatives far surpass the imperatives to preach.
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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.
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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
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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.
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And we can count ourselves perhaps still amongst the minority. But this afternoon we're going to look at what it means to hear
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God's word, to be a hearer of God's word, and to be a doer of God's word. As noted at the beginning, this is going to be an extended section, essentially, of application from my last sermon.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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That's what I want to do with you today, is I want to make you not just listeners, but expository listeners.
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To be skilled in handling the Word of God as a listener, as well.
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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,
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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.
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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
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Word, which is able to save your souls. The first exhortation that I want to issue to you, number one, is this.
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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
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Word of God. If we're going to yield any lasting and truly spiritual benefit from the preaching of the
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Word, we must come every Sunday with the spiritual readiness to receive that Word.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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But verse 21, in fact, gives us the context and beyond that certainly that is a great instruction to heed.
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That we should speak less. The Proverbs say that those who speak less seem intelligent even if they aren't.
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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.
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Listen more. But the principal idea that James has in mind here, in this whole paragraph, in this first chapter, if we look at verse 21, is this.
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That he reveals that he wants God's people to be better equipped to hear, and notice this with me, receive the implanted
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Word of God. In some ways, this little paragraph is an instruction manual for what it is to hear the
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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
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Lord's Day. And immediately after he delivers this plain command to hear, to be quick to hear,
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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.
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Before we can hear and receive the Word of God for the eternal benefit of our souls, we must make careful preparations.
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And we see the preparations that he lists here. The preparations that James has in mind are these, to put away two things.
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He says, all filthiness, and number two, rampant wickedness. And this language, if we're familiar with the epistles in the
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New Testament, is no doubt familiar. You've heard us talk before about taking off and putting on.
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And every Christian, when we come to hear the Word preached, when we even approach the reading of the Word in our daily
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Bible reading, we are to take something off in preparation for our time.
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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.
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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
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Word of God. And James tells us the two things, to put away all filthiness.
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Translated literally, that word filthiness, it means dung or excrement. It refers specifically to evil actions, to acts of evil.
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And in an idiomatic way, in the Greek -speaking world, it also sometimes referred to as earwax.
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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.
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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
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Q -tip and to remove the filthiness from our lives, to remove the perverse sin that is going to impact our ability to hear
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God's Word. And then at the same time, it's not merely enough to put away evil actions.
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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.
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And this refers to evil intentions. And so when the Christian comes to hear God's Word, we're not to come unprepared.
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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?
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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.
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The unprepared hearer of God's Word comes to the gathered assembly on Sunday, not ready to hear
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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.
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But we must come prepared. I've often thought, and I was speaking with our brother
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Sam a few weeks ago, there are times when I come, right, and I don't preach. That I come just here, and I might just sit here.
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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.
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And one of the things that I have noticed is this, that when I come to preach, I am preparing my heart all week.
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All week, I am ready to go. And I find oftentimes that the dullest
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I ever am, you'd think maybe it's the opposite, that when I come and I have no responsibilities whatsoever,
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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
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Word preached and to live that Word preached. And so I recognize that while my experience is very different from yours,
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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.
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That you come with hearts that are still cold. And yet, what James is telling us here is that we must prepare.
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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...
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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.
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A 19th century preacher who we're well acquainted with, he said this, we are told men ought not to preach without preparation.
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Amen. I really am not fond of hearing those guys who like to get up and they say,
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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.
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But he says we're not to preach without preparation, granted, but we add men ought not to hear without preparation.
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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.
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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.
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So brethren, are you coming? I ask this question to you on the Lord's day, prepared to hear
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God's word. And how do we prepare? I used the analogy a few weeks ago of an athlete.
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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?
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Noah, if I can ask you a question, when does Connor McDavid get ready for the big game? The morning before?
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I would venture to say that Connor McDavid gets ready the week before, and the month before, and the year before.
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And that all summer, he is preparing for a game that's going to happen the following June.
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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.
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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.
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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
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Bible reading is impacted by an unclear conscience. A conscience that is weighed down by secret sins.
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Weighed down by besetting sins. And one of the ways that we prepare is by living in continuous repentance.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Hold me accountable by knowing what the passage says, at least at a basic level, before you come.
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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.
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But things like sleep, and eating well before worship on the
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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.
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But to say, I believe it was John Owen, when he was meeting with the king, Sir, I must depart immediately after dinner.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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I'm not sure. But one thing is for certain. If it was a president, or a king, or a prime minister, that you deeply respected, oh, you would be ready.
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You would have your clothes laid out the night before. They would be ironed. Ladies, your hair would be done.
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Your makeup would be perfect. Everything would be in place for that meeting. How much more, meeting with the living
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God. And as I've said, if you come not prepared, don't stay home.
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If nothing else, come that you might be prepared for this evening. For tomorrow. For next week.
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Come prepared. But if you're not prepared, come. John Owen says this, and we should come,
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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
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God himself, and to deprive our souls of all benefit thereby.
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Let's come prepared. Number two that I want to put before us is this. Pray in advance.
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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.
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That we pray, or that we prepare in advance, and we pray in advance. And we pray,
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I think, for two principal reasons. One, because prayer is effectual. That prayer does, in fact, change things.
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That if you are praying for the preacher, I trust the Lord. That if you are praying for the preacher,
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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?
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And he walked them into what they called the boiler room. The meeting where everyone prayed for the service before the service took place.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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
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Ty, next week when he brings a historical sermon, that that would hit with an oomph because you have prayed.
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And so, how ought we to pray? Who should we pray for? Let me say, pray for the preacher, as I've already said.
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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
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I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly as I ought to speak.
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Philip Riken says this, he says, Most churchgoers assume that the sermon starts when the pastor opens his mouth on Sunday.
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However, listening to a sermon actually starts the week before. It starts when we pray for the minister, asking
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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.
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This is one of the reasons that when it comes to preaching, hear this, congregations generally get what they pray for.
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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
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I was teaching through church membership. They said, Pray me full, and I will preach you full.
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Pray me empty, and I will preach you empty. Are you praying the man who is ministering the word of God full every
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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.
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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
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Christmas carol as early as possible in the year. And so sometimes it would be
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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.
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I don't think we should play Christmas carols in September. But see if you can't beat the preacher in his own preparations.
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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,
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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.
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O, beat us in your prayers. Pray for the listeners. In 2 Thessalonians 3 .1,
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Paul said, Pray for us that the word of the Lord may speed ahead and be honored as happened among you.
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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, pray for them that the word of the
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Lord would speed ahead so that it would be honored in their hearts just as it has happened among you.
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In his book, Expository Listening, it's one of many good books on listening discernance, the author
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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.
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O, pray for the illumination of the word. And then pray for yourself. If nothing else, pray for yourself that the
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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.
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And we've seen that many times, haven't we? If I'm talking to someone who says, I just, 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.
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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.
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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.
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Number three, active listening. And we see this in a variety of places. In verse 19,
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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.
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A good example of this, I think, 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, then you're going to listen very, very carefully.
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You're going to be an active listener as you prepare to hear the will read. Is my name in the will?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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And I want to take us to an example, a good biblical illustration of what it means to listen actively.
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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.
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They've just returned to the promised land. They're rebuilding Jerusalem.
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And there's this earnest moment where all of God's people are going to hear the word delivered to them.
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In many respects, it is an expository sermon that they're listening to. Just to show you what
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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.
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That is, they read, they explained, they applied, so that the people understood the reading.
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This might be the first expository sermon in the Bible. And how did the people treat this preaching of the word of God?
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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.
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Why did we stand today? All the people stood, and Ezra blessed the Lord, the great
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God, and all the people answered, Amen, Amen, lifting up their hands. And they bowed their heads and worshipped the
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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.
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And there we see their earnestness, saying Amen, Amen, not just a mumbled
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Amen, but an Amen, Amen, lifting up their hands and bowing their heads in worship of the
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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,
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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
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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?
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Or do you come just to sit there passively, to rest a while until the time comes to sing again?
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To check your text messages, to leave a message for your friends' Facebook, their
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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.
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It requires all of your energy. It requires your focus. In many respects, to listen to an expository sermon is not just a monologue.
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It is interactional. There are days that I look out at you, brethren, and I know that you are tired.
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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.
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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.
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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
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Hebrew Bible and in the middle of speaking in English, he began to read out of his
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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?
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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.
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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?
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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?
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To be an effective listener of an expository sermon takes work. It takes practice. It requires your attention.
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It yields great benefits, but it demands something of you. And God commands us to love him with all of our heart, our soul, our minds, and our strength.
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He did not create these organic supercomputers. That's what we have.
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You know, AI, they're working very hard to make AI do what your brain can do very, very naturally.
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God has given us these organic supercomputers, not just to deal with the one plus ones and the two plus twos of the
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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,
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God has created your brain so marvelously, so wondrously, and in language that a three -year -old, a four -year -old can understand,
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I told him this, your brain is like a race car. It is the fastest race car out there, and you don't want to drive like a golf cart with your race car, but you want to use your race car brain, and you want to drive it as fast as you can go.
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I don't mean to patronize you, but the Lord has given us these brains with immense capacity, not to deal with the lowest level stuff that could possibly be served, but to deal with the weighty things, the rich and the deep, and the great doctrines of theology and of the
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Bible. Richard Baxter said, you have to work to do as well as the preacher, and should all the time be as busy as he is, you must open your mouth, that is to receive spiritual food, and digest it, for another cannot digest it for you.
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Therefore, be all the while at work, and abhor an idle heart in hearing, as well as an idle minister.
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If hearing the preached word is to hear God speak, this activity calls for our greatest attention.
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It calls for a teachable spirit. In Luke 8, 18, our
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Lord Jesus, meek and mild, said this, take care then how you hear, for to the one who has, more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he thinks that he has, will be taken away.
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Psalm 85, 8 says this, the psalmist says, let me hear what God the
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Lord will speak, for he will speak peace to his people, his saints, let them not turn back to folly.
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We're to be active listeners. One example, I've used one from the Old Testament, I'll use one from the
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New Testament. In Acts chapter 17, verse 11, we read of the Bereans. In Acts 17, 11, it says that the
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Bereans were more noble than those who were in Thessalonica. And why? It says this, because they received the word with all eagerness.
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Oh, they were eager to hear it, examining the scriptures daily to see if these things are so.
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There's a quote that our guys from the Institute here, from Walter Kaiser, and he says, you should always preach with,
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I'll do it this way, with one finger in the Bible. Whenever a man preaches, he should always preach with one finger in the
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Bible, remembering what it is that he is preaching. And he says, if your hand gets tired, what do you say, man, in the
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Institute? Use your other hand. Well, so it is when you're being an expository listener.
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To have one hand in the Bible, to be a Berean, to have the Bible open on your laps, there's a reason why we don't have a screen.
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It's not just because we're poor, it's because we don't want you to leave your Bible at home.
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But we want you to have your Bible on your lap, with your finger in it, following along. And for the love of all that is good, make it hard for the preacher.
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Make it so that if he says something that is not in the Bible, it is clear you have seen it, you're gonna talk to him afterwards.
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Put us to work, so that everything that we say, we have to have a scriptural bearing for it, a scriptural warrant for it.
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And if we don't have it, then it's not the word of God, and you need not listen to it. And train yourself in this church, and train yourself in every setting.
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When you listen to a sermon on the way to work, and the preacher says something, you need to ask yourself, or ask that preacher, what is the chapter and the verse?
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Where do you get that? What is your authority? We need to be active listeners.
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And what this means, when I told the young men and the young women at camp, is this, to sit up straight, to have good posture, to make eye contact.
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I know that our culture, our milquetoast, you know, Caucasian, you know,
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Canadian culture, doesn't say a lot of amens, but if you agree, say amen. If you disagree, maybe tell me after.
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But be engaged. Engage your whole person. Engage every sense, every faculty.
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Be an active listener. Number four, humbly receive the implanted word. Here we see, this is a bit of agricultural work.
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The implanted word. And we read that in verse 22 again.
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Sorry, verse 21. That we're to put away filthiness and rampant wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.
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Oh, what a cost. What a thing is on the line.
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That when we hear the word of God, it is not the word of God that will tickle your ears.
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It is not the word of God that will make you feel good for the week. What is it? It is the word of God that will save your souls.
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Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. And we need that implanted word.
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We need to receive that implanted word. This is agricultural language, as I just said a moment ago.
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And our brother read, I had him read it, so I wouldn't have to read it again. In Luke chapter 8, the parable of the sower.
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There were four different types of soil. And so you understand the parable. Your hearts are the soil, and this is the seed.
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And that you are to prepare that soil for the sowing of the seed, so that when it comes out, it finds good soil in your heart, and so saves, preserves, strengthens your soul for eternity.
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And when many of us hear that parable of the sower, when we read that parable of the sower, we so often assume that we are the good soil.
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We're the good soil that's going to yield the hundred and the sixty and the thirty. But let me ask you, is that indeed true?
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If you were to examine yourself for a moment, that when you come on the
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Lord's day to hear the word preached, you're providing, my wife for instance, she composts all year, so that she has the very best soil at the beginning of the year.
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She can grow almost anything in that soil. Does your heart come with that kind of soil?
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Or if you think honestly and truthfully about it, does it come with clumps of clay and an old license plate and a little bit of garbage from last week and some
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McDonald's wrappers? Where very little can grow in the shade of the junk that is there.
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Brethren, we must come every week to receive the implanted word of God into our very souls.
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And what that means is that we need to prepare it and that we need to be ready to receive it.
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And each one of us comes to the preaching of the word with all kinds of biases, all kinds of prejudices, all kinds of presuppositions that are at odds with the counsel of scripture.
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I like what one brother says, that neutrality is a myth. And what that means is that every week there are going to be things that come that are going to be hard for you to understand, maybe hard for you to accept, but you must prepare your hearts, you must have the soil of your hearts ready so that when that word comes, it is planted and it bears fruit, a hundredfold and sixtyfold and thirtyfold.
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I think it's amazing that we were talking about this in our men's group yesterday, that the social media world has spent billions of dollars on research and development to feed you in your own personalized feed exactly what you want to hear.
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They have built the perfect echo chamber so that if you don't like this political figure, oh boy, you're going to get every video that is critical of that man.
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And if you love this particular topic, you're going to get all kinds of things that are going to have you clicking and consuming ads for their revenue.
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And so that has accustomed many of us, many of you, to seek out only those things that reinforce what you already believe.
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But I'm here to tell you that when you come on the Lord's Day, you ought to come ready to be offended, ready to hear something different, ready to be challenged.
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As one person said, the work of the preacher is to do this, to disturb the comfortable and to comfort the disturbed.
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You need to be ready to be disturbed. We need to be ready when the
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Word is, and hear me, when the Word is accurately and faithfully preached, we need to be ready to say,
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I am wrong. I have been wrong about this my whole life. Maybe I've read a book on this and that author was very compelling, but this is what the
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Bible says. Maybe this is what my mom told me when I was three years old. But this is what the
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Word of God says. We need at every moment to be wrong, ready to be wrong.
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There are times when we need to be wounded in order that we might be healed. I think of a dog that I had at one time that, our dog
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Bo, he broke his leg. And we didn't know what had happened and we weren't great dog owners, I suppose, and we let him walk around on it and it kind of healed.
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But he always walked with a bit of a limp. And then we took him to the vet and the vet said, we really need to heal this broken leg, but we have to break it again so that we can heal it.
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And there are times when we're going to come on the Lord's Day and the Lord is going to need to break some bones so that he can heal them again.
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That we can hear hard things that we might be made richer, stronger, better for it.
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The faithful preacher of God's Word and the faithful hearer of God's Word recognizes what it says in Proverbs 27 .6.
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Faithful are the wounds of a friend and profuse are the kisses of an enemy. Sometimes the best thing that you can do or that I can do for you is to wound you so that you might be drawn to the
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Lord, drawn to Christ, healed and made better. I've been reading through the Proverbs and this week
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I read in Proverbs 17 .10. A rebuke goes deeper into a man of understanding than a hundred blows into a fool.
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We should come sensitive not so that it takes a hundred blows to finally have us changed but so that we can hear one word, just one verse from Scripture and say that is me, that is me and I must change.
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If I'm going to honor God, if I'm going to obey God, I must change. Or to receive the implanted word in Christ.
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That faith comes by hearing and hearing through the word of Christ. We aspire every
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Sunday to preach Christ -centered sermons. This is a very practical, application -heavy sermon.
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It's not on a text that speaks to Christ but I'm still going to speak about Christ today. We need to be Christ -centered preachers, yes.
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And let me say you need to be Christ -centered listeners so that as you're hearing the text expounded you can say that is just like the
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Gospel. That is just like Christ. You need to see the Lord in each one.
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In John chapter 5 our Lord Jesus said that they searched the Scriptures that they may have life and while they were seeking it in the
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Scriptures, it was in Christ that they would find it. That everything in Scripture is to point to Christ.
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And so what this means is that every week as we preach the Gospel as we say to you as I say to you that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God you need to ask yourself especially if you've never asked yourself before, is that me?
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The word of God says it is and so it's true. That you've sinned against God. And that while we were still sinners,
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Christ died for the ungodly. And we need to ask ourselves, have I believed on Christ?
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There are going to be times when we say that broad is the way that leads to destruction and narrow is the way that leads to life and few there are that go that way.
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That Christ is the only way, the truth and the life. And no one can come to the Father but through Him. That there is no other name given under heaven by which man must be saved.
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And you need to ask yourself have I believed in that Christ? Or am I on the broad road that goes to destruction?
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Every week we must receive the implanted word. Everyone every week, believer and unbeliever alike.
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Number five be doers of the word. In James 1 .22
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we're told but be doers of the word and not hearers only deceiving yourselves.
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Let me ask you how often do you use the word doer? If I were to say do you like to golf?
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Oh yes, I am a doer of that. That's quite odd language. Why would they translate from the
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Greek into the English? And why wouldn't they just simply translate to do the word of God?
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Do not just hear the word of God but do the word of God. Because the language behind that is this.
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That you can do something once but to be a doer means that you persist in that.
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And so to be a doer of the word of God. There are some people who have at one time done the word of God.
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I'm studying Greek right now and I'm learning all these different versions of past tense and present tense and everything.
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There's a person who has done something but they are not a doer of it.
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There are many people who have confidence in their having done but the Lord is not looking for people who have done but who are doers who are doing, who are presently obeying the word of God.
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God doesn't simply ask us, command us to hear the word, to actively listen to it, to pray, to do the necessary preparations but to do the word of God.
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And if we are not doing the word of God then what does the passage say? That we are deceiving ourselves.
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There are many people who are self -deceived because they believe they have made a profession at one time in their life or that they can point to a past history or a past example of obedience.
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The Lord does not want you to find confidence in your past obedience but to find your confidence in Christ today and to have it manifest itself in your present obedience.
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And let me ask you, how frequently are you coming to hear the word of God preached with the express intent to do it?
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Not just to listen, not just to admire, not just to critique but to hear it and then to do the word of God.
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It's perhaps one of the most dangerous things in all the world is to go to a church that preaches the
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Bible faithfully and then to not do it. You'd almost be better off going to a church that doesn't preach the
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Bible. Don't take that seriously. You'd almost be better to go elsewhere except that you wouldn't because you wouldn't hear the gospel there and you wouldn't hear what you need to hear in order to be right with God.
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But with every sermon that you hear that comes in fact from God's word, that increases your accountability.
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Some people, we talk about eating and drinking judgment upon yourself at the Lord's table, some of you are listening to the judgment upon yourself every week by hearing the word and yet not doing the word.
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In John 15, 22, Christ said to one of his detractors, he said, If I had not come and spoken to them, they would have not been guilty of sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin.
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Brethren, God wants us. I believe that God is pleased when we preach the word of God faithfully here.
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That it is a good thing to preach the Bible faithfully, accurately, and leave the rest to God.
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But God is not pleased with simply the act of preaching.
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Preaching is the means to the end, and the end is obedience to God. What Christ wants is disciples who are obedient to Him.
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Who are coming every week with pen and paper, journal in hand, making eye contact, listening.
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Why? Not just so you can say you go to a church that preaches the Bible. Not just so you can say that you're an active listener, but because you are there to the end that you might be more like Christ.
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And are you seeking that? Are you prepared to obey God's word?
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How do we ensure that we're not lying to ourselves? How do we ensure that we are not self -deceived hearers?
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Hearing only and not being effectual doers of the word? What I would say is this. Every time you hear something that you need to believe, brother, sister, believe it then, there, and at that very moment.
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If it is in the scriptures, say, and I must believe it, then I believe it. If this is what the
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Bible says, I'm not going to lean on my own understanding. I will trust in this with all of my heart. If the
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Bible has an imperative that tells you you must do something, then what you must necessarily do, if you're not going to be a self -deceived hearer, say, if the
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Bible says it, then I will do it. And I'm not going to do it tomorrow. I'm going to do it today. It's like when they say someone who is going on a diet, when they say they're going on a diet starting tomorrow, they're never going on a diet.
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That diet is not coming. I'm going to quit smoking tomorrow. You're not quitting smoking.
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If you want to quit, you'll quit today. If you want to do it, you will do it today. There's a story of a man,
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Christopher Ashe, who wrote a book called Listen Up, and another one called The Priority of Preaching.
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He shares an illustration of three devils who are in training. It's kind of a
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C .S. Lewis type of story. The devil asks these three devils, the three demons, what their strategy would be to deceive men.
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The first devil said, I'm going to tell them that there is no God. Satan said, okay, that's a good strategy, except that all of creation testifies to the fact that there is a
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God. It's very likely that even if you do that, there will be some fools who believe you, is how the illustration goes, but most will not, and they will believe that there is a
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God. The second demon said, well, what I will do then is I will make them believe that there is no judgment.
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Satan said, yes, some will believe that, but there are many who know, who truly understand that God will call everything into account, and they will still believe, even if you try to convince them, they will still believe that there is a judgment.
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And then the third devil approached Satan, and he said, I'm going to tell them there is no hurry.
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And Satan said, yes. That is the strategy. That will do it.
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Let them listen to the word of God, and then as they do, whisper in their ears, this is good stuff.
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You should do something about it tomorrow. And we know ourselves, don't we?
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That tomorrow comes and obedience doesn't. That we are slow of hearing, that we have short attention spans, and by the next day, we have not repented, we have not applied the word of God to our lives, and we have not changed.
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It is reminiscent of the story of Augustine, the fourth century theologian, who was once confronted about his sexual sin, and he thought,
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I do need to go to God about this, I'm going to pray to God about this, this was before he was a believer, and his prayer was,
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Lord, give me chastity, but not yet. That's some of you every single day, that you are here.
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That you are always learning, and never coming to a knowledge of the truth. You're always hearing that you have wronged the living
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God, and that God did not condemn you to hell immediately, but that He sent His only begotten Son, so that whoever believes in Him would not perish, but have eternal life.
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And you say, that's a great story. I'm going to share that with somebody else I know. They really need to hear this story.
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Or maybe I'll deal with that tomorrow. Let me tell you, brothers and sisters, when
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God gives you a command, when He tells you the gospel, when He exhorts you to believe on Christ and be right with God forever,
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He means for you to believe it, and to obey it, not tomorrow, not even in an hour, but right now.
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Delayed obedience, as I tell my kids, is disobedience. In Hebrews 3 .13, it says, but exhort one another every day, as long as it is called today, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
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And number six, revisit and remember. In verse 25, we'll look briefly at that.
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I promise this one's a fast point. It says, but the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets, but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.
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I want to hone in on two words here. The first one is this. Perseveres.
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Being the one who perseveres, and then the second word, being no hearer who forgets.
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So we've looked at these points. I can't remember if I revisited, but number six, revisit and remember.
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We want to persevere in our faithfulness. We do not want to be those who are hearers, and yet who forget.
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And so what we must do is we must forcefully combat forgetfulness when it comes to the preached word.
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And what this is, is it's a call to remember and to meditate upon what you hear on Sunday throughout the week.
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One of the best gifts that you can give a man who preaches
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God's word, to compliment him at the door is great, but tell him in two or three weeks,
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I have not stopped thinking about what you said that Sunday. That is a true compliment.
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That you are taking to heart what has been said. That you are meditating upon it.
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That you are revisiting it often. Let me exhort you, brethren, in as few words as I can, that when the sermon is preached, don't just leave it there.
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If you don't take notes during the sermon, maybe just write it on a post -it note. And on Wednesday, grab the post -it note and read again.
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Maybe something that you felt, I really need to deal with this. I must address this in my life.
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And meditate on it. And ask yourself about it. And ask yourself, am I actually following through on this?
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I was reading a stat that we retain about 10 % of the material that we read.
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You read a really good book, and you just read it, you're going to remember about 10 % of that book.
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We read, or we retain about 50 % of what we see and hear.
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I think that's very gratuitous. I don't believe it's that high, but apparently we retain 50 % of that.
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But we retain 85 % of what we take and apply.
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And revisit. And seek to make experiential in our lives. And so, be experiential listeners.
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To hear, and then to revisit it. To meditate upon it, and to apply it that day, and then the next day, and then the next day.
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You could be one of those people who has, buy a nice journal, and write your notes from the sermon for that day, and then in one month's time, go back and read it.
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Have I changed in light of that? What am I still missing here? To revisit it in 10 years, or to give your children the gift of a stack of notes.
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These are all the sermons I ever listen to. You might not even read a single page of my sermon notes, but one thing's for sure, you will know for certain that I have taken hearing
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God's word seriously. The Puritan preacher
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Philip Henry, he was the father of Matthew Henry, the Bible commentator. One of his parishioners confessed to him, he said,
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I find it easier to go six miles to and from church to hear a sermon, than to spend 15 minutes meditating and praying over it as I should when
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I come home. Go home. Meditate. Pray over it. And I'm going to leave us with these words.
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These are the same words I left us with last week. The church is always to be under the word.
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She must be. We must keep her there. As listeners, you must keep the word there.