How Preaching Affects Your Sanctification

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Void where prohibited by law. 18 plus terms and conditions apply. See website for details. Why is preaching important?

Well, I think for starters, preaching has been proven over history. If you're just going to try to copy the culture, what's going to happen is you're going to do a lousy job of it because you can't be as good at worldliness as the culture is with all of its resources.

And so the people who are drawn by that are eventually just going to fade away. One, two, three.

Welcome to The Rap Report with your host, Andrew Rappaport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application.

This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

Well, welcome back to another edition of The Rap Report. I am your host, Andrew Rappaport, and I have a guest with me today.

We're going to be talking about something that many people don't think about, and that is, well, people think about preaching, those that go to church, but we're also going to be talking about listening and how preaching will help in your sanctification.

So my guest today is Paul Shirley, and I'm going to bring him in. Paul, welcome to The Rap Report.

Andrew, it's great to be with you, brother. I'm really pleased with the opportunity and excited about it. Now, I don't know when we might have first met.

I thought that virtually we first met was at the Grace Advance training, where you were an instructor and I was a student, but I found out that we might have met actually before that when

I was down your way with Justin Peters for breakfast. Okay. Maybe.

I don't remember. I don't remember. Yeah. But yeah, I did enjoy our time together in the

Grace Advance Academy and thinking through some of those issues about the church, and just anytime you get the opportunity to fellowship with other like -minded guys who are churchmen, who just love the body of Christ, it is certainly a privilege to be able to do that.

Now, you are part of Grace Advance. So how did that come about?

How did you get involved with Grace Advance? And also, just give folks a background, because my audience may be new to you.

And so give me some background of your church, how you ended up there, and how that's going.

Sure. So I pastor a church up in Wilmington, Delaware area, and I've been here for about nine years.

We are a church plant from Grace Advance, as you mentioned. And Grace Advance is a church planting and revitalization ministry through Grace Community Church in California, where Pastor John MacArthur leads that ministry.

And so a little over nine years ago, we went through some training there over the course of a summer in California there with our family.

And we were sent out to be a part of a church plant here in Delaware. Before that,

I'm originally from Florida. My family is all from there. My wife is from Florida, grew up there.

We had first couple of kids there before we ended up in Delaware, but I was part of a church down there, associate pastor down there.

And as we were thinking through what the Lord might have for us next, we had always had a heart for church planting.

We had always had a desire to be able to go someplace where there was a unique need, particularly for expository preaching and sound doctrine.

And through the ministry of Grace Advance, we were paired up with a group of folks that were here in the

Wilmington, Delaware area, seeking to really launch and establish the very kind of church that we were desiring to be a part of.

And so those conversations took place in the summer of 2011.

And then by the beginning of 2012, I was here in place.

And our family has been in Delaware ever since then. And I always have a lot of evangelism opportunities when people ask me, how'd you end up in Delaware?

And I can always say, well, I got here from Florida, through California, because of God.

And so some really interesting evangelism opportunities there. So you really just wanted to get away from the beautiful sunny weather in Florida, right?

You wanted to experience snow. That's exactly right. It's funny, if you had known me before I moved up here, you would have thought that Delaware is the farthest place from where I'd ever want to be.

In fact, it was not until I moved up here that I had ever seen snow.

I mean, I was a grown man coming to pastor a church on the East Coast, and it was actually kind of embarrassing.

I had never even seen snow before. That's how much of a Florida boy that I was. And so thankfully, the

Lord, despite never expecting it, brought us up here to Delaware, where we just love life and ministry, and we're so thankful to be a part of the church here.

But yeah, it was a long trip from Florida to Delaware in more ways than one.

Yeah, I always remembered when my parents moved to Florida and I'd go down and listen to all these

Christmas carols and whatnot about snow. And they'd like, you know, for Christmas time, they'd set up like fake snow in the parks.

Tells you how much the North has influenced even

Christmas songs. If you want to even come close to seeing snow at Christmas down there, you got to go to Disney World and they pump in like this fake snow that's kind of like soap bubbles that are floating through the air and all the kids love it and everything.

And it's 85 degrees at the same time. Yeah, well, I had one experience of winter in Florida where it was cold.

We were, my father had gotten a boat. We were bringing it up the coast. So it was,

I think, it was like the one time that they went under zero. And every store that had any kind of gloves, jackets, we weren't prepared for it because we figured we were going to go up to Virginia and the rest of our stuff was in Virginia.

So we figured we wouldn't need anything till then, really. None of our winter stuff. And boy, Florida was not ready for that kind of cold weather.

Yeah, no, it never is. Every once in a while you'll get a cold snap and things start to freeze up and people just don't know what to do.

So we know what to do when it's super hot outside and that's go back inside and turn the air conditioning on. But when it gets cold, we're a little bit lost down there in Florida.

So let's talk briefly about the church that you're at down there, down from me down there because I'm up in Pennsylvania now.

But talk about the church. How long have you been there? How long have you been the pastor there?

Yeah, so we're just about nine years that we've been here. And the

Lord brought us together through Grace Advanced to be a part of this church with the leadership here.

And the Lord's been kind. When we first got here, we had a group of maybe 20 or 25 people, including our family that was praying and laboring together to start a work here.

And by God's grace, we've been able to see that move forward. We've seen a number of people come to Lord and be baptized.

We've seen elders grow up in our midst. We've got some homegrown elders who lead the church.

We're an elder ruled church. So I'm one of three elders. And not that this is how you measure the faithfulness of the church, but the

Lord has been faithful to bring more folks our way, that we've been able to disciple and be able to serve alongside.

So we're very thankful for it. I think that the two ingredients of any local church that are going to be most beneficial to its people are faithful preaching ministry and sweet body life.

And so we strive to be faithful in our preaching. Certainly we could be more effective, but we trust that we are being faithful to scriptures and our preaching here.

And we trust that we're handling the word accurately. And then in terms of body life, we've been so thankful to see the way the scriptures have impacted the people in our congregation, not only to grow their love for the

Lord, but also to grow their love for one another. Like if you were to ask me, just kind of describe your church briefly,

I would just say we're a church that loves the truth and loves one another, and that is a sweet place to be.

People ask, whenever I go back and visit family down in Florida, they always ask me questions about Delaware and they view it as the great white north.

I can visit Florida in July, by the way, and I can tell people in Florida that there's a foot of snow on the ground in Delaware, and they will believe me.

They will believe me. They just have no concept of, once you get north of a certain point, they just have no concept of what's going on up here.

So I get questions about it all the time, and I always just say my favorite part about Delaware, there's a lot of wonderful things about Delaware.

My favorite part is the church and to see the work that God's doing here. Well, let's talk about preaching because that is something you had written a book on, the book that is called

The Expositional Sanctification. And this is for folks who were going to talk about this book, and I just want to let them know they could go to kreessbiblical .com,

that's k -r -e -s -s -biblical .com to get a copy. It's called

Expositionary Sanctification.

This is not a very large book, but it is one that, boy, after I got done reading it,

I was like, how needful is this to the church? It's one that's actually affecting the way that I'm sort of rethinking some preaching aspects of it, of considering some of the things that you said.

So let me start with, you made a point in your book about preaching the importance of it.

Why is preaching so important? Well, I would say first and foremost that preaching is important to every believer because God has designed it to be the primary means of grace

He uses in our salvation and sanctification. So this is the primary way that God acts graciously and kindly to bring us unto salvation and to grow us in our sanctification.

You know, kind of like a Roman's tin, faith comes by hearing, hearing through the word of Christ, the preaching of the word.

It's through the preaching that God confronts us with the truth of the gospel.

And it's as we continue to submit to the preaching of the word in our life that we're brought under the lordship of Christ Jesus.

So there is a unique spiritual benefit that we derived from hearing the word preached.

And I always, whenever I'm talking about this with somebody, I'm invited to speak somewhere, or just a personal conversation with somebody, people always say, okay, well,

I understand preaching can be important to my sanctification, to my growth in Christ, but is it really the most important tool that God uses in my life?

And I would say, yes, it is. But the one thing that they always, people always respond to me with is, well, what about reading the

Bible on my own? What about my own personal devotions? Isn't that important too? To which I say, absolutely.

I am, let me go on the record on your show today, Andrew, I am four people reading their

Bible, okay? I just want to officially get that out of the way. I am four people reading their

Bible. It's super important for all of your listeners to do that. I tell my people in my church that you have their own copy of scripture and read it.

So that's always a response. So I just want that to go on the record today. But here's one of the things that I would say to that, is that for at least the first 1800 years of the church, the vast majority of believers didn't even have their own copy of scripture.

They had to go and hear it preached and then meditate on those truths that they heard preached throughout the week.

And that was the primary source of spiritual food that the Lord provided for them.

So I would just say that still for us today, this is the primary source of spiritual food that the

Lord provides. When we are able to hear gifted men make the meaning of scripture clear and exhort our hearts with the implications of scripture, that has a unique spiritual benefit in our life that we need to make sure that we're taking advantage of as believers.

You know, you mentioned in your book, part of that 1800 years, the

Bible was also something most people not only didn't have, they couldn't read because they were illiterate. And preaching was the means of sanctification for many people of having

God's word not only read, which maybe that's why in years ago, they would do a lot more reading of scripture in church services than we do today.

But, you know, one of the things that you brought out and this is what intrigued me with the book and why

I ended up wanting to talk with you more about it on the show, is the aspect of the person in the pew and preaching because we often don't think about that.

We think of, I think as a majority of Christians, we think of preaching as, well, this is what we pay a pastor to do.

He preaches so we can dig a little bit deeper into understanding the word of God. Unfortunately, many churches today seem to be more focused on preaching felt needs and things.

You know, it's kind of interesting. I just, as you know, I moved out to Pennsylvania and, you know, my books actually, unfortunately, were in boxes in my garage for like eight months.

I finally, after nine months, have the joy of having books behind me again. Last time we saw each other virtually,

I had empty bookcases. But the thing is, it was very interesting putting my books back on shelves because there's something

I noticed that the books that I have from the Puritans, many of the

Puritan works, all were in, not all, but a majority of them are in the category of God and salvation.

And most of the books that have been written in the last 50 years that I have, or maybe 40 years, are almost all like in the category of, you know,

Christian living in some way, whether it's dealing with suffering or things of Christian living.

Very few written on God, unless they were theological, like textbooks type of thing.

The only things I really saw on salvation were dealing with Calvinism or Arminianism issue.

And I'm like, I just, I noticed that we kind of have a shift from those before.

And I think that same shift occurred in preaching where it seems like, and what you're in your book kind of emphasizes, in preaching, we're lifting

God up on high, which is what the Puritans would do. And nowadays, it seems like much of the preaching is more focused on man and how to help them.

Self -help type stuff. Have you recognize that same type of trend? Yeah, absolutely.

And I think that it's no coincidence that we live in an age that finds many believers battling anxiety and discontentment.

And part of the reason for that is we haven't been focusing on a right doctrine of God and a right doctrine of salvation.

We think far too little and far too small thoughts about God, which is why we're anxious.

And we think far too little and far too small about our salvation, which is why we are discontent with what we have.

And what happens is that this sort of spiritual malnutrition, it's not solely found in the pulpit, but it begins in the pulpit.

You get anemic preaching, which produces puny Christians, where Christians aren't hearing deep thoughts about God that they can root their faith in.

They're hearing superficial kind of instructions and pragmatic solutions to spiritual issues.

And so they are being trained to think about God and to think about the Christian life in a way that is temporal and superficial rather than theological, eternal, and rooted in Scripture.

And that's part of the reason why I wrote the book. This is a book on preaching that's not for preachers. So every book

I own on preaching is for preachers. But it dawned on me, the average

Christian is going to listen to thousands of sermons over the course of their Christian life. Maybe they need to be taught and encouraged to think about preaching as well.

And that's what I want to do with this book, have a practical manual for believers that helps them to understand what is sanctification?

How does growth happen? What part does preaching play in my spiritual growth, my sanctification?

And what kind of preaching is most going to help me grow in my sanctification?

And that's part of the reason why the book is short. There's certainly a lot more that I could have added to it, but I've got about, this was actually a part of my doctoral dissertation.

So I've got well over 300 pages worth of content that was culled down to less than 100 pages because I don't want there to be any obstacle to any believer being able to just pick this book up and meditate on some of these truths that I think are most important for believers to understand.

And that's what intrigued me with it. Probably for the average reader, maybe a few hours, three, five hours to read the entire book.

It's, like I said, under 100 pages. The thing that intrigued me was that it was written not to preachers.

There's a lot for a preacher to gleam. However, it really is meant for people in the pew.

And that is something that was very different. So let's start with, I think most people in my audience would know what expositional preaching is and what sanctification is, but we get new listeners every week.

So could you define those two terms? Yeah, and I'll begin with sanctification.

When we're talking about sanctification, we're basically talking about the theology, the doctrine of how we grow and how we're conformed into the image of Christ.

And really, this is, from a biblical perspective, it's the language of holiness. That's what we're talking about.

We're talking about growth in holiness when we're talking about sanctification. In Christ, we have a new position.

We're saints. We're holy ones. But as saints, we are also called and empowered by God's grace to grow in that holiness.

That's the progressive element of holiness that really we're all battling towards.

So really, I think every believer needs to be studying the doctrine of sanctification because this is our life.

It's sinners who have been saved by Christ and are now being conformed into the image of Christ. Now being conformed to the image of Christ, that describes our sanctification.

And as a pastor, I want to know as much as I can from a biblical perspective about sanctification because that's going to help me to shepherd my sheep as much as possible.

And I think for the average believer, the more you can understand about how you grow the better because I think there's a lot of believers who say, boy,

I want to grow, but I really don't know how growth works. Sometimes I feel like I'm really walking with the Lord and then other times

I'm not and I don't understand why. And the fact of the matter is, there is clarity in the scriptures on why those things are happening.

And so that's addressed in the book on how this growth happens. And then in terms of preaching, what is expository preaching?

Well, you could define this as well or better than I could, brother, but I would just say expository preaching is biblical preaching.

To exposit the scriptures is to bring clarity on the meaning of scriptures.

One of the ways that I like to describe it is that expository preaching is the method of preaching that will proclaim the substance of the text, the significance of the text, and the stipulations of the text.

Or maybe to put it another way, in an expository sermon, the preacher takes a text of scripture and declares, here's what it says, so we're going to make these observations about the passage.

Then in the sermon, the preacher proclaims, here's what it means. So the preacher is going to interpret the text for you.

And then thirdly, in an expository message, the preacher is going to say, here's what it requires. Here's what you must believe about God.

Here's how you must submit to the Lordship of Christ Jesus in your life. Here are the implications of this text for your life.

And I think when it's done rightly, when it's done best, that's what an expository message is.

It opens the text of scripture, so that people will understand what it says, what it means, and what it requires from them.

Now, in your book, what you ended up doing is, and I want to take a short break, and then after that, dig into, you mentioned some threats to our sanctification that can occur in preaching, and then some benefits of preaching.

Because this is something I think people don't think through, of how preaching affects our sanctification.

So let's discuss that right after this break. The good news is,

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So, Paul, let's get into this, because for many people, they don't think about the preaching and how it affects our sanctification.

And early in your book, you laid out some threats to our sanctification that come from preaching.

What are some of those threats? Yeah, absolutely. I think to begin with, the two preeminent jobs that the church has are to preach the

Word and be holy. That's what we're called to. And it really simplifies things when you think about a church in that way. I mean, there's so many things that can be done.

There's so many ministries. There's so many needs. There's so many felt needs. There's so many desires.

There's so many niche markets out there in the evangelical world that I think it helps to just simplify that what we're called to do, preach the

Word in season and out of season. We are here as God's representatives, which means we have a responsibility, a divine obligation to proclaim the truth of God's Word.

We are a pillar and support of the truth. That's what the church has to be. So that's a preeminent responsibility that we have.

And along with that, 1 Peter 1 says that we have been called to be holy as God is holy.

So really, and I think this will resonate with you, Andrew, but sometimes I just can't help but scratch my head to see all the hand -wringing and all the brainstorming that happens out there in the evangelical church about how can we really reach our culture?

How can we really connect with the culture today? It's pretty simple. The Bible says preach the

Word and be holy and that's how you're going to be useful to the Lord and the

Great Commission. So these are our responsibilities, preach the Word and be holy. So preaching and sanctification are at the top of our list in terms of our priorities.

And so it's no surprise that when one is lacking, you can look to the other and say, oh boy, that's going to be lacking as well.

So when the preaching in the evangelical world is anemic, when it is rooted in pragmatism and human wisdom and personal preferences and the cult of personality that we see in so many large evangelical platforms, it's no wonder that you see believers who are floundering in sin.

They're struggling with anxiety because of a narcissistic worldview that they learned from a narcissistic pulpit.

And so these two things go together. The holiness of the church and the preaching of the church are intertwined together.

Whenever you see poor preaching, you're going to see weak believers. Whenever you see powerful biblical preaching, what you're going to see is you're going to see believers growing in the truth.

And I think a lot of the fruits that you see in the evangelical church today demonstrate just how weak the pulpits have been.

And I think you can identify several strands of dangers out there. One of them

I identify is the danger of lethargy. I think there are a lot of just lethargic

Christians out there who are apathetic. I proclaim Christ. I'm not really worried about growth at all.

And those believers are never confronted with the kind of preaching that would light a fire under them, so to speak.

I think also you see another danger that's affecting so many believers is the danger of licentiousness.

In other words, living a lust -filled life that is constantly pursuing gratification.

I think increasingly people are judging their walk with the Lord based on, does it feel right to me or not?

Does this feel good? What does this feel like? And I just say that sin often feels really good at the front end, and then at the back end, you realize what a disaster is.

So we need preaching that confronts this kind of idea of licentiousness.

And of course, also another danger is the danger of legalism. The idea that through our own faithless effort, apart from humble dependence upon God's grace, we could produce any kind of holiness on our own.

We certainly want to confront that with the truth of grace from God's Word as well.

But I think if I was to give my opinion, which is what I'm here to do, so it would be that the greatest threat to the church currently right now is what

I would call the threat of libertinism, or maybe your readers would be familiar with the term antinomianism, to be against the law.

This idea that we're saved and we're justified, and so how we live does not really matter all that much.

It's kind of like a modern day version of let go and let God with a Calvinistic reform view of justification tacked onto the front end of it.

It's simply saying, hey, I've been declared righteous by God, so what do I need to worry about striving after righteousness now?

And of course, the problem with that is that's not at all how Scripture describes a Christian life.

We have been justified, we have been declared righteous by God, but we've also been called by God to pursue righteousness, to pursue holiness, without which no man will see

God. And so these are some of the dangers that we need to be looking out for, and these are some of the dangers that should be addressed and counteracted from the pulpit.

You know, and one of the things you were saying as I was listening with the lethargic preaching, it's interesting that so many

Christians are going to complain about what they see in culture, where we live in a culture now where people don't want to think through issues, they feel through issues, they don't.

Exactly. It's driving so many Christians batty what they're seeing because it doesn't make sense.

People aren't even attempting to make sense anymore. It doesn't matter if it is completely illogical.

They're going to say what they're going to say anyway, and they feel it's right, and they feel so strongly they're going to shoot people over it or burn their homes down or whatever they need to do to get everyone else to submit to their view.

But those people in the church can see that outside, and yet, as you were saying, it was daunting on me, they don't recognize it inside their own church, that the preaching they're getting is all feeling -based, but they want the culture to act different than what they get in their own church.

Yeah, and I think that's part of the reason why the evangelical church has been pretty much neutralized in all this cultural upheaval that you see, is that the evangelical church, by and large, doesn't have a lot of answers for the very reason you just said.

Because for years, the church has been watering down the message into this kind of sentimental, it'll make you feel better, and you'll go to heaven kind of religion, rather than rooted in the truth of Scripture and submission to the

Lordship of Christ Jesus. And so now, a lot of believers, they can sense that things are wrong, they can see the chaos in the culture, but they don't have the categories in their thinking and in their theology to really get clarity on what's going on and how dangerous it is, not just for what they see on the news, but how dangerous it is for the impact it'll have on their own hearts.

Yeah, and I think you used the term anemic, because that's really, unfortunately, descriptive of the church and our culture today, is it's anemic.

It's just, the church used to be where people turned for answers. When there were cultural issues, they would turn to the local pastor.

And they even did that in 9 -11, 20 years ago, that you would have people reaching out to the churches and asking for the pastors to do something.

How much has changed in 20 years? And I think the real importance of what you laid out was that is at the fault of the church in the preaching that goes on.

What are some of the reasons for preaching, though, in church? Why is preaching important? Why not do dramas?

I mean, they could bring in so many more people and you could really build a big church with a good drama team.

You know, I was just recently at a church speaking where they had the church's focus before this person was there, was really their drama teams.

Everything was designed for drama. And they radically changed. It was a dying church.

Shocker. Yeah. It was a very liberal church. Unfortunately, the pastor that I was speaking with,

I don't know how, you know, he's, it's a thing of, he realizes he's got to completely change the culture of the church.

Yeah. Because the people who were there, or are there, actually, they still didn't get what was wrong, like what drove the church to where it was.

So why is preaching important? Well, I think for starters, preaching has been proven over history.

If you're just going to try to copy the culture, what's going to happen is you're going to do a lousy job of it because you can't be as good at worldliness as the culture is with all of its resources.

And so the people who are drawn by that are eventually just going to fade away. If you're going to do drama, then eventually people are just going to say, you know what?

This drama is kind of cheesy. I'm going to go get better drama somewhere else. So that's a failing strategy, of course.

Whereas preaching is proven throughout church history. I mean, from a historical perspective, preaching has always played a major role in faithful ministry.

Going all the way back to the time of Christ, Andrew. I mean, in Mark chapter 1, Jesus came into Galilee and he began his public ministry.

And Mark 1 15 says, here's how he did it. He said, the time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is at hand.

Repent and believe in the gospel. In other words, he began preaching the gospel. And to be honest with you, at the beginning of his ministry,

Jesus's disciples probably would have agreed with the drama, keep people happy, pragmatic methodology.

Because in Mark chapter 1, later on, you got people lined up out the door after Jesus does some healing, he does some miracles.

You have people lined up out the door, sick people to see Jesus. And the disciples finally say, okay, well, we better go wake up Jesus.

It's about time for him to get started on these healings. And they can't find him. And they're frantically searching around, recognizing we got these people here.

We've got to take care of their needs. We got to keep them happy or else they're not going to come back. Run around like immature deacon board on a

Sunday morning. And they finally found Jesus outside, detached from the whole thing.

And they say, everyone's looking for you, Jesus, in Mark 1, 35 through 39.

And Jesus says, let's go on to the next towns that I may preach there also, for that's why

I came out. I came out to preach. So that people would understand the truth that that was the focus of Christ's ministry.

And by the way, the disciples who initially did not get it, they eventually, after the gift of the

Holy Spirit, did get it. Because you fast forward to the book of Acts, and these same disciples, people come and say, look, there are widows who aren't eating.

And they basically say, we got to get some servants to take care of that. Why? Because the priority of our ministry is praying and preaching.

What was Jesus doing in the wilderness? Praying and preaching. That was his priority. That was the disciples' priority.

Paul went forward. And what did the apostle Paul do? He continued to preach the word. In 2

Timothy 4, 2, what did he command? Preach the word. This is our mandate.

And this has a proven track record. You go back to the time of the Reformation. Yeah, Martin Luther wrote his 95

Theses, and that was a big deal. But ultimately, it was his preaching that enlivened the spiritual life of his generation.

Or Calvin, his Institutes. That's one of my favorites. One of the greatest examples of a systematic theology you could ever read is

Calvin's Institute. But it was his verse -by -verse preaching in the city of Geneva that transformed an entire country, the entire

Swiss culture. Or even Zwingli, maybe the less publicized Swiss reformer.

His expository series in the Book of Matthew was so powerful that the city leaders, after hearing

Zwingli teach verse -by -verse to the Book of Matthew, they passed a law that all preaching has to be like Zwingli's preaching.

We are a long way off from that in our world today, aren't we? Yeah, but that was what was happening.

Time and time again in church history, we see the importance of preaching that the Puritans that you talked about, almost every single one of those

Puritan books that you put on your shelf was preached in a church before it was published in a book.

And of course, you know that, but the Great Awakening that we read so much about in our own nation's history, that was the result of powerful

Calvinistic expository preaching. So time and time again, the

Lord has proven that preaching is effective to accomplish his purposes.

And it shouldn't surprise us because this is exactly what he promised as well, that he would bless the preaching of his word.

And I think what we're seeing in our culture today, you mentioned 9 -11 and people coming to churches for answers. I think that's still happening a little bit, not much though, a little bit.

In fact, since our church has reopened since the COVID -19 shutdown, we've seen a lot of visitors coming in to say, hey, we've got questions.

And I've talked to other pastors, same way, unbelievers coming in. People haven't been to church in a very long time coming back to church saying, well, we realized we need this.

So there is some of that, but you're right that our country is in a much different place than it was in 2011.

And part of that is because of the lack of faithful preaching that we've seen in our culture.

And I think as things move forward, there has been and will continue to be a spiritual famine in the land, which is a part of God's judgment upon us.

In many corners of evangelicalism, the word was kind of set aside or used as a springboard to talk about other things.

And what we're seeing now is that the scriptures are culturally being marginalized because they haven't been faithfully proclaimed.

And it wouldn't surprise me if we continue to see that. I would kind of expect that as things move forward in our culture, which makes the need for preaching even more important now.

And if your listeners are thinking through this and saying, well, what does that affect me? I'm not a preacher. Well, it does affect you because if you continue to support and continue in churches that aren't faithfully preaching, then you're culpable for that.

You're responsible for what you hear. There are more commands in the New Testament that tell us how we are to hear the word than how we are to preach the word.

And that's because there are more believers who are hearing it every Sunday than preaching it. So we all have a responsibility to make sure that the church is faithfully proclaiming the truth and faithfully receiving the truth of God's word.

You know, it's just interesting how a little over a hundred years ago, people would sit outside, stand outside,

I should say, to hear Charles Haddon Spurgeon preaching. Nowadays, people go to church and the preaching is not the most important thing.

It's the programs. Right. Frustrating. But after this break, what I want to do is,

I want you to be able to explain to us, how does preaching affect our sanctification?

In other words, how does preaching sanctify us? I want to discuss that right after this break.

Two, two, two great books in one website. Visit strivingforeternity .org.

There are two books that I would like to recommend you purchase. What they, meaning people who aren't

Christians, other religions believe, and what we believe, Systematic Theology Made Simple.

Both are great resources, especially if you plan on witnessing to somebody. Strivingforeternity .org.

My name is Andy Olson, and I want to tell you about Ekozoi Radio. Ekozoi Radio is a podcast outreach of Ekozoi Ministries.

Every month, I find a knowledgeable guest to talk about an important and interesting topic that affects the church today.

We carefully balance the discussions of positive, God -glorifying doctrines of Orthodox Christianity from a mostly

Reformed point of view, with exposés of heresy, false teaching, and poor practice that goes on throughout the church today.

You can find us at Ekozoi .com. That's E -C -H -O -Z -O -E .com. And they are a member of the

Christian Podcast Community, which is where we are also a member. A lot of great Christian podcasting.

If you want to go to ChristianPodcastCommunity .com .org, either one, and you will get,

I think right now there's like 35 podcasts up there that are members. So, Paul, let me ask you, when we think about preaching, because this is,

I think, for many people going to be a new way of thinking of it, that sitting under good, biblical, godly preaching affects our sanctification.

What is that relationship between the two? Yeah, I think for starters, people need to think about preaching as a means of grace, and I think it's helpful for believers to have that category in mind.

If you've never heard the phrase means of grace before, look it up, start studying it. It's an important category you need in your

Christian life. Basically, it's just the instruments that God has promised to use to bring people to salvation and grow them in sanctification.

That's what the means of grace are, and one of the most ordinary and most important instruments that the

Lord consistently uses in that way is the instrument of preaching.

And what makes it so sanctifying for us is that preaching proclaims the truth to our heart.

I think there's no doubt in anyone's mind that Christ cares about our sanctification more than anyone, more than we even care about our own sanctification, which is an indictment against us, but it's a glorious truth about our

Savior. And when he was praying to the Lord, to his father, I should say, the Lord said, sanctify them in the truth, your word is truth.

So if we are going to grow in our sanctification, truth has to be at the forefront.

And what preaching, when it's done faithfully, accomplishes is that it brings the truth to bear in our life.

It opens our eyes to the meaning of God's word so that we can understand it better.

It exhorts us with the truth of God's word so that we are held accountable to obeying

God's word. And preaching does this uniquely. Preaching helps us to submit to God's word as well.

When I read the Bible on my own, which again, I think I made myself clear earlier, I'm for Bible reading. But when we read the

Bible on our own, we can pick what we read, we can pick how long we read, we can pick when we read.

We're in control of a lot of those details. When you go hear someone else preach, guess what you have to do?

You have to submit. They're the ones picking the text. They're the ones who decide how long the sermon is going to go.

No matter how many times you look at your watch, they're the ones who decide what time the sermon ends. And you know, sometimes that can be tiring.

However, that spiritual discipline of humbly submitting yourself under the ministry of the word, it is good for your heart.

You need that. And part of the reason why you need that is not only to produce submission in your heart, but also to produce faith in your heart.

I mentioned this earlier, but Romans 10 17 says faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ.

Ultimately, we are not going to go anywhere in our walk with the Lord apart from faith. As the

Apostle Paul said, we walk by faith, not by sight, which means we need stronger faith.

If you want more joy in your life, joy is a fruit of faith. If you want to see obedience in your life and in specific areas, that obedience is going to be the fruit of faith.

If you want to grow in conformity of Christ, you must grow in faith and God has designed preaching to grow your faith.

And I think part of the reason why is because preaching is an act of worship and not just delivering the message, but the whole exchange of the preaching event where God's gifted and affirmed man brings the word before the congregation that has been called out by God unto salvation.

The whole preaching event is an act of worship. I think sometimes we think of worship is just the singing.

Boy, what a great worship time. Now we're going to hear the preaching. No, no, it's all worship.

Your praise, your songs to the Lord is worship. But what is more worshipful to the

King than to stop and bow before his word and hear what he has to say and hear his truth for your life?

It is an act of worship to come before the Lord and to hear what he has to say.

So for all of those reasons and that it facilitates worship, it grows your faith.

It's used as a means of grace and it uniquely ministers the truth to your heart.

You need preaching if you're going to grow in the Lord, you know, I know we're more

Baptistic here, but it Baptist can even refer to the Westminster Shorter Catechism as you do in your book question 89.

The question in the in the Westminster Shorter Catechism is how is the word made effectual to salvation?

And the answer is the Spirit of God maketh the reading but especially the preaching of the word and effectual means of convincing and converting sinners and of building them up in holiness and comfort through faith unto salvation.

Now you provided seven reasons why it's especially preaching. What are those reasons that preaching is even more?

So we've heard you a couple times. You want to make sure it's clear that Bible reading is good. Obviously, you must have been accused of this a couple of times.

I just you know from a lot of conversations. I know that's the first question that people are going to ask so I'll answer it before they even ask it maybe but but yeah, and to your point, we're not a subscribing

Church. So the Westminster Confession of Faith is not our doctrinal statement. However, a bunch of really wise pastors got together and I might have a few doctrinal quibbles with some of their conclusions there but a bunch of wise pastors got together over a period of a really long time to come up with some helpful biblical instructions.

So it's worth noting and in fact, I love that phrase they use in answer to question 89 especially the preaching.

I've actually got an entire chapter in the book that you're referring to that's titled especially preaching and I think that's the way believers should think of it.

No, I'm not saying ignore the personal means of grace in your life ignore personal spiritual disciplines.

I'm not saying that I'm just saying that in all of these resources that you have at your disposal as a believer, you should think especially of preaching as a kind gift from God to help you grow in Christ likeness.

In fact, that's part of the reason why I endeavored into this study is

I began looking around at my own ministry experience and my own church and I say, you know that the believers that are the most mature also just happen to be the ones who love and appreciate the preaching of the word the most.

Is there a correlation there? I saw it in my own ministry. I saw it in my own experience, but that's not the final word.

So I wanted to get in the scripture and say is there a reason for this and when you study out the scriptures you see there is that kind of love for the word and submission to the truth.

It does cultivate Christ likeness in our heart. So yeah, I do I do think especially preaching is an important resource for believers.

You know, I go through in that chapter, but but I give those reasons preaching provides us with grace.

We need grace. We can't do this on our own and preaching is one of the ways that that provides us with grace preaching proclaims truth.

I need God's truth my wisdom my perspective the world's wisdom certainly aren't sufficient.

I need truth. So I need to find preaching that proclaims truth. Additionally another reason that we need preaching is because preaching relies on the spirit.

Some people think about well boy, you're an expository kind of theologically seriously minded church. You're not really into the

Holy Spirit. I would argue we are far more into the Holy Spirit than any charismatic church out there because the

Bible is the book the Spirit inspired the preacher is the one whom the spirit has gifted and the preaching of the word is what the spirit has promised to bless.

So so preaching is a uniquely spirit dependent activity.

I mentioned this a minute ago, but another reason why preaching especially preaching is because it encourages submission but one of our big impediments to spiritual growth is we just don't like to submit.

I want to follow my desires. I want to live by my lust rather than submitting to the

Lordship of Christ Jesus. So a big part of sanctification is is transferring my allegiance from my lustful desires unto a new allegiance to the

Lordship of Christ Jesus preaching in the in the sheer fact that it requires submission helps me to do that.

Additionally, here's another reason why especially preaching it's because it helps to facilitate understanding many times you read a passage of scripture and you say

I don't really understand what that means and then how many times you go listen to somebody like Pastor John MacArthur and you listen to his sermon and you go.

Oh, that's what it means. Well, that's helpful to us. We need to understand it if we're going to grow in it.

So so preaching helps in that regard another reason especially preaching

I mentioned this earlier, but it's really important. It grows our faith. It grows our faith. I need to hear the word proclaimed.

I need to sit under the means of grace because everything in the world that Satan has his hands on would seek to rob me of faith.

I need every means of grace. I can to help strengthen my faith and and clearly the scriptures promise that that as we hear the word it will grow our faith and and with that I think also

I mentioned this earlier, but I think it's really important as well to overcome some wrong perceptions preaching is an act of worship.

God is glorified. God is pleased when we accurately proclaim the word and when we accurately are and we faithfully listen to the word.

This is this is something that that is an act of worship. Psalm 96 2 and 3 says sing to the

Lord bless his name tell of his salvation from day to day declare his

Glory among the Nations is marvelous works among the people. So so the singing the telling the declaring of God's Glory.

It's all worship and and in a world that is seeking to suppress the truth of God our hearts need to hear the word proclaimed and to bring him worship in that way.

So certainly more could be said about preaching but but I think those are some big reasons why you should view especially the preaching as a means of grace to help you grow in your

Christian life. You know the last chapter of the book the whole book really was written to the person in the pew not to the preacher even though there's a lot for preachers, but your last chapter is faithful listening and that is really the kind of a culmination of the whole book has some very practical things for people as well who are going to be faithful to listening to verse by verse preaching.

So what are some ways we could be faithful if we're sitting in a pew? Yeah, I think one of one is just the mentality of hey,

I need this. This is a way that God is going to provide me grace. And so I need God's grace. So so I need this and then also allow your heart to be captivated with the truth of God's word.

Listen for the truth. I mean sometimes and Andrew, you know this you've done enough preaching before you get done with the message and you're like boy that was a dud, you know, and you just you weren't as clear as you wanted to be you you weren't as concise as you could have been or you stumbled over some words or you forgot to mention something and every sermon

I every sermon I've ever preached. I've thought that about the sermon, but even if it's hard to listen to if there's truth there it can be used by God.

So so you want to come listening for the truth because you need it so that the

Lord can help you grow in your faith. One of the things that I one of the things that I try to encourage my people to do is is listen to the message for your faith.

What is in this message about God that I need to believe what what is in this message that that I need to conform my thinking to search your heart as you as you're hearing the word to make sure that you're believing what you should be believing from the scriptures and as you do that just when you listen to a message, it's not an act of allegiance to the preacher.

It's an act of worship to the Lord view and this is one of the things that I think is really sad about where we're at as an evangelical

Church in America today. We have lost the sobriety and seriousness of worship when we corporately gather together.

It is it is so often it lacks the kind of seriousness and sobriety that is not only helpful but but it is appropriate to when we come before the word.

So I think if you want to best benefit from the preaching of the word it starts with just a right mentality as you walk in the door and I think also there's some practical things that you could do as well that I even address in the chapter be studying the word on your own in our church.

We go through books of the Bible verse by verse. I think that's the best way to do it. I would encourage preachers to do that. I would encourage folks to find churches that do that.

And right now we're going through the book of Galatians as a church, which means one of the best ways that you can prepare to hear the word is just just be reading and studying

Galatians and we have folks in our church who are doing that another thing that you can do practically super super easy pray for the sermon imagine imagine how powerful preaching would be if everybody who wanted to complain about the sermon would instead use that energy to pray for the sermon and pray for the preacher pray pray that that you'll hear the message.

Well also another thing I encourage people with come to church with a clean conscience. If you've got unconfessed sin in your life, if you're trying to hide from the

Lord in some other area, well, you're going to come with a critical spirit and you're not going to benefit from the way from it the way you you could if you guys sin that you need to deal with own it deal with it.

The Bible shows us how we can have grace for those things. So so show up to church with a clean conscience, especially if that means unity with another brother in the church.

Don't don't come to church ready for a fight or to get your revenge or holding a grudge against somebody seek the unity of the church.

Here's a really practical one. You want to benefit from the sermon on Sunday morning go to bed on Saturday night.

One of my ministry mentors always told me Sunday morning starts on Saturday night and our young family has lived by that principle for many years with our kids and everything.

We just don't take a lot of invitations to do things Sunday night late. If we do dinner on Sunday night with somebody it's an early dinner will show up early fellowship before dinner eat dinner and get out of there or we'll invite you to our house to do that.

But just you know, take some take some practical measures to guard your family, especially if you got kids or if you're a sleeper if you're prone to fall asleep easy and take some take some steps to to mitigate against that which by the way,

I think it's always funny. Our church isn't very big, you know, and I can see everybody in the room.

I'm not something like mega church pastor and sometimes people say, hey, you know, do you ever notice when people fall asleep in the sermon pastor and and just so all of your listeners will know the resounding answer is yes,

I can see everything that's going on. I'm looking out at everybody. So sometimes people think

I mean, he won't notice this or whatever. Yeah. I mean, I you know, if it was a rough night, you were at work last night and he fell asleep.

Look Lord bless you. That's between you and the Lord, but definitely the preacher saw it. So just in case you're wondering that's why

I would just say go to bed early get some rest. Here's a here's a big one Andrew and I and I think this is this is maybe the biggest one that that people could really work on and that is show up to church consistently just be there on a regular basis.

I think one of the things that we've learned when being able to gather together was temporarily taken away from us.

We realize just how sweet it is to be together and how important it is to be together. Don't let travel sports for your kids.

Don't let all those vacation opportunities. Don't let you know, your own fatigue keep you away from church.

You need to be there and the more you consistently show up the more you'll benefit from preaching because here's the thing with preaching.

It's not a fast -acting miracle drug. It's a slow -release vitamin that over times improves your spiritual health, which means the more you're there long -term the more you're going to benefit from it.

And so, you know the thing that encouragement I'd have to those of you who are listening. The book is expository sanctification.

Again, you get it at crease biblical resources. I will have the link in the show notes directly to the book, but here's my encouragement pastors who may be listening.

I encourage you to get a copy for every member of your church buy it by the case.

It's as we said, it's a short book, but I personally believe that if every church was member was reading this book,

I think it would change. Well, I think it might affect pastor your preaching because you're going to have to up your game but because of everyone studying the passage you're reading next week, that's going to that's going to force you to have to do a little bit more study maybe which is good for the church, but I think if I think every pastor would be greatly blessed if their church members their fellow church members are reading this book and knowing the purpose of preaching and seeing how preaching affects their sanctification their holiness their growth.

It is a greatly important. So if you're not the pastor of church still by a case of them for your church so that everyone has a copy of this book it is it like I said, it's a short read you can get through to one sitting

I did but you can do this. So I think it's a very helpful and needful book for the church and as both

Paul said earlier and I said at the beginning, I don't know many books like this. I don't know many books that focus on preaching from the for the viewpoint of the person in the pew and this makes this book different.

I hope that as you've been hearing if there's something in this book that you go yet. This is something

I need and there's a lot there for every Christian to gleam from in this book, even though it's short it is packed.

I don't think there's any wasted words in it. So I like those three hundred books. So get a copy.

I have the link in the show notes from crease press crease biblical resources, but you go crease biblical .com

crease is spelled k -r -e -s -s just search for you know, expository preaching here.

Now before we go as I like to do with my guest Paul is time for us to play a game and do not worry.

All the pressure is on me. No pressure is on you. So it's time for our spiritual transition game.

It's time now to start the spiritual transition game.

Okay. So this is how we play this ball. You're going to give me an object matter what it is something or discussion whatever and I have to take from whatever you give me and transition from the natural to the spiritual.

So I have to go from whatever you give me to a gospel presentation. So the reason we play this game is because so many people find it hard to share the gospel until they're in a gospel conversation or speaking spiritual things and then they find it easy.

It's that transition from the natural to spiritual. It's so many people seem to struggle with and so we've turned it into a game that we play with folks that with lots of practice.

You can take any conversation. I believe and turn it into a spiritual conversation where you can get to the gospel.

And so with our guests, we usually like to give you guys an opportunity to kind of stump me and see if I can do it with this point as I always say, there's no editing here.

If there's long pauses, it's because he stumped me but I so anything you want

I have to get to the gospel. We'll see if he's going to be difficult hard on me or not. So so Andrew you can get from this pastors struggling golf game to the gospel.

Is that yeah, that's the challenge. That's the challenge. Well, the reality is you're struggling golf for several reasons.

One is as you mentioned even in your in your book rate lack of practice will will prevent you from getting any better in your your golf game.

So practice could be one thing that would prevent you. But the other thing that could prevent you is just an inability.

You may have actually reached the peak of your golf ability and and I hate to disappoint you brother, but as you're getting older, your peak is probably behind you.

So you can put in as much practice as you want and you're you may not get better because you've reached what you could do and that's actually analogous to something else.

We work really hard at being a good person. We always compare ourselves to someone next to us and we try we work and we practice at being as good as we can but as hard as we work at it, we're never going to get right with God because we have an inability to do that.

We can't do that on our own. That's something God does and we work at it because we know we have a guilty conscience when we violate

God's law. We lie and we steal we know we've we're guilty God's given us a conscience so we can know that and yet we can never work our way to getting right with God.

That is something that God did when we he died in our place on that cross. What we do is we repent we turn from trusting ourselves as a good person or good works and we turn and trust

Jesus Christ. So maybe that'll encourage you on your next golf outing. Well, I would just say well done brother.

I actually I kind of I kind of think that maybe I teed it up for you. So you like puns no less.

Well, you know, I am a dad so I got to get a dad joke in every once in a while. Yeah. Yeah, you know,

I'm waiting till my my daughter who's now adult and married realizes that her husband is going to be telling dad jokes at some point and all the complaining she did is she's gonna be like, yeah, it just comes with being a dad.

That's right. Well Paul, I want to thank you for coming on. I think that your book is an excellent book is

I really do believe it's a must read for every church member and I do hope that many will get out get out and get this book right away.

It's it's I should look it's it's less than $11. So it's not even going to break the bank.

I mean, that's like one cup of coffee at Starbucks for some of you people that that go there.

I don't know why but I thank you for coming on. I hope to you know, be able to see you soon in person down and know you guys at your church do a bunch of the the conferences.

I don't know if you did the one if your church was I came down when it was John MacArthur and Steve Lawson with the grace advance.

Yeah. Yeah, we were a part of that. Yep. Yeah. So part of that, you know, I'm hoping to get time to do some more of those but I thank you for what you're doing.

Yeah, we all are right now in this season. We're all looking forward to being able to move around state to state for some conferences

Lord willing. Yeah. Well, it's it's starting to pick up. I do know that I'm you know that my the invites for me to speak at places are starting to pick up again.

And so it's we're starting to see that maybe some normality but you know,

I thank you for how you're serving your local church and then through your writings the church abroad.

It's it really is a blessing and it was great to be able to hear directly from you some of the you know, what the

Lord has put on your heart and how we as church members that sit in pews can learn from those of us who preach to those church members.

So I appreciate that. Thank you brother. Thank you. And with that it just folks remember to make today an eternal day for the glory of God and that's a wrap this podcast is part of the

Striving for Eternity ministry for more content or to request a speaker or seminar to your church go to strivingforeternity .org.

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