Preach The Word!

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Shayne Poirier preaches on 2 Timothy 4:1-5.

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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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As I've done through this series, I'm going to begin with another story. This time, a story that originates from 1927 in England.
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In 1927, a 26 -year -old Martin Lloyd -Jones began his first pastorate in a small church in Sandfields, in the south of Wales.
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The doctor, as he has become affectionately known as, had just resigned from his work as a physician, where he was one of the top medical doctors in all of London.
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Having been trained at the prestigious St. Bartholomew's Hospital, Martin Lloyd -Jones had secured a coveted position under the doctor and as part of the medical clinic that provided the medical care for the royal family.
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It was the job to have as a doctor in the city of London. He was a brilliant young doctor, who no doubt had a promising medical career ahead of him.
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But just as that medical practice began to take off, many of us know how that story goes.
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How the Lord called Martin Lloyd -Jones out of the lab coat, out of the clinic, and into the pulpit to preach the glories of Christ to the local church.
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He called him that he might give up everything and devote himself to a whole new passion, to a whole new obsession, namely preaching
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God's word. And so Martin Lloyd -Jones found himself ushered out of the spotlight that was
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London and the medical community there and into a stale old port town known as Sandfields on the west coast of England.
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And when he arrived there, as is often the case, he found that the church was in a state of disarray.
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In the church, many of the people had given themselves over to the social gospel.
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What is the social gospel? At least at that time, it would be akin to the social justice movement of today.
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A church drawn by, taken to, the social issues of the surrounding community.
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At the same time, the church had given itself over to a drama society that produced amateur stage plays from the platform at the front of the sanctuary.
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That the church was as much a theater and a stage as it was a place for the church building, a theater and a stage, as much as it was a place for God's people to meet.
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And upon arriving, Martin Lloyd -Jones immediately knew that the church was in great need of reformation. And so the very first thing that Lloyd -Jones did when he arrived, some of you know the story, is that he took the pulpit and he drug it out into the middle of the platform, front and center into the middle of the platform.
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One of the church staff, I believe it was the secretary, heard a ruckus. She went into the sanctuary to find
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Martin Lloyd -Jones nailing the pulpit to the floor. And this was more than just mere interior design.
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But he was conveying a point that from that point on, the preaching of God's word would be the focal point of that local church.
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That the social issues had to give way to the word of God. That the drama club would have to find a new stage to perform on.
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Because these two items were no longer the locus of control in the church, but it was the primacy, the preeminence of the word of God preached in the worship of God.
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The blazing center of all of the church's worship and activities was going to be the triune
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God, revealed through the word of God, preached from the pulpit to the people of God.
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And if anyone was going to change that, they would have to expel Martin Lloyd -Jones and they would have to pry the pulpit from the floor and move it back to the back of the platform.
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The doctor would go on to say that the work of preaching is the highest and the most glorious calling to which anyone can ever be called.
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The most urgent need, he said, in the Christian church today is true preaching.
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How that could be said of the condition of the church today. That the greatest need of the church today is true preaching.
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And this was not the first time that this had happened. Centuries earlier, John Calvin, if you know anything about Calvin's Geneva, went into many of the
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Protestant churches and moved the altar where the mass would have been served in the Catholic mass. Moved the altar to the side and then pushed every pulpit to the front and center.
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And he said this, let the pastors boldly dare all things by the word of God.
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Let them constrain all the power, glory, and excellence of the world to subdue it, to give place to the divine majesty of the word.
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He said that when the church met, it was as if the pulpit were the very throne of God. It was where God's voice was heard through the faithful preaching of the word.
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And this afternoon as we meet, a little bit smaller today, but meet nonetheless, we're going to give the lion's share of our time to preaching
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God's word. And why? Because as we will see, the example of scripture, the urging of the apostles, and the very commands of God incline us, compel us to devote ourselves to preaching the word.
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So this afternoon we're going through this series on the regulative principle of worship, how God dictates through his word everything that we do as we worship.
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And my objective, my only objective today, relying on 2 Timothy 4 is this.
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I want to convince you, and I'm probably preaching a bit to the choir, but I want to convince you still.
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I was further convinced as I prepared this. I want to convince you that the most important thing that we do together on the
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Lord's day when we meet for worship is to faithfully preach and to eagerly hear
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God's word. The centerpiece of the room must today remain to be the pulpit.
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The nucleus of all of our worship activities must be the accurate, faithful, and relentless proclamation of God's word.
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And so together today, we're going to look at 2 Timothy, excuse me, chapter 4, and we're going to look at at least four demands that this passage places on us as it relates to the word of God.
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I'll list them in advance, and then I will recount them again as we go through. You'll find them in your bulletin.
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But scripture demands that we preach the word. Scripture demands that we preach expositorily or expositionally.
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Scripture demands that we preach Christ. And number 4, scripture demands that we hear and heed the word preached.
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Now, you know what our sermons have been like the last couple of weeks. If we get into danger, point 4 is going to become its own sermon next week.
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So we'll see where we end up, but that's what I intend to show us this week.
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And so turning our attention again to 2 Timothy 4, I want to read again verse 1 and the beginning of verse 2.
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Paul says, I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom, preach the word.
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Be ready in season and out of season. The first demand that God places upon our worship when we meet is that we preach the word.
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Number 1, preach the word. The second letter to Timothy, if we were to go back into history and look at when it was written, it was authored approximately
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AD 66. Now there are many reasons why that detail is important, but the first among them, if you know perhaps, is that was the same year that the
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Apostle Paul would die at the cruel hands of the Roman Emperor Nero. And so opened before us is the last canonical letter of the
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Apostle Paul. In the truest of all senses, this was the last inspired letter from a man who was near to his appearing before the throne of the living
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God. The letter itself is full of references. We won't go through each of them, but references to Paul's chains and his suffering.
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And then in chapter 4 and verse 6, the verse immediately after what we've read this afternoon, Paul makes clear that he knew indeed what was coming.
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In verse 6 he says, For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come.
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What we need to understand about the letter of 2 Timothy is that Paul was writing a letter as a dying man to his beloved disciple,
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Timothy. In this letter he acknowledges that his race is coming to an end, and he's going to pass the baton to this young protégé who has now been entrusted with the gospel, once for all delivered to the saints.
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And I pose this question to you. What would you say, what would you write if you were given the opportunity to write one last letter to your brothers and sisters in Christ?
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By God's grace I am so thankful that he has created such a warm and united fellowship in this church.
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And so I know for many of you the love that you have for one another. What would you write in that letter to your brothers and sisters in Christ?
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To your dear friends in this church? I think we would all recognize that there is a special kind of sobriety that comes when a man or a woman is about to die.
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One begins to reflect on their life and what they have done with the years and the months and the days and the hours that God has allotted to them.
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If they were to live their lives all over again, what would they do differently? How then would they live?
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Or if God were to grant them another ten years, what would they do with that time? It is at this moment, when one stares death in the face, that we might expect the distillation of all of man's thoughts and priorities.
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That every extra thought, every useless thought, every trivial matter crumbles away and all that is left are the ultimate priorities of one's life.
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It is here at the ante room of God's court that all of these small issues fall to the wayside and we find out what truly matters.
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Now, Paul, who is a dying man, writing to the protege, the disciple
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Timothy, he could say literally anything, but what will he emphasize?
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What is he going to emphasize if you look for a moment at this letter, the last letter, the last chapter, the next paragraph, he goes on to deal with personal instructions.
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This is the last exhortation. What is he going to emphasize? Now he could prioritize the music ministry of the church.
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Last week I went to great lengths to show you the importance of that, but he does not.
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He could emphasize spiritual gifts and spiritual warfare, as important as that is, but he doesn't.
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He could speak about how the church needs to be a loving community, certainly an excellent thing.
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The world will know we are his disciples by our love for one another, but he does not.
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What does he say? As Paul writes to Timothy, he invokes the very presence of God.
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He says, in the very presence of the living God, the
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God who he is going to meet very shortly, and in the presence of Jesus Christ, who is to judge the living and the dead,
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Paul himself included, soon. He issues these three words to the church that must be forever taken heart by his people.
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The distillation of all of the priorities of the local church, these three words, preach the word.
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Brethren, there is nothing more important in all of the worship of the local church than this.
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Preach the word. The last words of the Apostle Paul inspired for the church until the end of days, when
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Christ shall return, is to preach the word. And whether that is preaching when it is in season, meaning when preaching is in favor and opportunities abound and people want to hear the
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Bible preached, or to preach the word. But even more, maybe in days like today, where biblical preaching is out of season and is scorned for being too serious, scorned for being too severe, for being boring, for not being entertaining enough, our charge from the very word of God is clear.
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We are to preach the word. Preaching is foundational for the worship of the church, and preaching is foundational for the existence of the church.
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It is through the proclamation of the word of God that we hear the gospel and believe. It is through the proclamation of the word of God that we are instructed to live the
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Christian life. It is through the proclamation of the word that we are reminded, week in and week out, of what we were just singing a few minutes ago.
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What is our only hope in life and death? Christ alone. It is through the diligent and faithful preaching of God's word that we are ushered into the very presence of God and confronted with truths that we would rather not deal with in our private reading of the
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Bible. I think of a story, you might recall me sharing it at one time, when Joel Beakey invited one of his neighbors to church.
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The man came and participated in the service, and before our brother,
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Joel Beakey, could greet him at the door, the man was gone. He thought, well, that was unfortunate that I wasn't able to acknowledge that I had invited him and he did in fact come.
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The next time he spoke to the man, he said, oh, so nice to have you on Sunday. What did you think?
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He said, it was as if you grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and brought me into the very throne room of God and I had to look at him face to face and answer him.
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It is in preaching of the word that every single one of us, even Christians, that we are made to face the truths of God that we would rather not face even as we are on our own where we are made to do business with him.
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It is through the pure proclamation of God's word that God's voice is heard audibly in the assembly of the saints.
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Now, we don't have time, a long time, to dwell here, but I want us to understand then what it means to preach the word.
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When we talk about a church that preaches the word, or for those of you men who aspire to preach the word, what does it mean?
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I found as I studied this week at length that I was gripped afresh by this reality of what it means to preach the very word of God.
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When Paul says in 2 Timothy 4 .2, that first word, preach, preach the word, that is the same word that would be used to describe the actions of a herald of the king.
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The role of the herald was not complicated. In fact, it was very straightforward, and yet it was deadly serious.
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The herald was to speak on the king's behalf and deliver the king's message to the citizens of his nation.
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When the herald spoke the words of the king accurately, these words came with the full weight of the king's authority.
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It was as if the king were present right there and then speaking to the people. What this means is that every single week, week in and week out, when this local church meets, it is commanded that one of God's heralds, one of those men who are manifestly called, who are biblically qualified, who are evidently gifted, one of those men is to stand up in the assembly of God's people as if he were a herald standing at the city gate or in the town square, and he is to declare, this is the king's message, and then he is to preach the word for God.
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But notice here that we're not called just to be heralds. God does not tell us just to herald anything that we want, to be carried away by our own imagination, by what we heard someone else say, but the herald is to preach the word, namely to preach
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God's word alone. And this is what differentiates a true herald from a false herald.
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When the true herald of God stands before God's people, he is to take the king's scroll into his hands, the living and abiding word of God, and he is to diligently and painstakingly and precisely preach only that which is revealed in the scriptures.
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He is to read and to expound and to exhort without adding or taking away.
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He is to prepare a meal, I thought about it this week, where every key ingredient is sourced from the
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Bible, that this is the grocery store where the preacher goes to get his ingredients to make the meal for God's people on Sundays.
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And in a very real sense, when the herald preaches, and I want you to listen very carefully because you might think to yourself, wow, that sounds pretty extreme.
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But in a very real sense, when the herald preaches God's word faithfully, he preaches with a real authority.
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It is a derived authority, an authority derived from the scriptures themselves, but it is a real authority.
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And in that moment, he becomes a mouthpiece for God in the church and for that day.
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And when that message is declared accurately and clearly, it comes with the full weight of God's authority.
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I would go even so far as to say that when the preacher of God's word faithfully and accurately preaches that word,
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God's people hear even the voice of God. Now, I'm not, don't for a moment think that I am talking about the
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Pope in the sense that when he speaks ex cathedra, his words are on par with scripture, no.
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But that the preaching is to be a servant of the word. Think of it this way, the sermon is a platter on which the word of God is served to God's people.
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John Calvin said, every time the gospel is preached, it is as if God himself came in person solemnly to summon us.
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He says, God does not speak openly from heaven, but employs men as his instruments.
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This means that when the preacher is proclaiming that which finds its origins in his own imagination, and we see lots of that today, don't we?
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Where men preach what they read in a good book, what they thought of this week, what they think might sound nice or compelling to the people.
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When a man preaches that kind of message, it comes with zero authority. There is no demand placed upon the people of God.
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But when that preacher proclaims God's word, it is as if the church has established a weekly appointment to meet with God and to hear him speak through the preaching.
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Does that sound far -fetched? If we were to turn to passages like 1 Thessalonians 2, in verse 13, we read about Paul's interactions with the
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Thessalonian church, and he says this, he says, and we also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the word of God, that is the preached word of God, he says, which you heard from us, you accepted it, not as the word of men, but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you, believers.
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Someone might hear that and say, but Shane, you're talking about the apostles. These men are inspired. They have written books that are in the
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Bible that will endure, that heaven and earth will pass away, and their words, at least as they are inspired, will endure.
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But we can go to another example. In the book of Luke, in chapter 10, in verse 16, as Christ is preparing to send his 72 disciples out, not the 12, but the 72, he says, the one who hears you, hears me, and the one who rejects you, rejects me, and the one who rejects me, rejects him who sent me.
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This is what it means to preach the word of God. Now, I'm not sure, for those of you who aspire to preach, if you feel the same weight that I have felt through the week as I've thought about these things, but this is why it says in James chapter 3, in verse 1, that not many of you should become teachers, my brothers.
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This reality should not puff up the preacher of God's word with pride, but should lay him in the dust.
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I would say, in fact, that it is a contradiction to find a man who is both a preacher of the word and a proud preacher of the word.
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He said, what you should find is men who, as they preach the word, they must confess that they are weak and they tremble at such a responsibility that when they unpack the word of God faithfully, that is, it comes to the people of God with God's very authority, that so far as he preaches the
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Bible, God's people are compelled to obey. Who is worthy for such a task as this?
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This would flatten, I would believe, even the most self -confident of men. Even as I was preparing this this week,
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I felt as if I cannot preach this week.
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I think I need to hang up the cloak and let Sam preach from now on.
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But what are we to do? God has commanded us to preach, and so we do.
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And so, every man here who aspires to preach the word, you must take great care in doing so, in preparing for it, in living in accord with it.
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In 2 Timothy 2 .15, it says, do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.
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For those who faithfully handle God's word, they have no need to be ashamed. And yet it seems at the same time, there are men who ought to be ashamed, who shamelessly peddle
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God's word, as if it were not his word at all. But we need to be diligent in preparing ourselves.
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This is a word for you young men who aspire to ministry, or to even you young women who want to lead a women's group, or something like that.
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There was the Puritan preacher Thomas Shepard, when he was on his deathbed, a group of young ministers came to his bedside.
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And don't you love these deathbed stories where, again, just as we see with the
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Apostle Paul, these men just spout out wisdom for the next generation. And as these young ministers were gathered around Thomas Shepard's bedside, they asked him for a couple words of wisdom, with respect to their calling.
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And he said this, your work is great, and requires great seriousness.
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For my own part, I have never preached a sermon which, in the composing, did not cost me prayers, with strong cries and tears.
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I never preached a sermon from which I had not first got some good for my own soul.
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And then listen to this, he says, I never went up into the pulpit, but as if I were going to give an account of myself to God.
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Such should be the approach of every preacher of the word of God. And if I can apply that to you, such should be the approach of every hearer of the word of God, that we would tremble at the preaching of God's word.
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And when God's word is preached, we should expect that it will not return void. We will not receive the accolades, the world's accolades, for preaching the
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Bible. I assure you, brethren, this church is not going to grow, at least apart from God's amazing and miraculous revival work, simply by preaching the word.
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It will grow, but it's not going to grow like the mega church that's planted down the street next year. You'll recall me telling a story where there was one church that was planting the same time as Steve and I were preparing to plant.
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Our efforts were very modest, in the living room, with a Bible study. I remember one day looking over at this other church and thinking, wow, they have all the bells and whistles, and I saw them on CTV news.
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They had a marketing budget of $100 ,000 to plant a church. Our church will likely never grow at that rate, and yet,
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God's word will never return void, but it will yield an abundance of fruit in the lives of its hearers.
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When we think about Martin Luther and his reformation experience, the explosion that took place in Wittenberg, Germany, what was the catalyst of those efforts?
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He said this, in Lutheran fashion, I simply taught, preached, and wrote
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God's word. Otherwise, I did nothing, and then, while I slept, and here's the
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Lutheran part, and drank Wittenberg beer with my Philipp of Amsdorf, the word so greatly weakened the papacy that never a prince or emperor did such damage to it.
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He said, I did nothing. The word did it all, and so that will be the case.
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Let's turn next to the second half of verse 2. The second half of verse 2 says this, maybe
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I'll begin from the beginning. Preach the word. Be ready in season and out of season. Here it is. Reprove, rebuke, and exhort with complete patience and teaching.
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Scripture demands that we not only preach the word, but that we preach the sermon expositorily, that we preach the word expositionally.
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Number two, I have on more than one occasion heard that if we as a church really want to truly and faithfully preach the word of God, then we just need to read the
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Bible aloud. As soon as we add something to it, we pervert it, but the question
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I ask you, is that actually the case? Once we have moved beyond reading the
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Bible, then we are no longer preaching the word of God. I would say that our text shows us,
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Paul shows us in his letter to Timothy, that that is far from the case. Our charge is certainly not less than reading the
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Bible aloud, but it encompasses far more than just simply reading the
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Bible. The preaching of the word, as we see here, includes other important elements. Paul tells us that God ordained preaching.
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The God -ordained preaching of the word isn't just to preach the word here, but he says this, to reprove, to rebuke, to exhort with complete patience and teaching.
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This could rightly be called expository preaching, and there are many people who, if we're talking about expository preaching today, it's interesting,
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I've read a number of books on the topic, every author has a slightly different definition, but there's a vast majority of people in the broader visible church today that have no idea what expository preaching is.
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I heard Derek Thomas, a seminary professor, was a seminary professor,
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I'm not sure where he is now, who said that the vast majority of his students that would come into seminary, it was clear that they had no idea what expository preaching was, that they had never seen expository preaching before.
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In a course that we do with the men, as part of Grace Institute, the brothers here who have taken the
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Foundations for Expository Preaching by Stephen Lawson, he tells the story of when John MacArthur would travel to different events to preach,
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I don't think he's there anymore, but when he would travel, what would often be the case is that he would get picked up at the airport, and on his way to the church, he would pass by one megachurch, two megachurch, third megachurch, and eventually he would think, okay, well this must be the church that we're going to, they would pass by that one, and it was almost a universal experience that as he traveled to these different cities to preach, that they would get to the edge of the city, and there at the edge of the city, not at a megachurch, but at a small, a modest -sized church with a faithful few.
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That would be the group hosting the conference for him to preach expository sermons.
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Expository preaching, you could say, is out of season in many respects, and yet, that is what we are called to do, that we are to preach the word, to look at it more closely.
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1 Timothy chapter 4, in verse 13, gives us a very helpful definition or summation of what expository preaching is.
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There again, in 1 Timothy 4, Paul tells Timothy, he says, until I come, devote yourself to these three things.
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Devote yourself to the public reading of scripture, to exhortation, and to teaching.
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That is, in a nutshell, expository preaching. To read the word of God, to exposit it, to expound it, to teach about it, and then to exhort it.
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G. Campbell Morgan, who is the predecessor of Martin Lloyd -Jones, he says that every word from the pulpit should amplify, elaborate on, or illustrate the text at hand with a view towards clarity.
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He wrote, the sermon is the text repeated more fully.
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An expository sermon is that which seeks to read, to explain, and to apply a passage of scripture so that the very main point of the text becomes itself the main point of the sermon.
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Scripture alone is the basis of every observation, interpretation, and exhortation.
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I like what Stephen Lawson says, that expository preaching is akin to water skiing.
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If anyone here has been water skiing, or kids, if you've been tubing, you know what that is like. You're behind the boat, and you have a little bit of freedom to go right, and a little bit of freedom to go left, but wherever the boat goes, you go.
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Such is a picture of expository preaching. Now, we need to discuss what expository preaching is not.
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Expository preaching is not just a line -by -line commentary of the text. Sometimes I think, and I think we've all been there,
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I'm sure it's a preaching pitfall that I have fallen into at different times, but we can all read a commentary of the text.
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It is not simply a commentary, but it is taking the main thrust of that passage, and it is applying the truth of God's Word to its hearers on every occasion.
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It is also not purely teaching. An expository sermon is not just teaching the text, but it is preaching the text, and there is a difference.
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Someone might ask, someone asked, I think it was Martin Lloyd -Jones, what is the difference between preaching and teaching? He says, when you hear preaching, you will know the difference.
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Expository preaching is not seeking to be as boring as we can possibly be. Just because a sermon is boring doesn't mean it's expository.
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Or just because it's expository doesn't mean it's boring. But an expository sermon is this, it exposits the passage.
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We read the text together. We consider, and this is an important word, the authorial intent.
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What did the author intend when he wrote this under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit? We ask the questions, what are the grammatical, what is the grammatical context?
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What is the historical context? What is the literary context? In other words, taking all things into account, what does this passage mean?
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That is to exposit the text, but that's only part of it, because it is expository preaching.
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We exposit the text, and then we exhort from the text.
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It is, to borrow part of an illustration from another brother, it is like taking the pulpit, which is the altar, if we can use that analogy for the moment, and taking one part rocket fuel, bringing that into the mix, that is the exposition.
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That is the condensed truth of God's Word, rocket fuel in one hand, and then the exhortation is to bring the spark.
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And it creates an explosion of biblical proportions, so much so that it compels the
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Christian forward to greater Christlikeness. And this explosion of both truth and application, it creates this mixture of both light and heat where God is revealed, where you get to see yourself as you truly are before God.
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And then the heat that you are propelled to serve God with greater zeal, with greater love, that you are moved with a greater passion to live for the living
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God. As Lloyd -Jones would put it, it is logic on fire, truth on fire.
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And at the end of the day, when an expository sermon is preached well, what you should do is this, you should leave the room thinking to yourself,
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I understand that text better, I understand myself better in light of who
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God is, I understand God better in light of what Scripture says of Him. There's an increase in understanding, and there is a transformation in the heart.
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And I think that the best expository sermons are always demanding, and yet in the same sense they are always easy.
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There are many churches, my friends, that we can go to perhaps this morning or maybe later this evening, where they are serving up cotton candy for anyone who would have it.
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And it's very easily digested, in fact it melts when it touches your tongue, and yet it will offer you nothing of eternal value, or even temporal value for your life today or tomorrow.
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And at the same time, true expository preaching is like a four -course meal.
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We serve milk, there's milk at the table for the baby
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Christians, there's a tomahawk steak for those Christians who have developed the ability to discern and chew and to work through that passage, and then there is everything in between.
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And so yet it demands everything of you, and yet in another sense, it is very plain.
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I take that as the greatest compliment. I once preached a passage, it's funny, I can remember it ten years later, my three points were pray, proclaim, persevere.
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And a brother came up, you know him, Luke Trombley, he came up to me afterwards and he said, that was the easiest passage to preach ever.
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It just unraveled itself, like you barely had to preach it, you just had to read the text and apply it.
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And I know Luke knows this, but my response to Luke was, brother do you know how hard it is to do that?
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To have a text, and to have someone at the end come out of it and go, the meaning is just clear, you just had to say it.
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Well it is clear, but it's much harder to say it than you think. And it reminds me of a story of a woman
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I was reading about recently who had heard of this great and famous preacher, Adam Clark, and she said, he is such a scholar,
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I want to go hear him preach. And she went to hear him preach and her friends asked her afterwards, how was the preaching?
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She said, it was just okay, I understood everything. Well such is the way that expository sermons work, that you are led to understand what the passage means, and then brethren, to apply it.
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And we play the long game. When we do expository preaching, you will see that I am guilty of this, to try to squeeze as much as I possibly can into any given sermon, and yet in another sense, we play the long game.
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That expository preaching is sequential, it is systematic, it is consecutive, and in the course of preaching through one book, and one chapter, and one verse, and verse after verse after verse after verse, the whole people of God get the whole counsel of God.
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And you get a balanced diet, and you don't get what the hobby horse that the preacher is riding this week, or the flavor of the month next month.
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You get what Paul said to the church in Ephesus, he said, I did not shrink from declaring to you,
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Acts 20 .27. What? The whole counsel of God. Martin Lee Jones, coming back from his medical terminology, he said this,
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I never left the patient to write the prescription. That it is not up to the appetites of the hearers to dictate what we preach, but it is what
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God's word dictates as we preach through it. It's not even up to the preacher to dictate what he preaches.
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Ask Sam that, as he looks to preach a text next month. We don't write the prescription, but God, the chief physician, he writes the prescription.
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One professor remarked, a preaching professor, he said, I can always tell the difference between a man who has been raised up in a church that preaches expositorily, the difference between that kind of man and a man who has been raised up in a church that does not preach expositorily.
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Expository preaching creates a well -rounded Christian. As one said it, the whole
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Bible creates a whole Christian. We're only going to do three points.
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We're going to do hearing next week. Next in verse 5, as for you, honey, this means my sermon is almost prepared for next week.
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As for you, always be sober -minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.
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Number three, we preach Christ. We preach the Word of God. We preach the
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Word expositorily, expositionally, and we preach Christ. Paul tells
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Timothy in verse 5 to do the work of an evangelist to fulfill your ministry.
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Now, certainly this would encompass preaching Christ to those who are lost, to join us on White Avenue, to preach to the lost there, to share the gospel with a coworker or a friend or a neighbor or a family member, but it does not preclude preaching
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Christ in the assembly of the saints. When Paul was talking to the
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Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 1 .23, he said this, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the
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Jews and folly to the Gentiles. They preached Christ in him crucified. When he wrote to the
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Romans near the end of his epistle, he's writing to Christians, he's explaining all of this doctrine, and I always found it interesting near the end of the book he says, and I hope to soon come to you that I might preach the gospel to you as well.
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As you've heard me say and others say, that the gospel is for Christians too. And so we preach the gospel in the fellowship of the saints.
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We need someone every week to tell us the old, old story, to lead us to Calvary, to tell us of the
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Lord Jesus Christ, who is the lover of our souls, so that even when we find ourselves in the slew of despond, if you come in here on Sunday and you find yourself in Doubting Castle, there's going to be someone who is going to preach
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Christ and him crucified for you, to you. Several decades ago, a pastor named
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Donald Gray Barnhouse was preaching an inter or a nationally broadcasted sermon on CBS radio, and he was speculating about what could be the most diabolical scheme, that's what
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I'm trying to say, what could be the most diabolical scheme that Satan could ever engage in or employ, that's the word
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I'm looking for, against the church. And Barnhouse had his listeners imagine for a moment, imagine this with me, what it would be like if all of the bars in Edmonton and in Canada were shut down, where there were no longer prostitutes who walked in the streets.
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If he had them imagine if pornography was no longer available, if all of the streets were in this utopian kind of way, perfectly clean, and all the neighborhoods were filled with law -abiding citizens, in a modern sense, no more drugs, no more gangs, no more disorder, no more crime on the news, all swearing and all cursing was gone.
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And every child, children, answered, yes sir, and no ma 'am.
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And in this fictitious world, Barnhouse had his listeners imagine then what it would be like if every church was packed to overflowing.
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So much so that every seat, every pew in every church, that people would have to squeeze to get just one more person.
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That if we took every chair that Capilano has down the hallway and we filled the room wall to wall, it would not be enough for the number of people that are in this room or who are coming to worship
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God. Barnhouse then said that the most diabolical plan that Satan could ever hatch up would be this, to allow all of these good things to take place, to allow the world to exemplify perfect morality, to fill the churches with perfectly behaved people, but to ensure that Jesus Christ was never preached, to have perfect morality, perfectly free of Jesus Christ, to have a perfect Christian nation,
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Christian nation, but without Jesus Christ. Stephen Lawson comments on this particular story.
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He says, in these pulpits there would be religious talk, but nothing said of the supreme authority and the saving work of Christ upon the cross.
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There would be mention of morality, but no Christ. There would be expressions of cultural concern and political commentary, but no
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Christ. There would be positive thinking and inspirational stories, but no Christ.
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The most diabolical ploy of Satan would be for churches to be bulging at the seams, but no proclamation of Christ and him crucified, and with this deadly silence, people would never learn of Christ.
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We would add, and everyone would die in their sins and go to hell.
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Find me the most skilled expositor in all the world. If he does not preach
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Christ, I do not want him, and neither should you. We cannot tolerate, and you've heard me call these things before.
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We cannot tolerate synagogue sermons, that is sermons that can be preached in any
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Jewish synagogue any other day of the week, but we need sermons that are filled to overflowing with Christ.
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True worship must be marked by biblical preaching, by expository preaching, but the warp and woof of our
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Christian worldview is fatally flawed if we are not informed by Christ -exalting, gospel -saturated preaching, that is preaching that takes us at every opportunity to a place of unyielding dependence upon Jesus Christ and his gospel, where we are reminded once more of the inestimable holiness of God, where we are taken once more to be shown the depths of our own depravity and sin, and then, as I said at the onset of this point, when we are led then to Calvary, to the very foot of the cross, where we are made to behold in the preaching of the word the very
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Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, who has removed our sin as far from us as the east is from the west, who came that we might call upon his name by faith and be justified, made right with God.
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And young man, again, for those of you who aspire to preach, let us take every opportunity to run our listeners to the cross.
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I like what Spurgeon said. He said in every text he found his way to make a beeline to the cross.
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Not that we're shoehorning Christ in, but that Christ is already there and we just need to find him in the text.
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On this topic, Spurgeon said, a sermon without Christ is an awful and a horrible thing. It is an empty well.
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It is a cloud without rain. It is a tree twice dead, plucked by its roots. It is an abominable thing to give men stones for bread and scorpions for eggs.
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Kids, how would you like that? Yet we do so preach. Not the right answer. Not Christ.
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Sorry. We do not preach. He messed me all up. We do so who preach not
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Jesus Christ. A sermon without Christ. How can it feed the soul?
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Men die and perish because Christ is not there. If you'll tolerate one more
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Spurgeon quote, he says, I received some years ago orders from my master to stand at the foot of the cross until he came.
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He has not come yet, but I mean to stand there until he does. Here then
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I stand at the foot of the cross and tell that story, stale though it sounds to itching ears and worn threadbare as critics may deem it.
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It is of Christ I love to speak. Of Christ who loved and lived and died, the substitute for sinners, the just for the unjust that he might bring us to God.
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Every week, brethren, we need to preach Christ and bring the balm of the gospel to your hearts.
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It's been said, as the pulpit goes, so the church goes and that the church itself will never rise higher than the pulpit.
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It might not always rise as high, but it will never rise beyond the pulpit. That's from Stephen Lawson. He said, preaching should be the first and foremost ministry of the church.
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Just as Martin Lloyd -Jones nailed then his pulpit to the floor of the church in Sandsfield, we firmly plant this pulpit front and center in the corporate worship of this church.
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That the word of God might be front and center in the activity, in every activity of this church.
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That we might declare that our authority is not the pope, it's not the subjective feelings of the culture, it is not a direct revelation that I received last night while I was mowing the lawn.
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It's not our own preferences or traditions. Our authority is the word of God alone.
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Lloyd -Jones said, the church is always to be under the word. She must be. We must keep her there.