July 8, 2015 ISI Radio Show with Pastor Mack Tomlinson on “Marks of Biblically Faithful Preaching”

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July 25, 2015

Pastor Mack Tomlinson of Providence Chapel in Denton, TX, discusses the “MARKS of BIBLICALLY FAITHFUL PREACHING”. Subscribe to Iron Sharpens Iron on-demand / podcast:

00:01: Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown
00:08: Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,
00:16: Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.
00:23: Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.
00:32: Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.
00:46: It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.
00:56: Now here's our host, Chris Arnton. Good afternoon,
01:11: Cumberland County, Pennsylvania and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth.
01:17: This is Chris Arnton, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 8th day of July 2015, and I'm delighted to have as a guest for the very first time ever on Iron Sharpens Iron, Pastor Mac Tomlinson, who is the pastor of Providence Chapel in Denton, Texas.
01:39: Their website is providencedenton .org, that's providencedenton .org,
01:48: and one of the reasons I'm delighted to have Mac on for the first time is because of the series of providences that led me to discover who he was in the first place.
01:58: I just happened to be casually looking on the internet for a church that most clearly resembled my own,
02:07: Grace Baptist Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. I was looking on the internet for a church that was located nearby where my brother
02:16: John lives and his wife Jan, and it just turns out that Pastor Mac is only 10 minutes away, and when
02:24: I contacted him, it turns out that he is a close mutual friend of Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries and also my first pastor,
02:33: Mike Gaydosh of Solid Ground Christian Books, who I've been interviewing on this program from time to time.
02:40: In fact, I just interviewed him on Monday providentially on part two of The Providence of God, but it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Iron Sharpens Iron, Pastor Mac Tomlinson.
02:53: Hello, Pastor Mac. Are you there, Pastor Mac? Well, you know...
03:00: Yes, hello. I'm here. Glad to be with you. Oh, you got me nervous there for a minute, brother. Can you hear me okay?
03:08: Yes, I can hear you fine. Okay, wow. That's a load off my mind now. Tell us very briefly about your church,
03:19: Providence Chapel, and before we go into our main theme today, which is the marks of biblically faithful preaching.
03:26: If you could just tell us a little something about Providence Chapel. Our church is a
03:31: Baptist congregation of about 130 people in the heart of Denton.
03:37: We, the church, started 15 years ago as a church plan, and it's grown steadily, and we're committed to the historic reform gospel of Jesus Christ, a loving congregation, and we are evangelistic, missionary -minded, and just trying to share the love of Christ here in North Texas.
04:01: And I don't know if you have your computer on because there is a time delay, if you do have your computer on, turn the audio off of that.
04:08: But the theme that you came up with today, or should
04:14: I say for today, the marks of biblically faithful preaching, that is an important issue because there is so much a variety of preaching that people hear on their radio and television, and a lot of it is disturbing to those who
04:32: I call dear friends and whose ministries I hold in high esteem.
04:38: The fact that they believe good biblically faithful preaching is a minority in the media, especially, is quite an alarming thing, and that's one of the reasons
04:48: I wholeheartedly agreed to speak on this issue that Pastor Mack Tomlinson has chosen for our program today.
04:57: And because of the fact that preaching, if it is biblical at all, has to in some way incorporate the gospel of Jesus Christ, so I think a good definition to start with is what is the gospel?
05:12: Well, of course, there are many elements to the gospel itself, such as repentance, saving faith, a changed life, the work the
05:26: Holy Spirit produces in sinners when they come to Christ, but if I were to narrow down a definition of the gospel,
05:36: I would simply say the gospel is the wonderful news, the work
05:42: God has done for sinners in the person of the Son, Jesus Christ. God sent
05:49: His Son, His Son lived the perfect life that we can ever live, and He died a sinner's death, a substitutionary death in our place, accomplishing, purchasing our forgiveness, forgiveness of sins, and He offers free forgiveness of sins and eternal life and a changed life to anyone who will believe that message.
06:20: I believe that is the heart of the gospel. And is there a difference between teaching and preaching, in your opinion?
06:30: I definitely believe there's a difference between teaching and preaching. Teaching, they can certainly overlap.
06:38: In all preaching, there ought to be true instruction, because you're unfolding the truth of the
06:44: Bible. But in teaching, I would say teaching would be more in a sense for the instruction of Christians in the details of the
06:56: Bible, both theologically and chronologically. Teaching is instruction in the
07:02: Bible of its contents. It would be more somewhat of a lecture form, so it shouldn't be dry or boring, while preaching is more of the authoritative proclamation of the
07:18: Bible in declaring the Word of God. Preaching is more, if you will, emotive, it's more of a proclamation, and you can see that difference clearly in the
07:32: New Testament. So I believe definitely there's a difference between teaching and preaching.
07:39: It would almost be like comparing, and I hate to use something as secular as this, but just to give people an idea, wouldn't it be somewhat similar to the difference between teaching and preaching is you have a coach teaching his team how to perform their assigned duty on any specific sports team, and the basic elements and facts that are involved in playing that sport to its most effective way, and the difference between that and a sports announcer who during a game is urgently and passionately telling you what you need to know if you're going to know who wins and loses this specific event, and there is an urgency involved, and even beyond the sporting event, a reporter, a warning of an attack of a foreign enemy or something where there is grave danger involved, and there's also good news involved because the reporter may be telling people where they can find safety and so on.
08:49: Would that be an accurate comparison? Very, very good. Another way
08:54: I would say it is teaching aims at the mind of a person for instruction and truth, but preaching should be aimed at the conscience of people who are at their heart for change and inspiration to produce change.
09:11: And well, why don't we start with a summary of the basic marks of biblically faithful preaching, and then after you give us the summary, we could go on with each element.
09:25: Well, I just thought of a few simple ones that ought to mark any faithful preaching of the
09:33: Bible. The first is being motivated for the glory of God and not for the glory of the preacher or of men.
09:45: Motivated, everything in preaching ought to be aimed to glorify God and Jesus Christ.
09:51: Secondly, truthfulness. If the Bible is the perfect record of God's truth, then truthfulness to it by the preacher must be a mark of preaching.
10:05: And by truthfulness, I mean being honest with the Bible and what it says and faithfulness to proclaim it and uncompromising commitment to the
10:15: Bible itself. And then next in our day of what
10:22: I would just call shallow minds and shallow thinking or frivolity, perhaps, there should be a seriousness and a sober -mindedness in Mark's biblical preaching.
10:35: And then finally, just a loving and passionate declaration of the truth to all men.
10:48: Those things mark biblically faithful preaching in my estimation. And what was the word you used for the first mark?
10:55: I got distracted by something, but I heard what you defined it as. But what was the word you used for the first mark? Well, motivated primarily for the glory of God.
11:06: Faithful preaching is first for the glory of God and Christ. Great.
11:11: Well, that's excellent. And we will be going back to each of those points, motivation to the glory of God, truthfulness, seriousness, and compassion.
11:21: We'll be going through each of those points in a short while, God willing, and perhaps we'll have to extend this to another program if you're willing and able to come back on.
11:32: But we hear, especially those who are in churches that are teaching on a deeper level of theology and doctrine, what is hermeneutics, what is homiletics, and are they both equally important?
11:48: And the reason why I even asked that question, because it comes to mind that Jonathan Edwards, for instance, who read his sermons, had a very laid -back, solemn, unemotional approach to his sermons, from what
12:04: I understand. We don't have recordings of them, but we have written reports about them. And on the other hand, we have
12:10: George Whitefield, who is most known for open -air preaching and evangelism, and so much so that the
12:18: Anglican church that he was a member of was very horrified by this undignified, if you will, style and manner of evangelism out in the open air and crying out with every fiber of his being the truths of the
12:37: Gospel. So if you could perhaps tell us about what is hermeneutics, homiletics, and are they both equally important?
12:45: Well, hermeneutics is simply the science or the principles of interpreting
12:52: Scripture. What principles do we bring to bear in interpreting the
12:58: Bible? While homiletics deals with the practice and the form or the art of constructing and preaching a sermon, hermeneutics deals with Bible interpretation.
13:15: Homiletics deals with how men preach, and they are different. And I don't personally believe that they are both equally important.
13:26: Hermeneutics, in my opinion, is much more important than homiletics, because hermeneutics determines how accurately we interpret the
13:36: Bible. If our hermeneutics is incorrect, then we will not be preaching the
13:42: Bible accurately and faithfully. But homiletics is an interesting subject, in that modern homiletics really changed in the century, in my opinion, when theological education actually began departments for homiletics.
14:02: That was unheard of in the 19th century and before, they didn't do such a thing.
14:09: And homiletics became a performance almost for preachers to be able to craft their sermons so perfectly, with such balance and alliteration, that the sermon became a performance rather than a powerful declaration.
14:31: If someone compares the preaching of, let's say, the 17th to the 19th century, and you read the sermons of whether that's even the reformers before the 17th century, or the
14:47: Puritans, or the 18th century preachers like George Whitfield, Jonathan Edwards, and then into the 19th century with C .H.
14:57: Spurgeon and Asahel Nettleton in New England, those men did not use modern homiletics.
15:08: Now they had orderly preaching, and they would have had points, but they were not about having a perfect performance in delivering a sermon.
15:20: And that's what homiletics has become. And I think that's unfortunate. Perhaps the greatest preacher of the 20th century, it could be argued, was
15:30: Martin Lloyd -Jones in England, and he did not, he was not a fan of homiletics in a modern sense, because he believed it distracted from the truth and brought more attention to the performance of the preacher.
15:47: Yeah, that's interesting, because one of the most dangerous combinations you can have is excellent homiletics with horrible hermeneutics.
15:56: When you have a gifted orator preaching lies, in fact,
16:04: I think that that's where the most successful false preachers come from, are those who have either an innate ability or trained ability to proclaim their message in an excellent and attention -grabbing manner, but unfortunately they're teaching something terribly false.
16:25: In fact, I won't mention his name, but a very well -known Reformed Baptist, especially from the latter part of the 20th century who is still living and who, if I mentioned his name, you'd know exactly who
16:39: I was speaking about. I was surprised years ago to hear him at a pastor's conference say, in regard to homiletics, he thought that Norman Vincent Peale was one of the greatest preachers that he had ever heard, but he believes that Norman Vincent Peale was a very dangerous heretic.
17:01: So there you have a combination of those two things that spread a teaching very widely and rapidly, but then yet was a false gospel, if you will.
17:14: Right. One of the famous stories that came out of 19th century England was an
17:20: American went to London and spent about a month there. The first Sunday he went to hear a preacher and he came away and said, what a sermon.
17:30: The second Sunday he went to hear another preacher and he said, what a preacher, but the third
17:36: Sunday he went to hear C .H. Spurgeon and he said, what a Savior. Amen.
17:44: Yeah, and it is interesting that the two men that I mentioned earlier,
17:51: Jonathan Edwards and George Whitfield, had very different styles of preaching.
17:57: In fact, George Whitfield's style was actually obviously out of necessity because he was an open -air preacher and they didn't have modern -day sound equipment or anything.
18:09: He didn't use any sound equipment. He had a tree stump or something. And of course, he wasn't exclusively an outdoor preaching, but he is most well known for that.
18:19: And Jonathan Edwards, who very quietly read his sermons in a totally different style, and yet because God is sovereign over his word being proclaimed, he used
18:31: Jonathan Edwards' Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God in a powerful and mighty way, so much so that it brought about a revival.
18:39: Am I right on that? Yes, that's true, and it is interesting. It also is a lesson to preachers today that we have to be ourselves and not be like anyone else.
18:51: Edwards actually preached that sermon the first time in another city in New England.
18:57: I don't recall the name of the city. I think it was in Massachusetts, but it had no effect on the congregation when he first preached it.
19:06: Later, he preached it in his own congregation in Northampton, and the
19:11: Holy Spirit chose to come upon the sermon with great power, and many people were gripped, and conviction of sin broke out in the church, so that's exactly right.
19:24: And even though you are putting a lower level of importance on homiletics, because that would actually be a subjective science where hermeneutics is an objective, exact science, really, isn't there importance, though, that the manner in which the gospel is proclaimed, it should be evident that the man who is preaching does have a compassion for the lost and passion to see sinners come to Christ, and that this is something deeply meaningful, important, and urgent that he is saying.
20:09: If you're hearing a lecture from someone from the pulpit, and the person is not only boring you, but apparently boring himself, there's not going to be much meaning.
20:23: And obviously, as I said before, God has sovereignty over his word proclaimed, and he can save souls even in that situation.
20:31: But isn't there an importance, nonetheless, in the manner in which you preach? Absolutely, it's very important.
20:38: And by making homiletics secondary in my comments to hermeneutics,
20:46: I wasn't saying that the sermon can't have any structure. A preacher must prepare his material, it needs to have order, it needs to have clarity, and it needs to be presented in a way that the people will actually understand what he's saying.
21:02: So, absolutely. But I think, you know, there's a modern...
21:07: The 20th century produced something that had never been used in history in homiletics, and that was alliteration, where every major point of the sermon begins with the same letter, and it rhymes, and it sounds flowery, and that became popular.
21:26: Well, it actually can just draw attention to the preacher's oratory and his ability, rather than the truth, abstraction.
21:35: So yes, there must be structure, there must be clarity, and that's where proper homiletics would be important.
21:43: I'm going to give our audience the email address if you have a question for Mac Tomlinson on our topic today,
21:52: The Marks of Biblically Faithful Preaching. Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.
22:00: That's C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N. I almost forgot how to spell my name.
22:06: A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Chrisarnsen at gmail .com.
22:13: And while I... after I made that announcement, I'll give a time for our listeners to send in an email.
22:20: I just want to quickly take this time to remind you that on October...
22:25: I'm sorry, August 31st, August 31st, Iron Sharpens Iron is proud to announce, or joyful to announce, is perhaps a better word for a guest.
22:45: That's Monday, August 31st, 4 or 5 p .m. Eastern, to discuss his new book.
22:52: And this is a book that comes on the heels of the
22:58: Supreme Court decision on same -sex marriage.
23:04: And this is a book that I have received from Dr. Moeller's office, a pre -publication copy of.
23:13: And I hope that you mark on your calendar to tune in to Iron Sharpens Iron, Monday, August 31st, 4 to 5 p .m.,
23:23: to hear Dr. Albert N. Moeller of Southern Seminary.
23:29: And please spread the word to your friends as well. But obviously, we are going to be airing our program,
23:38: God willing, every single day, Monday through Friday, prior to that. So I thank you for putting up with me as I gave that plug for our interview on August 31st with Albert Moeller.
23:52: We're very excited about that because it's the very first time Dr. Moeller has ever been on the program.
23:59: Okay, we do have a listener from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Ted, who asks a question that I think is a pretty brilliant question.
24:08: And the reason I say that is because I was going to ask it myself. But Ted beat me to it.
24:14: This is Ted's question for you, Pastor Mack. In much of evangelical Christianity, and particularly the
24:22: Reformed precincts, there is a presumption that expositional verse -by -verse preaching is superior to topical preaching.
24:31: Though I happen to agree with this, I don't think I've ever heard this proposition defended biblically.
24:37: Can you address that question? Well, that's honestly a wonderful question.
24:46: And it's an important question in our day very much. I hope my answer won't be too long.
24:52: I'll take your time. We can always have you back, remember. You can just cut me off if you want to move on.
25:01: Now, let me just also say here I'm talking about preaching. And though I've been preaching 40 years,
25:09: I kind of feel like a guy who is a homeless wino who's commenting on Wall Street high finance.
25:19: What do I really know about the subject? Well, I know what I believe about it.
25:25: So if Lloyd Jones said one time that he doesn't know if he ever truly preached, and he wouldn't have gone across the street to hear himself preach, then where does that leave me?
25:38: But anyway, the question is wonderful. I think my opinion is expository preaching is very important if we understand what that means.
25:51: But I believe it's been misrepresented, especially with the revival of the emphasis on expository preaching in, let's say, the last 10 to 20 years.
26:05: It's become a fad, almost a popularity thing where expository preaching has been presented as if it's the only method of preaching.
26:17: And I've heard men speak condescendingly about topical preaching.
26:25: And honestly, I don't think they would know church history well enough to do that.
26:33: How would I define expository preaching? Expository preaching doesn't necessarily mean you're always preaching through entire books of the
26:42: Bible, because people can actually do that.
26:49: They can preach through Matthew, then go right to Romans, then go right to the book of Jeremiah.
26:56: They're preaching all the way through a book. But if they are not actually bringing out of every text what's actually there, then they're not preaching expositorily.
27:08: Expository preaching primarily isn't to be defined by preaching through entire books of the
27:15: Bible. You can preach expositorily from one verse of scripture if you bring out of that text what the text is actually teaching.
27:27: What the author intended to say by it. Sorry? What the author actually intended to say by it.
27:34: Exactly. Exegetical preaching really is almost the same thing as expository.
27:42: You're bringing out of the text what it actually says. You're not preaching, reading into it, something you wanted to say.
27:51: Now this is interesting too. This means topical preaching is often important, because Lloyd -Jones even preached topically at times, if you look closely at his sermons.
28:07: For instance, in his long series in Ephesians, he had many sermons from Ephesians 6 on Christian warfare.
28:18: You listen to some of those. He has entire topical sermons on the devil and demons within the context of his preaching through Ephesians.
28:30: So topical preaching can be very important, especially as a pastor, if you want to address theological subjects such as justification, regeneration, conversion, adoption.
28:45: If you want to do a series of theological topics on that or on the outreach of God, you virtually have to preach topically.
28:55: When you do that, you can do it exegetically, where your material is coming right out of the
29:01: Bible. One further quick comment. You look back and read the history of preaching from the 16th century through the 19th century, you find something that's amazing.
29:20: Many of the reformers, many of the Puritans, many of the great revivalistic preachers like Edwards, Whitefield, Spurgeon, and on forward, men in the 19th century in Scotland like Robert Murray McShane or Andrew Bonar, Horatius Bonar, those men rarely preached a long passage from Scripture.
29:49: They almost always took one verse. And they believed that one verse was the message for the hour that God had given them.
29:58: And they would preach a full sermon from that one verse. That's historical
30:04: Christian preaching in all its glory. And that's the kind of preaching that God would often send revival to his church in times in the past.
30:16: Yeah, and I'm assuming that the providence of God also lends a lot of credibility to topical preaching, because if there's some kind of an event that is occurring in your midst, a pastor would probably be in error not to address it publicly to the congregation in a biblical way, especially if it was something of grave importance that affected the lives of everyone in that church.
30:48: It would be nonsensical, perhaps, to ignore that providential occurrence just so he could stick in his third chapter of Ezekiel or something.
31:00: Right, exactly. I agree with you. Another comment
31:05: I would make in that regard, John Wesley, though I am not a
31:11: Wesleyan, but he was a man greatly used of God in the 18th century, close friends with George Whitefield.
31:20: He preached a sermon one time on the judgments of God in earthly disasters after a major earthquake that hit somewhere in Europe or Asia, and Wesley took the opportunity of the current event to declare the truth to people, and so that's very fitting.
31:47: I think the negative wrong kind of topical preaching would be when men just create points, and they're not based on Scripture like how to have peace, and the man creates four or five points to just address the topic of having peace, but he has very few
32:15: Scriptures, and he's not even expounding what Scripture says about it. There are very popular contemporary men who preach that way, and it may stir people's emotions, but it doesn't feed them the truth of Scripture.
32:34: And we're going to be going to a break right now, so if Tom in Alton, Illinois can hold on.
32:40: We have a question from Tom, and I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing Alton correctly, if it's
32:46: Alton or Alton, however they pronounce that in Illinois. In fact, I'm going to ask you the question,
32:52: Pastor Mac, before the break so you have time to think about it while the break is occurring, and Tom in Alton, Illinois says,
33:00: I would like to ask Pastor Mac if he has seen his preparation for preaching and delivery in preaching change over the years, and if so, how?
33:10: Your own preparation and preaching and delivery of preaching, how has it changed, if at all, over the years?
33:17: And we're going to return to your answer to that question right after these messages from people who make
33:24: Iron Sharpens Iron possible. Please don't go away. Hi, I'm Pastor Bob Walderman, and I invite you to come and join us here at Linbrook Baptist Church and see all that a church can be.
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34:50: It's about God and His glory, and the gospel is about man... Welcome back, this is Chris Zarnes, and if you've just tuned in to Iron Sharpens Iron, our guest today is
34:58: Pastor Mack Tomlinson of Providence Chapel in Denton, Texas. Before the break, our listener
35:05: Tom in Alton, Illinois asked the question, if your own sermon preparation and delivery has changed over the years, and if so, how?
35:15: Well, personally, send my warm greetings to Tom there in Alton, Illinois.
35:24: But in relation to this question, preparation and delivery in preaching,
35:34: I think the answer is a very obvious yes. Preparation for a preacher changes and should improve all the time.
35:45: When we start out preaching as a young man entering the ministry, we hardly know exactly how to prepare messages, and we ask our ministers, we ask our professors, but we have to shape our own method of doing that, and we learn to do that the more we do it.
36:04: The only way to learn to preach is to preach, and the old fiery preacher
36:11: Leonard Ravenhill used to say, the only way to learn to pray is to pray. Well, the only way to learn to preach is to preach, and so we prepare as best we can as we learn, but that is refined more and more as we go on as the years pass, and each man learns what is his method of preparing and delivering sermons.
36:38: In preaching sermons and delivery, the worst mistake a preacher can make is try to imitate his favorite preachers, because you can't be your favorite preacher.
36:51: Right, and you hear that a lot. You'll look and sound ridiculous if you try to do it.
36:58: I happen to know of pastors that even unintentionally,
37:03: I'm assuming, imitated their favorite preacher's voice on their own answering machines. Yeah, well, anyway, so we have to be our own man, and our preparation will take its own shape.
37:19: What works for someone else will not work for you or for me, and so let me just come in briefly on my own preparation.
37:31: I used to do it a lot different than I do now after 40 years of preaching, but my own method is
37:38: I don't go to commentaries. I don't go to books. I go to my
37:46: Bible, and after I'm clear on what passage that I'm preaching on, then if I'm preaching through a book of the
37:57: Bible, then I know where my next passage is going to be the next time I preach. So I'll just spend time in that passage, in that text.
38:06: I read it. I meditate on it. I take notes on it, and I try to come to a very real sense of what is this passage actually teaching in its context.
38:19: Why did the Holy Spirit put this in here, and what is He saying through this?
38:25: What is the main message of this passage, and what are the main points that are tied to that main message?
38:37: So I'll take notes, and often that produces the major points or the major truth from that passage that I'm going to preach.
38:52: And I only want to make sure I preach what I have seen to be in the passage. And so once I meditate on it and take notes, then a lot of my preparation is done if I feel like I've come to see what my passage is actually teaching.
39:11: And only after that do I go to commentaries, and I read them.
39:17: And I gather what scholars and men who deal in an expert way with the original languages,
39:27: I read what they say. And I often gain great help and more light on the passage.
39:34: And then I'll take notes from those men, from the commentaries, and I'll gather further material.
39:42: And then my final stage of preparation is simply to organize that material in a natural way that fits me as a preacher.
39:53: I don't try to preach like Martyn Lloyd -Jones would. I don't organize material the way a
40:00: John Calvin would or the way a John Piper would. I have to make it my message, my material.
40:08: And my goal in preaching it is not to preach to the most intellectual person in the congregation.
40:17: I want to put that material right down where every teenager can get it because I have to feed all the sheep.
40:24: And if I give it, if I make sure the teenagers get it or the children get it, then I know the adults have gotten it as well.
40:33: So, that would be a little more about delivery, but yes, preparation and preaching, delivery and preaching,
40:43: God has to shape us into the preachers that he wants us to be. And he'll do that with every man who's truly called to preach.
40:54: And we have another listener in Yuma, Arizona, who has a bunch of excellent questions.
41:01: Actually, Clarence in Yuma, Arizona, and I'm going to start with his first, which in my opinion is more of a mark of a biblically faithful preacher or one who should even be behind a pulpit preaching.
41:19: And he asks about divine calling or appointment. Obviously, there are many people behind pulpits preaching that don't have either.
41:27: Am I correct? Yes, I think there's many men who choose the ministry for whatever reason, and they're not truly called to preach.
41:40: They're not gifted to preach. And if they're not called to preach, they will not evidence a gifting to preach.
41:47: One of the main proofs that you're called is that you're able to preach, you have a
42:03: The, I'll bring up another one of David's excellent points.
42:12: The addressing sin, personal or corporate, that is something that the most popular preachers like Joel Olsteen, for instance, who pastors one of the largest churches in the
42:26: United States, that seems to be totally absent from his sermons, which is perhaps one of the reasons why so many people love him is because they're not reminded of anything to feel guilty about.
42:38: But if you could comment on that as well. Well, I think my comment would be brief.
42:44: When you read the Bible, you read the prophets of the Old Testament, you read the apostles and the preacher of the
42:51: New Testament. They always preach about sin, righteousness and judgment.
42:58: Paul did that in Acts. You see sin being exposed under New Testament preaching.
43:07: John the Baptist, even on a personal level, told, who was it?
43:13: The ruler, that it was wrong for him to have his brother's wife,
43:22: I guess it was Herod. And that cost John his head. So as someone said, if you're going to preach repentance, you better pledge your head to heaven.
43:34: And so very few, I mean, there are many faithful preachers in America and around the world that still see preaching against sin and preaching repentance is indispensable with true ministry.
43:49: And any preacher or pastor that will not preach against sin or will not preach that repentance is essential to the
43:59: Christian life is a false preacher. And in fact, you cannot really appreciate good news at all, which is the gospel.
44:10: The gospel is the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ. You can't even appreciate good news if you don't know what the bad news is, right?
44:17: I mean, you're not going to be amazed by grace that you sing about in your song Amazing Grace unless you understand the horrible end of that story, correct?
44:29: Right, absolutely right. If Jesus said the ministry of the Holy Spirit, when he has come, he will convict the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment.
44:41: That is the Spirit's ministry. And so if that's his priority in applying the truth, how can it not be the preacher's priority as well?
44:50: And I'm going to just bring up and combine a couple of David or Clarence David in Yuma, Arizona, a couple more of his points, and I'll combine them, that the listener's attention should be drawn to forgiveness of sins by the sacrifice and resurrection of Christ and the imperative to repent and believe.
45:14: Shouldn't that be an element of every preaching message, every sermon?
45:21: Well, I wouldn't make that a legalistic, dogmatic, rigid rule about every sermon, because you clearly, in history, you have examples of pastors who preached sermons that were strictly for the edification of believers.
45:41: And they didn't try to then bring in a brief part evangelistically to speak of the gospel, always.
45:52: I don't think that evangelistic preaching has to be in every sermon, no. But there ought to be a lot of evangelistic preaching.
46:00: There are many sermons that are for the equipping of the saints that deal with other biblical truths rather than just the gospel.
46:10: Well, I can see already that we're going to have to have you back on this program again, Pastor Mack, to continue on this one issue of the marks of biblically faithful preaching.
46:21: But we have about 13 minutes left or so. If anybody would like to join us on the air with some more questions for Pastor Mack, the email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,
46:33: C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Please give your first name, city and state, and country if you're outside of the
46:40: United States. Who are some of your heroes of the
46:45: Christian faith who were preachers or are preachers from the past and the present?
46:52: Well, I'll be brief on this. I really want to get to an important topic that I think is on your heart, too.
46:59: I hope we have time for that, and that is what would disturb me about contemporary preaching today.
47:07: Yeah, that was going to be the flip side of the... But some of my preaching heroes, well, there's a few in history, and I hope your listeners can jot these names down.
47:19: Go read about these men, and you can find their sermons as well. But some early ones would be some lesser -known men in America, Samuel Davies, D -A -V -I -E -S.
47:34: He was a man in Virginia in the 18th, I believe the end of the 18th century, beginning of the 19th century, who
47:43: Lloyd -Jones called him the greatest preacher America ever produced.
47:49: And he was a Presbyterian, a Tenet preacher who rode the counties of Virginia preaching the gospel, and he saw mighty outpourings of the
47:59: Holy Spirit. His sermons are in print, and they are phenomenal to read them.
48:06: The same for a man that followed him, Archibald Alexander, who was one of the great historic
48:15: American preachers. His sermons as well are simply incredible how rich they are.
48:21: Going back a little bit, I love those two American preachers in our country's history, but in Britain, men like Howell Harris, the great
48:32: Welch evangelist, who was really the first open -air preacher in Britain before Wesley, before Whitefield.
48:41: Howell Harris was a fearless preacher. Reading his life is amazing. And of course,
48:48: George Whitefield and Daniel Rowland was another Welchman who was a pastor, but he was one of the most powerful preachers of the 18th century.
49:00: Mighty revival happened under his ministry, and contemporary people who heard both
49:06: Whitefield and Daniel Rowland said, long after you would forget what the content of George Whitefield's sermon was, you would remember
49:15: Daniel Rowland's sermon. So that's quite a compliment. In fact, let me just take our last break, which is brief, and we're going to pick up right where you left off after these messages.
49:24: Don't go away. We'll be right back with Pastor Mac Tomlinson. Researched and prepared by biblical scholars devoted to accuracy, the new topical reference
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51:00: That's wrbc .us. Welcome back.
51:06: This is Chris Arns. And if you just tuned us in, we are discussing the marks of biblically faithful preaching with Pastor Mack Tomlinson of Providence Chapel in Denton, Texas.
51:15: And these sermons that he was mentioning before the break primarily, if not exclusively, are in writing today because these are all men of the past that he was specifically mentioned to my memory.
51:28: You can go to solid -ground -books .com and do a search on those very men that Pastor Tomlinson told you to write down.
51:40: solid -ground -books .com. They are sponsors of this program.
51:47: And by getting your books from them, you are helping Iron Sharpens Iron. And last but not least,
51:54: Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com. CV for Cumberland Valley.
52:00: BBS for BibleBookService .com. They are also helping the cause of Iron Sharpens Iron. So remember those two sources.
52:07: Now you wanted to go into, unless you wanted to mention one or two modern -day preachers that are among your heroes or those you love, and then move on to your most crucial part that you wanted to say about what you hate or don't like, what bothers you in modern preaching.
52:24: Yeah. Well, I want to mention some 19th century men also before I hit our current date, because there are some little -known men in Scotland that are among,
52:37: I think, some of the greatest examples of preaching as pastors and evangelists in modern church history.
52:45: Andrew Bonar and Horatius Bonar and Robert Murray McShane.
52:52: You can get the biographies on those men's lives from the
52:58: Banner of Truth Trust, and they are a goldmine, truly a goldmine of examples of what pastors ought to be in preaching, reading their lives and how they preach.
53:14: And it should be an encouragement to young preachers that they could, too, reach the heights by God's mercy and grace of Robert Murray McShane.
53:24: He passed away and entered glory with Christ at 29. Yes, yes.
53:29: But he did more in his few years in the ministry than often many others do for generations.
53:38: As far as contemporary men, in the 20th century, Martyn Lloyd -Jones would be my favorite, along with the old fiery evangelist
53:50: Leonard Ravenhill. Leonard Ravenhill wasn't a man who majored on theology, but he majored on holiness, revival, the fear of God, prayer.
54:02: And he was a powerful preacher in his day, and he can easily be heard widely on the
54:07: Internet. And then his friend, A .W. Tozer, is also a man very worthy of listening to and reading from the 20th century.
54:18: And then today, two men just come to mind today. One is perhaps my favorite living preacher,
54:28: Geoffrey Thomas, the pastor of Alfred Place Baptist Church in Everestwood, Wales. Listening to Geoffrey Thomas' sermons and reading them is an education in preaching.
54:42: One of the best alive today. And then finally, a very little -known man that his sermons are available on the
54:49: Internet, Conrad Murrell of Louisiana, one of the greatest preachers of the 20th century, but virtually unknown.
54:59: And he is really worth listening to as well. And it's funny that you said the name Conrad, because I was going to pipe in and say
55:06: Conrad M. Bayway of Kibwata Baptist Church in Lusaka, Zambia. He is one of the most powerful preachers that I've ever heard in my life, and he's still living and pastoring there in Africa.
55:18: Well, both of those Conrads, Conrad M. Bayway and Conrad Murrell, are really worth hearing.
55:25: Yes. And if you could, since we only have a few minutes left, about three, could you give us what troubles you most in modern preaching that you hear and see on radio and television?
55:35: And we can always extend this conversation to another program, which I hope we do. Well, I'll comment briefly on these.
55:43: I'll just name them. I think there are five general things that is wrong with much contemporary preaching.
55:48: Number one, they're not necessarily in any order of importance. One would be professionalism in preaching, where men want to make their performance or their oratory almost a performance.
56:02: The preacher wants to have a perfectly delivered sermon because it seems like he wants to be known as a great preacher rather than being truth -driven to give to people.
56:15: Or, under this heading, would be entertainment -driven preaching, which isn't true preaching.
56:21: Men trying to be cool, trying to be contemporary in a wrong way, trying to be likable, trying to be funny.
56:28: So polished preaching today is often meant just to impress or entertain, and that's far from the biblical view of preaching.
56:38: The second thing I think is bad is what I would call palatable preaching, preaching that where men want to please their congregation, and they often avoid subjects with silence that will offend or challenge the congregation.
56:58: And the question to ask is, do preachers yield to the temptation of softening their message so as not to offend the important or wealthy people in the congregation?
57:09: We should never make preaching palatable. We need to make it profitable.
57:16: No one can truly preach faithfully who is a man pleaser. And thirdly,
57:23: I would say cold intellectual academic preaching is a problem.
57:28: Cold intellectual academic preaching. I just wanted to repeat that because you broke up a little bit. Right. Cold intellectual academic preaching, it puts people to sleep in church.
57:42: It's just giving out information, but it doesn't speak to the heart and conscience of people.
57:48: It just wants to reach the mind or impress the intellect rather than truly stirring the heart and changing people.
57:58: And then fourthly, what I would call Bible -less preaching. Preaching with no
58:04: Bible. How often do we hear men preach who don't actually preach a text or preach what is true in Scripture?
58:14: It's amazing how many sermons today are given where the preacher never even refers to the
58:19: Bible, or they may take a Bible verse at the beginning of the sermon, but that's the last you hear about the
58:27: Bible in the message. So our opinions and our cleverness of speech don't matter.
58:38: Paul said to Timothy, preach the Word. And if there's anything any preacher has to offer anyone that is of lasting value, it's got to be the
58:49: Word of God itself. And then finally, what I would call powerless preaching.
58:57: And I mean by that, preaching that does not have the power and authority of the Holy Spirit upon the preacher or upon the message.
59:06: And that has to do with the preacher having the umption or the authority of the
59:12: Holy Spirit upon him when he preaches. If that's not there, and no preacher can control that,
59:21: God has to give that. And only when the Holy Spirit anoints the messenger and anoints the message will the preaching have power.
59:32: And we're out of time, Pastor Mack. We look forward to having you back on, and his website is
59:37: ProvidenceDenton .org. ProvidenceDenton .org. I hope you all always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater
59:45: Savior than you are a sinner. See you tomorrow on Iron Sharpens Iron. Hope you tune in. God bless.