Feed the Sheep

Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry. My name is Mike Ebendroth. Almost forgot my name for a second. My name is, mi nombre es.

When you don't know what to do, just promote yourself. We've got a new book out, King, How the

Sovereignty of God Changes Everything. And essentially what I did is I took an older book and put some more gospel grace in it.

And it talks about if you understand God as a king, it helps you understand election, it helps you understand his return, the king's return, that God speaks.

Thanks to the team, including Mario Escobar, you are the best. Look at that.

And he didn't even get a copy yet. Signed. My kids have done private school, homeschool and public school.

And I remember in public school, speaking of signing things, I had to sign that they would do their homework.

They read such and such and I have to sign it because they turn it into the teacher. And typically it was just my initials,

M -A. And so one time I took the pen and I put it in my mouth and I signed my initials with my mouth on Luke's deal.

And he brought it back to school and they said, you forged this. And he said, no, I didn't.

My dad signed it with his mouth. There you have it. Today, I'd like to talk about Bible teaching, preaching.

And if you're a pastor, I hope I can help you out a little bit. If you're just a

Bible teacher, not just, but if you're a Bible teacher outside of the pulpit, maybe you teach Sunday school. Maybe you teach your children.

Maybe you teach other people's children. I think pretty much every Christian should be a Bible teacher because you want to teach others what you've learned, right?

You learn something and then you pass the baton on to someone else. And so everybody in a sense should be a good

Bible student, learner, and then teacher. But I'm specifically going to talk today about how to be a boring

Bible teacher. If you wanna be a boring Bible teacher, this show is for you. And the way

I've set this up is, we're gonna do the contrast. We're going to do the opposite. How to be a boring Bible teacher.

And you say, I don't wanna be a boring Bible teacher. I don't wanna be a boring anything, let alone teach the Bible. I mean, we get excited about our hobbies and, oh, archery and music and concerts and nature and all these things.

And we get excited about those things, which is fine. But what about being excited to teach the

Bible? One of the things I want to do is to be faithful to teach the Bible. What does it say? What does it mean?

Convey the truth without adding or subtracting or fumbling the football when it comes to Bible teaching.

But I also wanna do it in an enthusiastic way, in an earnest way, in an exciting way, because these truths in the

Bible are exciting, are they not? They're relevant, are they not? You think about, well, is this practical?

Let me ask you, is God practical? Is sin, forgiveness, all these things?

There's a lot of things that are practical. So today, how to be a boring Bible teacher.

By the way, I'm an expert in many things, and making mistakes when I preach and teach,

I'm an expert in that too. So we wanna make sure that we show excitement, that we're enthusiastic, that the word of God has actually changed us, right?

You study the Bible and it changes you when you study, and then you wanna tell other people how God has encouraged you, convicted you, reproved you, come alongside of you.

Thankfully, let me say this at the beginning of the show. Well, it's not so much the beginning anymore, it's a long intro.

How to be a boring Bible teacher, have long intros. The word of God is powerful.

The word of God does its work. And so thankfully, even when we are boring, even when we don't show enthusiasm, excitement, even though we are short of repentance, even though we should be repenting of our weak repentance, it still does its work.

So let's just say that at the front end, that the word of God still does its work, even if you're monotone, boring, stuffy, it still does its work.

But since the word of God is alive and it's powerful, and it is God -breathed and authoritative,

I think we should try to preach it in such a way, teach it in such a way where it's not boring.

How to be boring, number one, scold people. There's nothing worse than being scolded from the pulpit.

And when I think about scolding, I keep thinking about Charlie Brown's teacher.

And I looked it up online and I guess it was a trumpet and then they've got that muffle thing that they put on the trumpet.

And it's just wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah. And it's just like, before you know it, when people are scolding,

I don't mean rebuking because we are to rebuke. I don't mean reproving because we are to reproof, 2

Timothy 4, verse two and following. I just mean this condescending, speaking down,

I'm better, why have you let me down to your congregation? Scolding comes across where basically you say to yourself, if you're listening to the

Bible teacher or preacher, is this guy mad at me? Did I do something wrong?

And I've scolded a lot. We don't wanna be mad at our people. I come to church worship services on Sunday, Lord's Day.

It's a means of grace. I wanna tell you about the gracious one, the Lord Jesus. And of course, when we need to deal with sin or complaining or contentment issues or whatever, a lack of thankfulness, anxiety,

I know Mario never struggles with anxiety, neither do I. Well, yeah, let's address it, but it's the manner of how do you do it?

And if you think about a father trying to teach a son or mom teaching a daughter, there's a way to do it and there's a way not to.

This is an interesting quote from Spurgeon. Do not, however, let us allow our preaching right home to our people to degenerate into scolding them.

They call the pulpit coward's castle. Interesting.

And it is a very proper name for it in some respects, especially when fools mount the platform and impudently insult their hearers by holding up their faults or infirmities to public derision.

There's a personality, an offensive, wanton, unjustifiable personality, which is to be studiously avoided.

It is of the earth, earthy, and is to be condemned in unmeasured terms while there is another personality, wise, spiritual, heavenly, which is to be aimed at unceasingly.

The word of God is sharper than any two -edged sword, and therefore you can leave the word of God to wound and to kill.

And need not be yourselves cutting in phrase and manner. God's truth is searching.

Leave it to search the hearts of men without offensive additions from yourself. Spurgeon lectures to my students.

That's fascinating that he called the pulpit Coward's Castle where you probably wouldn't talk this way to someone in person.

It almost reminds me of social media. People can say all kinds of things with keyboards because you're not in front of them and there are cowards behind the keyboard.

Don't be a coward behind the pulpit. Or if you're a dad around the dinner table, certainly we are to preach the word in season and out of season reprove, rebuke, exhort with great patience and instruction.

But we are not to scold the word, we're to preach the word. I think it was

T. David Gordon that talked about how a congregation will, this isn't right, but they'll do it.

They'll say, you know, the countenance of the pastor toward me is the countenance of God toward me.

That is to say, if you're up there preaching God's word and the congregation is watching you frown and scold and berate and do things from behind this coward's castle, they, the congregation will begin to think, you know what?

Pastor seems mad at me. He's preaching the Bible. I guess God is mad at me as well. And of course, for Christians, God isn't mad at Christians.

God disciplines Christians. God corrects Christians. God chastens Christians. That's true.

We can do things that would displease God. We could sin, but we are in Christ.

Remember that we are united with Christ Jesus. Union with Christ. And therefore, when

God sees us, he sees us in his son. He sees us through the lens of Christ's righteousness.

And therefore, he's not mad at us with some kind of scowling, countenance, scolding.

I take scolding as a negative thing. And maybe you like to be scolded. I don't know. But that just starts turning people off.

That starts doing all kinds of other things like making us think, this is not encouraging.

When I used to preach, I used to think, I want people to walk up to me and say, that was intense.

That was John the Baptist -like. It was like Jeremiah or something. And I don't even know if I'm a

Christian after that sermon. That's bad preaching. If you get convicted by things in a sermon, great.

But after you discipline a child, I think you love them and comfort them and say, daddy loves you.

And so if there's going to be discipline from the pulpit through the scriptures, as the spirit of God applies it, fine, but then we give the balm of the gospel afterwards.

That's why we preach with categories like law and gospel and guilt, grace, gratitude.

That's why those things are very important. We are adopted as sons because of the triune

God's work. And therefore, God's not mad at us. And we don't want to scold God's people. We want to feed them.

Remember Peter, three times after the denial, Jesus said, well, if you love me,

Peter, what? Scold my sheep. No, feed my sheep.

That's what we do. Sheep need to be taken care of, provided for, protected. And we want to feed them with the word of God, this buffet that we have.

And you think, you go out for a good dinner, nice restaurant, just the food and the quality.

And you're like, I'm so excited. I'm hungry. And I see that here at the church that I pastor, a privilege to pastor

Bethlehem Bible Church for 28 years. People come, notebooks, Bibles ready, and they want to know what

God's word says because they want to be encouraged and they want to be fed. Zephaniah 3 .17.

Here's a verse that we probably should send to everyone that's tempted to scold people.

The Lord your God, Zephaniah 3 .17, the Lord your God is in your midst. A mighty one who will save.

He will rejoice over you with gladness. He will quiet you by his love.

He will exalt over you with loud singing. How could God do that to anyone?

Exalt over you with loud singing. How about Jude? You know the verse, but have you thought about it lately?

Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy.

And now we'll certainly have joy in heaven, but I think he is referring to the joy of God, language that we can try to grasp to say, you know what?

This is amazing. This is, I mean, that God would have so much joy over us, of course, we're gonna have to be united to Christ.

You, if you're a Bible teacher, want to encourage. You want to come alongside. I think if you're going to want to put people to sleep and bore them, scold.

Number two, how to be a boring preacher. Just talk in monotone ways.

Just never change your voice, your expression, your face. If I were to talk to you outside of your teaching role of the

Bible or preaching role, if you're a pastor, you would do things like good, better, best.

You would talk about narrow and wide. You'd smile and you'd do things.

And sometimes you talk louder. Sometimes you talk softer. This is just how we talk.

Different cultures may be a little fiery, fire, fire, fire. They have more fire than others.

Fire, fire. I hear people teach the

Bible and sometimes it is so boring because they have this flat monotone.

Maybe they're scared. Maybe they are so concerned about preaching

God's word properly and teaching it properly that the fear overrides any emotion, any personality.

Think about it. First Timothy four, Paul is writing to pastors and he's saying, I want you to read the word. Then also in second

Timothy four, he says to preach the word. So we're not just supposed to get up and just read the Bible, that we're supposed to do that, but we're also, he wants us to preach.

So God's using our personality. Providentially, he's used my personality, background,

German grandparents, Swedish grandma, all these other kinds of things. And so I am who I am now and God works through personality.

I don't want personality to dominate, but he works through personality. Just imagine phone books.

We used to get phone books all the time and they were thick. By the way, my dad was so strong, he could just rip a phone book in half.

I think there was a trick to breaking the spine, but these are big city Omaha phone books and he could just rip those things.

I imagine if you read the dictionary or read the phone book out loud, you would probably say, man, that is boring.

And sometimes that preaching is so boring. I found a boring sermon online and it was called the

Theological Implications of Ecclesiastical Chronology and Pauline Epistolatory Constructs.

It was a joke one, but it's like, okay, just imagine if I've just monotone with this kind of info.

Before I begin my 23 point outline, which I will attempt to complete without deviation,

I would like to read a brief quote from the 1879 edition of Ecclesial Typologicals in Modern Scandinavia by Bishop Thaddeus von

Sprenglof. Insofar as liturgical function is predicated on eschatological unknowing, the parousia delay ratifies the sacramental temporality with the ecclesial semperfermanda.

Can you imagine God is speaking? I say this often, I'm sure I learned it from someone.

In the old days, in the days of Israel, 2 ,000, 3 ,000 years ago, there were all kinds of false gods, but they didn't speak.

They had eyes, but they couldn't see. They had ears, but they couldn't hear. And they didn't speak, but God speaks.

That's an amazing thing. And not just speaking in nature about his power and wisdom, but God reveals his mind.

We wouldn't know anything about a triune God, except he reveals himself, he's speaking. We wouldn't understand anything about how to have our sins forgiven.

We wouldn't understand anything about incarnation and the Lord Jesus, items like, you know, the eternal sonship of Jesus.

We had no idea. We wouldn't know about predestination. We wouldn't know what glory was like. We wouldn't know anything except God tells us.

So if God's telling us things, we should probably be excited about it and have a little enthusiasm and not just boringly teach, monotone.

I mean, I regularly tell the story when I met a 15 -year -old kid up at York Beach, and it was a public, it was a hotel.

And I got in the jacuzzi. There was a pool and jacuzzi. And I got in and he was in there and he was bugged that somebody else was getting in with him.

I mean, it was big. And he's like, you know, my dad's, you know, my dad's a policeman in town.

That means I have to get out. Anyway, I said, he is? That's amazing. I'm the mayor of this town.

And I said, no, I'm not, I'm just joking. I said, I'm a Bible teacher. Ever read the Bible? You read the Bible? No, the

Bible's boring. And I thought, all right, here we go. Oh yeah,

I forgot about how boring the Bible is. That time when that general comes in, Sisera, and into this tent of this

Israelite lady named Jael. And she's like, you know what? He's an enemy, but I'll give him some curds and some milk.

And he can lay down here and sleep. And he falls asleep and she takes a hammer and a tent peg and she puts it in his temple and drives it down through the temple.

Oh yeah, that part? He goes, I never read that. Yeah, of course you didn't read that.

So let's make it as practical as possible. Dads, when you teach the Bible at home, why don't you be excited?

I guess if you have to fake it, you have to fake it, but I'd rather have it come from your heart. Why don't you be excited? We're gonna have

Bible time tonight, kids. We're gonna learn about God and we're gonna learn about Ehud and Eglon. Eglon was a very fat man.

We're gonna see what about Israel in the wilderness? What's gonna happen? Quail, manna. What about Jesus and what he's going to do?

And did you know he even slept and he got tired and he did this and he did that? I think you're excited about it.

Versus, okay kids, we're mandated by the Puritans to have family worship.

And you're gonna sit down and you're gonna love this. Dad loves it, mom loves it, you love it too.

Now get your Bibles, don't move, don't say anything, don't smile, don't ask me questions.

You're gonna learn God's word. How about this,

Psalm 119? I will also speak of your testimonies before kings and not be put to shame.

For I find delight in your commandments, which I love. I lift up my hands toward your commandments, which

I love. I guess we get into a whole thing about do you lift your hands in worship or not?

What it looks like. Probably if you look at some of the ancient near Eastern raising hands, you would come before the king and on the way to bow down, you would raise your hands up, bowing down.

Kind of hard to do when you're doing that, gonna bow down, but you could do it this way. And so I guess if you wanna raise your hands in a church service and do this, that's one thing.

But here, what about raising your hands up to the word of God?

By the way, Mario, the charismatics that attend raise their hands here during the songs. They never do that when

I'm preaching. I wonder why is that? Maybe I'm a boring preacher, maybe that's why.

But here David is like, I'm gonna lift my hands up to your word. Can you imagine? I love your word so much.

I find delight in it. Psalm 119 goes on to say, how I love your law. Right, we love

God's law because it's a reflection of who he is in his nature and his holiness and his righteousness. It says in Psalm 119 verse 97, how

I love your law. It is my meditation all the day. We don't wanna be boring preachers.

We don't wanna come across as boring Bible teachers. We wanna be excited. And of course, what needs to happen behind the scenes is

Monday through Saturday, on good weeks, it doesn't always happen, but this is my desire.

Monday through Saturday, Lord, wash me, change me. Show me this passage that I'm gonna preach in Luke chapter 10.

Show me its glory. Show me the Lord Jesus in it. Change me, convict me, help me, reprove me, come alongside of me and then get me ready to go.

And then I'm gonna show people the glories of Jesus on Sunday. So it affects me, then it affects them.

It's not just, I'm gonna study and then show them. I want to go spend time with the

King. And now I come out and say, this is what I've learned about the King. This is what he wants me to tell you. This is who he is.

This is what he's done for you. And so that way I can be excited. How to be a boring

Bible teacher, number three for today is teach too long. Preach too long.

From the pulpit, I think the number should start with a four. If you're gonna be a preacher, 41,

I guess we could start with a four. It could be four minutes, 400 minutes. But I'm thinking about 40 to 49 minutes.

I think Sunday I went 50, I can't remember. But right around 45 minutes is a good amount of time.

When I first got saved and I'd listen to somebody like John MacArthur, I'd think, how can you preach for an hour on the first word of Romans, Paul?

I thought, that is why, I just thought, that's amazing. Then when you start preaching yourself, you're like, you know what?

Yeah, I can preach for an hour. Not many people can I listen to for an hour. I start kind of zoning out after about 40 minutes.

I mean, I guess I could, maybe Sunday night service. If I look up websites with pastors and it'll say preaching through Ephesians, great.

Good seminary, great. Good statement of faith, great. And then I see 64 minute sermons, 69 minute sermons.

Week after week, I'm thinking, that's pretty rough. Especially if you're newer, I've been here 28 years.

And I think if I preach 60 minutes, people would probably take it. But I don't think I wanna do that.

I think when you're teaching the Bible at home for family Bible time, if you're not careful, dear dad, maybe moms are listening, you're gonna teach

Bibles in the morning, Bible time in the morning. Typically at our house, Kim would get the kids ready for school, whether that was private or public or homeschool.

And she would probably read the proverb of the day, right? If it's the 5th of December, you read

Proverbs 5 or whatever, talk about it. And then I would teach the Bible at night. But if you're a dad and you're gonna say, you know what?

We just had dinner, buckle up. We're gonna sit here for the next hour and have our family

Bible time. We're gonna sing some songs. I'm gonna teach and it's gonna go on for an hour. You can, and I've sat around the table for a long time, talking to the kids.

What about this? How do we work through these issues? So I'm not saying you can't sit there for an hour. I'm just saying, dads, especially, when you teach the

Bible to your kids, why don't you just read for five minutes, talk for a few minutes about who God is, what sin is, why do we need

Jesus? And then take some prayer requests and close versus I have to teach the

Bible for an hour now to my kids. And what do I say? And how much do I have to study? Just pick

Exodus chapter one, read it, read it with enthusiasm. Talk about who God is, who man is, why we need a savior.

And then pray, off we go. Don't preach too long. Here's another way to be boring.

And I'll steal Haddon Robinson's line here. Be a star spangled banner preacher.

Be a star spangled banner teacher. Mario's looking at me like, what in the world?

When you go to a football game, when you go to a baseball game in America, they play the star spangled banner. Someone sings it.

Well, in between the first quarter and the second quarter, in between the first period and the second period, in between the third inning and the fourth inning, they don't play it again.

They sing it, play it, done. Star spangled banner preaching is, we read the verse at the very beginning and then we never talk about it again.

We're just using it as a platform to jumping off point and never to go back and dig into it.

It's like, here's a Bible verse and now let me tell you about whatever I wanna talk about. That is boring when you ignore the text because the text is exciting.

The text is God's word. I want it to do the work. I want it, the powerful word, to work in people who believe.

It says about the word in the Thessalonican epistle, it powerfully performs its work in those who believe.

So I don't wanna just use the Bible as a springboard to then say, you know what? Well, let me tell you what

I really wanna talk about. No, the text drives everything. And if the text drives everything, then it's going to be exciting.

How to be a boring Bible teacher? Forget about the people you're teaching. You're like, what?

Forget about the people you're teaching? Yes, so here's what I used to do. I rightly was taught, we don't exegete the people first.

We exegete, think about the sign, exit sign to go out, pulling out what's in God's word, not putting into.

So it's exegesis, not eisegesis, putting things into. And I'm figuring it all out and I'm gonna study it.

And then I'm gonna get up and preach it. I'm gonna preach this sermon because I did my exegesis and I put it together.

And now I'm gonna preach. Okay, that's needed and that's first.

But now what I do is I do that. And then I literally sit back from my notes and say, do you know what,

Mike? A, make sure you talk about Jesus, big picture, right? If we're in some wisdom literature,

I still need to make sure that it's within the realm of the story of redemption, Christ -centered preaching, et cetera.

But then I look up and I think, I'm preaching to people. How am

I gonna craft this sermon so I can talk to the lady that just got diagnosed with stage four cancer?

And she has a name, I know her name. And I think, how can I minister to her? How can I minister to people who just lost their jobs?

How am I gonna minister to someone that just lost their spouse? How do I minister to someone who just had a miscarriage?

How do I minister to people that have joy and seasons of life and they got a new job, they have a new spouse, they have a new baby?

I'm thinking about certain people. Not because I'm gonna change the data of my sermon, but I remember

I'm preaching to the Lord's people. And therefore

I do things like this. I remember there are children sitting there and good jobs, mom and dad, for bringing your children to sit through sermons.

The way you do that at home is you teach them how to sit on the couch with a book for five minutes, then it's six minutes, then it's 10 minutes, then it's 20 minutes.

And so when it's book time on the couch, they can sit there for 30 minutes or 60 minutes because you've taught them that.

So now I'm preaching to people and I think, okay, we have new people. So if I say the word redemption,

I might say slaves into sin and now we're bought out of the slave market with a ransom price, the blood of Christ.

And so he redeems us. And so I'll explain what redemption is and how

Israel was redeemed out of Egypt and bought with a price. However I wanna do it, but I'm thinking there are children there.

And sometimes I even say, and I try to do it regularly. I think I did it this last Sunday. Children, right?

Or I'll think I've got some deep theological truths and then I'll put in a song that I know kids will get.

And I was talking about joy this last week from the pulpit right over there. And then I started going into,

I've got that joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart. And I know the kids were listening because I'm trying to bring them in.

I'm preaching to God's people. This is not an exercise of me just being in a building by myself with no one there.

I mean, think about it this way. During COVID for a while, we didn't have people come to the church because we were trying to figure it all out.

And then we resumed church services shortly after that. But when I would just preach to you,

I mean, why do you think I always say, hey Mario, when I'm doing this show? Because otherwise,

I mean, I'm looking at the camera right now, but I can see his face with my peripheral. And if he's like, what, or huh, or smiling or whatever, because it's just much more relatable when

I'm talking to people, we feed off each other in a sense. So today on No Compromise Radio, I just want you to try to teach the

Bible faithfully, enthusiastically, regularly. And I want your heart to be on fire personally as you study so then that comes across when you preach.

That's what I'm really after. When the truths of God transform us and change us and encourage us, then we want that for other people.

So my name is Mike Ebenroth. This is No Compromise Radio Ministry. Info at nocompromiseradio .com.