Video Transcript: Session 4 Preparing to Preach Bible

The year was 1958, in a little town, in northern Pennsylvania, the town there  was very proud of its town and how they reached out to each other and cared  for each other. And they decided to build a new building something that hadn't  been done in the town in years. And so an architect designed this beautiful red  brick building, and it was going to house, the City Hall, the police, and the fire all in one place. And people were excited about this. At the ribbon cutting, there  were over 100 people in this little tiny town gathered for the ribbon cutting proud  of this new facility that was created to serve the people in that community more  effectively. But it didn't take very long, within a couple of months after they  moved into the building, they began to notice that there were some problems  and the problems look something like this. Outside of the building on the  outside, there were these cracks that began to form in the bricks. And then the  windows wouldn't go up and down the way they were supposed to wouldn't shut  totally. And then the doors, you couldn't shut the doors. And then pretty soon  they began noticing gaps in the floors in various places. And then to finally make matters totally worse, the roof started to leak. And so within a matter of a few  months of occupying the building, they had to move out. inspectors came in and  the building was declared no good. And so they ended up tearing the thing down within months of building the thing and occupying it. Now a big disappointment.  Of course, for the people in town, the lawsuits filed against the builder and that  sort of thing. Several months later, they found out the reason why this building  had fallen apart the way it had. Turns out that there was a town not too far away  another little town, but it was a mining town. And so there were mines all through that area of the hills of Northern Pennsylvania. And in that mine, they were doing mining that involves setting off huge charges, which would explode a new vein  of coal to get out of the mine. And those charges would set off tremors in the  ground. Now you couldn't feel them on the surface. But apparently at the  foundational level of that building in that small town, this red building, they could  be felt. And as a result, when the foundation started to crumble, the rest of the  building couldn't stand. Now I share that with you today. Because that's just the  principle if you don't have a good foundation, or if the foundation disappears,  any building that you build is going to disappear is going to become useless, it's  going to become frustrating. And now as a metaphor, I find that that's what's  happened where I live in the United States. We began as a nation that had  some Christian values to it and some understanding of the Bible as a rule for  life. Now, at one point in this country, 90% of the people identified with the  Christian religion, but now today, that's very, very different. Here's a survey I  read this past week, says that in this country right now 65% of the builder  generation, that is those who were born prior to World War II of those people,  65% of them have a worldview that is informed by the Bible. In other words,  when they look at the world, and when they look at what happens to them, they  are looking at it through the lens of the Bible, and the values of the teachings 

that are there 65% of the builder generation. But then look what happened in my generation, the boomer generation, the ones that were the children of the  builders, only 34% of us as of a couple of years ago, had views of the world that  was informed by the Bible. In other words, when we look at the world, we look at it through the lens of the Bible, but now, now 66% Of the people don't. They  don't look at the world through the lens of the Bible, the values of the Bible, the  foundation of life that we believe the Bible is, doesn't function for them. And then you get to the age of my children, the busters, only 17% So not 83% of the  people in that generation in my country. Look at the world but don't do it through  the lens of the Bible. Only 17% of those do that have a biblically informed  worldview. And then when you look at their children, the age of my  grandchildren, it's only 4% 96% That's why they say in America, we are now a  post Christian nation. We have lost that characteristic of Christianity that defined us right up until Wow, the 1980s 1990s here in this country. Now, what I want to  say today is related to that because as people of the Bible we are called to know Make a difference, or a call to look in the cracks of society and plant the word  that something may bloom. Now to give you some context, Okay, welcome. This is the fourth class in this class on preaching, the preacher, the preparation and  the presentation of messages that are biblically informed. And today's talk is  going to be a little bit different in the sense that at the end, you might ask, Well,  why did he want to say all those stuff? I'm taking it for granted. But here's where  we've been. So far, we've been talking about preparing for preaching, and what  do you have to do? Last time, we talked about prayer, that prayer is an essential preparation for ministry that you or I, as a preacher, become a person of prayer,  praying, not just about, you know, the passage that we're going to preach on or  not just about the event on a given day or on a given Sunday. But we're people  whose lives are characterized by prayer, and that we're relating to God, and  we're seeing the world through our lenses of our relationship to God. And then  that call that Paul said, often to get others to pray as well. That would increase  the amount of power that would flow through our messages, so that people  could genuinely experience life change. So that's where we were last year. Last  Last time, as we started to talk about preparing for preaching. Now, today, in this session, Session Four, I want to talk about what you need to prepare to preach,  you need prayer, but you also need the Bible. Now, that may sound a little  wacko to you, because you say wait a minute, I'm taking a course from Christian leaders Institute. Expect that, I'd be talking about the Bible when I preach. But  I've got to tell you that that's not always the case. And we're going to talk about  that a little bit today. But I want to begin with one of the great charges in  Scripture to Timothy. Now you remember the setting of Timothy, that Paul had  mentored all these young men who became preachers, various places, but we  know Timothy and Titus in particular, because Paul wrote letters to them. And so he writes to Timothy, and he calls him my true son in the faith. And this is what 

he says, as he gets kind of toward the end of what he wants to say to him, he  challenges him this way. And the first letter to Timothy says, in the presence of  God, and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living in the dead, and in view of his appearing and His Kingdom, I give you this charge. Now look at those words a  moment. So this is so important. This is kind of like, you know, when you used to have to swear by something to make it really important, right? I, I swear by by  mother's life that this is true. You know, as a kids, we might say something dumb like that, well, this is something like that this is so important. That is not just, I'm  not just flipping, flipping out these ideas or are giving this this advice flippantly.  This is a charge that is done in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who  will judge the living in the dead, and in view of the fact that he's coming back  and in view of the fact that he is building his kingdom now. And he's going to  install a Kingdom that's going to last forever and ever and ever, in view of all  that, what what would Paul call Timothy to do? This is his charge, preach the  Word. Preach the word, be prepared in season and out of season now,  commentators discuss what that might mean. But likely what it means is that  there are going to be seasons when everything's going great in your church or  your ministry, and you preach and there's response, and people are ready to  hear and they're eager to, to respond to what you say, I I can remember a  season in my ministry like that in the late 1980s. When the church I was  privileged to pastor in Southern California was growing by leaps and bounds we  couldn't keep up with it structurally and, and it was just, it was just like that the  Holy Spirit was blowing through that congregation that's in season, but there are times out of season well, as well. When you feel like you get up you say, you  know, my words are just falling and nothing. I reading, Jeremiah, in my morning  times of meditation and devotions, and yesterday, I just read that Jeremiah was  attacked. In fact, he was beaten, and then he was put in stocks and city gates  for a whole day. And at the end of that time, he was thrown in jail. And in that  process, he decided he wasn't going to preach anymore. So this is just, you  know, people are not receiving this message. Now, he wasn't preaching a nice  message. He was preaching that unless the people repented and changed and  turned, the city of Jerusalem would be destroyed and they would be taken away  into captivity. So it's not a nice message. It's out of season, at least as far as the  people were concerned. And yet, even as he decided to stop preaching, he said  the word of the Lord began to build in me like a fire like a pressure cooker that  couldn't stop. And so eventually he had to go back to it. So be prepared in  season, be prepared out of season, ready to give a message that is appropriate  for God's people relevant to them. Correct people rebuke them and encourage  them, a lot of people need encouragement with great patience. because not  everybody's gonna respond at the right moment or some people, it takes some  time. And I think of a good friend of mine who's an alcoholic. And he tells talks  about the patience of some people with him as they prayed him and witness to 

him and preach to him, preached him back into the kingdom of God, and do it  with careful instruction. So that's the charge preach the Word. And then he says, why this is an important charge. For the time will come when people will not put  up with sound doctrine, instead, to suit their own desires they will gather around  them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.  That is a day and age that can be described throughout the ages. You can pick  sections of time, and say, You know what, people are not going to hear that  preacher because he's too this or he's too that and then go to this one, because  he's saying what we like to hear. Now, we're gonna do just some history a  minute, and I'm a history buff. There's a saying about history that if you don't  know history, you're doomed to repeat it. And so here's just some history about  why it's important that I give you today the charge in this class, to preach the  Word. I'm gonna go back, first of all, to this first, this is the first book, The first  manual on preaching. In the Reformation time, the first Protestant manual on  preaching was written by a man named William Perkins, you'll notice how he  lived from 1558 to 1602. Now, this was a time right after the Reformation. And  so there had been a return to the Word of God. And so he's writing to people  about preaching. Now. It was it's only 50 years or so since Martin Luther nailed  those 57. Those are 91 Theses on the wall and the church and Wittenberg on  the door. And so the reformation is still alive and well. And yet, Perkins noticed  some things about his, his culture. And so as he was writing, to teach people  about preaching, this is what he said, The Word of God alone is to be preached.  in it's perfection and inner consistency. You can still buy that book, by the way,  his language is rather archaic, but you can buy that book and other writings by  William Perkins. But I happen to read about him as I was preparing this series of lectures. I read about them in a book by Tim Keller, who is the now used to be  pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City. And while he was in  New York City, wrote a book called preaching and I recommend it to you  commend it to you. It's, it's a wonderful book on preaching, but he was looking  back at William Perkins work and he said this, William Perkins and his  contemporaries reacted against the cultivated oratory of their time. They  believed that the main aim and preaching had been lost, that we Let the Bible  Speak for itself, so it can pour forth its own power. And so the idea of what was  happening in England at that time was that preaching had been overtaken by  oratory. In other words, the preachers were well versed and coached and  practiced in, you know, making the right references to classical literature,  including the right poems from the right poets, preaching in a way that was  dynamic and reflective. And as a result, they were drifting from the word. Now  they'd read the word but as far as understanding even more about that passage  that they read, the rest of the service could go anywhere. And so William  Perkins is one of those who began to call people back to preach the Word,  preach the word, he himself has a rather interesting upbringing. He grew up in a 

Christian home. But even though he showed great promise, as a scholar, he  became an alcoholic, we would call him that today began to turn his life around  with the help of God, of course, and others, when a woman was walking along  and was disciplining your child and said, you know, if you don't behave, I'm  going to give you to that drunken Perkins over there. And so he decided that his  life had to be different than that. And as a result, he became a very influential  preacher and teacher and Part of his passion was to prepare people to preach.  And what do you preach? Preach the word in all of its consistency, all of its  beauty, all of its power. Now, why am I making that point to you today? Well, if  we do a quick historical survey, we're going to find that the culture around us  and the church within that culture has a tendency to drift away from preaching  the Word. At the time of the Reformation, the Roman Catholic Church had pretty much hidden the word. Remember, they not only didn't give people access to  the word, of course, it was written in Latin and Greek and Hebrew. And most  people couldn't access the word. But when people tried to translate it into  English so that everybody could read it, they put those people to death, because they didn't really want them to read the Word. And it wasn't until Martin Luther  started to read the word that he began to realize, wait a minute, the just will live  by faith. And he began to understand that the scriptures taught that we're saved  by faith, not by adhering to the rules of the Roman Catholic Church. And so in  that great group of solas, you know, the only thing the foundation of the  Reformation period, they said, sola scriptura. In other words, we're only going to  preach the scriptures, we're only going to read the scriptures, that's our rule for  faith and life. Sola fide It's only by faith that we are saying sola gratia it's only by  grace, that we experience salvation and sola Christus. It's only by Jesus Christ.  And then finally, the last one is sola deo gloria. And so it's through men who  called people back to the Bible, and preaching the Bible. People like Martin  Luther, people like John Calvin is somebody who began the Reformation  movement. And he, he was one known for organizing the Christian faith into  understandable volumes of teaching on the Bible and on the church and on  church order, and discipline and all that sort of stuff. You can find all of that with  John Keller. And so that's the way it was. That's the 16th century. And you would think, Wow, what a great thing this reformation has been, it changed the world.  But by the 17th century, in England and Scotland, you had the same kind of  thing of the church began to drift away into tradition. And as a result, the  traditions became more important than the word. And so in the 17th century,  people like Samuel Rutherford, John Owen, and you can still get their books,  their writings, their sermons, they began to preach the Word. And they began to  go into the halls of power into palaces in order to preach the word and to hold  people accountable, according to the word government accountable. According  to the word, it was preaching the word. So that's the 17th century and the 18th  century, we find that a very similar thing was going on in the Church of England. 

And so there are a couple of people who began to call people back to the word.  One is George Whitfield. The painting here is a famous painting of George  Whitfield, first visit to the United States. He came here to visit and he would  preach outdoors. In fact, there's a story told him that Benjamin Franklin, went to  hear him, and Benjamin Franklin decided to figure out how far he could hear him preaching, even though he had no, you know, didn't have any microphone didn't  have any big system to speak through with large speakers. And so he began  walking away from George Whitfield. And at at a mile, he could still hear him.  And so but, but George Whitfield was somebody who called people to  repentance and called people to living by the values of the Bible. Another one of  that period is John Wesley. And notice the title of that book, John Wesley, the  faith that sparked the Methodist movement. He was somebody who was  powerfully involved in helping people understand the word and apply it to their  lives in a methodical kind of way. That's how they got the word, Methodist, they  created these classes that study the Bible, small groups, so men and women  would gather to pray with each other, and study with each other and hold each  other accountable for their Christian life. And then in our country in the United  States here. Jonathan Edwards, in a little church in Connecticut was part of the  Great Awakening as he preached the Word to people and the spirit fell. Now,  that's a historical viewpoint. What about the modern era? You know, are people  going either a one direction or the other one is you can make tradition more  important, more important than the word or you can just ignore the word entirely. Is that happening? Now the picture of that's on the screen right now is John  Wimber. John Wimber was one of my professors and he started a movement in  Southern California where I had the privilege to live for 23 years. And in that  movement, he started a church that he said was going to be faithful to the Word  but was going to get rid of all the traditional stuff. In other words, he said, you  know, as far as theology goes, you only have to believe one thing in order to  become a member of this church, that you're saved by grace through faith. So if  you've got soteriology, that's the theological term for that part of doctrine. If  you've got that straight, you can be here. Anything else, if you believe your  children should be baptized when their babies Great, we'll baptize them, if you  believe that they should be dedicated, and then have their own baptism, when  they decide when they get old enough to make that determination, that's fine,  you can be here then, if you believe Jesus is coming back tomorrow, that's  great. You can be here, if you believe that, who knows when he's coming?  That's fine. These other areas of doctrine were less important, and especially  the traditions that would grow up around them. And so he was said he was  shocked. The church that he began, now there are several vineyard churches,  many of them throughout the United States, and Canada, and England and  Europe, etc. In that first church has been going about a year and they've been  growing by leaps and bounds and, and they started in a school and they moved 

from there into a warehouse. And he was going from his office, through the  gathering area into the Worship Center, when he heard somebody say to  somebody else, but that's not the way we do it here. And he said, he was just  astounded that right away, there were traditions growing up, out of nothing  wrong with tradition itself. But that can get to the point where tradition begins to  take over the word. And we read the word through the lens of our tradition,  instead of reading our traditions and the world, through the lens of the word. And then the other great movement that you experience in the modern era, I think, is  a people ignoring the word. So there's tradition. And then there's the Book of  Amos 8:11. The days are coming, says the Lord, when I will send a famine  through the land, not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of  hearing the words of the Lord. Yeah. I think there's that famine where I live.  Maybe it's where you live too. I do strategic planning, I'm working with a church  right now is kind of an in house consultant to do strategic planning for them in  the city in which I live Grand Haven, Michigan. And when I did this, 10 years ago with the church, I was pastoring in Grand Haven. Then we talked about the fact  that 35% of the population around us was unchurched, not a big area, small  town, USA. So 35% of the mission field here locally. And so I and a couple of  other leaders got together, we began to pray and we set a goal that that would  go down over the next 10 years. And lo and behold, it went down over the next  10 years. To 34%. And that was exciting because we say, okay, the gospel is  making a difference. And then the last time I began looking at this was earlier  this year, and I found that the number now is 47%. Just a few years later, 47% of my community is considered to be unchurched not just unchurched, but not  connected to any religion. Now, that's something amazing to me. And when I  think back, I think of all the people that I know, that left the church that had a  famine for hearing the word of the Lord. So it's important that we, somewhere  near the beginning of this class, talk about the charge to preach the Word, don't  preach your own opinions, you may have some, but those opinions have to be  seen through the lens of the word. Don't preach only what is common, what  people like to hear. Now, we've got some preachers in the United States that are rather astounding to me. And yeah, one of them, you can tune into his  broadcasts. He's on TV every time every week and sometimes several times a  week. And once he starts a sermon, the word is never mentioned again. There's  a hunger for hearing the word Lord. So I say to you, wherever you are in the  world, look at your world and know that you're called to preach the word.  Because here's the book of Hebrews, the word of God is alive and active  sharper than named double sword that penetrates even to dividing soul and  spirit joints and marrow judges, the hearts and the outs, the thoughts and the  attitudes of the heart. It's the word that has power. So I say to you in the  presence of God in Christ Jesus who will judge the living in the dead, and in  view of his appearing in his kingdom, I give you this charge, preach the Word. 

Be prepared in season and out of season. correct, rebuke and encourage with  great patience and careful instruction, because that's where the power is. And  we're going to look at the next sessions about ways that you can access the  word and interpret the word in a way that will become relevant to your hearers  and become a channel of the Holy Spirit's power and God's love to people. So  stay tuned till next time