In this audio message, Joe Morecraft discusses the topic of the preaching of God's Word. The power of Scripture and preaching is significant. Faith comes by hearing the Word of God. Pastors need to be faithful in preaching the Word of God and not adding to or taking away from it. The unregenerate are not saved by the clever and persuasive words and theories of men.

Hebrews 4:12 (NKJV) - "For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart."

Well I was very thankful for that last message and it really does, I think, segue beautifully into the next message that we'll have from Joe Moorcraft. I think what really binds us together in this room among the many different shades and perspectives that people might have is that I believe that we're a people who believe that scripture is sufficient and that scripture alone should define everything from our understanding of God, all of our practices, absolutely everything and there are lots of implications about that and of course I want to let you know that I have rewritten something we've used as a guide for many years what we've called the confession for uniting church and family and I've spent you know a good portion of my schedule for the last few months rewriting it engaging you know almost 20 men to wordsmith it and people not exactly from our persuasion to get their understanding of things. Scholars, some seminary presidents have helped me with this, and some of you as well, and I'm so grateful for that. But I hope you're able to read this really carefully, but there's a statement in here I want to direct your attention to because it really harkens to the message that we just heard from John about the heart of the matter and what defines anything that we do in the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ and there's a statement in the introduction to this new newly crafted what we're calling now a declaration not a confession so we don't want to put on the same level as a historical confession.

But let me just read it to you because I think it'll set the importance of John's message in terms of what we're trying to say in this declaration. There's a heading, the importance of this statement. While this statement addresses important matters of church and family life with significant consequences for good and for evil, we do not believe that the way the church and the family intersect is the most pressing issue before the modern church. Rather, the most pressing issue in the church today is the communication and acceptance of the true gospel of Jesus Christ, resulting in full trust and obedience to it as revealed in scripture. Thus, the need to speak to this issue of church and family life at this time in history arises from a significantly deeper problem than the complementary roles of church and family.

The deeper problem is the modern day rejection of scripture as fully sufficient for church and family life and the need to return to biblical order in the church and family this underlying matter of the authority and sufficiency of Scripture is at the heart of this declaration and so John I was so grateful for your message I it was very timely and I think exactly what I pray will continue to hear and to to harken unto and with that we're bringing Joe Moorcraft up who's gonna speak of preaching because it is in the preaching of an all-sufficient, inerrant word that God leads his church. God leads his church through his word and so it must be central and here you have a man who has dedicated his entire life to that proposition. Joe, would you come and minister to us? Thank you, brother. Good to see everybody again.

It's always an honor to be invited by Scott to speak at any of his conferences. I really appreciated the powerful message that we all heard a few minutes ago by the suit that preceded me. We're going to talk We're going to talk today about the eschatology of preaching, or more specifically, how God is going to conquer the world through the faithful preaching of the Word of God. But first of all, let us pray. Father, we come to a very serious and central issue as we deal up this subject.

We thank you that the preaching of the cross is the power of God and salvation to everyone who believes. So we pray for those who preach here today that you would make us more faithful preachers, totally dependent upon you and not upon ourselves. And because all of us here preaching, we pray, Lord, that you would bless our ears to hear it with obedience and with submission. And during this time together, we pray now that you would encourage and strengthen, convict, motivate us, deal with us by your word in whatever way we need for Christ's sake. Amen.

In my late 20s, I finally laid to rest the pessimistic view of the future in which I had been raised. And I adopted a victory-oriented view of the Kingdom of Christ in history before the second coming of Christ. It happened through a long struggle and with much serious study and prayer. But what finally pushed me into this victory orientation was the biblical doctrine of the preaching of the Word of God. What the Bible taught about the nature and the triumph of the preached word made any defeatistic, pessimistic view of the future of Christ's kingdom in history impossible.

And it was the 16th and 17th century Puritans that did it to me, that brought me to where I am in my view of preaching. Along with a book I highly recommend to you by a 20th century French Calvinist by the name of Pierre Marcel, M-A-R-C-E-L, entitled The Relevance of Preaching. God used the 16th and 17th century Puritans of my life, and particularly Marcel, to help me see what the Bible taught about the nature and power of preaching. Let me quote Marcel for you. Preaching with the power of the Holy Spirit, the Lord working with his preachers and himself confirming the word which they proclaim, the power of this preached word is the very power of God.

For it accomplishes the works which the Godhead alone is able to perform in the hearts of lost men. Its effectiveness is divine. It produces the very fruits of God. Let the pastors boldly declare all things by the word of God of which they are constituted ministers. Let them constrain all the power, glory and excellence of the world to give place to and to obey the divine majesty of this word.

Let them enjoin everyone by it from the highest to the lowest. Let them edify the body of Christ. Let them devastate Satan's reign. Let them pasture the sheep, kill the wolves, instruct and exhort the rebellious. Let them bind and loose, thunder and lightning if necessary, but let them do all according to the word of God.

And that last paragraph was by John Calvin. What was it that particularly changed my view of preaching? It was what the Bible taught about the relationship between the faithful preaching of men and the exalted, reigning, glorified Lord Jesus Christ. Once I learned that he continues to be a prophet as well as a priest and a king, he continues to be a teacher, he's the only preacher whose preaching can do you any good, that once I realized that great work of God in the faithful preaching of men, I realize that's what gives preaching its power. That's why people can leave a faithful preaching of the Word of God and go home thinking they've had dealings with God, which they have.

Because in and through the mouth of that preacher, the Lord Jesus Christ from the right hand of God by the power of his Spirit preaches. The power in our preaching is Christ preaching in our preaching from his exalted position at God's right hand by the power of the Holy Spirit. He participates in our preaching by speaking with his own mouth that which we hear from the mouths of man. The preached word therefore is a re-creative, restorative force in the church and world because in it Jesus Christ gives what he preaches. He brings what he declares.

He causes to happen what he preaches to our hearts. When the preacher preaches Christ's word, Christ causes that word to happen. The Bible says that Christ preached peace and the Bible also says that Christ brings peace. The Bible teaches us that Christ preaches repentance. It also says He brings repentance.

The Bible says that Christ preached the kingdom of God. It also said that He brings all the saving, transforming power of the kingdom of God to bear upon individuals and upon this world. In fact, in Mark 4, 21 through 25, we see Christ teaching us that his kingdom makes its way in this world through the preaching of the gospel. Shining its bright light, scattering darkness, leavening the whole loaf, and growing to be the largest tree in the garden by the message, the preaching of the message of the king and his kingdom. Listen to Mark 4, 21 through 25.

And Jesus was saying to them, A lamp is not brought to be put under a peck measure, is it? Or under a bed, Is it not brought to be put on the lampstand? For nothing is hidden except to be revealed, nor has anything been secret, but that it should come to light if any man has ears to hear let him hear and he was saying to them take care what you listen to what kind of preaching By your standard of measure it shall be measured to you, and more shall be given you besides. For whoever has, to him shall more be given, and whoever does not have, even what he has, shall be taken away from him." One verse, one passage, that particularly impacted me in understanding the power of preaching is Romans 10. I'd like for you to turn there with me, please.

Romans chapter 10. Let me read verses. We'll start with verse 12, but I really want to begin with verse 13 and read through verse 15. But the sentence begins in verse 12. For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, For the same Lord is Lord of all, abounding in riches for all who call upon Him.

For whoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved. How then shall they call upon Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in him whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they are sent?

Just as it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who bring glad tidings of good things." Now notice the chain in these verses. Whoever calls upon the name of the Lord. That's an Old Testament phrase. It means whoever worships Jehovah. The word Lord, when it occurs in the New Testament by itself more times than not, refers to Christ.

So when it says, whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Whoever worships Jesus as Lord shall be saved. But how can you call upon Him if you don't believe in Him? You must believe in Christ as your Lord and Savior in order to worship him as the Lord. Next one, how shall you believe in him whom you've not heard?

Now there are some older translations, English translations of the Bible that say this, whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. How shall you call upon him in whom you've not believed? How shall you believe in him of whom you've not heard? Now that is correct. I mean you're not going to believe in Jesus unless you've heard about him, except for the fact that the word of in the English translation is not there in the Greek translation in the Greek version now let me give you a short Greek lesson for those of you know Greek for those of you don't I don't know But I want to impress you with my knowledge of Greek.

All right. The word for here is the word ako, And normally the direct object of a verb is in the accusative case, except for words like akuo or to hear. And the direct object of that verb is usually in the genitive case. The genitive shows possession, so you normally put an of before the word that's in the genitive case, except when that word is the direct object of a kuo. You got that?

Okay great. So here is the point. Whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. How shall you call upon him in whom you've not believed, and how shall you believe in him whom you have not heard? If you have never heard the voice of Christ, you cannot believe.

My sheep hear my voice and follow me. Now I'm not talking about any audible voice to the ear. I'm talking about a voice that only the heart can understand, that great effectual calling of God. So when Jesus Christ preaches to your heart, you believe. I can preach to you till I'm blue in the face.

And if all I have is my own strength and my own power, you're not going to believe. But when Jesus preaches to you, you believe. I'll put in Southern something Spurgeon said far more eloquently. He was preaching on effectual calling and he said, and of course as always was calling people to come to Christ, and He said, now there are some of you out there who are hardened in your sins and when you hear me say, come to Christ, you say in your heart, no I won't. No I won't.

Spurgeon said, I say to you that if the Holy Spirit calls you out of darkness into light, yes you will. Yes you will. And so you're not going to worship Christ unless you believe in him. You are not going to believe in him until you've heard his voice calling you out of darkness into light. And then notice the next question.

How shall they hear the voice of Christ without a preacher? Now let's talk about that word preacher. You know there's a Greek word for preaching, heralding, karuso, not just for spreading the gospel but for actually officially heralding the gospel of Jesus Christ. There is a word for the preaching of the gospel, kerygma. And then there is a Greek word for the preacher, karouks.

Now what's interesting, and it means a herald, somebody who officially heralds a message a king has given him to declare. What's interesting is the word preacher, karuk, hardly ever occurs in the New Testament. Now that's very important to bear in mind because the point is that the important thing in preaching is not the human preacher. We're not preacher centered. The Puritans were not preacher centered.

They were preaching centered. In fact, the Greek word there, How shall you hear without a preacher? That's not even the Greek word, karouks. So that it's not really preacher. It's a present participle, which means, should be translated, He who continually preaches.

So whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. How shall you call upon him in whom you have not believed? How shall you believe in him whom you have not heard? And how shall you hear his voice without someone who has given his life to the preaching of the Word of God. Not everybody has given his life to the preaching of the Word of God.

Not everybody's supposed to. Not everybody's supposed to be a preacher. But here there is a person that Christ has sent. How shall he preach officially as a herald unless Christ has sent him? In other words, preachers aren't self-made.

If you're a real preacher of the gospel, It's not your fault. You didn't make yourself such. In spite of everything you are, the Lord Jesus Christ made a preacher out of you, one who gives his life to the preaching of the gospel. And how did he make a preacher out of you? Well, first of all, he gave you this inner, inescapable, life-consuming desire to preach the gospel, to see people converted, and to see churches arise from that preaching word.

You're happy in nothing else unless you're preaching the gospel and you're giving your life to it. And then he gives you accompanying gifts. If God has given you this inescapable desire to preach the gospel, he gives you the gift to preach and everything else that's involved in being a faithful preacher of the gospel. Christ never called anybody to preach to whom he didn't give the gift of preaching. You know the story about the young man who came to his elders and he said, I believe I had a vision the other night.

Saw these big giant letters, GP, and I believe that's God calling me to go preach. So the elders said, well, preach a sermon, let's see. So he preached a sermon to these old elders and one of them got up and said, I think you misunderstood the vision. GP means go plow. But we're not talking about visions.

We're talking about when God makes a preacher out of somebody, He gives him the inescapable desire to preach the gospel, the accompanying gifts, and the approval of the leaders of the church as he tests his gifts in front of them and as they examine him to see if he's sound and to see if his knowledge of the Word of God is both broad and deep. And then there's a fourth element. And that is God gives him a group of family somewhere in the world that want to benefit from his preaching. So in our presbytery, if somebody has believed he's been called to preach and months and years go by without a call to preach anywhere, we assume we made a mistake because God gives you the call to preach so that you might benefit people by preaching. So whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

How shall they call upon him in whom they have not believed? How shall they believe in him whom they have not heard? How shall they hear without one who has given his life, who is compelled, as Paul said, to preach the gospel. And how can he really be a preacher unless Christ sends him? Man can lay their hands on him all they want to, but men cannot make another man a preacher of the gospel.

Only Christ can do that as he is sent. And so what makes our preaching powerful? Not because of our eloquence, I assure you, I'm from West Virginia. Not because of our intelligence. But if our preaching benefits anybody, it is because Christ preaches his powerful words of spirit and life to his people through our frail and fragile but faithful preaching of the word of God.

You and I are the hammers and saws. Now after a carpenter builds a great house, People don't go up to him and say, man, what's the brand of that saw or that hammer you used? I wanna know what the hammer is and what the saw is so I can build a house like you built. Hammers and saws are nothing. It's the carpenter that's everything.

And if God works through your life, praise the Lord, that is a tremendous privilege. And if your preaching does in the hearts of men and women and young people what only God can do, It is because Jesus sovereignly and graciously preached his powerful word through your weak and frail mouth. Things started to happen. You remember the verse in Ephesians chapter 2 verse 17 where Paul says, speaking of the risen Christ, He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who are near. So now here you have these great words that Paul says Jesus came to Ephesus and preached.

Now can you tell me which one of the gospels it was That records Jesus traveling to Ephesus during his three years of life on earth? Never did. No theophany, no vision. So when did Jesus go to Ephesus and preach? It says he came and preached peace to you.

And when Christ preaches peace, people experience peace. Families experience peace. Nations experience peace when Christ preaches to them. Well, in the third and fourth chapter of Ephesians, we read about apostles and preachers and pastors and teachers and evangelists and prophets. And when these God-anointed men came and preached to Ephesus, that's when Christ came to Ephesus.

Christ came to Ephesus and preached through these faithful preachers. That's what I pray every Sunday morning. That's what you who are preachers should pray every Sunday morning at your church and teach your people to pray. Lord Jesus Christ, come to Chalcedon today and preach. Come to Chalcedon Presbyterian Church and preach to me and preach to our families, because if you don't come and preach, nothing's going to happen.

And that's what makes preaching so powerful. You remember Paul said in the last part of the book of Romans, he said, Now to him who is able to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery which has been kept secret for long ages past, but now is manifested, and by the scriptures of the prophets according to the commandment of the eternal God has been made known to all the nations leading to obedience of faith, to the only wise God through Jesus Christ to whom be glory forever. What's going to bring the Gentile nations of the world to Christ? Paul's gospel and the preaching of the Lord Jesus Christ. Not just the words of men though inspired by God, but those words empowered by the sovereign and almighty voice of Christ.

So those are some of the reasons that I developed a very high view of preaching early on in my life. And that view of preaching, as I said, has shaped my view of the future and what God is going to do in the future for men and nations and how you and I as preachers of the gospel should face the future. I want to read now several, what I think, are prophecies about the effect of preaching on this world in the book of Isaiah. I'm going to leave the exegesis up to you because I'm not going to exgeed all these passages. I'm going to say just a few words about each one of them but I want you to turn to the book of Isaiah and look at what I think are prophecies and divine promises about the transforming effect of the word of God and the preaching of that word on every area of life.

First of all, turn to Isaiah chapter 2. Now remember, I'm going to depend upon you to do your own exegesis. And if you don't have E.J. Young's commentary on the book of Isaiah, get it yesterday. In my opinion, it's the greatest commentary on Isaiah ever written.

Chapter 2, The word which Isaiah the son of Amos saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem, now it came about that in the last days the mountain of the house of the Lord will be established as the chief of the mountains, and all the nations will stream to it, and many peoples will come and say, Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us concerning his ways, and that we may walk in his paths. For the law will go forth from Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And he will judge between the nations, and will render decisions for many peoples. And they will hammer their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Let me give you a little Hebrew lesson.

The Hebrew word for and, if you were taught by an English Hebrew scholar, is waw. If you were taught by a Dutch or German Hebrew scholar, it's Vav. And the point is, thank you very much, would you open that for me? And the Hebrews would use and far more than we would. In fact, if you were an English teacher and you start every sentence in their term paper with and, you'd probably count off.

But and is a powerful word in Hebrew. It's called the wow consecutive. That is, when you see sentences that begin with the word and, that means that they're all linked. There's a chronology here that it's not just a bunch of statements, but they're linked. That's why in the first chapter of Genesis, one of the ways we know that it's not poetry, but historical narrative, and some translations don't have this.

Almost every sentence in Genesis 1 begins with the word and. To emphasize, this is chronology here. This is history here, it's not poetry. Well, you see it here in Isaiah 2 and in these various prophecies. That in Old Testament language it prophesies a time when the mountain of the house of the Lord shall rise above all of the other mountains and overshadow them all.

And when that takes place, the nations of this world will gush into Jerusalem. Not trickle, but gush into Jerusalem. And they will come to Jerusalem and they will beg the people of God. Tell us how to govern ourselves. Tell us what the law of God says as how we should govern our nations.

And all this is directly the result of what it says in verse 3, the last part. For the law will go forth from Zion, the preaching of the Word of God, and the Word of the Lord will go forth from Jerusalem. Verse 4, and in the going forth and the declaration of that law and that word, the Lord Jesus Christ himself will act and judge between nations and will cause the nations to hammer their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. You know when Hallelujah Chorus occurs and handles Messiah, I trust. Most Americans think it happens at the end, and it's connected with the second coming.

Hallelujah Chorus comes right after the great singing of the preaching of the gospel and the company of preachers taking the gospel all over the world. And then the Hallelujah chorus. Turn to Isaiah 11. How God uses preaching to convert the world, conquer the world. Let's read chapter 11 verses 1 through 9.

Then a shoot will spring from the stem of Jesse and a branch from his roots will bear fruit and the Spirit of the Lord will rest on him the spirit of wisdom and understanding the spirit of counsel and strength the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord And he will delight in the fear of the Lord, and he will not judge by what his eyes see, nor make a decision by what his ears hear. But with righteousness he will judge the poor, and decide with fairness for the afflicted of the earth. And he will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked. Also righteousness will be the belt about his loins, and faithfulness the belt about his waist. And the wolf will dwell with the lamb, And the leopard will lie down with the kid, and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together, and a little boy will lead them.

Also the cow and the bear will graze. Their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. And the nursing child will play by the hold of the cobra, and the winged child will put his hand on the viper's den. They will not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. This is a prophecy of the effects of the birth and baptism of the Lord Jesus Christ, the descendant of David.

And that as a result of his presence in this world and his work in this world, there will be the restoration of international peace and safety. The wolf will lie down with the lamb. Some people think that's literal. Some people think it's a figure of speech. I happen to think it's a figure of speech, But the point is that there will be the restoration of safety.

There will never be any utopia on this side of the Second Coming. As long as there are any more crafts in the world, there will not be a utopia on this side of the Second Coming of Christ. But things will become a lot better through the preaching of the gospel of Christ. The wolf will lie down with the lamb. The lion will eat straw with the cow.

Now what will that take? What does a lion love to do? It loves to rip the jugular out of little lambs or cows. A cow couldn't stand the thought of ripping the jugular vein out of a little lamb. It just loves to chew its grass and chew its cud.

And what would it take for the lion not to eat the cow, but to eat grass with the cow? His whole nature would have to be changed. Everything about him would have to be changed. And What is it that Christ is going to use to change the natures of the most violent people upon the face of the earth and to restore peace and to cause the saving knowledge of the Lord to cover the earth as the waters cover the sea? We're not left to guess in the last part of verse 4.

That is He, Christ, the seed of David. And He will strike the earth with the rod of His mouth and with the breath of his lips he'll slay the wicked. What's Christ going to use to bring restoration to this world and cause the knowledge of God to spread to the four corners of the world and transform the violent natures of the most wicked of men? What comes out of his mouth? Whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

How shall you call upon him in whom you've not believed? How shall you believe in him whom you've not heard? And how shall you hear him without a preacher? And how shall he preach unless he's been sent?" You remember the great picture of Jesus in Revelation 19 where he's leading his triumphant armies and he's splattered with the blood of his enemies. And what did he use to destroy his enemies?

The sharp sword that came out of his mouth. The conquest of the world by the preaching of the gospel. Turn with me to Isaiah 44. Let's read verses 24 through 28. Thus says the Lord your Redeemer, and the one who formed you from the womb, I the Lord am the maker of all things, Stretching out the heavens by myself and spreading out the earth all alone, causing the omens, the superstition, the magic, the false religions, causing the omens of boasters to fail and making fools out of diviners, causing wise men in their own eyes to draw back and turning their knowledge, not based upon the word of God, into foolishness.

How? Confirming the word of his servant and performing the purpose of his messengers. It is I who says of Jerusalem, she shall be inhabited and of the cities of Judah they shall be built. And I will raise up her ruins again, of which the return to Jerusalem after the Babylonian captivity was a type. It is I who says to the depth of the sea, Be dried up, and I will make your rivers dry.

It is I who says of Cyrus, he's my shepherd and he will perform all my desire. And he declares of Jerusalem, she will be built. And of the temple, your foundation will be laid. Here God says, I'm not only going to cause false religions to fail, and the knowledge of wise men to fail, but I'm going to rebuild Jerusalem. I'm going to remove all obstacles and I'm going to cause Jerusalem to become a praise in the earth.

And I'm going to do it all by confirming the word of his servant and performing the purpose of his messengers. Look at Isaiah 45, beginning with verse 21. Declare and set forth your case. Indeed, let them consult together. Who has announced this from of old?

Who has long since declared it? Is it not I, the Lord? And there is no other God besides me, a righteous God and a Savior. There is none except me. Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth.

For I am God and there is no other. I have sworn by myself the word has gone forth from my mouth in righteousness and will not turn back, that to me every knee will bow, every tongue will swear allegiance. They will say of me, only in the Lord are righteousness and strength. Men will come to him and all who are angry at him shall be put to shame. In the Lord all the offspring of Israel will be justified and will glory.

And men all over the world will bow in submission to God. His word will not come back without accomplishing what he was set out to do. Turn to Isaiah 52. Let's read the first 10 verses. Awake, awake, clothe yourself in your strength, O Zion.

Clothe yourself in your beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city. For the uncircumcised and the unclean will no more come into you. Shake yourself from the dust. Rise up, O captive Jerusalem. Loose yourself from the chains around your neck, O captive daughter of Zion.

For thus says the Lord, You were sold for nothing, and you will be redeemed without money. For thus says the Lord God, my people went down at the first into Egypt to reside there. Then the Assyrian oppressed them without cause. Now therefore, what do I have here, declares the Lord, seeing that my people have been taken away without cause. Again the Lord declares, those who rule over them howl, and my name is continually blasphemed all day long.

Therefore my people shall know my name. Therefore in that day I am the one who is speaking. Here I am. How lovely on the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who announces peace and brings good news of happiness, who announces salvation and says to Zion, your God reigns. Listen, you watchmen lift up your voices, preach.

They shout joyfully together, for they will see with their own eyes when the Lord restores Zion. Break forth, shout joyfully together, you waste places of Jerusalem. For the Lord has comforted his people. He has redeemed Jerusalem. The Lord has bared his holy arm in the sight of all the nations that all the ends of the earth may see the salvation of our God.

Paul was thinking of that passage when he wrote Romans 10. Whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. How shall they call upon Him in whom they've not believed? How shall they believe in him whom they've not heard? How shall they hear without a preacher?

How shall he preach unless he's been sent? How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who preach the gospel. Isaiah 55, verse one, the whole chapter. Oh everyone who thirsts, come to the waters, and you who have no money, buy and eat. Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost.

Why do you spend money for what is not bread and your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me and eat what is good, and delight yourself in abundance. Incline your ear and come to me. Listen that you may live, and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, according to the faithful mercy shown to David. Behold, I have made him a witness to the peoples, a leader and a commander for the peoples.

Behold, you will call a nation you do not know, and a nation who knows you not will run to you, because of the Lord your God, even the Holy One of Israel, for He has glorified you. Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts. And let him return to the Lord, and he will have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.

For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there without watering the earth, and making it bare and sprout, and furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be which goes forth from my mouth, it shall not return to me void, empty, without accomplishing what I desire and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it. For you will go out with joy and be led forth with peace. The mountains and the hills will break forth into shouts of joy before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands. Instead of the thorn bush, the cypress will come up, And instead of the nettle, the myrtle will come up.

For it will be a memorial to the Lord for an everlasting sign which will not be cut off." The power of the preached word in causing the world to be conquered by Christ. My word that goes forth from my mouth, how shall you believe in him whom you have not heard? How shall you hear him without a creature? My word which comes forth from my mouth that comes forth from your mouth shall not return unto me void. I had an old primitive Baptist friend in the mountains of southwest Virginia where I'm from.

He was illiterate, but he memorized whole sections of the King James Version of the Bible, or at least he thought. And so on one occasion he was preaching on Isaiah 55 and he said, as God said, my word shall not return unto thee unavoided. He got the point? So now when you preach on Sunday mornings or whenever you preach the gospel, and of course preaching is not to be confined to Sunday morning in church, preach the gospel everywhere, What was the old Puritan's name that he was jumped on because he would preach in various parishes without getting permission from the bishop? He said, well now you got me wrong, I only preach two times a year.

It's only two times a year I preach. In season and out of season. So that's the way we want to preach. Don't just preach once, preach all the time. Because the preaching of the cross is the power of God and the salvation to everyone that believes, capable of causing the world's nations to become Christ's disciples.

So when you preach, preach as if Jesus Christ was right there in the pulpit with you. And picture John Knox, you remember? John Knox with a sword standing behind the great preacher George Wissert, who was later a martyr, daring any soldiers of the crown to mess with him while he was preaching the gospel. Well, there's somebody greater than John Knox in the pulpit with you. Do not fear men's faces.

You preach the word of God faithfully whether men are frowning or smiling, it doesn't matter. The only thing you want to be concerned with is whether there's a smile on the face of the one holding the sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God standing in the pulpit with you. If there's a smile on his face while you're preaching it doesn't matter who's frowning or who is smiling. And this preacher who's behind you, This great reigning Christ by the power of his spirit not only can protect you and defend you but empower your preaching and Cause your preaching to accomplish only what God can accomplish So praise the Lord for a preached Christ. Praise the Lord for a preached Christ.

It is Christ, and through the preaching of Christ, that you'll conquer the world. I embarrassed a bunch of Presbyterian preachers one time. That should be an encouragement to some of you. I embarrassed a bunch of Presbyterian preachers one time I pressed them. I said, how many of you know the verse where Paul says, I determined to know nothing among you but Christ crucified?

Of course, everybody raised his hand. And I said, well, the only problem is there is no such verse. Would you raise your hand? There is no such verse that says, I determined to know nothing, but I determined to preach Christ crucified. That's not what it says.

It says, I determined to preach Christ, comma, and Him crucified. So the focus, as important as the crucifixion of the cross is, and if we're not preaching the cross, we're not preaching the gospel, as central as that is, what is even more central is the risen, ascended, reigning, exalted Lord Jesus Christ. That's the focus. And that's who we preach. We preach about this reigning Christ, once crucified, shedding his precious blood for sinners.

But it's Christ that we preach. Praise the Lord for a preach Christ. But here's another thing to praise the Lord for. And I praise the Lord for this. For the 40 years I've been pastor of my church in Atlanta.

Praise the Lord for a preaching Christ. Where would we be without a preaching Christ? Calvin would speak of the pulpit as the throne of Christ, the judgment seat of Christ, from which he rules and judges the world. And you and I are his pathetic, rusty, dull, temporal pathetic, rusty, dull, temporal saws and hammers and screwdrivers. And what a privilege it is to be used by the King of Kings.

If you have any doubt as to whether or not the preaching of the Word of God has the power the Bible claims for it, If there's any doubt in your mind as to whether or not the preached word has the power to transform and conquer the entire world, then listen to these words by the great James Thornwell, one of the most powerful preachers that lived in the 19th century. Listen, if the church could be aroused to a deeper sense of the glory that awaits her, She would enter with a warmer spirit into the struggles that are before her. Hope would inspire ardor. She would even now arise from the dust and like the eagle plume her pinions for loftier flights than she has yet taken. What she lacks and what every individual Christian lacks is faith.

Faith in her sublime vocation, in her divine resources, in the presence and efficacy of the Spirit that dwells in her. Faith in the truth, faith in Jesus, and faith in God. With such a faith, there would be no need to speculate about the future. That would speedily reveal itself. It is our unfaithfulness, our negligence, and our unbelief, our low and carnal aims that retard the chariot of the Redeemer.

The bridegroom cannot come until the bride has made herself ready. Let the church be in earnest after greater holiness in her own members, and in faith and love undertake the conquest of the world and she will soon settle the question whether her resources are competent to change the face of the earth. Let us pray. We thank you, Almighty God, that one day many years ago you preached to us and we were saved. We thank you for the times that we have been privileged to see you preach through us and see people brought to faith, renewed faith, obedience, renewed obedience, maturity.

We pray that you would continue to use us in our future, oh Lord, as preachers of the gospel. We long to be used to you. That's all we want to live for, is to be used to view in seeing the power the gospel prevailed in men and nations. And so, Lord, I do earnestly pray for the preachers in this room. Give them deep abiding humility, great faith in you, a greater faith in the power of your word, and use them and their testimony and their faithfulness down through their generations to bring countless men, women, and children to faith in Jesus Christ.

Use them to build a great church upon this earth. Use them to make the world's nations Christ's disciples. Amen. Christ's disciples. Amen.

Thank you, Joe. We want to just give a few minutes for any questions anybody else might have. You know Joe, there are preachers in this room, some in their 20s, some in their 30s, some in their 40s, Some in their 50s. Jeff Pollard and I are in our 60s. How about that?

And there's some in their 70s. I don't know if there's anybody in their 80s preach. Is there in this room? I don't think so. So There's your crowd right there.

Any questions for Joe? Don't hesitate if you do. I have a t-shirt somebody made for me. I got an opinion. You got a question?

Yes, sir? Your name is McAlpin? Kenneth McAlpin? The first king of Scotland? Buried on the island of Iona?

That is great. So, yes sir. Yes, next question. I think that the preaching that Christ uses normally is the faithful preaching of the word of God, not just any kind of preaching. Although, I did have a professor in seminary named Ronald Wallace, who when he was a young man in Scotland was a professed atheist.

And so he got some of his friends together and he said, let's get the greatest atheist debater in Great Britain to come and let's rent a hall and let's advertise and get him to come and refute Christianity once and for all. Now Dr. Wallace was a godly man later in life, so they pulled their money and they hired this atheistic debater and got this hall and hundreds of people showed up and Ronald Wallace was sitting in the middle of this room excited about how this debater is going to destroy Christianity with no intentions whatsoever of becoming a Christian. So the debater gets up and he gives his reasons and he says, now to show you the irrationality of Christianity, I'm going to read from the third chapter of Romans. So with this contemptuous voice, he reads the third chapter of Romans and Dr.

Wallace gets converted. And that's the very moment. Now that shows you how powerful the Word of God is. But the answer is yes, I believe they're evangelists. I believe evangelists are church planters, not people who go around holding crusades, but people who plant churches.

I'm talking about pastors and teachers, preachers, spreading the gospel and building up churches. Our church in Atlanta for 40 years has been committed to planting new churches in various places. And we are right now planting a new church in Birmingham, Alabama, because we believe not that we should go out and get isolated, detached, unrelated individuals here and there to sign the dotted line, but to build strong churches and to pastor those churches as the base camp, the base of operation for the conquest of the world. So we preach in our churches evangelistically. We preach in our churches to build up people to faith.

I mean that's the heart of everything we do preaching and teaching inside and outside the church. Is that sort of... Yes sir? Amos tells you that. We're living during a day of famine of the preaching of the Word of God.

Two kinds of famine in Amist. A famine of hearing. Most I think I hope I'm did wrong on this. This is one thing I hope I'm completely wrong about. And that is that I think most Christians really don't want to hear the word of God.

Most professed Christians don't want to hear the word of God. So we have a famine of hearing and then we have a famine of preaching so that the pulpit has always been in this country probably the most powerful force in the early days for good. Now it is the most powerful force for evil. On one side you have the liberals and the humanists who reject the Christian faith and on the other side you have those who think they're preaching the truth but who continue as our brother preached a while ago to preach something that in 1618, in Dort, was condemned by the whole reform world as heresy. And yet most preachers today are Armenian at best, Pelagian at worst, conservative and liberal.

So I think the state of preaching is lousy. I think that God's going to judge the church, except by grace, because of the pulpit. There's an old story in mountains of West Virginia. If you have a muddy stream, you can't get the mud out of the stream until you get the hogs out of the spring and you're not going to get the mud out of the stream of most of the denominations in America until you get the hogs out of the springs that is the seminaries And if revival is going to come to the Christian church in America, it seems to me it's got to start with the pulpit, where preachers humble themselves before God and cry out to him for mercy and those that are not called to leave the pulpit and those that are rededicate themselves to preaching the whole counsel of God. Does that answer your question?

Yes sir? You mean while he was in jail? Is that where Paul says okay go ahead yes. I want you to read that text before I give you my two cents worth. Reads everybody I think what he means by that, he's a little earlier, he talks about how his imprisonment and the way he suffered and the way Christian brothers saw him suffered made them more courageous in preaching the word of God without fear.

But then he also says, now that I'm out of the way some of them these ambitious brothers of mine think they're going to move up the scale and they're going to become more important and they're going to take my place because they're very jealous and they're very ambitious and they are going to preach Christ and it's all going to be for ulterior motives. He said but the important thing is Christ is being preached. I had a friend, a former Baptist preacher many years ago named John Reesinger and He told me about this man, this deacon in his church. John could never do anything right as far as this deacon is concerned. He was always criticizing him, always jumping on him for one thing or another and John who was a Calvinist believed five points Calvinism anyway was I mean a nervous wreck, angry, nervous and so he was having private worship one time and he said to the Lord in so many words, Lord this is crazy.

I mean here he said I go around the world preaching that you're sovereign and that we know that all things work together for good to those that love the Lord and here I'm letting this deacon make me a nervous wreck and I know you have him in my life to teach me patience and to hone me down and so Lord please forgive me for my attitude I've got to go to Deacon so-and-so, ask his forgiveness. So John goes to Deacon so-and-so and he says, sir, I need to tell you something. I need to ask your forgiveness because I've had a bad attitude toward you. God's using you in my life to make me a better Christian. You'll probably go to hell for it, but God is using you.

So that's what Paul is saying. He's not condoning their ulterior motives, but he's saying what's more important than the preacher is Christ himself. Use of humor in the last moment. We all have, specifically though, on one more picture of the panel of elders assessing what the dean means to the young visionary. If you were there, that seasoned elder, would you tell him to go plow as an eloquent way of spelling practice in the context of preaching?

Or as an ammunition to indeed seek a better... Well, that is a good question. And understand, in Presbyterian circles there's two kinds of elders, not in all formed Baptist churches, but in, because I don't want you to misunderstand me now. I understand the nature of your question. I should have clarified.

There's two kinds of elders. One is not over the other, but there's ruling elders and preaching elders. We get that from 1 Timothy 5 verse 17 that says, that the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who work hard at preaching and teaching. So an elder can be honored and never preach a sermon in his life. So what we require of men who are going to be ruling elders but not preachers, and preachers aren't overruling elders, there's equality of authority.

What we require of elders and deacons in our church is just like the Second London Baptist Confession is the constitution of many of your churches, our constitution is the Westminster Confession of Faith and Larger and Shorter Catechism, of which the Second London Baptist Confession is a wonderful plagiaristic document. The next session will clear that up. So we require them, they have to go through about a year refresher's course with me on what the Bible teaches about the Westminster Confession of Faith because they're going to be asked a question. They're going to be asked publicly before God, is the Westminster Confession of Faith your Confession of Faith? Is there any paragraph in any chapter of the Westminster Confession of Faith or Catechism with which you disagree?

So they better know their stuff because the people that examine are the other ruling elders. We have two preaching elders in our church, but most of them are ruling elders who don't preach but are apt to teach. And I mean, they grill them. And the only difference we make between an elder candidate and a deacon candidate, since a deacon doesn't have to be apt to teach, he has to believe the same thing but he doesn't have to say it well. And so we require knowledge, I mean not the same thing we would require of somebody who's going to spend his life preaching.

So if somebody has been trained to be a preaching elder, and we usually require them, particularly if they're young, they have to go through a three-year program in our little one-horse seminary taught by the pastors in our denomination. And they will be examined concerning theology, content of the Bible, apologetics, philosophy, sacraments, church government, history. They'll be given the opportunity to preach, to see where they need to go plow. And that takes hours. One funny thing is because they're going to be in the pulpit and they're going to have people's souls in their hands, so to speak.

And we want to make sure as much as is humanly possible that what they preach is going to be true. We have one history. I got five minutes. I hate those little things, those signs he holds up, I love you. We have a guy who gives the church history exam named Don Crow, great.

I mean, he's such a low-key guy that he can say something funny and you laugh five minutes later You know you don't realize it Like he said one time at Charles the first did not like his severance package Well anyway, so he was examining these young guys and he said, now we've spent the past hour on the early church, let's move now to the medieval church and let's talk about the papacy. And between the years 1150 and 1350, who was the head of the church? And I remember this one seminary student was panicking. He said, I didn't even study the Pope's. And he said, Mr.

Crow, I don't know who was the head of the church for those 200 years. And Mr. Crow said, Christ was the head of the church.