In this audio message, Scott Brown discusses the topic of preaching. Preaching is a powerful tool that God uses within a church. Pastors are called to faithfully exposit the Word of God -- they aren't called to come up with their own creative lessons and messages. It is the Holy Spirit that convicts the heart, not us.

2 Timothy 2:15 (NKJV) - "Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth."

The National Center for Family Integrated Churches is pleased to present Elder Training. This message is entitled, Preaching, and is hosted by Scott Brown. I have with me Dan Horne and also Joaquin Fernandez, whose picture I hope you can see on the screen. And then my father, Bill Brown, is here also in the studio with us, which is always great to have him here. And Ryan Glick is running the technology, and Peter Bradrick is here, and Joshua Horn is here, Dan's eldest son.

So as we begin, let's seek the Lord in prayer. Oh Lord, we thank you for your kindnesses toward us in using preaching. We thank you Lord for establishing the way that you would help your people and how much help you've given to us this way has been such a blessing. And Lord, as we now consider these things, that you would help us to understand how we might be faithful to you in all of our preaching. I pray that you would bestow the men that are with us tonight with power that you would grant them lucid thoughts that they never could have on their own that you would help them with the Holy Spirit by illuminating their minds.

Oh Lord, you've given us a hammer, a fire, a word, and we're so thankful for it. Now Lord, that you would help us to glorify you in this discussion and that you would use it to promote faithfulness toward you. Humble and yet confident and faithful preaching all the days of our lives. In Jesus' name, Amen. Okay, so this subject of preaching is a very, very important one.

I've been reflecting over the last couple of weeks, especially, about the power of preaching. I think it really started in my mind to have prominence when I was considering the wedding of my son, David, who was married last week. What his wedding made me think about was the power of preaching, because many of the blessings that he is enjoying now, many of the blessings that his wedding really represented were a direct result of preaching. The transformations that happened in our family, the realizations that came to us, the way that he was directed and his youth were hardwired to preaching. Specific messages that I heard, specific text of scripture.

Preaching is powerful. It'll change your life. It'll shake everything up. It'll shake a city down. It'll shake a heart up.

It is so powerful. So I'm grateful that we're able to consider this tonight. But I look back, even as a young believer in my teens, God was shaping my life through preaching as a young man and I'm so thankful for the preachers that God gave to me in those days. So we're studying a really important subject. Yeah, one of the things that that strikes me too is that we can think of preaching and think of the one big message that we hear or you know that this fantastic message that somebody gave but that's not actually what changes lives what actually changes lives is the week in the week out careful exposition scripture You know Isaiah puts it in Isaiah 28, 10, for precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little.

So it's not that great message that you heard that one time that actually transforms lives. It's the faithful week by week preaching of shepherds of the church of God. Amen. You know, I'm reminded of Titus chapter 1 verse 3 where we read, But God has in due time manifested his word through preaching which was committed to me according to the commandment of God our Savior that's how the Apostle Paul begins his letter to Titus but God uses this method this strange odd foolish you know unmet you know method it's an untimely method It's not the kind of communication that you would think God could use. He needs something glitzier, something more powerful.

In a time where churches, right, frequently they think the most important thing is counseling. And they think the most important thing is their activities. And they think the most important thing are all these side issues. The reality is the thing that God says is the most important for the changing of God's people is the Word of God preached faithfully. Amen.

Joaquin, let's see. Any thoughts? We want everybody to hear your voice so they know when you're talking. So Joaquin Fernandez with us at Hope Baptist Church, a dear brother in the Lord, and we're just grateful Joaquin that you're able to join us. Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself.

Well yes, my name is Joaquin Fernandez, I'm married to Monica. We have four children and we moved to this area four months ago, but we've been coming up here over the last probably three, three and a half years. And I can attest to the power of being under good preaching because after being for many, many years under not so good preaching, you know, your life just goes with whatever wind of doctrine. But when you are exposed to the Word of God preached faithfully, truly your life is transformed. I can attest to that.

I'm very grateful. And I can see it in my own family, in my own home, as I crack the book and read it every day. It may not be preaching exactly, but it is washing with the Word. It's not the brilliance of the message, right? It's not even the flawlessness of the preaching.

It's the faithfully going to God's Word and God's Word actually speaks to lives today, and to believe it, and to trust in it, and to trust that God is still sovereign over all things on this earth. Yeah, that's how Paul saw his own preaching. He said to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 2, he said, I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power." And then he says, why? This is the way it is, that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.

You know, what a blessing it is to have a people whose faith rests on the wisdom of God and not some hot personality that's somehow making everything perfect for everyone. Or even somebody who thinks that they're speaking directly to the needs of the congregation. The reality is one of the powerful ways that God uses preaching is that you preach your message, you faithfully try to exposit what's in the passage, and God applies it to different people in different ways in the way that they need it. And Boy, if you had to do that off of man's wisdom, you'd miss everybody. Just faithfully expositing the word is the way to actually change the lives of the people in the congregation.

And Paul says that the power of preaching is in the Resurrection, not in the man. He says in 1 Corinthians 15, 14, if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty. So there's a direct connection between the resurrection and its power and the preaching. You know, we're here getting ready to celebrate the resurrection on Sunday and when we celebrate the resurrection we're really you know recognizing many many fruits of the resurrection the power of the resurrection as it's expressed in so many ways well one of those ways is that It's the resurrection that makes preaching powerful. And for those of you who haven't preached, one of the things to trust in is that if you're faithfully trying to exposit the Word of God, that it's the Holy Spirit that convex people's hearts.

And so, Not that this gives you an excuse to be sloppy or anything like that, but the reality is it's God that does it. And so it's the Holy Spirit that gives the power to preaching. And so the Holy Spirit corrects a lot of our mistakes, right? We have the promise from Romans 8 that He corrects our mistakes in prayer, and the reality is he corrects our mistakes in preaching as well. Right.

Thank God for the answer. So let's jump into John MacArthur's book, Preaching, How to Preach Biblically. I chose this book because it communicates a pretty broad range of subject matter that needs to be considered. And like any book, you know, I think you'll find things that you may not completely embrace, as we have it. I think, you know, the categories are very important.

A lot of the principles are important. Some of them actually serve, some of the things that are in the book actually serve as a teaching tool to correct errors. So hopefully we'll get to some of that tonight. But I really, I'm grateful for this book. And I think the introduction and the first chapter are worth the price of the whole book.

That's all that you had. Let's jump in here. MacArthur talks about what's wrong with superficial, marginally biblical preaching. Interesting, it was a few years ago in our church here, We're doing something with our young men. We called it Boys Day at Southeastern.

Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary is about a four minute walk from where we're broadcasting here and from my office. So we would gather the young men in the church, find the time when they had scheduled an exemplary expository preacher and take our boys over there and say, this is expository preaching. Then we would take them out to lunch afterwards and ask them a bunch of questions and have them testify to what they learned. They had a worksheet to fill out, outline the message, say was it topical, was it expository, was it theological or thematic. Those are really neat times.

One of the times we took our boys over there, MacArthur was there. This was many years ago. He had just written these things up and he gave these at the conference and then ended up putting them in this book. I just remember listening to this message, which was so fantastic. Here's what he said on that day.

He said, It usurps the authority of God over the soul. It removes the lordship of Christ from His Church. It hinders the work of the Holy Spirit. It demonstrates appalling pride and lack of submission. It severs the preacher personally from the regular sanctifying grace of Scripture.

It clouds the true depth and transcendence of our message and therefore cripples both corporate and personal worship. It prevents the preacher from fully developing the mind of Christ. It depreciates by example the spiritual duty and priority of personal Bible study. It prevents the preacher from being the voice of God on every issue of his time. It breeds a congregation that is weak and indifferent to the glory of God as their pastor is.

It robs the people of their own, a true source of health. It encourages people to become indifferent to the Word of God and divine authority. It lies to people about what they really need. It strips the pulpit of power and it puts the responsibility on the preacher to change people with his cleverness. I love the points.

I think every one of them is really fantastic. Hey, any questions that you guys have, flip them over the wall. We'd love to try to answer anything that you have. Lead us, if you will, in the direction you'd like us to go, but we'll just talk through the points of the book and then deal with whatever is on folks' minds. Dan, any thoughts on this first part of the introduction?

I think these 17 points, I think, are the best part of the book as you said. And I thought he sums it up really well in the first point which he says, who has the right to speak to the church, the preacher or God? And that's really the bottom line question. Are you pulling your messages from Scripture? You're pulling the message out of your own mind.

If you're pulling them out of your own mind, you're saying that a man is the chief shepherd of the church. You're saying a man is the one who has authority over the church and not the word of God. And in the end, everything falls apart after that Because we know what man produces. It's stuff that falls apart, as opposed to if you really want the people to be transformed. It's faithfully saying, what has God said?

That that's what's transformative. It struck me that he does one of the exegetical fallacies that DA Carson is going to talk about next week, next time. We're in point three where he says it hinders the work of the Holy Spirit. He actually says in there, in fact, it is the only tool he uses, meaning the Holy Spirit. And he uses Ephesians 6, 17 for it, and take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God.

Boy, that is a really bad handling of the text. The Holy Spirit is gracious and He uses the word of God. The Holy Spirit never teaches anything contrary to the Word of God, but the Holy Spirit can act. He is God. He doesn't require the Word of God.

Right? It's not the Word of God does not constrain the Holy Spirit. It's just that the Holy Spirit, because He is God, never speaks contrary to it. In the introduction in 13, page 13 in the introduction, he talks about the achievements of expository preaching, and he says, expository preaching expresses exactly the will of the glorious sovereign and allows God to speak, not man. Expository preaching retains the thoughts of the Spirit and brings the preacher into direct and continual contact with the mind of the Holy Spirit who authored Scripture.

Expository preaching frees the preacher to proclaim all the revelation of God, producing a ministry of wholeness and integrity. Expository preaching promotes biblical literacy, yielding rich knowledge of redemptive truths. Expository preaching carries ultimate divine authority, rendering the very voice of God. And then finally, expository preaching transforms the preacher, leading to transformed congregations. I think all those are important, but Dan, let's talk a little bit about this last one.

It transforms the preacher. Right, and point five of this list is basically the same point and one of the things that I underlined in the book was what he says after that is, the greatest personal benefit that I get from preaching is the work that the Spirit of God does on my own soul as I study and prepare for two expository messages each Lord's day. It probably shouldn't be this way, but I know it's this way for me that it's when I prepare a message that I have the best understanding of any text. It's just because there is such a responsibility when you step into a pulpit to actually make sure that you're rightly dividing the word of truth for these people. Those who are teachers will be held to a stricter judgment, James 3 says.

And so because of that, there's a certain pressure that I find... That's why one of the reasons that for me it's a great joy to preach is it's actually the preparation and that I actually spend the time and feel the pressure so that I actually handle the Word of God very carefully. And so it's a tremendous blessing. Right. You know, and the other part of it is that it takes you places that you wouldn't necessarily go.

There's so much growth that's embedded in the process of expository preaching for a man because it takes him out of himself, it forces him to deal with things that he wouldn't normally deal with or things he's not comfortable with dealing with. One of the other points that I put a mark by in the book is point eleven that it robs people of their only true source of help. It's very easy when people come to you for counseling to come up with wisdom out of your own mind, but that does not help them. The only thing that really helps them is to say, here's how scripture applies to your problem. That's where the true source of help is.

And if you're not doing it in the pulpit, that you're dealing with the Word of God and saying this is to affect lives, then people aren't going to do it on Monday. They're not going to do it on Tuesday. Yes, when you counsel people, it's very important to be going back to the Word of God. But the reality is, if on Sunday you're testifying that the word of God is not authoritative, it really doesn't matter when somebody has a problem and comes and asks you for help and you go to the word of God. It's that week in and week out.

What are you actually practicing? Are you actually saying that the word of God is what's transformative? The word of God is where there is help in this fallen world. Let me ask you a question because I see this relationship between the preacher and the congregation on Roman numeral 13 that you pointed out here. It says expository preaching transforms the preacher leading to transformed congregations.

I've read that, and this might be a denominational thing, some denominations or perhaps just the church as a whole, you have new pastors every two or three years. And is there any correlation between an expository preacher being 20 years at a pulpit rather than someone who runs out of ideas in a congregation that is no longer excited about a preacher who's pulling things out of a hat rather than from scripture. Oh, yeah, it keeps you from saying the same thing over and over again. We tend to do that anyway. We have favorite stories that just pop into our minds, you know, they keep popping in there and we're tempted to use them and maybe become a little bit pedantic.

But yeah, I think that is one of the brilliant things about expository preaching is that it keeps you moving in the things of God and not your own brain. When Paul says, follow after me as I follow after Christ, that is something that every pastor in a sense says when he steps into the pulpit. Every man who preaches the word of God is saying follow after me as I follow after Christ. And if the man of God is not studying and is not increasing in his knowledge and he's not dealing with other tax, the congregation is going to catch up and just stop, right? There is not going to be any transformation in the congregation because the pastor is not going to stay out ahead of them.

And so everybody will be baby Christians. And so yeah, and I think that then the people go, well, we've heard that message so many times. We're not getting anything out of this. And then the pastor usually leaves. Right?

I mean, I think in the Southern Baptist Convention, it's something like a two-year as the average stint for a pastor. You look at Luther, you look at Calvin, you look at Baxter, you look at all these men that could spend 30 years in a pulpit. They didn't spend 30 years in a pulpit by saying the same stories every other week. Right. Right.

Hey, just a thought here about this book. I know a lot of us are strapped for time in the reading of these books. The first two parts of the book I think are really the heart of the book. And the rest of it gives some helpful technical things. The chapter on prayer by James Roskam I think has some very compelling, helpful, humbling kinds of things in it.

If you're short for time, read the introduction, rediscovering and sponsoring preaching. The MacArthur articles I think are probably the best ones in the book and the one on prayer. So let's see, let's move on here. This is the Richard Mayhew chapter. He makes a comment that is true but shouldn't scare us as much as someone might hope it would scare us.

Unchurched people today are the ultimate consumers. We may not like it, but for every sermon we preach, they're asking, am I interested in this subject or not? If they aren't, it doesn't matter how effective our delivery is, their minds will check out. Well, the Spirit of God is what takes the foolishness of preaching and makes it something effective. And of course we ought to constantly sharpen ourselves and be aware of how we're communicating.

It is true, we have a very immature populace in the church that are looking for another jag. So let's see, here's a question. I had a hard time deciding if they were trying to raise the bar for faithful preachers or if they were claiming that only seminary trained well-rounded Bible scholars are qualified to bring the Word. What are your thoughts? Good question!

When we were talking to our own men about this in the sessions here in Wake Forest, this was something we spent some time on. So we disagree. Does the scripture teach us anywhere that seminary training is required for men to preach? Well here's the answer. No it doesn't.

And so what does qualify a man to preach? Well, the Bible just doesn't give us seminary training in its laundry list of qualifications. And one of the dangerous things that happens with seminary training is that if you look at what there's 23 something like that qualifications for an elder and only two of them really have to do with knowledge and apt to teach and not a novice and you look at all the rest of them and they are character qualities. And so when you make a statement like this, and the book does make a statement, it was written for a seminary. It was written for a seminary class.

And so there's implicit in it, it's not explicitly saying it, but it's definitely pointing towards seminary trade well-rounded biblical scholars. But the reality is a man with character is what God puts down in His Word as the most important qualification. And so we get these people who have a lot of head knowledge that has puffed them up, and they stand in the pulpit, and because they're seminary trained, because they're well-rounded Bible scholars, we think somehow that qualifies them. No, that's not the qualifications that God has given. Does that mean that you should be ignorant of the word of God?

Absolutely not. You're not to be a novice. You are supposed to be apt to teach you do need to rightly divide the word of truth but it's not seminary training is not I mean it could be helpful but it is not the end-all be-all the apostles explicitly were not trained in the academy the people here is recognized that they recognize them as not being educated meaning not brought up in the academy but what and they make that charge of Jesus Christ as well that he's not qualified because he wasn't educated in the academy right I mean but what did they say they said well they were recognized as having been with Jesus. And I think there's a lot loaded into that statement. The knowledge of the scriptures, humility.

A transformed life. A transformed life, yeah. So yeah, we don't buy into the seminary exclusive seminary model. I went to seminary, I'm grateful that I did. Charles Swindoll used to say, it takes you three years to get through seminary and I think 15 years to get over it.

This is a seminary president that says that. I think there's some truth to that. You handle the word of God clinically, technically, it's not good for you. At the same time, I mean I look back at my own seminary experience as a blessed time. My heart was hungry, I desired to be faithful, It was a blessing.

I focused on Bible exposition and theology and those are my favorite subjects today but it was a blessing to me but I think that it can transport you out of the world that you need in order to be preaching effectively. And it emphasized the sacred secular distinction that isn't emphasized in the word of God. The elders are taken out from among you. They are end samples. They are people that are in the congregation.

And all of a sudden, it's heading back towards Rome in a sense, that all of a sudden, that the person who's qualified is the person that somebody else has put the stamp on. It's not the pope. Instead, it's the president of the seminary. But that's just dangerous. The education's fine.

It's just dangerous, Some of the baggage that goes with the education. Right. Scott, you have a talk that you gave some years ago, the home as a factory for church leaders. And that, in Scripture, we see how it's from the bottom up, the groan in the body in the home. And also that's where they're proven.

And the book does seem to make the case that it's more top-down, don't try this at home, we're professionals kind of thing. Right, right. We don't want to diminish the importance of languages. We don't want to diminish the importance of careful scholarship and an understanding of the theological categories. We want to be very careful to say that.

Here's a reality. Where are the next generation of Greek and Hebrew scholars going to come from? They don't typically come out of homes. Now they can. I think if we really restored the home the way it ought to be, we may find the next A.T.

Robertson coming out who is a Greek scholar or some of the other great men who really were helpful to the church. We need men like that to be helpful to us. I just have to point out this, that in the requirements in the 18th century to attend William and Mary at the age 13, you had to be completely fluent in Latin because some of the classes were taught in Latin, but you also had to be fluent, completely fluent in Greek to the point where you could carry on a debate in Greek in order to enter college. That was a requirement. It was one of the entry requirements to be able to debate in Greek.

That was not training from a seminary. That was training from homes. Now people that graduate from seminary, actually most of the Greek professors are unable to do the standard that was expected of 13-year-olds 250 years ago. So when we talk about getting the family right, it can make a big difference. And yes, the biblical scholars can be produced out of families.

Let me take the next one since it's addressed to me by Mike Brewer. He asked me to elaborate on my point. Are you saying that the Holy Spirit has work outside the Word of God or has extra biblical work? My point is that the Holy Spirit blows where it will. Now it never does anything that's contrary to the Word of God.

It never does anything that's in conflict to the Word of God. But the reality is it can convict you of sin, the Holy Spirit can convict you of sin without you reading in the Word of God that it is sin. The Holy Spirit does have a real work. It's not somehow constrained that you have to read it in the Bible before the Holy Spirit can work. The Holy Spirit works independent of the Bible, but the faithful handling of the Word of God is the typical way, but it's not the only way.

He just makes it too constrained. God does lots of things without a word of scripture. You might argue, well, He did it by the word of his mouth, but he sends a spirit of confusion into people's hearts Just this evening my family we were reading in the book of Judges where we read that God caused a spirit of ill will to rise up in the hearts of men. Pharaoh's heart being hardened. That wasn't by the word of God.

So I think that's what you're saying, that God, He can blow away a mountain or bring one up. Right. God is almighty. He's not constrained. Now, again, that does not mean that God ever contradicts himself.

He doesn't. He is truth. So with all the time constraints, this is from Brent. Hi Brent, how are you doing? Brent Kendall, with all the time constraints in your lives, How much time do you personally take time to prepare a sermon?

Yeah, good question. I mean, let me direct you to the section on page 273, Frequently Asked Questions About Expository Preaching by John MacArthur. I believe he talks about his own preparation. He and I went to the same seminary and I remember him coming and saying he always spent 20 hours on a sermon. He says now it's maybe around 10 or maybe a little bit less than 10 hours.

After spending your whole life doing exposition, I can see how the well fills up and you can move more quickly and you understand things more fluidly the older you get but how much time do we spend I spend I spend between 10 and 20 hours typically a week on it right I since I have another full-time job and stuff, I probably average 10 to 12 hours. Usually most of my preparation is on Saturday. And I'll have thought about it, I'll have read the passage, but I won't really sit down and do the study until Saturday typically. So it would be a full Saturday. It takes me time.

I have to live in a text for a long time to read it over and over and over again. So time helps me a lot. I mean, one thing that I'll say about John MacArthur is he always preaches from the New Testament or almost exclusively from the New Testament. The truth is it is harder to prepare messages from the Old Testament. The Old Testament has shadows.

The Old Testament has all these meanings. You have to cross reference it to the New Testament. The New Testament is largely commentary on the Old Testament, and there's very similar commentary in the various Gospels and the various epistles, and the reality is he's cut down his work because there's part of the word of God that he frequently doesn't preach. Can you, for the benefit of the other men, say a little bit about what happens Tuesday mornings at Hope Baptist? Oh, this is one of the neatest things we do in our church.

We gather our men together at 6 a.m. On Tuesday mornings and our focus is the text that we're going to preach on for the upcoming Sunday. And there are usually 25 to 40 guys that are there. They bring their sons. And we just work through the text that we're preaching on.

It's so helpful. I learn so much from the time. People always hear their voice in my sermon because I use the things that I hear. They're so helpful. Our objective during those times is really very simple.

It's twofold. What does the text say? We really want to figure out what the words and their connections add up to. Not what I think about it, but what does it say explicitly. And then secondly, we want to be a springboard for men to go into their homes and teach these things to their wives and their children so that when they get to Sunday everybody comes in already having heard It read and discussed and hopefully and we pray that it's in detail but it's a very helpful time.

There's a couple questions about what is the value of original language study and Mike Matarko asks on the whole it also made me think that I cannot do a complete job without a thorough understanding of Greek and Hebrew. One of the things that I have a real problem with his position because his position is not the position where the church has actually seen amazing movements of Reformation. The first one that came to mind was the Lollards. The Lollards when Wycliffe translated the Bible to English There were men who preached the gospel all over England and there was a major reformation to the point where one out of three people that you met on the street was a lawler. How they become a lawler.

These were plowboys. They were not people who went and studied Greek and Hebrew. The reality is the vulgar languages, meaning that not the languages that were originally written in, are amazingly effective to preach in. We should not dismiss it. We should not hold the standard that he creates.

This standard is the same standard that they use to reject people that were faithful biblical preachers for men that were trained by the Roman Catholic Church. When you set that standard, it becomes a false standard. The reality is God is very gracious. He has given us brilliant men that have translated the scripture. Are there problems in every translation?

Absolutely. Unquestionably. But, at the same time, are they close enough to be enormous benefit to the people of God? Yeah, and we live in a time where there are tremendous resources available to us. There's a whole chapter on that.

I encourage you to look at it. They give some critical books that can help. A Strong's Concordance and a dictionary that is correlated to it is really, really helpful. The online tools, the Bible programs can be very helpful. Helping you to understand what the text means.

Calvin, Calvin's commentaries, Matthew Henry's commentaries, and all kinds of full-blown commentaries are online for free. John Gill, I mean those are three major commentary sets. If you just read those three you'll know whether you're on or off track on the text. If you have something brand new that they've never thought of, Be worried. Some people say don't read the commentaries.

I read lots of commentaries. Sometimes it helped me. By the way, just this morning I got burned by a commentary. We're ending up our study in Galatians and I was reading the Founders Press commentary and the last paragraph in that commentary is commenting on Paul's use of the word amen at the end of the Galatian letter and he says the term amen only exists in Romans and Galatians and I wrote that down I said that this morning and this guy said, Hey, wait a minute. That ain't true.

And so, commentaries can sometimes burn you, but not very often. And when we look at the tools that are available, the reality is one of the things that I think that are also way overstating is how much knowledge of Greek and Hebrew people actually have coming out of seminary. I think that what he's saying is pretty fantastical. The people that I know that have graduated from seminary, they do not have close to the knowledge of Greek and Hebrew that they're talking about having. Is that beneficial?

Absolutely. Is that necessary? They're graduating people from master seminary that don't meet the standard that he's saying is the required standard. The reality is that most people who even understand all the tenses and all the endings and all that kind of stuff, in the end, they don't have the whole vocabulary. They're still looking up words to figure out what the vocabulary is.

It takes a considerable amount of time to really master the language. And a couple of years in Greek in seminary doesn't get it unless you spend the next decade doing it every day. Reading the text, working through it, I did that as a young pastor when I got out of seminary and it fell off over the years but I think it does take some tremendous effort to really get where you're at the scholar level. The syntax is often difficult and it can be difficult to put things together. It helps to have men smarter than you.

Maybe it's because I'm a B student. I wasn't able to pick enough up in two years. I know there are a lot of guys in my classes too that they didn't pick it up in two years either. To go to the flip side, what is the value of the original language study? One of the things that you can see is that Greek for instance, since I don't know any Hebrew, Greek for instance, the order of words really can tell you what the priority was in the sentence, where the emphasis was put.

Because in Greek, you could basically put the emphasis just like we would in English, where you would emphasize a word. By word order, you could specify where the emphasis is. So that's useful. Sometimes, I know there's a passage in Hebrews that is this picture that's a sailing metaphor that when it's translated to English, you lose the whole metaphor. Does that mean the English is wrong?

No, the English is right. It's just that these words, The series of words are actually all related to sailing and it's this picture of a boat that's the current's pulling the boat away when he's talking about drifting away and stuff that in the English you don't get this metaphor. Is that useful? Sure. Is that required?

Does that mean that faithfully preaching out of the English is somehow going to mislead the people? No. They're not going to mislead the people. But there's usefulness to it, too. Dan, you said something earlier this evening that the Holy Spirit will aid you and make up for your mistakes.

And hopefully make the congregation forget some of your mistakes. Right. Or bring them up so that you can learn from them. Yes, amen. So just having a good working knowledge and making use of the tools that are out there are probably sufficient.

And the Holy Spirit will make up for it, not that you're going to be, like you said, lazy about it or sloppy about it. But you don't have to become postgraduate to get a doctorate degree to start preaching. And there is a question about who qualifies you. Yeah, and one immediate thought that I had about that was when you look at an elder qualification, one of the concept of the elder qualifications is above reproach. And there is a real relative standard, right?

We live in a very biblical illiterate age. In certain ages of the church, would Scott and I be qualified to be elders? Absolutely not and we don't have enough biblical knowledge But at this age are we qualified at Hope Baptist? Yes, because there is this idea of follow me as I follow Christ which means that God has taught you more that you've walked with God longer that God has instructed you more so that you can point, you're above reproach, that the people in the congregation see the work of God in your life. And if everybody in the congregation knew the biblical languages and somebody went up there to try to preach without knowing the biblical languages that would be wrong but in a day and age when almost all of us are illiterate in the biblical languages does that mean that the only way that you can get in the pulpit is to be literate in the biblical languages no most of the people when William and Mary required you to be able to debate in Greek.

The guys in this book probably could not meet that qualification, and they wouldn't be qualified elders at that time because they didn't know the biblical language as well enough. Yeah, and just further on this whole matter of who's qualified to preach. The first thing that comes to mind is James' admonition, let not many of you become teachers. So everybody is not a teacher in the same way. Well, every father is a teacher of his family, but James wasn't talking about that.

He was talking about corporate instruction of God's people. It's not something that God gives the ability to everyone. Although it is true that all of the brothers can help one another and instruct one another to a certain degree. But what James is saying is that it's actually not right for very many to be teachers. So I'm aware of some places where they actually believe that every man should be preaching and teaching.

I completely disagree with that. And then further, this whole thing about qualifications, the elder qualifications are important to consider. There's also the idea of being able. Everyone is just not able to teach. There are certain communication gifts, there are certain ways of thinking that end up being a blessing and certain that don't.

So and people just know that, you know, they yawn, they say, no, we can't take this anymore. And so a guy becomes disqualified. Yeah, I was thinking of what I was laughing as you said that, because I was thinking of what Spurgeon said in his lectures to my students where he said, it's obvious if you do not have the lung capacity for people to hear you, then you were not called to teach. Right? Very practical things.

If people can't hear you, you weren't called to preach. Thank the Lord for microphone. Yeah, exactly. So let's see this. What do you think about a pattern of having three to four elders in a church, each preaching on a book of the Bible or occasionally a topic for a month or period of time in the course of the year without wearing them out with week-to-week preparation especially if they're not fully paid by the church.

A lot of issues in there. I'm gonna start at the end of the question and then maybe we can work our way through it even if they're not fully paid by the church. Our conviction is that it's wise and it's biblical that men are set aside to preach. Because the time investment is so enormous it's very difficult to defend the faith, to understand, to communicate well, to do the kind of work that's necessary to protect the flock in the Word of God. A shepherd should not be coming off half-cocked.

He needs to really understand what that text means for the church because it means something. It means that we have to do something about it and if you miss it then you've really done the congregation a disservice. So I think the first thing I would say is if you're in a place where someone is not being set aside we would just encourage you, our perspective is, move in that direction. Pray that God would give you the ability as a church to set men aside to labor in the Word of God. The question strikes me as the passage that I preached on this last week, which was including Galatians 6, 6, let him who has taught the word share and all good things with him who teaches.

I mean there's a biblical commandment that the labor that goes into preparing a sermon is supposed to be rewarded by the people who hear the sermon. I mean that's a clear biblical commandment. My other thought is is it possible to have three or four qualified elders that you pay them for their one week a month where they prepare a sermon? I mean, that could be workable. It depends on the men.

It depends on how well they work together. It depends on how closely they see the scripture the same way so that there's a pattern of exegesis even though there's very different styles. For instance, Scott and my style is very different, but at the same time the way we handle the scripture, the way that we see the scripture is very similar. So there's a pattern even when I step into the pulpit when Scott's not in town. One of our guys, Jason Dome, many of you hopefully know, has written an article on this whole subject of compensation.

It's well written, it's clear, it's not very long. It's on the NCFIC website in the articles and resources section. So enough on that, should we say any more about that? Is it wrong to have three or four elders preaching? I don't think so.

I don't know if it's, in my opinion, ideal, But I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with it. Stephen Ward says, I can't help but think how humbling it is to preach. There are godly men in many different evangelical denominations that do not see God's Word in the same way. Yet God chooses not to open the eyes of His people to see His word in the same way. Yet God chooses not to open the eyes of His people to see His word in the same way.

God requires all of us to depend on Him alone and give their every thought to Him, knowing that if we hold to even one stubborn thought, God may choose not to open our eyes to the truth. I think that's a very profound statement. We do see through a glass darkly. We have fallen souls. We have inadequate intellectual capabilities.

We have a whole history and background that messes with us. We live in a culture that clouds us up and bends us around. So yeah, we have to be beggars before God for help. Right. The verse that it reminds me of is Romans 12 too.

And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. The reality is that the problem that we have, why we all see scripture wrong, is because of our love of the world, that we're conformed to the world. I'm not saying that we love the world in a salvific sense or a non-salvific sense, but there's a real sense that the world affects us. And so as you come to the text, I mean, this is one of the things that strikes me often when I come to the text is that walking into the room, I'll think, oh, this is a brilliant thought that I had during the week when I get to Saturday and start to prepare and I go and check the cross references and go, whoops, it was my brilliant thought, not God's brilliant thought. The example doesn't work.

The rest of the scripture doesn't support it. And you cross it out. One of the things that when you step into the pulpit, because it is a fearful thing to step into the pulpit, not fear of man but fear of God, when you step into the pulpit you need to have diligently tried to renew your mind. It is true that there's lots of bad teaching in pulpits, But if we all work to renew our mind, we would come to a more common agreement. If you're able to see the PowerPoint, I fast forwarded it up to the chapter on prayer, chapter 4, where James Roskup, who was one of my seminary professors when I was there long ago.

I got out of seminary in 1980, how's that? But James Roskaupt was there, a very blessed brother. He says, If the preacher is to deliver God's message, with power, prayer must permeate his life and furnish a lifelong environment for the fruit of the Spirit. As a follower of God, his spiritual credibility forcefully attracts others to follow him. Because he's a trailblazer, he practices single-minded devotion to God.

He humbly renders all glory to God and submits to his word. And then he quotes Phillip Brooks, nothing but fire kindles fire. To know in one's whole nature what it is to live by Christ. The chapter on prayer, I thought, was especially humbling and helpful. Would a church-based training of men's minds to exposit be a Reformation occurring?

Yes. Would the local church be the place to teach Greek and Hebrew for most men? It may take a while. Amen. Big double, triple amen.

You say it may take a while. And the reality is Reformation takes a while. We look back at the Reformation and we look at Luther and we look at Calvin. The Reformation continued for another 150 years. I mean, there was a long Reformation.

We want it to be quick. We want to say oh Let's all be done in ten years not in ten generations Which is more the biblical model the reality is the reason that to go back to the William and Mary example The reason the William and Mary example holds is because 250 years later they started doing other things, right? I mean it was, it did not happen overnight and we have to understand, we have to be willing to say this may take 200 years. But that means we do our work today, we set up our children so that they're further down the road so that they can walk further than us, that they can exceed us, right, that they can stand on our shoulders. To go into the NCFIC theme is that when you get to the point where the fathers and the sons get separated, what we end up doing is we never move the ball down the field.

What we do is we just keep starting from the same exact 20-yard line every single time. And what we need to do is we need to be about the practice of moving the ball down the field for our children. And I see it in our church and it's a wondrous thing. Yeah, Here are a couple things that you might consider regarding Greek. I think 70% of the vocabulary in the New Testament is made up of 315 words.

So go learn the 315 word. Gives you a big jump start and if you have an interlinear Bible that has the Greek on the top and the English on the bottom, you just use that, you'll begin to pick up the length. If you look at the words and look it up in your concordance, different places like that, There are ways that you can just naturally in everyday life continue to familiarize yourself, at least with the vocabulary. The complex syntax and things like that take more time. I think my son David was 10 when I spent about a year in Greek with him.

He didn't certainly master the language, but he knows a lot of words that just pop out of him every once in a while. In one of the ways that you have 13-year-olds be very fluent in these languages is they used to teach them differently. They used to, right, when C.S. Lewis learned Latin, he was handed a Latin book and said, read this. Right, when Knox learned Greek, he took a Greek text and he took an English text and he figured it out.

And so sometimes we get this systematic teaching which It's not the way we learned English. So we just have to understand that part of it is we need to figure out again, how do you actually learn languages? Because I think the seminaries, in a lot of ways, haven't been helpful. We don't learn English by studying grammar. But yet, almost any of the learning the classical language is what they start with as a study of grammar.

That's not how you learned English. Why do we think that that will be effective for Greek and Hebrew? That isn't how they taught them 200 years ago, and we need to recoup some of those things, not because it was 200 years old, so that makes it special or better but because it was actually a lot more efficacious. Right. I think we just encourage you to get the tools and begin to use them get good commentaries go online word searches really helpful We just got a couple minutes left here we have our nine o'clock break and we'll be back in five minutes but thanks for the great questions we'll continue on and try to field these.

During the break you can send more. Send more during the break yeah so hey we'll see in five minutes Thanks for your attention. So we're back again. Welcome. We're gonna start off here with a quote by R.A.

Torre, which is on page 60 in the book. Do you want a new minister? I can tell you how to get one. Pray for the one you have until God makes him over. This is in the chapter about the power of prayer.

There are a lot of neat things in this chapter. But prayerful humility is such a help to a congregation when it's in the heart of a preacher. This question from Bob Briggs, he's asking about what you do in your preparation to ensure that you won't bring your biases and imbalances into the message. This matter of prayer, I think, is a good place to begin to answer that question. He says it's very sobering to me to realize how my sinful heart can lead me to put my spin on the message.

Absolutely, Bob, this is always our problem. We have preconceived notions, we have hobby horses and things like that. The first thing I would say is it really begins in the heart that desires not your own will but your father's, not your own words, but your father's words, not your own ways, but your father's ways, where you self-consciously order yourself under the authority of God. You Place yourself in the position of a son, ready to hear, and not a cook but a waiter, somebody who desires to bring what's there to the people. The way that I check my own biases and imbalances is the principle that scripture interprets scripture.

Right, whenever you think that a word means something you search for that word. You search for the Greek word, right? There's a later question about what resources do you use? 98% of the time all I use is e-Sword. Now e-Sword has Calvin's Commentaries on it, it has Strong's Concordance, it has Greek text on it, it has all these other things, and it has a King James Concordance, which is very useful because you see a Greek word, you can click on it, and then it will show you every single place it is used in the Bible.

And so you can go to every one of them and say, what is the really scope of the meaning so that I'm not adding a meaning that does not exist in the text? And so really the way you check your biases is you don't say anything unless you check the rest of scripture as best you can to make sure that something that you're saying is not somehow contradicted by another verse. I mean that's the primary way that I check my biases or my cleverness. That isn't very clever. The other thing is the governing principle that keeps you hemmed in by the text.

Where you're not there to come up with some new wonderful idea, But you're there to be bound by the text. Calvin talked about this in really beautiful language. But we ought to be men who not just are willing, but we desire to be hemmed in by the text, to be limited by it. You said, I think Calvin had said it in very beautiful language. Paul actually said it in more beautiful language just because it was inspired by the Holy Spirit.

But you know, 2 Timothy 1.13 says, Hold fast the pattern of sound words which you have heard from me, in faith and love which are in Christ Jesus. This is what we're supposed to do. We're supposed to hold fast the pattern of sound words which you have heard from me. This is Paul telling Timothy as he's going to preach the word, he's saying the goal of preaching the word is to hold fast the form of sound words that you've received from me. That's what we're supposed to do.

We don't need to come up with anything clever. We don't need to come up with anything smart. What we need to do is hold firm the pattern of sound words that we have heard from him. Yeah, and one of the temptations that we face is when we're in a text and there are things that we don't understand maybe as well as we could or we ought to, or maybe there are some things that are genuinely confusing to keep from speculation. And to say in our hearts, okay, what is the undeniable truth of this text that I can jump my whole weight on?

What in this text can I absolutely pound the pulpit from? What is so undeniably true? Just hang with that. If you're not sure, don't be too creative. And stay with the main meaning of the text.

This kind of thing happens to me regularly on Saturday night. And I'll say to my wife, oh, Deborah, I hate this sermon. I'm not getting it. I am so dull. I am so thick.

And she'll always say the same thing to me. Scott, just repeat the words. That's what they need. The people need to hear the words repeated and explained in a common way. Just be satisfied with the words.

Now one thing I'll say on the flip side of that is at the same time when we get a passage, the way the pastor is transformed by the word of God, is struggling with those areas that he doesn't understand. Now, there can be that you run out of time. You just cannot understand it by the end of Saturday night. So at that point, you preach and you say, There's something here that I don't understand, but different sermons are different, right? When I preached in Galatians, that's a really easy text to understand.

But the text that I'll preach in Deuteronomy 22, that's an extremely difficult text to understand and so there you have to struggle with it. You have to deal with it differently. But we have to also understand what a tremendous blessing it is that we get to deal with it because that's how we're transformed. Yeah. Luther talked about laboring hard with the text, to beat on it, to squeeze it, you know.

We often have to do that. Edwards, Jonathan Edwards, talked about his pursuing something to the end. In other words, if there's a question, pursue the question until you get to the end. It takes a lot of labor to do that. It takes time, and it's frustrating because it takes you often beyond your knowledge, your wits.

It's necessary to be there for that. And my most common prayer during preparation is probably, oh God, help me understand this text. I mean, it's really just that basic, is that that's the time for prayer as well. And God loves His people. He desires them to understand if you ask God for wisdom, He promises that He will give you wisdom.

And pray that prayer in faith, and God helps you amazingly. I think it comes down to a lot of times do we really believe the Word of God is a sword and it pierces into the division of soul and spirit. Do we really believe it's bread? The very words themselves are bread and water and fire. If we believe those things we really can't trust in it and not have to try to create something better than Scripture.

So there's a question here about eldership. How do you become elders? Ron Doran. Hey Ron, good to see you up there. So how did Scott and Dan become elders at your church who recognize your qualifications?

Do you recommend ordination and being in subjection to another body of denomination. In our church, Dan and I became elders at two different times. We had two founding leaders. I was one of them, Jason Doan was the other, who became elders by the appointment of the congregation after some period of time. We launched the church and then asked the church whether they would or would not affirm us.

And then it was probably about a year later, I guess, that Dan and another fellow were nominated and then they were affirmed by the church. The continuing who recognized your qualifications, obviously that. When we talk about who recognized your qualifications, there was a twofold process there. And probably in a real sense, the elders have the responsibility to guard the doctrine. So it's the other elders that have to recognize the qualifications because you're joining with them to protect the doctrine.

But at the same time, if the congregation said you're not fit to be an elder, then you're not fit to be an elder. And so both of them are there, but the elders have a real role to play. Is this person sound in doctrine? Do you recommend ordination, being in subjection to another body or denomination? I don't think that we see that in the New Testament.

When you see Paul writing to Timothy, when you see Paul writing to Titus, you don't see that there's a requirement that you don't see any concept of a denomination, but even to another body. Now granted that's apostolic authority, And so you might have other issues there about how to rightly apply that and is it sometimes helpful To have another church come beside you that you trust their doctrine and that they examine the man to say that he's sound a doctor And especially if you're jump-starting and you have no elders in place that can be very useful. But once a church is ongoing the church itself and the elders of that church should be the primary one who recognize the qualifications. And then Mike Cox has this question. Isn't it better if the preaching elders don't need to be compensated.

I've seen problems arise because the preacher is somewhat beholden to the pay. Well yeah that can happen. If a man is a lover of money then he should have been appointed in the first place. So it's very important that a congregation is careful in that whole process, and that they don't point men who are in it for the money and who will tweak the message in order to keep the money flowing. But that doesn't change the clear teaching of scripture that a workman's worthy of his hire, that you don't muzzle the ox while he's shredding out the grain, that those who benefit from the teaching are supposed to share all good things with the one who teaches.

I mean, these are scriptural commandments. So to say that, is it better for the preaching elder if he doesn't need to be compensated? I think that's contrary to the teaching of Scripture. Scripture says that you compensate him. Right.

I've seen over the years different manifestations of this idea. You know, men who come to the conclusion, well, we had a problem one time, and so we're never doing that again. Well, that's really not a very good reason to do or not do something. We have problems. There will be problems in the church.

And you may obey the Lord and do something and find that it doesn't work out very well. And you don't want to eliminate a practice because somebody abused it. And even Paul on the beach of Miletus in Acts 20, he says that walls will rise up from among you. And so these are men that Paul appointed, and still, it happens. This is what happens.

And we just have to accept that that's in God's timing and in God's will. And so we should obey the best we can, but we don't fear, we don't steal from the pastor because it really is theft. You don't steal from the pastor in order to protect him from his propensity to sin. I mean, if he's sinning in that way that he's preaching the word for unrighteous mammon, then you've got a bigger problem. You've got how he is leading the church is more important than the money that you pay him.

And if you put a man in there that's leading the church in that way, that's your big problem. Right. And then another question goes like this, isn't it acceptable that any man can preach as long as the elders are present to oversee the teaching? So I think the basic idea is, is it okay for a man to teach just as long, any man to teach, as long as there's a qualified elder in the room. My view is no.

The Bible says that a man must be able to teach, not that there's an elder present. Scripture states it clear enough. Well, I think there is a point here where James 3 when it talks about teachers that there is a different role from teachers than elder and so there are men that are qualified to teach that may not be qualified to be an elder and so we need to understand that there are times and yes it's a lot safer if there's an elder in the room at the time, but that doesn't mean that every man gets to teach. Let not many of you be teachers. I mean, I would just like to submit that it isn't right to put non-teachers in front of a congregation.

They need to be able and have been verified to be able. So let's see, Ron Dorn, your warning is to warn others about Dr. Roskopf's referring positively to Charles Finney on page I think it's 56 or something like that. Yeah it's a well-written quote by a let's see somebody that we're not even confident was a believer and he said he had no sin and John says if you say you have no sin the truth does not abide in you there I think we can say pretty definitively he was not a believer and so when he prayed his praying was not powerful God does not say that he answers the prayers of the unrighteous. Yeah, there's some quotations by some of our other unfavorites and men that we really would take exception to.

I actually like the quote that Ross Cup put in there, but Dr. Ross Cup comes from a dispensational background. And so I mean, I think you have to understand that that's his perspective we don't agree with it yeah but that doesn't mean that every single thing is chapter on prayer is bad I think we have to be discerning and careful to see that so yeah Ron I completely agree Referring to Charles Finney is the unpardonable sin. Maybe not unpardonable. Stephen Ward asks the question that we had mentioned in the last session that we have a time of interaction and discussion with the congregation after a sermon.

How do you handle the situation, for instance, when a man challenges a perspective that it was taught? I'll continue with the question later. But what you do is, as elders, you have the responsibility to guard the doctrine of the church. So what you do is you kindly, you gently, you lovingly, you do all those things, but you do not allow your congregation to be misled. But that also means that you have to be prepared and you have to be knowledgeable enough in the scriptures to be able to have the debate, to be able to stand up there and say no, let's go to this verse.

You said that this is your perspective. And then there is another case where the man's right when he challenges the perspective, and we also have to be willing to be taught that if he can point out a scripture that says, what you said was wrong because this scripture, how do you harmonize that scripture with what you said? We need to be willing to hear that and be quick to listen as well. But again, the debate has to go to what's the standard by which you're judging whether the perspective's right or not. If they're not making a biblical argument, the answer is, this is what the Bible says, and that's what matters.

Yeah, and also, Stephen, I like to add your word to the question. How do you handle the situation? Well, The Bible tells us about how to handle it. You handle it in the spirit of gentleness. You know elders are not to be quarrelsome or strikers.

They're not to be angry men. So there's a way that's handled. So you mean we have to stop having the deacons drag people out and beat them up in the parking lot. It's been a long day. We got some big deacons.

I don't know. You better watch out. She's got a big excavator. Oh, my. So and then also, how do you handle a situation if you as the senior pastor disagree with something that was said in the pulpit?

So in the same way, in a spirit of gentleness, Do we want to take the senior pastor thing on? Yeah, I was thinking we should take the senior pastor thing on. The senior pastor is nothing that is ever referred to in scripture whatsoever. There, you know, somebody being set aside for the ministry of the word, somebody being paid for the ministry of the word that's clearly in scripture, but that doesn't somehow make him a senior pastor. The reality is all elders have the same authority.

And when you set up a man to have special authority, the reality is now we're down to two, but when we had four elders, there'd be times where the three of us had one opinion and Scott had another opinion and he voted his vote counted for one and the other three counted for three. I mean there is no senior pastor idea there's just the person who because he's been set aside preaches more but that doesn't make him a senior pastor. So John Richardson, hey great question, what would be your top five resources and references? You mentioned one of them in your, or two of them actually in your question, Calvin's commentaries. They're fantastic.

They're beautifully written, they're very insightful, Passion for God and the Gospel are there. Same thing with Matthew Henry's commentaries. For commentaries, I probably use Gil's commentary the most because a lot of times it's, again, it depends on how much you've preached and those things, what you're pulling out of and how much you've studied the Word of God. But a lot of times when I'm looking at a passage, it's just one verse that I have a question at not the whole passage and and I really like Gil because Gil gives verse by verse commentary so that you can get a commentary on a specific verse that you're struggling with or trying to understand as opposed to pulling in. You know Calvin writes in paragraphs Matthew writes in paragraphs.

Matthew Henry. MacArthur's commentaries in the New Testament are very helpful. There's an enormous amount of research in MacArthur's commentaries. I like those. The interlinear Bible, I think that's very helpful.

Strong's Concordance. Did you say that? Did you say Strong's? I mean, I use e-Sword, which is a free software package that I've got it open in front of me right now to find Bible verses. And one of the things that I really like there is they have a Strong's cross reference for the King James.

And so you can go to any verse of the King James and you can hit whatever words are in there that you have a question at. And then there's the King James concordance that you can pull it across. So just being able to look at multiple texts in one software package, I find to be very helpful. Right so there are questions about translations or versions so let's take that on there there are a couple of questions I'm just going to read both the questions and then we'll go back and try to tackle the various elements. On page 254 they rate the various English translations for accuracy.

If there is an objective standard to judge the correct meaning of the manuscripts, why not use it to make an accurate translation? What are your thoughts regarding the use of multiple translations in preaching versus being KJV or NASB only what about the ESV and then let's see oh I guess is that the only KJV and a SP question I thought there are two oh I guess yeah okay so let's let's talk about and talk about translations my personal view is that there are too many translations out there. Two families of texts that form the two traditions of translation. We can talk about all of that. I think one thing we need to acknowledge is there are different philosophies.

We think, I mean Dan and I think that there's a philosophy of translation that's actually destructive. And if you, Bill Einwechter wrote a fantastic small book on this subject, and I don't know if you can get it on Amazon or not, He also preached a message on it at our Sufficiency of Scripture conference, which was a fantastic message as well. And he in that message, he unpacks the issues in depth. I agree with Einwachter on the matter. And just to kind of give a brief summary of what Einmuchter says, because I think it's very helpful, is the first question is, how do we decide what's a good biblical translation?

And the answer is, the Bible tells us how. And so what are the principles from the Word of God? Well, first of all, it's called the word of God. Paragraph means things written together. It's Greek.

His paragraph is a Greek word or it's from the Greek. And it's not the paragraph of God. So how do you translate it? You translate it word for word. When they translate it concept by concept, that's contrary to the teaching of the word of God.

The word of God means the word of God. So that's one aspect of it. The second aspect of it is understanding what the underlying Greek text should be. It's the providence of God and the doctrine of the providence of God. Has God protected His word for the church?

And so when you look at an eclectic text, for instance, where they're pulling Greek words from multiple texts to the point where most of the UBS and other eclectic texts, they end up that there was never a text that actually had that Greek in it. Frequently on a given page of it, there was never any text like that. So they've said essentially that God has not preserved his word for the church. And so I think Those are the two principles that we have to understand when we start to look at translations. Is it word for word because that's how God chose to reveal Himself?

And what's the underlying text? Is it a text that states and believes that God has always kept His word before the people of God and that He hasn't hidden His word from them? If you'd like to listen to that message, we'll give it to you. We're going to have to figure out how to get it to you, but we'll figure that out. Just send us an email saying I'd like that message from Bill Einwechter on this matter and we'll figure out a way to get it to you.

So another question about plurality of elders. With the plurality of elders, wouldn't one of their responsibilities be to check the one bringing the scripture message to be accountable to one another. Yes, absolutely. That's the beauty of the body of Christ. We don't stand alone.

We need our brothers. We don't just need elders, by the way. Scripture makes it very clear that anybody in the congregation can confront an elder and can trip the process of church discipline. So elders don't stand above anyone. We stand together.

And so there's kind of a mutual accountability that's a beautiful thing in the church. And it's one way that we learn about our weaknesses and find our path to the refreshments of repentance. And we've had it happen in the meeting of the church in the time of interaction after the sermon, where one elder has stood up and said, I don't think what you said here was correct. I think that it's, Again, it's done in the spirit of gentleness, it's done in the spirit of love, it's done in the spirit of delighting in the things that God has revealed. But elders shouldn't be embarrassed too if they make a mistake because we're all fallen human beings.

Hey, it happened to me this morning. I said, there are like two of Paul's letters in the word amen. One guy said no way, that's not true. Boy, what a mess. I'll make a comment.

That question about the plurality of elders. Someone just goes to the Hope Baptist Church is under these two men in authority. I've been here four months now and so I see that Tuesday morning, let's look at the scripture for Sunday and every man speaks up And then after the church service, as one of the questions referred to, there's more time for questions and teaching. It takes an understanding of, hey, the sufficiency of scripture. This is about Christ.

This is Christ-centered. This is not about this elder or that elder, this preacher, my sermon. I am accountable to you all. And this is about the Word of God, the centrality of Scripture, not about my message. There's an understanding that produces a safety.

And then you point something out. You're not trying to knock anyone down because there's no intimidation or anything like that. Nothing even close to that. There's just, we're trying to figure it out together. And some work harder than others.

And then some are placed there to do that. Related to that, in the end, if you're an elder that said something wrong, your greatest delight should be to be corrected. Boy, if you've misled the congregation. Who wants to answer to God for that? The greatest delight is to be corrected.

So if you are to echo what you're saying, If your delight and your purpose and the reasons you're going to scripture is to say, what has God said? And not what has Scott said or what has Dan said, but what has God said? You delight if somebody says, wait a second, you're saying this, but I look at this scripture and I don't see how that you can mesh those two together and that you need to deal with that and that's great delight If you have an environment where? Nobody can be wrong How does that work it just doesn't work and so hey, nobody likes to be told that they said something wrong. I don't.

I never like it. Never makes me feel good at all. And from time to time, like this morning, it happened. Another question that Brett has is when does it cross the line of sharing and teaching? I just did on Esort, I just did a search for sharing.

Sharing is a very new term. There isn't a biblical term called sharing. It's called teaching. So Steve Smith, if you have a new church start, what if you do not have elders to qualify new elders? Well, we don't hold the position that elders are necessary to qualify elders.

However, they're helpful. You have men who are qualified and have the wisdom that the congregation has recognized. So my answer would be the congregation is the ordaining body, not the elders. Yeah, I mean, I have a couple thoughts on that. One thought is that ideally when you have a new church start, that it's planted by another church.

And so the church is sending out people that that congregation and those elders has already said is these are qualified men. I mean, that one of Steve Bragge and my thoughts when we became elders was that at some point we would be sent out. Now that isn't what God's plan was, but part of it was we were saying if we wanted to start a new work to walk out and start a new work where the church we're attending is not saying that we're qualified to be elders would be wrong. So that's the ideal, but at times it doesn't work out. And so then how do you jumpstart the process?

One of the dangerous things to have a denomination do it, or to have another church do it, or elders at another church, is we just have to understand how few of the qualifications they can actually evaluate. They can evaluate apt to teach maybe, because apt to teach doesn't just mean that you stand in the pulpit and teach. It means that somebody comes up to you and has a problem, and you point them to scripture and say, here's the scriptural answer to your problem. That's what it means, apt to teach. It means that you are apt to teach.

It's not just that you have an aptitude for teaching, but you're apt to teach. And so even somebody coming in from outside can't really evaluate that. The only thing that they might be able to help with is novice and doctrine. Whether you rule your family well, somebody coming in from outside that doesn't know the man, he cannot evaluate that. That's impossible for him to evaluate.

And the rest of the 20 qualifications, they fall into the same category. The congregation where they are is the one that has to evaluate those things because they're the only ones that can know those things. Well one of our former fellow elders Steve Brege is in New York with Ash Noah listening to this. Hey Steve, so if you want to weigh in on any of this send us a note we'd be happy to read it. Anyway Steve it's great to know you there.

We sent Steve out to plant a church about an hour and a half from us in Moore County Moore Christian Assembly So that's pronounced Moore Christian Assembly Moore Christian Assembly. That's right. Okay So this whole Finney quote we're back to the Finney quote Mike Brewer wants to suggest that it might be possible for someone unqualified to say something correct like Balaam's donkey. Yep, that's true. What I want to say though is I believe Balaam's donkey was righteous, so I'm not sure that it qualifies and that was the Holy Spirit that opens his mouth the mouth of the donkey so it's clear that the donkey was qualified more than Finney was sorry it's been a long day yeah Entering in the pearly gates is going to be rough for us, I think, some of the things that we've said.

Okay, hey, Mike Matarco, thank you for giving us the detail on Einwechter's book. It's called English Bible Translations by what standard? Preston Speed Publications and yeah we really recommend that book. It's a good one. Tom Kaiser, Tom you're asking about guidelines or principles for identifying and presenting application for the message on page 10.

The message applies the scriptural meaning for today. So there are a lot of different ways to do application and MacArthur's book here has some helpful things to say about that. Our encouragement to men is apply it all through the message. You hit a phrase apply it. You know Let there be proper analogies, references to real life.

So the message is always being applied. One of the things that Dan and I do from time to time, probably not every time, but we do it fairly regularly, we'll get to the end of the message and say, okay, here are three applications. One of the things is that we do have to understand that there is a difference between preaching and teaching. And one of the differences between preaching and teaching is teaching is a transfer of knowledge and preaching is a call to obey. And so there is a real difference in preaching and teaching and all preaching should have teaching involved in it But in the end even through the message there should be times where there's a commandment of God and you call the people to obey and so guidelines and principles for identifying and presenting applications for the message.

I mean, one of the things is to understand your flock, understand where they are. And this doesn't mean that you do an application that's specific to a person. But we only have a couple people over the age of 70 in the congregation, we tend to give our applications to what to do with children, right, because we have 120 children or something in the congregation. And so because of that, right, you are actually making the application to the children. The other thing that I would say to that is it can be hard to do, but pastors have a responsibility to be like the sons of Issachar and understand the times.

You have a responsibility. Being an elder of a church means that you read, because reading is a requirement as an elder of a church that you don't just read theological books, you don't just read other works. I mean, Spurgeon, in his lectures to my students, he has a whole thing about how important it is, the library of a pastor, and how it is important that every church has a book budget, because the pastor needs to be well read. He needs to be reading a variety of sources. He needs to be reading things of what's happening in the world today.

He needs to be reading history because history is very tied to theology and all these different areas. And if you understand the world, then you bring those things and those warnings. We're in a very different state of our economy, our world, than 100 years ago, than 200 years ago, than 300 years ago. And the pastor has the responsibility to understand where the world is so that he can speak to the congregation, understand where their temptations are. The internet is a whole new set of temptations that's different than it was a hundred years ago.

Where the temptations are, where the challenges are, where the things that they should be guarding themselves against, where the risks are, what God's doing. We're a nation that's killed 50 million babies. God is taking his revelation from our nation. That's why you have homosexuality from Romans 1. I mean, these are real things that we need to be speaking to, and these are real applications.

There are places you can look to see men who really do this well. You mentioned Spurgeon, Dan. Spurgeon was a master of this. We were just this morning reading a few pages out of Spurgeon's book on the Holy Spirit. And this short four or five page section, Spurgeon, he's talking directly to I think five different kinds of people in the congregation and he, with each paragraph, he's looking eyeball to eyeball into one kind of person and then to another kind of person he's mentioning these kinds of people by name.

Spurgeon was constantly applying. It's hard to find a paragraph where Spurgeon isn't somehow applying it and really taking people by the collar and saying this is for you. But yeah, constant application is really important. When people think that expository preaching means that you just give the data, they've really missed so much of what God intended preaching to be. That's expository teaching.

We're supposed to be expository preachers. So is there a place for that? Sure there's a place for that but... Fire and light right? That every sermon needs to have light in the sense that it needs to be pointing people to truth right?

Or worship and spirit and truth is another way to say it. There needs to be truth that you're telling people things that they haven't seen in the passage. Not that they couldn't have seen it and not that everybody hasn't seen it but you tell people because of your study of things they may not have seen in the passage so you have to have truth there, you have to have teaching there but you also have to have fire, you have to have spirit, you have to have this is a call to obey, this is the Word of God and you do not hear the Word of God and walk away. You have to be a hearer of the Word and not a hearer only. Is it also true that the text itself is going to lend itself more to application throughout than rather than toward the end because I've watched you guys this past Sunday you came to the sort of to the end of your sermon and you said okay a couple of applications and I thought there already been 50 yeah You gave us application throughout the whole thing.

Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. But the other times that you take most of it, 80% of your time. Trying to explain what this all means, and then you can apply it because it's harder to communicate I'm assuming the text will tell you. Right. The Galatians 6 passage, right, I mean it was Paul instructing the people how to walk in the Spirit.

So after, you know, whatever it was, I don't know how many exhortations there were in the passage but there were a bunch. But at the end, my application was walk in the Spirit, which was really the summary of every other thing that I exhorted people to through the sermon. So yeah, it depends on the text. One where you're especially preaching through Deuteronomy, a lot of times you have to explain what's going on. You have to explain all the details before you can say, now do you see how the gospel was portrayed in this text?

You see what God was doing. You see how this is just. You see how this is righteous. You see how God's glorified by this. And a lot of times, there has to, especially in the passages that your people may not read as much and study as much and understand as much, a lot of times you have to do a lot more teaching before you can raise their knowledge to the point where you can then say, now you need to obey.

But there always has to be that call, now you need to obey. It's so important that we not leave our people without a word from heaven. It's not our word, and that's why we have to be careful, but to casually speak of eternally important things really needs to be considered as to whether that's really the right thing. We would say no it's not right. There should be clear determinative appeals for obedience when we're in the scriptures.

Let's see, Steve Smith, does the congregation vote or appoint an elder? Also is there a need for a period of time for candidacy? In our church, the constitution requires a majority vote and two-thirds majority vote of the members of the congregation. And so that's how we do it there. We want to make sure that the congregation does affirm the appointment of this elder.

I mean, on the question of a need for a period of time of candidacy, I mean, these are to be known men, right? This isn't that somebody walks in and he's a brilliant speaker, and so therefore you appoint him as an elder. The point is that these have to be men that you as a congregation can verify that they meet these standards. That takes more than three months. That probably takes more than six months, nine months, a year.

It depends on how active your congregation is in fellowship and how many times they've invited them into their house, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Before they can say, I am confident that this man meets the biblical qualifications. One of the dangers is to rush into it and try to get it really quick. No, it's a patient process. It's a process.

Do not be hasty. Lay hands on any man. Right. That is a problem you want to avoid, being too desperate, being patient, to see that men are appointed in an orderly manner. Because there is a real transfer of authority from the congregation to the elders when they appoint the elders.

The elder has real authority, and so you want to be very slow and very careful to appoint one. Yeah. And also understand that you might appoint the wrong man and Paul did it so don't expect to be perfect. Yeah, there will be wolves coming up from among you. Those were appointed wolves we think.

Well, the elders, they were elders. They were elders. I mean, the you there refers to the elders so it seems like he's saying that some of these elders that he probably had some involvement when appointing that they will be wolves. A comment by David Axberg in order to be a good preacher you need two things. Heart knowledge of the scriptures and of your congregation.

So I'll give you an example of knowledge of the congregation. We are getting ready to do, let's see, in May. May 6th and 7th, you can see it on the internet, but we're going to do a child-raising course for our people. We're inviting anybody from outside the community to come. It's 7 and 8 by the way.

7 and 8. May 7 and 8. And what we did is we spent quite a bit of time walking through our list. Essentially what we did because we were trying to figure out as we do this training and adminition award conference How do we make this the most applicable to people? And the reality is this is a hope event.

This is for the congregation and hope. That's why we're doing it. We're inviting other people. We delight if other people come. If they can benefit from it, we think that it will be very beneficial.

But to make it as beneficial as possible to the people who we have been called to shepherd. We went through every single family on our church directory today in our elders meeting and said, what do we think they need to hear about raising their children? And we put them into categories and now we're going to decide what the topics are as we categorize them and that's how it's going to be the message. So first of all, one statement is as elders, you need to know your people that well. You need to be able to say, this family, what do I think they need to hear and this isn't based on ages this is based on knowing the people this is based on having eaten with the people this is based on having discussions with the people this is based on actively working to love the people that's a responsibility of the elder to actively work to love the people in the congregation.

And doing that means that you know them well enough that you can go through the directory and say, this family, we think we should speak on this. We see a weakness here that they don't understand this and this and this. And so we did that for every family in the church, and now we've got a list of topics. And let me tell you something. I am fired up about these topics.

I was trying to convince somebody today to come to the conference. Yeah, there you go. OK, what are we going to do for the fifth graders and the seventh graders? Because we have this many in a programmatic church, they don't know the families. They've never seen the kids, because they're not allowed in this sanctuary, perhaps.

But they do know demographics, but they don't know them personally. Right. And I look across our congregation and the difference in, pick an age, the difference in the various 10-year-olds in our congregation, boy, they don't all need the same message. It really depends on what their parents have been teaching, what the flaws are. We all have flaws in our parenting, and this isn't Scott and I going, oh, we're perfect.

We need to teach everything. But one of the areas that I think we really need to teach on is an area that Scott and I aren't confident is what the scripture says about. But that's also an area that people in the congregation need to hear. They want to know the answer to the question. So do we.

Yeah, so do we. So how often do you guys diagram sentences all the time? Never. Never? Dan, you don't diagram sentences.

I don't diagram sentences. You do too. No, I don't. You read a sentence and you know what it means. That's why it takes you between 10 and 20 hours and him between 10 and 12.

I'm just sloppy. I just throw out whatever You don't need to diagram it you just Understand grammar. Well, I mean there are places where it matters a lot and Ephesians 5 Especially there's this daisy chaining of truth Ephesians 5 many times that I've never diagrammed it. I've been meaning to talk to you about that. I guess I'm confessing my sin now.

So obviously, there's different views for different people about how often you should diagram something. Thoughts on 11 where he talks to the comprehension levels of the congregation teaching just below their level and periodically going above it. If you constantly say that all you're going to do is teach below their level of comprehension, understand their level of comprehension is going to decrease it's going to decrease that's where we are in the church that we have a lot of a lot of dumb people in the church today because the preaching isn't challenging you recall and I'm not saying that you use theological words I'm not saying use fancy words but the point of preaching is to teach something new. It is to raise up the congregation. The purpose of preaching is to edify the body to do the work of the ministry, and edifying the body to do the work of the ministry means they grow.

That's what edifying means. And so if all you're doing is teaching below so it's easy for them no you need to be challenging them does anybody want to dumb the Bible down no the Bible is the NIV. Yeah people do it's not the right direction we don't have kiddie sermons and we we speak to children I mean we're speaking directly to children we preach The majority of our congregation happens to be children. Big joke around here is we preach to eight-year-olds. That's our business.

But do we feel perfectly adequate to communicate to the eight-year-old? No, we really don't. But we want to speak plainly, like men, like normal people. We don't want to use a bunch of complex terminology that nobody can understand. But there's no intentional dumbing it down to try to figure out where people's capacities are.

I don't even know how to do that. And I mean, an example of this would be the sermon that I preached on Sunday. I talked about Manichaeism. And the reason I talked about Manichaeism is it was very applicable to the text, and it made sense. Does that mean that was there another 150 new words that nobody had ever heard of before that I introduced in the sermon?

No. There was one that I thought it was important for people to understand this old heresy that's come back. And so I spoke about it and I spoke about it using the theological term. And that's how you raise up the congregation. If all you do is show off by giving one concept after another that's way above their head, you're not actually trying to raise up the congregation.

But the point is to raise up the congregation. Just another extension of that thought. Some people might think that their messages should be the interpretation of one Greek word after another and quoting all these Greek vocabulary. We don't think that's necessary. We don't think it's helpful.

I don't think when you look at Peter and Peter says look Paul was confusing. Peter's preaching wasn't like that right? I mean we just have to understand it's not doing all these word studies and stuff. He was proclaiming the Word of God. Yeah yeah.

Ron Doren you sent us this great quote by Richard Baxter. I preached as never to preach again, as a dying man to dying men. And then you say, oh, that God would give us preachers with such hearts. How about make us like that? David O'Jai, good to see you up there David.

Hey David. Chapter 10 presents a very disciplined manner to develop a pastor's library. How did you develop your library? Would you recommend Stitzinger's approach? I would suggest that probably both of our libraries are far more extensive than his very methodical approach we tend to more see a book and buy it and that's why we both have a whole piles of books that you constantly have to reorder your books to fit in the new ones.

Yeah, he has some great books to focus on 600 books. So that's a nice way to build a foundation. I think I read somewhere that Jonathan Edwards died with 300 books in his library. You know how many books you really need? Here's the answer, just a few more.

And related to that, I mean one of the things that we have to be careful about that list or to say get these 600 books, the truth is it's also very good to get books that your congregation might be reading, even when they're bad books. Or that they're going to be talking people in their workplace that they've read. So to be able to speak to what's happening, we shouldn't just limit our library to theological books. The reality is the whole world is God's and we need to be speaking to all the aspects of it. Well hey, let me just end with this.

You're talking to two guys over here who are so grateful to be laboring together in the preaching of the word. We learn a lot from one another and are so grateful that God has allowed us to do this. And we really do pray that our hearts would be ordered under God's authority, that we would not be our own men, that we would continually mortify the flesh in our preaching and that we would be men who have a baptism of fire pray for us. That's what we really desire to do and be. And anyway, hey, thank you for being with us again here tonight.

We'll try to find a way to get that audio message to you for Bill Einwector on translations of the Bible and We're gonna sign off now Close with the reading of Scripture. Yes. Amen because this is the scripture that speaks to me most right? This is Jesus Christ talking to Peter at the end of John. So when they had eaten breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, Simon son of Jonah, do you love me more than these?

He said to him, yes Lord, you know that I love you. He said to him, feed my lambs. He said to him again a second time, Simon son of Jonah, do you love me? He said to him, yes Lord, you know that I love you. He said to him, tend my sheep.

He said to him a third time, Simon son of Jonah, do you love me? Peter was grieved because he said it to him a third time, do you love me? And he said to him, Lord you know all things, you know that I love you. Jesus said to him, feed my sheep. This is Peter, one of the apostles, the lead apostle in a lot of ways.

And Jesus Christ is saying, right, this is how the church is founded. The church is founded by feeding the lambs, by tending the sheep, and by feeding my sheep. Expository preaching is about feeding the lambs and feeding the sheep. This is the heart of the message that Jesus leaves with. This is what the people need.

They need to be fed the Word of God. Amen. Oh Lord we thank you for giving us your word and now we pray that we would love it with all of our hearts and then seek to teach it and to do it like our brother Ezra did. The National Center for Family Integrated Churches is dedicated to proclaiming the sufficiency of scripture for church and family life and to the establishment of biblically ordered churches. For more information, resources, and products please visit our website at www.ncfic.org.