In his sermon, Dr. Joel Beeke discusses the nature and importance of Reformed Experiential Preaching, emphasizing its unique combination of scriptural, doctrinal, experiential, and practical elements. He contrasts it with preaching that is either purely intellectual or purely emotional, advocating for a balance that reaches both the head and the heart. Reformed Experiential Preaching is idealistic, realistic, and optimistic, as it sets forth the ideal Christian life, acknowledges the struggles and realities of Christian experience, and provides hope for the ultimate glory in Christ. It requires the preacher to apply sermons practically, engaging the congregation to live out the teachings in their daily lives. Dr. Beeke stresses the importance of discriminatory and applicatory preaching, which distinguishes between believers and non-believers and ensures that sermons are personalized and applicable to all listeners. He also highlights the necessity for preachers themselves to have an experiential relationship with God to effectively preach in this manner.

Okay, amen. Thanks for coming. I look forward to this and I'm only sorry I couldn't hear my dear brother Borgman's addresses. I'm actually a very good friend to Brian And I've been in his church several times doing conferences and watching how the people and he interact with each other. He's not only a model for reformed experiential preaching, but he's a model for being a reformed, experiential heart-to-heart pastor.

And people love him. I do have to acknowledge, though, Brian, you can dare to say things to your people that I don't quite dare yet to say to mine. Brian's a straight shooter with his people. They just, they love him so much, they just take it from him. So every minister has his own style, which is, but I was privileged to be there.

What was it, your 30th anniversary there? Yeah, that was awesome. All the testimonies that were given, wonderful. Anyway, if you turn with me to Romans 7 and needless to say the subject is very dear to my heart that I'm going to bring you today and tomorrow. It's something I've wrestled with all my life.

And I do have the privilege of teaching my full course of Reformed Experiential Preaching to a number of seminaries around the world And most repeatedly to John MacArthur's Master's Seminary, his D. Min. Students. So I do that every other year. So what I'm about to give you is just kind of like a little digest of some of the more important parts of the course, and I hope that you'll benefit from it.

We're going to talk this afternoon about what really is Reformed Experiential Preaching. Seven or eight marks that really mark it out. And then we'll talk about what does this, what does a Reformed experiential preacher smell like? I mean, how can you tell this is a Reformed experiential preacher in the good sense of the word. And then tomorrow, we're gonna go deeper into the weeds and look at John Bunyan and so on, how they how they did it.

Because you know John Owen said of John Bunyan that he would give up all his learning if he could just relate to the souls of people the way that Bunyan could. So I want to read from Romans 7 verse 15. Well, start at 14 and we'll read through Romans 8 Verse 1 and then I want to read the last verses of Romans 8 as well. Romans 7, 14, for we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin. For that which I do, I allow not.

For what I would, that do I not, but what I hate, that do I. If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good. Now then, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. For I know that in me that is in my flesh dwelleth no good thing. For to will is present with me, but how to perform that which is good I find not.

For the good that I would I do not, but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. I find then a law that when I would do good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man, but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?

I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God but with the flesh the law of sin. There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit. And then jump with me to verse 34. Who is he that condemneth?

It is Christ that died, yea, rather that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ, shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword, as it is written, for thy sake we are killed all the day long. We are counted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord." That's far the reading of precious scripture.

Let's pray. Lord God, we need Thy help doubly whenever we speak about this subject because it's so challenging for us as preachers to really preach from the heart to the hearts of our people, the unsearchable riches of Christ, the abominable character of sin, the beauties and glories of heaven, and all those experiential themes that run through scripture so abundantly and are so dear to especially the mature children of God who wait for thy word to drink it in. And I beseech of thee, Lord, help us in these lectures. We thank thee for helping Brian in a wonderful way, and I pray that I may receive that same portion of help and that this whole conference may end up being one in which these dear brothers brothers in the ministry may return home this week saying I've got yes more work to do in this area as we all do, but it was invaluable to me and for my ministry and it will impact me and help transform my preaching to be all the more effective. So help us in these hours and be near to us we pray in Jesus name.

Amen. So You've all heard preaching that reaches the head and not the heart. You come away with some interesting things, but you don't really know what to do with the sermon. In the worst case, such preaching may puff you up with a bit of knowledge, but it's light without heat. But you've also heard preaching that is all heart and no head.

Hearing it can be emotionally moving. People leave the service excited, fired up, feeling good most of the time, but it's zeal without knowledge. It's like cotton candy. Such preaching has lots of flavor but no nutritional value. So when we speak about experiential preaching, you need to understand that's not the only kind of preaching.

The way I explain it to my theological students is I do it this way on a whiteboard scripture alone all preaching must be based on scripture then you put an arrow sound doctrine all preaching must be doctrinal you can't preach without doctrine You can't preach without teaching what the Bible's teaching. But that always has to come out of Scripture. Then comes experiential. All my experiential preaching must be based solidly on the Word of God, and it must be doctrinally sound according to the text I'm expounding on that particular occasion. And then all preaching must also be practical.

So from the experiential end, after you describe how the Holy Spirit works these things in the soul and what the believer experiences, you then ask the question, so what? What do I do with this now practically in my life? So remember in this conference we're only speaking about one of these four dimensions of preaching. All four to greater and lesser degrees with regard to experiential. Not every sermon is equally experiential, but all four must be in every sermon because of course All our preaching must be scriptural.

Of course it must all be doctrinal. But also, of course, and this is what lots of ministers forget, it must relate to the inward soul, to the heart experience of that doctrine, of that text. And then of course it must be practical. So remember that as I go through these four lectures, I'm only picking out this one aspect, experiential. And I teach homiletics at the seminary, so I have four full courses that take on all these other aspects as well.

So the problem with both of these kinds of preaching is that they sever the vital connection between truth and love. Truth and love. Paul says in Ephesians 4 15, speak the truth in love so that we may grow up into him in all things which is the head even Christ. I mean that could be a masthead for true preaching, just that text. Speak the truth, speak doctrinal truth based on the Word of God, but speak it in love that touches the soul, that impinges upon the experience of the inner man, so that we may grow up into Christ in all things, how practical it is, which is the head, even Christ.

So gospel truth has not reached its goal until it produces gospel love. Truth and love are inseparable. Love has no living roots without gospel truth. That's the kind of preaching we need. So Reformed experiential preaching is not merely aesthetic, causing people to walk away saying what a beautiful idea.

It's not merely informative, imparting knowledge about the Bible and theology. It's not merely emotional, warming hearts and producing strong feelings. It's not merely moralistic instructing and exhorting what's right, what's wrong. There are traces and elements of all of these in good preaching, but none of them is the heart of the matter of experiential preaching. Reformed experiential preaching uses the truth of Scripture to shine the glory of God into the depths of the soul by the Spirit of God to call people to live holy and solely for God.

Let me say that again, because this is key. Reformed experiential preaching uses the truth of Scripture to shine the glory of God into the depths of the soul by the Holy Spirit to call people to live holy and solely for God. Experiential preaching searches our hearts. It comforts the soul, it allures the soul, it invites the soul, and it engages the soul to experience by the workings of the Spirit the doctrines you are presenting in that particular sermon. So experiential preaching is very personal.

It's from the heart of the preacher to the heart of the parishioner. It breaks us. Think of Romans 7. And it remakes us. Think of Romans 8.

It's both exhilarating and humbling. Under experiential preaching, the true children of God who have any experiential knowledge of God, or have considerable, I should say, experiential knowledge of God, they will walk out of church saying, truly we have met God face to face in this place. So such preaching brings us face to face with the most glorious and delightful being in the universe and face to face at the same time with our profound wickedness and our dire need for the Savior. And such preaching exalts Christ and helps us to find our all in Him so that we walk out and say what a savior, what a savior. You probably heard this story that in the late 19th century in London, there were two very successful preachers.

One was Philip Brooks and one was Charles Spurgeon. And Spurgeon, of course, was warmly experiential, and Brooks was more intellectual, said some edifying things, but didn't reach the heart the way Spurgeon did. Well, the pastor who lived a few miles away from them and just was frustrated because he couldn't get more people to his church. So he said to his elders one Sunday, I want you to go for me, skip church today, our church, I want you to go hear Brooks preach in the morning and Spurgeon preach in the evening and come back and tell me what they're doing that I'm not doing. Now, I'm not sure that's the best thing for him to do, But anyway, that's what he did.

So these elders went and heard Brooks in the morning. And they walked out. They said, Wow, what an intellect. What a preacher he is. I mean, this is amazing what we learned.

And let's not even go to hear Spurgeon tonight. We'll come back and hear Booksy. I mean, nobody can match this. This is astonishing. What a preacher.

But the one said, you know, we promised our pastor we would go, so yeah, I guess we better go hear Spurgeon. So they stumble out after they hear Spurgeon in the evening and they look at each other and say, what a Christ! What a Christ for our soul! Well, which one did they really benefit the most from? Obviously, Spurgeon.

So really, what is Reformed experiential preaching? So I want to give you three words that I hope will be helpful. Idealistic, realistic, and optimistic. I want to enter into this discussion by giving you an example in my own life that I think will be helpful so that you can remember the gist of what I'm about to say. So I was one of those people when I was 18 years old, one of the people, I think it was the last year of the lottery in the United States.

And I was drafted in because my, they went by your birth date and my birthday numbered number 32. And anyone under number 100 had to go in. So I quickly signed up for the Army Reserves because I felt called to the ministry, spent two years there, and I worked under, after basic training, I worked as a clerk typist under a boss an amazing huge huge black brother I mean this guy was like a great big teddy bear and so kind, so warm to me, so different from basic training with a drill sergeant. And the day I left active duty I could be called back up you see for the next six years to go to war. And you have to go to meetings and summer camps and all of that.

So he put his arm around me the last day and he said, son, I'm going to miss you. But son, I want to tell you something. If you get called back up to come into war, you gotta remember three things son. Number one, you gotta remember that How to fight. You've been trained to fight.

You gotta remember the way wars should go. Number two, you gotta remember that wars never go the way they should go. Wars are bloody and messy and they take all kinds of twists and turns. So you need to be able to adjust and know how to change plans and how to cope with things not going the right way. And number three, you need to be optimistic, however, that the end of the war will be one on the side of what's right and United States is on the right side and so you've got to be fighting for Uncle Sam and you've got to be fighting for the US government and for the nation and so remember those three things when you fight remember you're fighting for that flag he said to me I thanked him very much and I walked away from that and suddenly dawned on me you know this is this is quite a bit like experiential preaching because in experiential preaching the preacher does these three things.

First of all, he's realistic. He's Romans 7. In my flesh dwells no good thing. Or just a bunch of sinners sitting here apart from Grace Brothers. And the minister's not afraid to say that.

He's not afraid to preach Romans 7. In my flesh dwells no good thing. He's not afraid to preach the dastardliness, the heinousness of sin and the struggles, the struggles of the believer, even the mature believer with the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, the pride of life and so on. Sins maybe that people don't see but dwell inside. You experience them.

Experiential realism. But then that's not all there is to experiential preaching. If that's all there was, you'd leave everyone in your audience, all God's people at least, you'd leave them pretty content with the way they're at. So everybody has all these struggles, so I'm no different than anybody else. And I just trust Christ and that's the end of the story.

No need to grow. No, no. Idealistically, You have to preach how the war should go How to battle against those sins To find freedom in Christ you need to preach Romans 8. We're more than conquerors through him who loved us. There is hope in Jesus.

There is an answer to the question in Romans 7. I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. You can live at a higher level through grace, through sovereign, free grace, and you explain the glories and the mountain peaks and the beauties of Romans 8. Nothing shall separate us, not even sin, from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. So you preach both realistically and idealistically.

Now what if you preach only Romans 8, which a lot of preachers do do do today. By the way, Romans 8 in our seminary library has more recordings than any other chapter in the Bible, which tells me that more reformers and Puritans, that's most of our library, preach on Romans 8 than any other chapter in the Bible. And I can see it for good reason. It's a rich glorious chapter. But they also preach quite a bit on Romans 7.

Now here's our temptation. You want to comfort God's people. So You don't want to dabble too long in Romans 7, but you just want to give them the victory and all of that. But you see, if you give all the idealism and you don't solve realism, what happens? Well, they say, I don't think I'm a Christian at all.

You keep talking about all this optimism. I'm still struggling with that lust of the flesh or that fear or, I must not be a Christian. So if you preach Romans seven without Romans eight, you're not really preaching the full, well-rounded experiential life of God's people because you're just leaving them content there with their struggles with sin. If you preach Romans 8 without Romans 7, you're not preaching the depths of the inner struggles of their soul. You're not preaching really robustly, holistically, experiential either.

And then they'll say, well, this is too much for me to grasp. I'm way down here spiritually, you're preaching way up here. There's no room for me. And then you must look for the end goal. But it's not Uncle Sam, it's not United States, it's Jesus, It's the glories of heaven, it's the future of every believer.

We will gain the victory, we'll enter in glory, and we'll enter into a spiritual marriage, a spiritual utopian marriage with Lord Jesus Christ. Yes, there is a utopian marriage. Sin free, fault free. It's Jesus and the believer in glory forever. So take that as an entrance, a gateway to understanding experiential preaching.

You're preaching those great themes of the Bible that impact the soul of the believer idealistically, the way I should be, realistically, the way I am, and optimistically, what my future's going to be with Christ forever in glory. Now John Kelvin already spoke about the importance of experiential preaching. Now Kelvin also used the word experimental and the words are very similar they come from the same root word in Latin. So you can really use either one. Problem is today if you look up the word experimental in the dictionary there's nothing there about the thing we're talking about so it's harder for people to understand.

The advantage of the word experimental is you've got the word experiment directly in it which is helpful actually because you see everything, every experience you have must be tested like an experiment with a hypothesis. It must be tested in the light of Isaiah 8 verse 20. If they speak not according to this word it is because there's no light in them. I love what Martin Luther said. He said if your experience cannot be found back in the Bible, it's probably from the devil and not from God.

I'm talking not about the details of the experience, but the essence of the experience. You see, we've got to bring our personal inner spiritual life and lay it down beside the scriptures and say does it cohere with the scriptures. So Calvin uses experimental sometimes and he uses experiential sometimes And the Puritans also followed him in that and used both. But here's Calvin, for example. When he paraphrases Psalm 27 verse 9, he says this, make me truly to experience that thou art near to me and let me clearly behold thy power in saving me." And then he goes on to say, we must observe the distinction between the theoretical knowledge derived from the word of God and what is called by the divines, the experimental knowledge of his grace.

And that is when God shows himself in operation to the soul who finds him in his word. Very interesting statement. Calvin believed that the truth of Scripture is foundational to Christianity like we all do, but that truth he's saying must be experienced in the form of an experimental knowledge. So one more recent writer put it this way, you've got two pieces of pizza, maybe it's a supreme pizza with all kinds of ingredients. You've got a man who's a nutritionist who could give you a whole sermon about all the ingredients of that pizza.

You've got a man sitting next to him, but that man can't eat anything because he's got stomach cancer, can't eat the pizza. But the man sitting next to him, well He knows a little bit about the pizza. He sees cheese, he sees mushrooms, but he can't tell you much about it, but he tastes it. Who really knows the pizza? Obviously the man who tasted it.

That's at the heart of what we're getting at with experiential knowledge. You taste and see that the Lord of good. The word of the Lord is honey and sweeter than a honeycomb. The prophets are always talking about that, aren't they? I rejoice in tasting the word of God.

So Calvin is getting at that here. You see, it's something more than just head knowledge. William Perkins, the father of Puritanism said, the spiritual knowledge of God consists in an experiential knowledge of Christ's death and resurrection, an effectual and lively knowledge in the soul, working in us new affections and new inclinations. Well, I'm going to give you my tentative definition now at this point because I think I've built it up to this. So here it is.

Reformed experiential preaching explains how things ought to go in the Christian life, the ideal of Romans 8, how they actually go in Christian struggles, reality of Romans 7, and the ultimate goal in the kingdom of glory, the outcome of Revelation 21-22. Paul Helm wrote a definition that I find very rich of experiential preaching in the Banner Truth magazine way back in 1975. And by the way, I should say here that nearly all preachers in America, all Reformed preachers in America, were experiential up until the 1830s with Charles Finney. He did so much damage with all his techniques and with our Mininism coming in. But all the great missionary preachers, William Carey and Judson, They were all experiential preachers.

Listen to Paul Helms definition. I think you'll get it. The situation today calls again for preaching that will cover the full range of Christian experience in the soul, a developed experiential theology. This preaching must give guidance and instruction to Christian in terms of their actual experience. It must not deal in unrealities or treat congregations as if they lived in a different century or in wholly different circumstances.

Stop right there. In other words, you don't just copy the Puritans and say word for word what they said. No, they addressed it to their century. You've got to make it real and experiential in our century. But then he goes on to say this, this experiential preaching involves taking the full measure of our modern situation and entering with full sympathy into the actual experiences, the hopes and the fears of Christian people.

That's why it's so good for you as a pastor to know your people well, to know them inside, to have counsel with them, to have them tell you secrets about their struggles that perhaps they've told no one else. And they won't do that if you only stay three years in the church and run to the next one. It's when you're there for a while and you've pastored them and you've led them as a shepherd and they've come to trust you, trust your confidentiality, come to see you as kind of a spiritual father over the years, that they'll pour out their soul to you. So this is what we're getting at. Before I'm the experiential preacher, it touches on my relationship with my wife and my children and my extended family and my church and my society and my workplace.

It covers the whole of life. Always aiming, always aiming to live holy and solely for the glory of God. All right. Now, so much for a kind of definition of what it is. Let me, Let me, I've tried to present to you now maybe the trunk of the tree and with some of the roots there, idealism, realism, optimism.

But there are two fat branches in experiential preaching that come out of this tree. And one is a fat branch and the other is a really fat branch. Okay? So we'll do the fat one first and then the fat fat one. The fat one is what our forefathers called, which you suddenly don't even hear the word anymore, discriminatory preaching.

Discriminatory preaching. Discriminatory preaching aims to distinguish the Christian from the non-Christian so that people can diagnose their own spiritual condition and needs. It aims to distinguish the Christian from the non-Christian so people can diagnose their own spiritual condition and needs. Heideberg Catechism calls preaching the keys of the kingdom of heaven. When you preach, you open the kingdom with the keys to those who are truly repenting and truly believing in Christ alone for salvation and you are closing the kingdom to those who have yet refused to bow the knee and surrender their entire lives to the Lord Jesus Christ.

So in discriminatory preaching as the Puritans used to say we are setting men before eternity. We are bringing judgment day down to the consciences of men and we're saying things like this to them if you were to die today would you be ready to meet the Lord is Christ your only hope are you sheltered under the blood of Christ alone is is Christ everything to you is he your total Savior not 99% a hundred percent is it all in Christ for you? Discriminatory preaching. So discriminatory preaching examines people, examines the marks of grace in their life. It takes the 11 marks of grace, for example, in 1st John, the epistle of assurance, and says, do you love the brethren?

Do you follow the commandment? We know we pass from death to life because we love the brethren, because we obey God's commandments. Is this the trajectory of your life? Do you have a special love for the children of God? You're discriminating, you see.

You do that with the Beatitudes. Those are not blessed but cursed who are not poor in spirit, who don't mourn over sin, who aren't meek, who don't hunger and thirst after righteousness. And on and on it goes. So Charles Bridges in his famous book, The Christian Ministry, which I think is the best overall book on the ministry ever written in the history of mankind, Presents three aspects of discriminatory preaching. First aspect is between the church, people in front of you, and the world.

Two different life philosophies. That one is antithetical to God, one is supportive of the word of God. And Bridges Golanhi has got like, it looks like about 20 proof texts here and sets all of these up in dichotomies of church people, worldly people, church people, worldly people, the contrast between them. But secondly, and this is where so many ministers don't speak like our forefathers here, We must have that discriminatory line of preaching go through our congregation. Every one of us has many unconverted people in our congregation.

Boys and girls, young people, also some members of the church that are just nominal. You know that. You can see it in their lives many times. Sometimes you don't know really because you have doubts and fears but you can't see into the heart so you have to be careful to judge. But in your preaching, you have to give the clear marks of grace of what it means to be a child of God.

Otherwise, some of your members are gonna stand before Christ on the day of days and say, Lord, Lord, have we not done this and that in thy name and done many wonderful works? And they'll say, I never knew you, depart from me. You that work iniquity. David Brainerd said this, labor in your preaching to distinguish clearly upon the experiences and affections in religion that you may make a difference between the gold and the shining dross. I say labor here if you would ever be useful minister of Christ to separate the precious from the vile.

Examine yourselves, whether you be in the faith, prove your own selves, 2 Corinthians 13 says. And as a minister, I am to help my people do that, to examine themselves biblically. And then thirdly, Bridget says, there's also a line of discrimination in a tertiary way within believers because not all believers are alike. Some are babes in grace, some are young men in grace, some are fathers in grace. Sometimes you preach to all of them in one group and you just say children of God and you say something.

Other times you might say for those of you who are fully assured of your faith, let me give you this counsel. For those of you who are fully assured of your faith, let me give you this counsel. Or for those of you who are still very new to the faith and struggling maybe with assurance, let me give you this counsel. You see, you're speaking to different groups in your church. The Puritans were very big on that.

So that not every sermon, but only when the text compels it, you will single out different groups so that everyone will feel over a period of time that the minister knows exactly my condition of soul. Also when you speak to the unconverted actually. I don't preach the same to you, to unconverted people who are seriously impressed with the truth but haven't been able for one reason or another to come to Christ yet but they're searching, they're drinking in your sermons but they're not saved yet. They're like this close. You don't preach the same to them do you?

As someone who comes in is totally indifferent like Galio Cares from none of these things and you don't even understand why they're in church. And they're hardened and they pull out their cell phone and do some email while they're sitting in church. I mean come on these two people need two different kinds of preaching, right? So there's a discriminatory element of preaching, which is the same within the two big groups of the saved or the unsaved. Now today when you go to hear many preachers, and I'm not a very judgmental person so don't take this wrong, but I'm just saying this is a serious problem in America today.

There's no discrimination at all. Let me just up and praise the Lord. We thank that we're all in Christ here today. And maybe later in the praise, if there's someone who's not yet saved in Christ, please save them. And, oh, there's like 400 people in church and they're probably all wondering, someone not saved here?

I wonder who that one person could be. Certainly it couldn't be me or any of my kids. This is ridiculous. You're deceiving people. You're making them feel like everyone's saved just because they come to church.

There's a lot more people than one that are not saved in your church and in mine. And they need solid, strong, inviting, alluring, convicting preaching. So That's one part of experiential preaching. You really examine people. Now the fat branch is what's called applicatory preaching.

We must apply, apply, apply the sermon. I know some preachers who will go unnamed but they're pretty good preachers in many ways, great exegetes, but they actually say from the pulpit, we as ministers, the Holy Spirit does all the applying. We don't do that. So we just tell the truth and we leave it up to the Holy Spirit to apply. Is that what the prophets did?

Is that what Jesus did? Is that what Paul did? None of them. Application, application, application. Jesus is the supreme model of this.

Always applying everything he said. And to specific groups. So application is critical. In fact, I'll say it bluntly, that's really what we get paid to do. Yes, to exegete the text too, but really what people want to know is, what do I do with a sermon?

I have a favorite Scottish, old Scottish story I love to tell. A lady was home sick, her husband went to church, and very devout people. Husband came home. She heard the back door like 10 minutes earlier than usual. Is that you Donald?

Is the sermon done already? He said yes it's me dear but no the sermon is not done. It's been said. It has yet to be done. See, in preaching without application, Nobody knows what to do with the sermon when they go home.

In Puritan experiential preaching, what happened was the Father would either be taking conscientious notes or he had very good memory and he would be weaving the sermon every day in family worship, those two sermons morning and evening. He'd weave them through all the family worships of the next week. So they called the preaching occasions the marked day of the soul, abbreviation for market, because they would go one day a week to the market to get all their groceries for a whole week. They didn't have grocery stores you can run in and out of like we do. And so they saw Sunday as a day, the market day for the soul, when you go get the Word of God and all the applications the preacher made and then you live out of that for the week to come as the Father would apply it all week long.

How different that is from what we have today. Daniel Webster, 19th century, was asked, what are you looking for when you go to hear the gospel preached? He answered this, when I attend upon the teachings of the gospel, I wish to have it made a personal matter to me, a personal matter to me, a personal matter to me by application." I was talking to Bob Godfrey, who is the former president of Westminster West in California a few years back. And he said, you know this business of people just wanting comfort all the time in sermons, it's really quite shallow. He said, tell you the truth, my heart is easy to wander, so I actually want to get beat up a little bit under sermons and get back on the right track.

I want God to deal with me in sermons." I said, amen Bob. So we need to bring real applications to our people in our sermons. Now 35 years ago when I was teaching theological students, I would say to them, you've got to bring an application at least once every 10 to 15 minutes, at least. So every major point you make, you've got to have an application. Today, I tell them at least once every five minutes.

People's attention span today just does not last with straight doctrinal teaching very long. So you're looking, you're praying, you get down on your knees when you're preparing your sermon and say, Lord, how this point I'm just going to make from this text, what's the best way for me to bring that home to the consciences of my people? Is it through an illustration? Is it through something that they need to do or something they need to avoid doing or is it through just directing them to the fullness of Christ or whatever it is. It's not an either or.

The Holy Spirit's job or my job. It's both of our jobs. Calvin said in every sermon there's two ministers. There's the one who's saying the words and then there's the one standing beside him that nobody can see who takes the words and takes them like arrows in his bow and shoots them out over the congregation and directs every arrow to every heart according to each heart's need. That's experiential preaching.

So people go home and say, it was as if I didn't even see the minister up there and as if no one was around me. God was just dealing with me. God was applying to me. Maybe it's a great comfort and they go out weeping with joy. Maybe it's just Christ.

I had this incredibly sweet comment of an old saint in my congregation. And she's been on the way for several decades and of course every Sunday go out she shakes my hand every service She shakes my hand and she says, you know, I just figured out this week that you actually preach the same message every single Sunday. I said, really? Yeah, she said, it's always something about Jesus. And I said, well, what do you think of that?

She said, yeah. We just need them every week, don't we? See, That's it. We need them every week. I need to bring you something every week.

I need to bring you some more grapes from Eshkol. I'm a spy. A minister is a spy who goes out and spies out the land of the Word of God and brings back riches and treasures and directions and applications to his people. Now sometimes those applications are of course very comforting. Sometimes they're very convicting.

Sometimes applicatory preaching is costly preaching because you maybe even know ahead of time that some people are going to have their toes stepped on. But John the Baptist didn't seem to worry about that. He lost him his head, but he told Herod specifically, that woman sitting beside you, you're sinning Herod. Now you don't say that from the pulpit directly to one person, but the principle you do say, you do say. You know, don't you pretend, don't you pretend to be a Christian when you're cheating on your wife.

Don't you think you're just this mature Christian when you're pushing that button and going watching pornography secretly. You've got problems to work with, serious problems. So you have applications you see. So Bridges writes this, the method of perpetual application, notice the word perpetual, where the subject will admit of it is probably the best calculated for effect in preaching. Applying each head you bring distinctly to your people and addressing separate classes or groups at the close of the sermon with suitable exhortation, warnings, and encouragements and comforts.

And is not this what the Epistle to the Hebrews does, which is itself a series of sermons. It's a complete model of this scheme. This is still Bridges. Argumentative throughout, connected in his train of reasoning, logical in his deductions, each successive link in the book of Hebrews is interrupted by some personal, forceful convictions of applications while the continuity of the chain is preserved entire to the end." Wow. Spot on.

Spot on. Spot on. Spot on. So remember, you're not speaking before people. You're speaking to people.

You're speaking to people. And therefore, just the way you speak to your kids. When you want to train your kids, what do you do? You apply, apply, apply the truths and show them what it will look like in their daily life when they obey those principles. As a preacher, you're a father to your people.

You apply from the word of God. I had a minister who trained me, or first minister who trained me, my MDiv, he said to me, you know, you'll get really confused if you look in the eyes of people. It'll be too direct for them. They'll feel uncomfortable. But yet you don't want to look over their heads like this.

You ever see a minister do that? He looks from side to side like this. Like there's no people in front of him. It's crazy. Even your plamenics, your style delivery, will impact your application.

So I went out my first time as a preaching because he said, don't look in their eyes. He said, look at their foreheads. So because it will just discombobulate if you look in their eyes. So I started looking at people's foreheads. Talk about discombobulating somebody.

It was awful. One sermon I gave it up. I'm gonna look people in the eyes because I'm preaching to people. I want to connect with people. Now of course you don't stare at one guy for 15 seconds while you're preaching I mean you use some common sense But the point is you see your whole demeanor your whole body your whole mind your whole soul is is is is thrown into the act of preaching.

And in experiential preaching, you very voice, sometimes you may be leaning forward like this, talking to God's people about the sweetness of Christ. Other times you may be ramping up the volume and saying, if you don't change, you're on your way to everlasting destruction. Do you hear me? You see, diversity to the saved, diversity to the unsaved. You're applying, applying in all kinds of ways.

All right, let me just give you in the last 10 minutes I have here a couple more applications. One thing I want to do for sure is, yeah, I think I'll wrap things up so we don't go over time, but I want to give you a quotation from Francis Wayland. Francis Wayland, he was a Reformed Baptist preacher. His dates are 1796 to 1865 And it was in 1857 that he wrote a book called Notes on the Principles and Practices of Baptist Churches in America. And there's one paragraph in this book I want to read to you.

This was in 1857. So 20, 30 years after Charles Finney came in with his new measures, and he's bemoaning in this paragraph that some ministers now, in fact the general trend of ministers following Finney, are no longer preaching experientially. And then he gives a list of things, which he puts in the category of experiential preaching. I want you to hear that list. So here it is.

From the manner in which our ministers have entered upon their work, that is the work of preaching, it's evident that it must have been the prominent object of their lives to convert men to God by the grace of the Spirit. They were remarkable for what was commonly called experimental preaching. Then here it comes, this is all one sentence. They told much of the exercises of the human soul under the influence of the truth of the gospel, including The feeling of a sinner while he's under the convicting power of the truth. The various subterfuges to which he resorted when he was aware of his danger.

The successive applications of truth by which he was driven out of all of them. The despair of the soul when it found itself holy without a refuge. The final submission of the soul to God and simple receiving of and reliance upon Christ for salvation. The joys of the new birth and the earnestness of the soul to introduce others to the happiness which it has now for the first time experienced, the trials of the soul when it has found itself an object of reproach and persecution among those whom it loved best. The whole process and ups and downs of progressive sanctification.

The various devices of Satan to lead us into sin, the mode in which the attacks of the adversary may be resisted, and the grave dangers of backsliding with its evidences and the means of recovery from it. You could take that all together. That could be a definition of experiential preaching as well. But then, here's the sad part. Way then concludes with these sad words.

These remarks, this list, show us the tendency in 1857 of the class of preachers which seems now to be passing away. I'm wondering what he'd say if he heard preaching in 2025. So how different experiential preaching is from what we often hear today and my whole conviction having spent thousands upon thousands of hours in my life, from the time I was 15 years old until today, reading our forefathers, reading the Puritans, reading the Reformers, reading great 18th, 19th century preachers, as well as contemporary authors. My conviction is that those who preached experientially, as well as biblically, doctrinally, practically, saw far more fruit on their labor of genuine conversions than those who did not. And often they preach warning sermons, not just comforting sermons, And God used those warning sermons often for the conversion of dozens of people at once.

Sometimes even hundreds. So when the Word of God is not preached experientially, When it's preached in a way that can't really transform listeners because the preacher fails to discriminate and fails to apply, that preaching is usually reduced to a lecture or to a catering of what people want to hear, worse yet, or to a kind of subjectivism that is divorced from the foundation of scripture truth. It fails to explain what the reform called vital religion, living religion in the soul, How that sinner is stripped of his self-righteousness. How he's driven to Jesus Christ alone for salvation. How he's led to find the joy of simple reliance upon Christ.

How he encounters the plague of indwelling sin, how he battles against him were backsliding, how he gains faith. These are the things that need to come back to the foreground again. We need to preach We need to preach heart to heart, humbly, earnestly, passionately, the whole counsel of God. Stripping sinners of their righteousness and building them up in the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now the problem is with this.

The problem is you can't really preach experientially if you don't live yourself in an experiential relationship with God. So that's my next talk. What is the experiential preacher like before God? Let's pray. Gracious God, please, please bless this little intro to Reformed Experiential Preaching.

And Lord, bless the talk also to come about what that means for the preacher's own life and help us to examine ourselves under the microscope of Thy Word and convict us where we are going astray or where we are growing lukewarm and do direct and guide us Lord that we would have a personal vital relationship with thee in the inner closet as well as among our people that may assist our experiential preaching and not detract from it. We pray in Jesus name. Amen. Thank you.