The following message was delivered
at the 1991 Trinity Pastors Conference held on October 20th through
24th at the Trinity Baptist Church in Monteville, New Jersey. What the nurture of the inner
life of the man of God is among the private duties of the ministry,
the public preaching of the Word of God is among his public duties. That is, it is foundational,
it is central, it is the crucial and most important part of his
manifold tasks as a servant of Christ. And perhaps nowhere is
that two-pronged perspective more powerfully and simply distilled
then in Paul's exhortation to Timothy, take heed unto yourself,
the primary private duty, and to thy teaching, the primary
public duty. And preaching, in the biblical
sense of that word, preaching, I say, is the most potent weapon
in the arsenal of God for dismantling the kingdom of darkness and for
establishing the kingdom of God's dear Son in the hearts of men. And it is of utmost importance,
then, that we have a clear understanding of what biblical preaching is,
a clear understanding of what good, Spirit-owned, consistently
edifying preaching is. And in making an attempt to come
to some clear views as to the elements and qualities of true
preaching, we are presently examining some general axioms which apply
not to the act of preaching itself, which has its own set of unique
dynamics, but rather to the content and the form of our sermons,
whether they be topical the exposition of a specific or individual text,
or whether they are part of a consecutive exposition of a larger portion
of the Word of God. Yesterday we examined the first
of the seven axioms that we hope to cover in these morning sessions,
that axiom being that the proclamation explanation and application of
scriptural truths must constitute the heart and soul of all preaching. Now, in this first hour this
morning, we take up the second axiom, which is found on page
2.3 of the notes that you have. The numbers are in the bottom
right-hand corner. And that second axiom is stated
as follows. The proclamation, explanation,
and application of scriptural truths which are most needed
by your regular hearers must constitute your constant goal. Now please note the key words
in the axiom. We are dealing with the truths
most needed by your regular hearers. Now it is not necessarily the
truths that they most desire. Your children might desire a
constant diet of ice cream, Twinkies, and Froot Loops, but you have
more love for them in regard for their physical well-being
than to give them a diet comprised of what they want and what they
would like. Furthermore, the truths most
needed by our hearers may not necessarily be the truths we
most desire to give them at any given point in our ministries.
The writer to the Hebrews had that problem. Concerning Melchizedek,
he said, there are many things I desire to say, but he said,
I can't say them. I desire to say them, but they
were not in a posture of spiritual perception and spiritual health
in vigor enough to receive them, so he didn't say that. So we
are concerned in this axiom to address the matter of ascertaining
the truths that are most needed by our regular hearers, and that
giving such truth must constitute our constant goal. Now, as in all other things,
we will not perfectly attain our goals, we will not be perfect
or infallible in our judgment, but we must continually strive
to keep an honest and open heart before God in conjunction with
discussion and deliberation with our fellow elders to serve up
a diet of divine truth that indeed represents the truths most needed
by our regular hearers. Now, with that brief explanation
of the words of the axiom, you will notice in your outline that
we are going to trace out, first of all, the biblical basis for
the axiom, and then letter B, the fundamental principle operative
in the application of this axiom, and letter C, some general guidelines
for the wise selection of sermonic materials. Now, on what basis
dare I assert as an axiom essential to all effective biblical preaching
that the proclamation, explanation, and application of the scriptural
truths most needed by our regular hearers must constitute our constant
goal in preaching? Well, I rest my case, as for
the biblical basis, upon three very sound pillars of biblical
revelation. The nature of preaching in relationship
to the prophetic office of Christ, the implications of the pastoral
office and the pattern of biblical preaching. First of all, then,
the nature of preaching in relationship to the prophetic office of Christ. One of the truths of Scripture
which I trust all of you holds dear is that when the Lord Jesus
said, where two or three are gathered in my name, there am
I in the midst, Matthew 18, 20, that this is not a noble notion. It is a blessed, albeit spiritual,
reality. And when the Lord Jesus is present
in the assemblies of his people, he is present to exercise all
of the prerogatives of his offices as prophet, priest, and king
of his people. He is present not only to be
worshipped in the glory of his person, not only to be praised
in terms of the sufficiency of his work, but he is present to
instruct us as our great prophet, to minister to us as our succoring
high priest, and to exercise his crown rights as our exalted
king. And he exercises these offices
by his word and spirit through the means ordained by him as
those conduits through which he comes to his gathered people
in his offices of prophet, priest, and king. Now, when we ask the
question, how does he fulfill his office as prophet in the
midst of his people? I believe the section in Revelation
chapters 2 and 3 holds the most helpful clue of the answer to
that question. For in Revelation chapter 2 and
3, we have the picture of the Lord Jesus in all of his exalted
glory in the midst of the lampstands. And what John hears and sees,
he is to write to the seven churches, and the Lord Jesus begins each
of his messages by saying, I know thy works, and concludes each
message by saying, He that hath an ear to hear, let him hear
what the Spirit is saying to the churches. And in each of
those messages, our Lord gives specific pointed, tailor-made
observations, rebukes, consolations, and counsels, but he also gives
general, sweeping, universal truths and principles. In each
of those messages, there is a promise to him that overcometh, will
I give. and in a similar way he exercised
his prophetic office in the early churches when the letters would
come from those uniquely inspired men called Apostles so that the
Apostle Paul could write in 1 Corinthians 14 37 if any man among you is
spiritual Let him acknowledge that the things which I say unto
you are the commandments of the Lord." In other words, Christ
is standing among his people in the apostolic writings, exercising
his office as prophet, as God's final word to his people, as
well as king and sovereign over them. But in preaching, he also
manifests what is said of him in Ephesians 5. When we husbands
are told to love our wives as Christ loved the church, to love
our wives as being our own bodies, we are told in that passage,
as Christ nourishes and cherishes the church. Well, what is one
of the ways in which Christ continues to nurture and cherish his church? Well, he does this as his word
is read and expounded and applied to his people, and he builds
up, he nurtures his church in this way. Even as a husband cares
for his own body, and if it needs a band-aid, he doesn't give it
an antibiotic. If it needs a splint, he doesn't
give it an injection of cortisone. He nourishes his body in terms
of the specific and current needs of his body. And so the Lord
Jesus, as the tender priest and as the authoritative prophet
and the reigning king in his church, exercises his offices
in this way. Therefore, I say, we must be
sensitive to the present needs of our people, viewed not only
in the immediate context of where they are, but in the long-term
context of their growth and development unto the fullness of the stature
of Christ, and only as we are concerned about preaching those
truths most needed by our people do we show a sensitivity to the
reality of Christ ministering among his people as the living
and ever-present prophet of his church. But then, secondly, the
implications of the pastoral office point in the same direction. If we stand before our people
to feed them, Bosco, feed my sheep, in the capacity of shepherds,
then surely sensitivity to the state of the flock is essential. In that beautiful imagery of
Psalm 23, one of the great functions of the shepherd is to lead the
sheep into green pastures, to lead them by waters of stillness
or quietness. and what man is worthy of his
position as a shepherd who is either ignorant of or indifferent
to the state of his sheep, and what they may need at any given
time in the way of the guidance and direction rooted in the word
of God. If we take the imagery of 1 Thessalonians
2 and verse 11, that of a father in the midst of his family, then
the same case is made for seeking to bring forth those truths needed
by our people. For Paul says in that text, you
know how we dealt with each one of you as a father with his own
children, exhorting you and encouraging, and solemnly testifying to the
end that you should walk worthily of God who called you unto his
own kingdom and glory. And while a loving father will
have generic instruction for the entire family, he is not
worth his salt as a father who is not in touch with the real
current needs of his children and committed to portioning out
the kind of instruction most needed by them. If we go to another
imagery of what we are as overseers and as God's servants, if we
are set among the commonwealth of God's people as governors
or rulers, Hebrews 13, 7, 17, and 24, what governor is worthy
of his position who is indifferent to, ignorant of, or insensitive
to the state of the commonwealth? and what it may need in the way
of authoritative direction. If God has given us as pastors
and teachers for the perfecting, for the mending of the saints,
the same verb is used to describe what those disciples were doing
before they were called when they were by the seaside, mending
their nets, are we indeed fulfilling our function if we don't know
where the holes are in the net, where the mending is needed. If we are given as pastors and
teachers for the perfecting of the saints unto the work of service,
then surely what we bring to them in the way of proclamation,
explanation, and application of divine truth must be reflective
of the needs of the people of God. But then thirdly, I rest
the case on what I've called the pattern of biblical preaching. Now we turn over to page 2.4.
The pattern of biblical preaching. As we read the recorded sermons
of the Old Testament and the New Testament, we see pastoral
concern coming to expression in the epistles of the New Testament.
This principle is dominant. They were sermons suited to the
need of their hearers. One has said, a coat that fits
everyone really fits no one. It's like these one-size robes. I wonder how they arrive at the
cut and the size of those robes, because while they may fit everyone,
they really fit no one. And so, as we turn to the recorded
sermons in the scriptures, whether in the Old or the New Testament,
we see again and again that what they said was determined by the
state and the condition of the people. Jeremiah's message could
not be as suitable to the people of God in his day, or as in the
day of Isaiah, so that the two could be switched. The Corinthian
letter did not need to be sent as a pastoral corrective to the
Philippian church. And it would have been wrong
to send the Philippian letter to the Corinthian church as a
pastoral letter. Now granted, as it became evident
that these were the letters that would be incorporated into the
permanent documents of the New Covenant community, I understand
full well that the Corinthian congregation needed the Philippian
letter. You're missing the point I'm
making. The point I'm making is that what precipitated the
letter, what determined its specific content and even its form, was
the current need of that congregation. And this pattern of biblical
preaching is found throughout the Old and the New Testaments. And while we are under a qualitatively
different mode of the Spirit's operation and influence, They
were direct organs of revelation and had unique authority as prophets
and apostles, yet there is an underlying principle that with
the prophets, our Lord, and the apostles, they did not cut suits
that fit everyone. They were cutting suits that
fit particular congregations and particular states and conditions
of the people of God. And brethren, I believe that
threefold witness cannot easily be pushed aside. And if we are
convinced of the nature of preaching in relationship to the prophetic
office of Christ, the implications of the pastoral office and the
pattern of biblical preaching recorded in the scriptures, then
we will have as one of our constant goals to bring forward to our
people the truths most needed by them. Now having established
that, let us then move to letter B, the fundamental principle
operative in the wise selection of sermonic materials. One of
the questions that was submitted with an application had to do
with this very issue. the fundamental principle operative
in a wise selection of sermonic materials, and it is stated in
your notes this way, there is a constant and delicate interplay
of the natural and the supernatural. One of the points that I emphasize
almost ad nauseum throughout the entire pastoral theology
course is that in every facet of the work of the ministry,
as in our progressive sanctification, there is a constant and delicate
interplay of the natural and of the supernatural, the divine
and the human, the mundane and the supermundane, the rational
and the truly mystical. Such text as Philippians 2 evidence
that this is God's way of operating in His people under the full
blessings of the New Covenant. Work out your own salvation with
fear and trembling. You are to engage all of your
faculties with the highest sense of the solemnity of the issues
involved. You are to be wholly engaged
with fear and trembling. Why? For It is God who is at
work in you to will and to work for His good pleasure. My intense working does not displace
God's working. The reality of God's working
does not negate the necessity of my working. I work because
He works, and I give myself to work in the confidence that He
has preceded me and attends me in my efforts. Philippians 4.13,
I can do all things. I do them. But I do them in him
or through him who strengthens me. He does not bypass me. He does not do them through me. I do them. And in all that is
bound up in the integrity of my renewed ego, I do them. I can do. But I do through him
who strengthens me. And nearer to home with this
ladder of the work of the ministry is 1 Timothy 2.7. Paul has written
to Timothy, and he has used some illustrations, buttressing certain
commands, and then he says, Think on these things. And that verb
is in the same family of the noun noose, to use your noggin. Threw your mind to what I've
said. Pin all your mental faculties
upon it. Think on these things. And then
he says, And the Lord give thee understanding. He didn't say,
Timothy, throw your mind into neutral and pray and wait for
light. The Lord will give you light. He said, Think and the
Lord will give. Well, is it my mind that gives
or is it the Lord that gives? Well, you see, you don't set
up a dichotomy. The pattern of God in sanctification generically
comes to specific application in this matter of preaching,
and even more narrowly in this matter of making a wise selection
of sermonic materials. There will be this constant interaction
of the divine and the human. the mundane and the super human. Blakey has stated this very clearly
and powerfully in his excellent book for the work of the ministry.
He says, there is no inconsistency between the preacher's faith
in the necessity of the agency of the spirit and his exertion
to have his sermons such as shall be signally fitted to impress
his hearers. Nay, rather, the more intelligently
he believes that he is a laborer together with God, the more diligently
he will work to make his discourse as excellent as possible. The
husbandman knows that he cannot make the seed grow. Yet, while
he looks to God for the increase, he is himself careful to treat
each sort of soil as its nature requires, and to give to each
kind of crop the peculiar attention that its character demands. And
in like manner, though the preachers are aware that God alone can
make his sermons effectual in the spiritual profiting of his
hearers, yet because he is wise, he seeks to find out acceptable
words which shall be as goads and as nails fastened by the
masters of the assemblies. Ecclesiastes 12 verses 10 and
11. And what is true in the act of
preaching and in laboring in the content and substance of
the sermon is equally true in making judicious decisions with
reference to the whole matter of what I should preach. Now all of us struggle with the
fact that by temperament By natural inclination and by training,
we will tend to err either on the side of trusting too much
to our natural faculties in the engagement of our God-given natural
powers, or to sit back and shift into a semi-mystical state and
say that God must be the one who gives me light in this matter. And therefore, in the light of
this fundamental principle, I give four warnings. Beware. Beware of the ironclad rulemakers. You see, the ironclad rulemakers
are those who would mandate, and I've read the books, interesting,
by men who are not resident working pastors, most of them, who tell
us you should sit down at the first of the year and map out
every sermon for every week for the entire year and stick to
it like the Medes, the law of the Medes and the Persians. They
are convinced that the only kind of preaching is consecutive expository
preaching. Therefore, they map out the book
they're going to plow through from January through March in
the morning, and the book they're going to attack in the evening,
and they map it all out. They can announce it ahead of
time, and just like an efficient train system, they're right on
schedule, blessedly predictable, questionably predictable. of
the ironclad rulemakers. Secondly, beware of a legalistic
inflexibility with your own plan. You are Christ's free man. And
you and I can be indifferent to the text, quench not the spirit. Yes, we must have some plan,
some overall scheme and approach to what we are going to preach
to our people, but there must never be bondage, not only to
the rules of others, but to our own unwritten rules, the principles
by which we find ourselves most comfortably working in this.
Don't ever let them become a straitjacket to yourself. Then thirdly, beware
of copying others as you seek to find your own method. One
has said that the proper use of biography is not to copy great
men, but to understand them. Not to copy them, but to understand
them. And certainly if anyone gets
so enamored with Spurgeon that he says, well, the secret of
his great power and usefulness over so long a time must have
been the way he selected his sermons. I tell you, I'd be in
the loony bin if I accepted Spurgeon's way. For when he asked the question,
what is the right text? How do you know it? He answers,
we know it by the signs of a friend. When a verse gives your mind
a hearty grip from which you cannot release yourself, you
will need no further direction as to your proper theme. Like
the fish, you nibble at many baits, but when the hook has
pierced you, you will wander no more. When the text gets hold
of us, we may be sure that we have a hold of it and may safely
deliver our souls upon it. To use another simile, you get
a number of texts in your hand. You try to break them up. You
hammer at them with might and maim, but your labor is lost.
At last you find one which crumbles at the first blow, and it sparkles
as it falls in pieces, and you perceive jewels of the rarest
radiance flashing from within. It grows before your eye like
the fabled seed which developed into a tree while the observer
watched it. It charms and fascinates you,
or it weights you to your knees and loads you with the burden
of the Lord. Know then that this is the message
which the Lord would have you deliver, and feeling this, you
will become so bound by that scripture you will never feel
at rest till you have yielded your whole mind to its power
and have spoken upon it as the Lord shall give you utterance.
Wait for that elect word even if you wait till within an hour
of the service. Now you're going to be indicted.
This may not be understood by the cool, calculating men who
are not moved by impulses as we are, but to some of us, these
things are a law in our hearts against which we dare not offend. And I say, God bless Spurgeon
for his law, but don't make it mine. I mean that. And Spurgeon was wrong to set
that out as a pattern for his men. And imagine trying to throw
off that counsel when that man stood before you in all the living
presence of his Christ-like life, his selflessness, the unction
in power. Who am I, a little neophyte,
to question a giant? Brethren, brethren, I urge you,
beware of the ironclad rulemakers, beware of a legalistic inflexibility,
beware of copying others, especially when they obviously in their
own experience are way out in what we would call the very marginal
edges of the mystical dimension of getting the mind of God. Dr. Lloyd-Jones uses some injudicious
language in the same way. I'll not give you the whole quote,
but he speaks of a certain series of sermons, and he says, I am
quite confident, page 190, that the preaching of that series
of sermons was dictated to me by the Spirit Himself. There
it is. I didn't write it. Well, we must,
by God's grace, beware of copying others because generally when
you copy, you copy the idiosyncrasies of others and not those areas
in which they were in the center of sound principles. And then,
I've already anticipated the fourth warning, beware of the
two great dangers of enthusiasm, using it in the sense of the
old writers, and rationalism. Enthusiasm was the word that
was used as a synonym for fanaticism. claiming and expecting something
very close to direct revelation. Don't get yourself in the bondage
of believing and heeding Spurgeon's counsel. Don't speak in judiciously
of having a series of sermons dictated to you by the Holy Spirit
to say that in the course of your ordinary ministry you were
unusually moved and gripped by a text and you could have no
rest until you preached upon it. That's quite another thing.
But on the other hand, beware of rationalism. That is, an approach
to selecting sermon materials without conscious dependence
on the Holy Spirit, without earnest prayer for the help of the Holy
Spirit. this committing of oneself to
a series of sermons without ongoing sensitivity to pastoral concerns
which might dictate either the interruption, the expansion,
or the cessation of the series on which you started in good
faith, but within which it becomes evident pastoral concerns demand
that you bail out. Now then, let me, in the ten
minutes that remain, give what I'm calling some general guidelines
for the wise selection of sermonic materials. We've considered the
biblical basis of the axiom, the fundamental principle operative. In the outworking of that axiom,
now some general guidelines for the wise selection of sermonic
materials. And here, brethren, I confess,
as I went over these things last week and again early this morning,
it pains me not to read the many quotes from the old masters in
this area, but I simply must, in the interest of time, pass
over them. First of all, and fundamental to everything else,
seek to be consistently prayerful for divine guidance in this matter. The awareness that in great measure
the health and well-being of the flock will be dependent on
the main spiritual diet given from the pulpit should cause
us to cry out continually, who is sufficient for these things? Adele Davis said, you are what
you eat, and any congregation is what it eats. And what it
is, is what you and your fellow elders will serve up when you
stand and proclaim the word of God. But it's precisely at this
point that we have one of those promises that ought to be one
of the most frequently pleaded promises by every preacher. James
1 in verse 5, if any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God who
giveth. And three of the verses that
are some of the earliest that we tucked away as Christians,
Proverbs 3, 5, and 6. Trust in the Lord with all thy
heart. Lean not upon thine own understanding. Doesn't say don't use it. He
says don't lean upon it. In all thy ways acknowledge him
and he will direct thy paths. And while we abominate any claims
to direct revelation, we do believe in specific guidance. There's
a difference between the two. Direct revelation is one thing,
specific guidance is another, and specific guidance is promise
to those who ask, and who ask in faith. What a curse is upon
a people whose prayerless parson serves up sermons precipitated
by his own whims of the moment, or the dictates of Lord convenience
and King expediency. Perhaps our lack of divine guidance
is simply a witness to the truth of James 4.2. Ye have not, because
ye ask not. So the first guideline, brethren,
is seek to be consistently prayerful for divine guidance. How often
my heart is smitten when I've launched into a series and I've
come to the desk and automatically reached for my exegetical tools
in the next paragraph and begun my work, lifting up my heart
for help in my work, but not pausing to say, Lord, is it that
I should carry on in that next paragraph this week? Am I just
automatically turning to that? Because months ago, in answer
to prayer, I was convinced it was the right thing to do. We
need to keep that sensitive spirit that constantly finds us prostrate
before God, crying for wisdom. Secondly, seek to be aware of
the needs of the flock of God. To shepherd the flock is to lead,
to guard, to feed them. Therefore, we must take seriously
the admonition with respect to a man's literal flock of sheep,
as found in Proverbs 27, 23. Be diligent to know the state
of thy flocks. Now if it's right that a literal
shepherd who has a literal flock of sheep is commanded by God
as a part of heavenly wisdom and an expression of the fear
of God to be diligent to know the state of his flocks as an
economic responsibility, how much more we who are charged
with that flock, purchased with the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. William Gurnall, in his massive
treatise, The Christian in Complete Armor, writes, The preacher must
read and study his people as diligently as any book in his
study, and as he finds them, dispense like a faithful steward
unto them. The Apostle Paul is the great
example of this principle in action. When he lists all of
the things he bore for the name and sake of Christ in 2 Corinthians
11, 28, he said, besides all of this, that which cometh upon
me daily, the very word he says in Philippians, we should not
be anxious. He says, I am anxious. Anxiety for all the churches. Therefore, the epistles are pastoral
responses to perceived need, responses personally given. First Corinthians 1, 10 and 11.
It's been reported unto me of the household of Chloe that there
are divisions among you. And then he begins to address
that very issue. The book of Galatians, the epistle
to Philemon, first and second Timothy, all of these things
indicative of pastoral sensitivity. Our Lord is the great pattern,
is the great shepherd. The Sermon on the Mount, contrasting
the nature of the kingdom He has come to establish with the
perspectives embedded in the life of the Jews of His day through
their cursed leaders, the scribes and the Pharisees. And then His
upper room discourse, given to comfort His own on the eve of
his departure from them. And you and I must seek to be
aware of the needs of the flock, particularly in the various categories
that I've listed, and I must touch upon them quickly, their
general needs. As you seek to determine the
mind of God in the selection of sermonic materials, seek to
know your people with reference to their general needs. Do you
have a number of people that come out of religious and cultural
backgrounds that are indicative of broad areas of need? I remember
when God brought us a number of people out of hyper-Calvinistic
backgrounds. who found it impossible to believe
the freeness and the fullness of the gospel offer, who were
constantly looking for signs of grace within before they would
lay hold of the objective promise of the gospel without. Well,
once that need was perceived, then the preaching, both the
selection of texts and subjects and applications, would reflect
the sensitivity to that need. If you have a number of people
brought out of the background of a feelings religion, truth
is no broader, higher, deeper than their present philometer.
Well, you have got to give them great doses of those portions
and principles of the Word of God that will correct that horrible
error. But then you must be sensitive
to specific critical needs. I cannot understand The pastor,
knowing the church is going to face a matter of crucial heart-wrenching
discipline, just plods right on with his regular text in the
next passage or the subject in the topical series he's bringing,
and doesn't prepare his people for the grief and the pain and
the heart-wrenching experience by opening up some appropriate
passages dealing with the subject of discipline. Perhaps God has
taken away a giant from the congregation. Someone esteemed and loved by
the entire congregation has been cut down suddenly. And you know
that when the people come on the Lord's Day, their minds are
full of grief and a sense of loss. How insensitive not to
cry to God that He would give you a word that, like the Lord
Jesus of whom it is said, He has given me the ear of one that
is taught that I might speak a word in season to him that
is weary, be sensitive to the specific critical needs, and
then be sensitive to what I've called the occasional needs.
When things happen in our national life, Just this week ago, Lord's
Day, this happened in our assembly, as the whole mind of the nation
was taken up with this matter of the proceedings in connection
with Judge Thomas. Our people were not living in
Mars during that week. They were filled with all the
questions and the consternation and concern And I was wrestling
with whether I should say something, and I came to the conviction
that I should not, and how relieved I was when Pastor Nichols called
me and said, have you decided whether you're going to carry
on in the manifesto? I said, yes, and gave my reasons
why. He said, well, I believe God has gripped me with some
biblical perspectives. And he went over them with me.
And then even that morning, as I indicated in the announcements
he'd be addressing at that night, one of our most perceptive godly
women came and said, Oh, Pastor, what an answer to prayer. I've
been crying to God that I wouldn't enter this new week confused
as to how I should think as a Christian. And so you seek to be sensitive
to the occasional needs. of the people of God. Then thirdly,
seek to be sensitive to God's dealings with your own heart
and mind. And here I wish I could pause
and expand, but I cannot. But you need to be sensitive
to your own, your own walk with God, God's dealings with your
own heart, with your own mind. Though we don't preach ourselves,
we do preach out of ourselves. out of the crucible of our own
dealings with God, our own wrestlings with sin and grace. And as you
assimilate the word of God in your own devotional life and
the flavor of your own inner life is conditioned by that,
be sensitive to that in terms of the selection of your sermonic
materials. And then fourthly, seek to be
sensitive and accurate with respect to your own development as a
preacher. Romans 12, 3 and 4 is always in order. Don't think
more highly of yourself than you ought to think. I'm amazed
when a young tyrant will say, Well, I just preached through
the book of Hebrews. I marvel at his cheek. I think I'd preach
the congregation to sleep if I were to tempt. For me personally,
at this stage in my development, To try to preach through Hebrews,
to teach through it would be another thing. And I marvel because
the men of this world often are wiser in their generation than
the sons of light. One of my favorite tenors who's
been dead now for 15 years was Richard Tucker. And there was
pressure on him for years to sing the role in a certain opera
in which he would play the role of a high priest. And as a devout
Jew, a cantor, that's how he began to sing in Long Island.
He said, no, I've not developed vocally. I've not developed in
my general maturation of the appreciation of that role. I'm
not ready for it. 40, 45, 50, 55, 60. And he was 62 years old when
he had learned the role and was going to make his debut in that
particular role. And three weeks before he was
to do it, he died. But I marvel at that kind of
honest assessment. I'm not prepared to do that role
justice. Now, in a sense, we can never
do any portion of the word of God justice granted. But let's
be realistic in terms of our development as preachers, in
terms of our relationship to our people, in terms of our cultivated
skills in homiletics and in the ability to take weighty truths
and to break them down simply to the people of God. I commend
to you Gardner Springs' comments on this. in his book, Power in
the Pulpit, my old edition. I didn't look up the pages in
the new edition. I'll try to get them for you. But then, quickly,
seek to be sensitive to the reaction of the flock. Now, this may sound
strange to some of you, but I'm going to take the time to say
it. Seek to be sensitive to the reaction of the flock. If you've
got true sheep, how the food's going down ought to matter to
you. Now, you're not the servant of man, and as Paul says in Galatians
1.10, if I should yet seek to please men, I should not be the
servant of God. But we must not ignore true sheep. And if we find them all with
a sour face and continually burping and belching, maybe the food
we're giving them isn't the best. And this is where you see carefully
guarding the membership is critical. I don't want to ask a bunch of
goats if they like the food I'm serving up that only sheep will
love. But if under God you have a regenerate membership, then
seek to be sensitive. Don't ignore what they are saying. If Paul was concerned that bringing
an offering would please the saints, Romans 15 31, shouldn't
we be concerned if our sermons please the saints? And don't
be so insecure that you can't ask the mature saints and get
their feedback and listen to them. Ask your elders, get their
feedback. I sought feedback from my brethren
between yesterday and today. I feel so uncomfortable doing
what I'm doing. Running through this outline,
it feels to me so mechanical. On point after point, I want
to cut loose and preach, but my fellow elders and several
of you whose judgment I trust have said to me, no, brother,
you're doing what's right, I believe it's good, and I've subjected
my own desires to the counsel of my brethren. So, brethren,
I'm not just mouthing theory. I had to put it in practice between
yesterday and today, because I believe you're true men. I
believe you've come here to be taught and helped. And if you
say to me, Pastor Martin, this is the most helpful thing, granted,
it's not dealing with it the way you deal with it in the classroom.
And I've had former students saying, thank you, pastors. It's
like having a refresher course. I completely forgot about that.
Or it was good to have it handled afresh. I've been taking the
input of my sheep, in the sense that temporarily you are sheep
that I am to feed. And then I want you to add a
sixth. As I was praying over this material this morning, I
said, Lord, how could I miss this sixth one? Seek to be sensitive
to the spiritual state of the flock, that is, where they are
in terms of their ability. Two passages, Mark 4.33, Jesus
spoke to them as they were able to receive
it. As they were able, and then Hebrews
5.11, I want to give you stuff about Melchizedek, you're not
able to take it. Be sensitive to the spiritual
state of the flock in terms of what they are prepared to receive,
and if they need milk and need the rudiments again, you may
have to give them milk and the rudiments again. Well, may the Lord help us, brethren,
in this matter. It's a delicate, vexing issue. Certainly, I don't claim to have
all the answers, but I hope the things we've considered will
be of help, as together we seek to be wise and good shepherds
to our people, giving them that which they most need at any given
point in their life as a congregation. Let's pray. Our Father, we feel afresh the
weight of the responsibility that is upon us, and we confess
our native ignorance and dullness and how much we need the help
of the Holy Spirit if we are to give to your people that which
they most need. Help us to have hearts open to
our people. Help us to have discerning minds
Help us, our Father, to know what it is to be guided of your
Holy Spirit in the exercise of sound judgment. Keep us from
a calculating, rationalistic approach. Keep us from a fanatical
approach. Help us to keep on that razor's
edge. of utter dependence upon your
spirit while engaging every legitimate means and all of our faculties
in seeking to know your will. Hear us and answer us, we pray,
in Jesus' name. Amen.