Category Archives: Preaching

The Pastor – In His Study And His Pulpit

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The Pastor in His Study

Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” – 2 Timothy 2:15 KJV

Fling him into his office, tear the office sign from the door and nail up a sign, “Study.”

Take him off the mailing list. Lock him up with his books and his Bible. Slam him down on his knees before texts and broken hearts and the lives of a superficial flock and a holy God. Force him to be the one man in the community who knows about God. Throw him into the ring to box with God until he learns how short his arms are. Engage him to wrestle with God all night long and let him come out only when he’s bruised and beaten into being a blessing.

Shut his mouth forever spouting remarks. Stop his tongue forever tripping lightly over every nonessential. Require him to have something to say before he dares break the silence and bend his knees in the lonesome valley of suffering. Burn his eyes with weary study. Wreck his emotional poise with worry over his life before God. Make him exchange his pious stance for a humble walk with God and man. Make him spend and be spent for the glory of God. Rip out his telephone. Burn up his ecclesiastical success sheets.

Put water in his gas tank. Give him a Bible and tie him to the pulpit and make him preach the Word of the Living God. Test him. Quiz him. Examine him. Humiliate him for his ignorance of things divine. Shame him for his good comprehension of finances, game scores and politics. Laugh at his frustrated effort to play psychiatrist. Form a choir and raise a chant and haunt him with it night and day. Sir, we would see Jesus. And when, at last, he does enter the pulpit, ask him if he has a Word from God. If he doesn’t, then dismiss him.

Tell him you can read the morning paper. You can digest the television commentaries. You can think through the day’s superficial problems. You can manage the community’s weary fund drives. You can bless the sordid baked potatoes and green beans, ad infinitum, better than he can. Command him not to come back until he’s read and reread, written and rewritten, until he can stand up worn and forlorn and say, “Thus says the Lord.”

Break him across the board of his ill-gotten popularity. Smack him hard with his own prestige. Corner him with questions about God. Cover him with

demands for celestial wisdom and give him no escape until he’s back against the wall of the Word.

Sit down before him and listen to the only word he has left, God’s Word. Let him be totally ignorant of the down-street gossip, but give him a chapter, and order him to walk around it, camp on it, sup with it, and come at last to speak it backward and forward until all he says rings with the truth of eternity.

And when he’s burned out by the flaming Word, when he’s consumed at last by the fiery grace blazing through him, when he’s privileged to translate that truth of God to man and finally transferred from earth to Heaven, then bear him away gently, and blow a muted trumpet, and lay him down softly and place a two-edged sword on his coffin, and raise the tomb triumphant, for he was a brave soldier of the Word. And ere he died, he had become a man of God. 

– Dr. John MacArthur

The Pastor in the Pulpit

“I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom; Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long suffering and doctrine.” – 2 Timothy 4:1,2 KJV

“I call you this day to wield the sword, to hold forth the mirror, to scatter the seed, to serve the milk, to hold up the lamp, to spread the flame, to swing the hammer, to stop with the secular wisdom in the pulpit, cancel the entertainment in the church, and fire the drama team. Get rid of the silliness, unplug the colored lights, put the pulpit back in the center of the building, stand up like a man, open the Bible, lift it up, let it out, and let it fly. It is the invincible power of the inerrant Word.”

– Dr. Steve Lawson

Thoughts on Preaching

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“Imagination in preaching means being able to understand the truth well enough to translate or transpose it into another kind of language or musical key in order to present the same truth in a way that enables others to see it, understand its significance, feel its power—to do so in a way that gets under the skin, breaks through the barriers, grips the mind, will, and affections so that they not only understand the word used but feel their truth and power.” – DSinclair Ferguson

“A good question for us as pastors to ask ourselves before we get up to preach is, ‘Would Jesus Christ have had to die on a cross for me to preach this sermon?'” – William Willimon

5 Points For Preaching

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Article: 5 Practical Points for Preachers by Nicholas Batzig – original source – https://www.feedingonchrist.com/blog/post/five-practical-points-of-peaching

This past Tuesday, I had the privilege of giving a pastoral charge to two men coming to be licensed to preach within the bounds of our Presbytery. The charge to those being licensed or ordained is a solemn event, happening only once in a man’s life and ministry. The charge was built largely on the ministry of the Apostle Paul and some of his charges to Timothy and Titus in the pastoral epistles. Though one can only say so much in a three to four minute charge, I carved out five practical points for these men as they enter in on a preaching ministry. Here is the essence of that charge: 

1. Prioritize first preaching to yourself whatever you plan on preaching to others.

John Owen once famously declared, “Truly no man preaches that sermon well to others that doth not first preach it to his own heart”. . .Unless “he finds the power of it in his own heart, he cannot have any ground of confidence that it will have power in the hearts of others.” We never want to step into the pulpit without having seriously and soberingly preached first to ourselves whatever passage we are preaching to the congregation. When a man does not preach the Scriptures to himself, first and foremost, he will deliver hyper-intellectual, experientially theoretical, or dry and lifeless sermons to the people of God. 

In Lectures to My Students, Charles Spurgeon explained the dire need a minister of the word must have to be so affected by God’s word that he has a burning fire for the proclamation of it within. This will only come as we preach God’s word consistently to our own hearts, the Holy Spirit fanning the flame of love for the triune God and the ministry of His word. Spurgeon wrote, 

“I have such a profound respect for this ‘fire in the bones,’ that if I did not feel it myself, I must leave the ministry at once. If you do not feel the consecrated glow, I beseech you return to your homes and serve God in your proper spheres; but if assuredly the coals of juniper blaze within, do not stifle them, unless, indeed, other considerations of great moment should prove to you that the desire is not a fire of heavenly origin.”

2. Keep Christ and Him crucified and risen central in all your preaching.

The Apostle Paul said, “I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. Nearly every man I have known has began his preaching ministry with this commitment. However, as the years roll on, so many deviate from this and allow themselves to be sidetracked by subjects and emphases that–while they may have roots in the teaching of Scripture–supplant the central focus of Scripture on Christ and the salvation that is in Him alone. As Geerhardus Vos explained,

“It is possible, Sabbath after Sabbath and year after year, to preach things of which none can say that they are untrue and none can deny that in their proper place and time they may be important, and yet to forego telling people plainly and to forego giving them the distinct impression that they need forgiveness and salvation from sin through the cross of Christ. . . there ought not to be in your whole repertoire a single sermon in which from beginning to end you do not convey to your hearers the impression that what you want to impart to them, you do not think it possible to impart to them in any other way than as a correlate and consequence of the eternal salvation of their souls through the blood of Christ.” 

3. Give yourself to a continual study of biblical, systematic, exegetical, and historical theology. 

In 1 Timothy 4:13-15, the Apostle charged young Timothy, “devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching. . Practice these things, immerse yourself in them, so that all may see your progress. There is so much to learn. The late John Gerstner was once asked how much theological preparation does a man need for effective ministry. He said, “If I knew that I only had five years to live. I would spend four preparing for ministry and one ministering.” Although some might find this statement somewhat lopsided, the point is simple. We need to be men who are continually digging into the Scripture, solid theological works, and the annals of church history. As we do, the Apostle says that our “progress will be evident to all.” We need men who are humble, hungry, and teachable. We should also recognize that this is not merely something we should do in preparation for a preaching ministry–it is something that we will need to do this throughout the entirety of our ministries.

4. Stay single-minded in your commitment to the the gospel ministry, particularly in light of suffering for the sake of the gospel of Christ.

As the Apostle Paul told Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:3, “Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him.” If we are to have a fruitful and effective ministry of the word and the gospel, we need to stay single-minded to the call of God. Too many ministers have allowed themselves to become preoccupied with civilian affairs. We are not to divide our time between the ministry of the gospel and community organization. We must resist becoming “half pastor/half politician.” Whatever the distracting agendas, the man of God must give himself wholly to that which God has deemed most important.

This is especially the case when hardship or opposition arise because of the word. The Apostle Paul could press though all the challenges, trials, and opposition on account of the word because he remained single-minded in his commitment to the mission of God. In 2 Tim. 2:10, he explained, “I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory.”

5. Watch over your life

In 1 Timothy 4:16, Paul told Timothy, “Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers.” There are a thousand different ways that Satan seeks to devour ministers–e.g. love of provision, love of praise, love of pleasure, and love of power. Many men have started off strong and then spiritually declined because they stopped keeping watch over themselves. Since we have an irreconciliable war raging within us, the flesh wrestling with the Spirit and the Spirit with the flesh, we need to be especially resolute in mortifying sin and in guarding our hearts.

We can professionalize ministry in such a way and to such an extent that we learn how to hide the true spiritual condition of our hearts. A number of years ago a pastor and theologian I greatly admired for his robust Reformed expositions of Scripture took his own life. It came out that he had been having affairs with women in various related congregations for approximately two decades. During that time, this minister wrote solid books, spoke at major conferences, taught in seminaries, and carried on in regular Lord’s Day preaching and teaching. When some of his ongoing sin came to light, he was asked how he was able to minister while living in unrepentant sin. He replied, “I leaned on my gifts.” That is a sobering thought for any man to whom God has given gifts for preaching and pastoring. A mentor once wisely taught me, “You can lose the ministry and keep your family but you can’t lose your family and keep the ministry.” There is an ever present need to take heed to ourselves. Our lips are always a few steps ahead of our feet. There, we must be resolute in guarding against the multitude of temptations that Satan will seek to use against us.