True Preaching: Secondary Characteristics

Recap of True Preaching's Primary Characteristic: The Herald of God

0:07 When it was my privilege to address you on the first evening of our conference, it was within the framework of the theme, what constitutes true preaching? And I suggested to you on that occasion that any attempt to wrestle with that question within the lids of the Word of God will bring us, at least in principle, if not in absolute agreement on the precise terminology, it will, I say, bring us at least in principle to the conviction that true preaching involves the proclamation, the explanation, and the application of the Word of God by one who legitimately occupies the position of and self-consciously conducts himself as a herald of God. And having supported that assertion from the materials of the New Testament, I then suggested that that biblical concept of a herald involves at least five predominant characteristics integrity, authority, boldness, seriousness, and unction.

1:32 And that as we read the history of those men whom God has used with power, in the work of preaching, it is relatively easy to discern that fundamental characteristic and its attendance in all of their ministries. There was great diversity of native gift, great diversity of preaching style, many respects in which they differed from one another as much as night from day, but this was the one fundamental common denominator they spoke as the appointed heralds of God. And now, in this hour, I want to direct your attention to what I have called the secondary characteristics, plural, of true preaching. And everything said with respect to this second division we must continually remember is said within the context of those principles established under the first heading. These four elements that constitute the characteristics of true preaching, if divorced from that one fundamental characteristic singular,

Secondary Characteristic 1: Simplicity and Clarity of Presentation to the Mind

2:57 become nothing more than some of the elements of secular rhetoric. But because God works not only sovereignly but wisely, and in terms of means suited to given ends, it can be demonstrated in the history of preaching that has been owned of God for the reviving of His church, for the advancement of vital religion, that these four characteristics, almost without exception, have always been present in that preaching. And the first of those secondary characteristics is what I am calling simplicity and clarity of presentation to the mind. True preaching will always involve simplicity and clarity of presentation to the mind.

4:02 We are all agreed that the great instrument in the work of God in the soul is His truth. His truth is the truth of God. The truth as embodied in the scriptures of the Old and the New Testaments. But that truth does not operate in the accomplishment of God's saving designs, whether in calling the sheep of Christ to Himself or being instrumental in their maturation and development.

4:30 I say that truth does not work magically or mystically, but mysteriously and powerfully by the operation of the truth upon the mind and the understanding of the hearer. And so we are not embarrassed as those who believe in the strictest monergism, that is, that the impartation of divine life is wholly the work of God. We are not embarrassed by such text as James 1.18.

5:03 Of His own will begat He us by the word of truth. Of His own will He begat us. There is the sheerest, purest form of monergism. He brought us forth, but He did so by the instrumentality of the word of His truth.

5:26 Or the language of 1 Peter 1.23, having been born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God which liveth and abideth forever. And so fundamentally, fundamental is this perspective that Paul is not at all embarrassed to call himself the spiritual father of men. In 1 Corinthians 4 and verse 15, he says, I have begotten you through the gospel.

5:58 And if there is any brother amongst us who has allowed himself to be enmeshed in the sophistry of the whole notion that God's ordinary method in regenerating man has no connection with the gospel, I trust that sophistry will be blasted and shown for what it is. For as Professor Murray so powerfully demonstrates in his treatment of the subject of the new birth, the immediate and first reflexive response of the impartation of divine life is faith and repentance. And faith and repentance must have an object. And therefore, the only context in which the divine beginning occurs is the context of the proclamation of the truth.

6:46 And it is precisely because of that principle that true preaching is concerned that the truth shall make an entrance to the mind of the listener. Because we know that until the truth enters the mind, it will not become effectual in transforming the heart. And though we are convinced that God alone, can dispose the mind to receive the truth, we do not expect God to perform a second miracle in sorting out the complicated gibberish of the preacher so that the content of the message can only be understood by a miracle of bringing some rationality out of a formless mass of religious verbiage.

7:38 And so the kind of preaching that God has owned with power in the history of His church is preaching that has been marked by simplicity and clarity of presentation to the mind. In that choice work that the banner has recently reproduced, and if you do not have it, may I urge you to obtain it and read it as soon as possible on the leaders of the 18th century evangelical life and ministry. Speaking of some of the common denominators of the preaching of these men whose lives are sketched out by Bishop Ryle, he says, they preached simply. They rightly concluded that the very first qualification to be aimed at in a sermon is to be understood. They saw clearly that thousands of able and well-composed sermons were utterly useless because they are above the heads of their hearers They strove to come down to the level of the people and to speak what the poor could understand. To attain this, they were not ashamed to crucify their style and to sacrifice their reputation for learning.

9:01 To attain this, they used illustrations and anecdotes in abundance, and like their divine master borrowed lessons from every object in nature. They carried out the maximum of God's and the greatest of all things. They were not only the best in the world, but also the best in the world. A wooden key is not so beautiful as a golden one, but if it can open the door when the golden one cannot, it is far more useful.

9:27 They revived the style of sermons in which Luther and Latimer used to be so eminently successful. In short, they saw the truth of what the great German reformer meant when he said, no one can be a good preacher to the people who is not willing to preach in such a manner that seems childish and vulgar to some. Now all this again, Ryle says, was a hundred years ago. Now this whole matter of simplicity and clarity of presentation to the mind obviously brings within its orbit such matters as vocabulary, the choice of our words, it brings into its orbit this power this vital element of structure. And I'm amazed at the lack of willingness to expend labor in the structure of sermonic exercises which results in this inability to be clear. Structure is vital to clarity. The connectives within a sermon.

10:38 You may see how one heading of truth is connected to another because you've lived with that for half a century. Perhaps I trust for days and in some cases for weeks and in a sense your general and constant interaction with the scriptures and theology and preaching means that you are living with the connecting elements of truth continually but many of your people are not. And I have sat and listened to many a sermon and scratched my head and wondered how in the world that arm was attached to the body. Now the arm was substantial flesh and bone in terms of biblical materials but it hung out there like some kind of a hand in the book of Daniel that appears out of nowhere and begins to write upon the wall. It is attached to nothing and has no relationship in terms of overall symmetry. And so brethren if we in our praying that God would use our preaching and if in our praying there is this renewed concern that was set before us so vividly in the previous hour that we may preach out of the experience of a felt Christ that our mouths as it were may be watering in the very act of preaching as they feed upon the bread of life in all of that there must be a constant commitment to labor at simplicity and clarity of presentation

12:08 to the minds of our hearers. What is elegance of style? What is loftiness of thought? What is profundity of insight if there is no grip no penetration no stickability in our sermons?

12:28 The substance of our sermons though at times exegetically accurate and in many senses perhaps profound in their insight are like a greased pig. A person could not take hold of that if his life depended upon it. There is no glue there are no burrs there are no there is no stickability and it's to be found at this point there is not that simplicity and clarity of presentation to the mind. Now we forget often that Whitefield and Spurgeon were vilified as much for how they spoke the truth of God as for what they spoke as the truth of God.

13:12 When you look at some of the caricaturing that was done in terms of the cartooning in Spurgeon's early days it pointed to the fact that this man dared to speak of high Calvinism in the language of the costermonger and the man in the street. Who is this young Tyro to come taking these lofty high things and speak of them in such a way that a man with a second grade education sits riveted to his seat by the sheer power of its clarity and its simplicity.

13:48 But they were simply following the pattern of their master that one in whom all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge were hid and yet it is said of him the common people heard him not with pain in the fulfillment of their Sabbath duties but they heard him gladly heard him gladly and I have a sneaking suspicion that this is the true reason that the two great reasons for our deficiencies in this dimension of simplicity and clarity are number one our failure truly to understand and be masters of our subject. A man will be simple and clear in direct proportion to his mastery of his subject. It is the undigested concepts of our minds that are the only things that matter to us. The mother of the unclear pronouncements of our pulpits.

15:01 Until a man perceives an issue in bold relief and sees it in all of its angles and dimensions with twenty twenty vision he cannot speak with clarity and simplicity concerning that subject. How often we were reminded of this some years ago when we had a brilliant young man who had his master's degree in computer technology and he just had more learning in his head than he ought to have had and still be seeing. And he had none of the kookishness of the typical academic egghead and one of his delights was to go off every summer to a children's camp at that time a boys camp and the class that everyone was going to be in. And he was so confused when he heard them in school and made them so simple and plain that they loved them. And the reason was he had a mastery of his subject. And I'm convinced the second great reason as to why he was so

16:31 careful about his subject was the fact that he was so careful about his subject that he was so careful about his subject that he was so patient in reading his essay Simplicity in Preaching found now in the collection of his essays entitled The Upper Room. Please obtain that book read that essay and re-read it periodically. I quote just a part of the book of C. He was so careful about his subject that he was so patient in reading his essay and seeing his subject as a simple thing that was a

17:59 part of preachers shoot over the heads of their people. This is true also in 1882 when Ryle was writing, I fear a vast proportion of what we preach is not understood by our hearers any more than if it were Greek. Now our brother Theo would have no problem if we spoke in modern Greek, but most of our people would. So I urge upon you, my brethren, to join with all of your prayers and entreaties for the outpouring of the Spirit, for greater dimensions of a felt Christ in preaching. I urge and exhort you to labor to attain simplicity and clarity of presentation to the mind and to attain it at any cost. But then in the second place, another secondary characteristic that is marked true preaching is what I am calling, Vividness of Exhibition to the Imagination. Vividness of Exhibition to the Imagination. Bridges quotes an old Arabian proverb which states, He is the most effective speaker who

Secondary Characteristic 2: Vividness of Exhibition to the Imagination

19:15 can turn men's ears into eyes. He is the most effective speaker who can turn men's ears into eyes. Vividness of Exhibition to the Imagination. Those who have been used of God in the work of preaching, to some degree, regardless of whatever element of native gift was present, labored at cultivating this ability of making the truth come home to the imagination with vividness. And again, in doing this, they were simply reflecting biblical truths in a biblical manner. Vividness of Exhibition to the Imagination. It is my own firm conviction which deepens with each passing week as I must wrestle to prepare lectures to the men in our academy on the subject of preaching and the work of the ministry, that we must hammer out a theology of preaching from the kind of preaching recorded in the scriptures. Now, what are the prophets without their vivid imagery which may, truth as it were, leap into the imaginations of the minds of the people?

20:31 Vividness of Exhibition to the Imagination. The prophets without their vivid imagery which may, truth as it were, leap into the imaginations of the minds of the people. Vividness of Exhibition to the Imagination. The prophets without their vivid imagery which may, truth as it were, leap into the imaginations of the minds of the people.

20:32 Vividness of Exhibition to the Imagination. Constantly using personification, analogy, metaphor, parable, object lessons, and doing so under the direct impulse of the spirit that was given to them as prophets. God did not speak to his people through the prophets in simple, bland, unadorned, unimaginative language. Vividness of Exhibition to the Imagination.

20:58 When, of course, we turn to the New Testament, what is the ministry of God? What is the ministry of our Lord without little, narrow turnstiles and people squeezing through to get on a compressed and narrow way? What would the teaching of our Lord be without the picture of a farmer going forth with his seed bag over his shoulder and casting his seed upon the field and the vivid imagery of the various responses in terms of the soil? What would our Lord's teaching be without travailing?

21:33 What would our Lord's teaching be without beans on his house, without any wine on his table being poured out by men, withoutfilm? Would our Lord's teaching be worship and marriage with a negóce for roigkeitensthe rich women who from the pain and intensity of birth pangs rejoice as the little one is laid upon her breast? the recorded sermons of our Lord and those sermons ooze with this element of vividness of exhibition to the imagination of the hearers likewise this is true in the preaching of the apostles what little bit we have and even in the most intense didactic portions of the epistles there is this constant use of analogy metaphor similar simile parable and what I want to call the abandonment of descriptive freedom in which the preacher himself in the very act of preaching has the truth as it were so etched upon the screen of his own mind that he describes what he sees he has no visions I'm not speaking of direct revelation but he has so abandoned himself to the concept

23:01 that it stands out in bold relief in his own imagination and in a sense he then describes what he sees now not all possess this gift to the same degree by nature I'm very much aware of that not all will cultivate the same degree by the most prayerful employment of all the legitimate means but brethren my appeal is this if the whole Holy Spirit has conveyed his truth in this manner in the scriptures can we lay any claim to being Bible preachers preaching the Bible in its own literary form if we do not seek to cultivate the ability to preach with vividness of exhibition to the imagination of our hearers now if you do this your congregation will never have a hankering for drama in the pulpit they'll never have a hankering to have drama as a substitute or supplement to preaching now who has made man so that there is at the level of his aesthetic sensitivity both the longing for that

24:28 vividness of exhibition to the imagination and that delight in that very exercise did God or the devil make us that way? did God or the devil make us that way? did God or the devil make us that way? it is God who has given us our aesthetic sensitivity the devil has perverted it but when a man could go and hear Whitfield preach of real things of heaven of hell of blood the everlasting covenant of the substantial things of the world of the spirit but preach them with such vividness of exhibition to the imagination that eternal and spiritual things as it were became concrete in his words why go to the local theater to hear and see false things and unreal things of unreal stories of unreal people I'm convinced that one of the reasons there is this lack of appreciation for preaching and this hankering on the one hand for drama and the so called liturgical revival is because there is something in the totality of the humanity of men that cries out that imagination is a God given faculty shall neither be ignored nor raped in preaching

25:57 but shall be brought to the service of the sanctuary there is nothing nothing worse in the world than dull preaching unless it is the preaching of error and brethren we ask too much of our people to expect that they will come with that eagerness that was mentioned yesterday with that sense of thirst and anticipation if they cannot come with the expectation that the truth will come not only with simplicity and clarity of the mind but with vividness of exhibition to the imagination I know it will embarrass him to use the illustration but it's current so I'm going to use it I almost got sick to my stomach when we were pulling out the muck from the wells that first session when Pastor Chantry was talking to us about pulling out the muck from the wells this work that's been going on what was he doing? he could have said in simple unadorned language we are seeking to clear away dimensions of error that have clogged spiritual blessing that would have been true but by turning that same concept into the matter of clearing out the muck from the sweet wells of truth you could see it

27:25 now is that just a trick a rhetoric no God has made us so that that essential truth impinges with much greater power upon the totality of our humanity when the imagination is brought to its service well then I hasten on to the third characteristic of true preaching at the secondary level I remind you brethren only within the larger context of a herald whose substance comes from the word of God who speaks in the name and the authority and under the unction of God don't divorce these things from that larger context the third element at the secondary level is what I am calling directness of application to the conscience not only simplicity in addressing the mind vividness in exhibition to the imagination but directness of application to the conscience and here again when we turn to the scriptures for a theology of preaching this principle stands on the very face of the word of God in the old and in the new testaments the preaching that is recorded is preaching that not only

Secondary Characteristic 3: Directness of Application to the Conscience

28:54 records the great redemptive acts of God records the great propositional truths about God the precepts and the promises that flow from the heart of God but application is woven through the fabric of it all now for the man who's taken up with the redemptive historical approach I would not have too much gripe if they would do it the way Moses did when Moses recounts the history of the nation it always leads to a therefore when ye come into the land and when the blessings of God come beware lest ye forget your God and then he takes that whole history of redemption and he makes it a lever by which to seek to pry them loose from the cursed sins of presumption and carelessness with respect to the grace of God and surely this is the pattern of the preaching of the prophets they did not track in vague generalities concerning covenantal disobedience they did not traffic in innocuous pronouncements about apostasy we have the specimen preaching in a man called Amos for three sins yea for four and he names the cardinal sins of the nations

30:21 and then turns to Israel and Judah and names their sins and it is precisely this thing that caused the prophets such opposition this matter of directness of application to the conscience and when we turn to the New Testament we see it again and again in our Lord in the Sermon on the Mount he is not content simply to give a generic expansion of the true meaning of the commandments that he deals with in Matthew 5 but he takes and applies that principle in a concrete situation he does not simply say God's law which says thou shalt not kill forbids not only the positive taking of life wrongfully but even the attitude of hatred oh he says it goes much further it involves the absence of any desire to retaliate therefore he that would smite you upon the one cheek turn the other cheek also what is he doing he is making specific concrete , application of broad moral principles and then of course we see this so much in our Lord that it is said on some occasions he perceived that they he spake they perceived that he spake of them and certainly in the Apostolic preaching Peter dared

31:50 to stand and say you people by wicked hands have taken him and crucified him and on through the history of the world the history of the church these men were concerned to cause their hearers to know that they were not merely saying nice and true things in their hearing but weighty and necessary things to their very heart Bridges in his classic work on preaching and again recognizing so many new faces and many of you relatively younger brethren let me urge you if you do not possess Bridges buy him and if you can't buy him come to a few of us and beg a few bucks to get him and then constantly go over the section the entire book is of great worth but in this connection go over the section on preaching and in this particular chapter on applicatory preaching he sums up the whole witness of scripture in these words personal application formed the nerve of preaching of the Jewish prophets and of our Lord's public and individual addresses his reproofs to the scribes and Pharisees to the Sadducees and Herodians had distinct reference to their particular

33:18 sins in his treatment of the young ruler and of the woman of Samaria he avoided general remarks to point his instructions to their besetting in the case of the young man as we do to each other's words Peter's hearers were pricked to the heart by his applicatory address even the hardest heart the most stubborn sinner is made to smart under the point of the two-edged sword preaching in order to be effective in every man's business and even to his bosom what would you think if upon returning home you opened up your local newspaper and there in the section where the various men's stores and department stores put out their weekly specials you saw this sign special sale on men's suits half price one size fits all one suit would you be enticed by the fact that it said 75%

34:47 off no limit on the number you may buy now you'd laugh at the ad one suit that fits all fits none may I say that that could be written over many a sermon one suit and in reality fits none in a sense in our work of exposition and we are constructing that suit made of the fabric and I trust of unmixed fabric of divine truth but it is in application that we move from this construction this tailoring of this suit to fit all and we come to every man in his place and we custom adjust that suit to his case and we do it not only with reference to men's sins but with reference to their struggles with reference to the experiences of the child of God we move from the generic into the specific this is the great genius

36:15 of the richest of the Puritan writings of the Puritans and so disaffecting many young men who have never drunk of those wells when someone says in a cavalier way with pseudo scholarship that sacralism and defective views of the principles of the inwardness of religion permeates all the Puritan writings that's rubbish I have found my heart opened up and laid bare and I have found my savior set before me until I have been ravished with the sight of his glory that which makes that writing breathe with such unction over 300 years from the time it was written is that there is no more detail in the writing of the book of the world and that is the only way I can describe it that sounds like a mixture of words but the glorious

37:45 and blissful trauma of the first time I went through volume six I came in there with a notebook and a flashlight and said go to work for three weeks and I felt as though this man had gone through every nook and cranny of my heart with a flashlight and then had taken notes and his notes were the treatise not only search me with that same light he took another book and he opened it up and he shined it on those texts that spoke of the mighty power and efficacious grace of my savior brethren no little part of that is in the matter of specificity and in the manner of truth magazine anything that goes back into the sixties is ancient history for some of you I know there is that moving

39:13 incident taken from the life of Gilbert Tennant some of you may be familiar with it but I believe it bears repeating by the name of was also ministering there in fact they would often use the same building preaching to the Dutch and Tennant preaching to the English speakers then an amazing thing happened the spirit of God began to move powerfully upon the Dutch God was sovereignly moving upon the Dutch and Tennant observed this preaching essentially the same doctrines as but in the same geographical area in the same building some coming under deep distress and through to glorious deliverance in Christ God God had dealings with his heart and there was impressed upon Tennant with renewed power the reality

40:42 of the world of the spirit and the great issues of eternity and in the midst of those dealings with God with him a letter came from his dear brother and colleague in the ministry that he ought to descend in his preaching to specific thrust at the consciences of men that he ought to begin to discriminate between true faith and false faith between stony ground hearers and those who receive the word into good soil and thank God unlike the state of being as someone who has lived in an immoral world and he was an ancient man but he was a one who led the And from the human standpoint, the only difference was right here.

42:04 He began to preach with directness of application to the conscience.

42:17 Brethren, this is one of the greatest demands of true preaching. For unless you would put yourself on the high road to apostasy, you cannot engage week by week in the close discriminating application of the word to the hearts and consciences of your hearers, both for conviction and comfort, unless in the secret place you are experiencing that powerful application of the word to your own conscience. And it is the staleness and the sameness and the blandness and the bland quality of our own life in the closet that is the cursed mother of the bland, pointless ministry of our pulpits. And for this wickedness, may God forgive us. Then finally, the fourth characteristic of true preaching at the secondary level is that which I am calling earnestness of solicitation to the heart. And to the will.

Secondary Characteristic 4: Earnestness of Solicitation to the Heart and Will

43:39 Earnestness of solicitation to the heart and to the will. No one holds, I don't believe, more firmly than I to the clear teaching of scripture that sinners are spiritually dead. They can do nothing to affect their own generation or in the language of the old standards to prepare themselves thereto. But the same Bible, the Bible which teaches this truth, gives us the example of the preaching of men who understood that truth.

44:16 And that preaching is suffused with earnestness of solicitation to the hearts and wills of the hearers. A couple of examples to illustrate. We open up to the prophecy of Isaiah. And we read that graphic, that vivid description of the sin, of Jerusalem under the picture of that man who is sick from the top of his head to the sole of his feet.

44:46 And then the prophet says, Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. The same prophet speaking in the name of the Lord says, Seek ye the Lord while he may be found.

45:08 Call ye upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord. For he will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. The language of Ezekiel, who cries out, Turn ye, turn ye.

45:29 Why will ye die, O house of Israel? Ah, but you say, Brother Martin, that is simply Ezekiel writing what he said in the name of God. That is simply Ezekiel writing what he said in the name of God. That is simply Ezekiel writing what he said in the name of God.

45:38 That is simply Ezekiel writing what he said in the name of the Lord. Yes, but I ask this question. When Ezekiel preached those words, for those prophecies came first of all in the context of living oral communication for the most part. Did Ezekiel represent the heart of God by standing and saying,

45:59 I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that he turn and live. Turn ye, turn ye. Why will ye die, O house of Israel?

46:08 Is that how he represented the heart of Jehovah? Who though constrained, by righteousness and fidelity to the terms of his ancient covenant, that turning from him would result in judgment and captivity? And yet the same God, under the constraint of fidelity to the terms of the covenant, is the God of heart? The God whose bowels yearn for his people.

46:36 And when he says to the prophet, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that he turn and live, surely the prophet sought, albeit thinly and with great limitations, but nonetheless, rudely and vividly, to have his whole demeanor a reflection of the heart of God. God say, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, turn ye, turn ye.

47:06 God speaks it with all the yearning of his holy heart.

47:11 If we speak in such a way as not to reflect something of that yearning, we misrepresent God. In the very, speaking of his words,

47:22 we turn to our blessed Lord.

47:26 And I'm sure all of us have those things that in our hours of reverie, we say, I wish I could see, I wish I could hear. And one of mine is, I wish I could have been in the temple on that day, that great day of the feast,

47:43 where we read in John chapter 7, on that last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and he cried, saying, if any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. Oh, the earnestness of solicitation. The earnestness of entreaty. And we see it in his pathetic plea, oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how oft would I have gathered you as a hen gathereth her chicks and he would not.

48:22 And in the end, the apostles, we see it again, knowing the fear of the Lord. We persuade men. We beseech you in Christ's stead, be reconciled to God and all the language that we would call sentimental and gushy to the Corinthians. Oh, Corinthians, our mouth is opened.

48:42 Our hearts are enlarged. The language of the text read by Mr. Dunkley in our hearing. We were willing to impart unto you not the gospel of God only, but our very soul,

49:00 because ye were become dear to us.

49:09 And so in the history of the church, someone was asked who had heard McShane regularly, what was the secret of his preaching? What was the great dominant characteristic? And this person answered, he preached as if he were dying to have you converted. He preached as if he were dying to have you converted.

49:33 My brethren, how long has it been since that unconverted four-year-old, that unconverted teenager, that unconverted adult in the congregation, though he may have left the doors impenitent and unmoved to his heart,

49:55 as though he were dying that I should be converted. And of course, having read any of you the biography of Whitefield, tears were an integral part of his preaching. Not the tears of the actor, who by so identifying with his false person, his imaginary character, he can in that psychological manipulation open up his tear ducts at the right spot every night in the theater. But a man who in the midst of preaching was so imbued with something of the compassion of Christ that that compassion that was finding a vent in the free offers of the mercy, and in the entreaties and overtures of free unfettered gospel invitation, just automatically opened up the tear ducts until they flowed in his preaching.

51:00 You see, brethren, it is precisely at this point that perhaps we manifest our greatest deficiency in preaching. And I have longed to see emerging out of the resurgence of reformed truth some hope, holy pleaders,

51:19 men who standing unequivocally and unembarrassed upon a platform of definitive doctrinal commitment, and I've chosen my words carefully, of definitive doctrinal commitment that is not only explicitly articulated in the preaching, but is everywhere pulsing through the preaching to see such men who by the grace of God cultivate the art of holy pleading, who preach as if they were dying to have men converted because they are dying to have them converted, and they feel an inward death if they have no shields upon their ministries. This whole notion, I'm reformed, I have the truth, I give it out, I leave it with God. You misrepresent the God whose truth you're announcing. He doesn't feel that way.

52:19 When his truth goes forth and his people do not respond, God and God and God entreats. And if that's not true, then I've got to tear out page after page in my Bible.

True Preaching: The Whole Man to the Whole Man

52:41 Now, some of you who have followed the pattern of what I've sought to lay before you have already drawn the conclusion. What I'm saying, and now I conclude, in this matter of the secondary characteristics of true preaching, you can sum it all up in this way. I am saying that out of the context, of a man legitimately occupying the place of conducting himself as a herald,

53:09 preaching that is true preaching is in essence the whole man, the herald, communicating to the whole man, the listener. We talk to the mind, the imagination,

53:27 the affections, the will.

53:32 True preaching involves the whole man who preaches. Engaging the whole man who is under that preaching. And I don't like to use the term listen because there is a dimension that makes it more than listening. There is that triangular dimension of true preaching when in the act of preaching the divine Lord who has given the word himself comes in that word to the heart of his servant making him to feel and taste the power of that which he preaches so that every person from heart and eye and mouth reflect that the power of that truth is finding an outlet in his total humanity.

54:16 And in that context when God is present the same God engages the whole humanity of the listener so that mind and imagination and affections and will are caught up in the power of truth.

54:33 And though men may not repent and believe in the language of Hebrews they will taste the power of God. They will taste the powers of the world to come.

54:43 They will know even if they never repent that when Paul says we look on the things that are not seen that these are substantial realities. We do not traffic in notions and ideas and in God words. We traffic in the substantial realities of the world of the spirit in terms of the language and words and thoughts of the Bible.

The Cost and Nature of True Preaching

55:14 And brethren if we ever preach it will be costly.

55:22 It will be costly. As was said of our Lord that virtue went from him.

55:29 This frail human constitution in its weakened sinful condition every time it must bear the current of the energy of the Almighty conveying his everlasting word there is the sense in a much lesser way and in ways that have no parallel with our Lord but nonetheless real virtue goes out of us.

55:59 I have heard good orthodox reformed preachers who I trust I am not over critical and I don't believe I am but I wondered if there was much difference between them and a computer. Feed the information into the computer push the right button and out comes the response but you know in all of the so-called language of the computer what is the predominant element? I the computer am talking to you and giving you an answer to the question which was programmed into me the answer is that on such and such a day you see there is a flatness that indicates it's a purely mechanical process. The computer has no heart has no imagination it has no faculty to feel the use of the information being programmed in and now being passed but as the heralds of God we do not speak as computers but as men.

57:04 And as the heralds of God the message in passing through us engages the totality of our humanity and in conveying it to others it addresses the whole of their humanity. Now let me emphasize again the variations in style in the degree of animation in the measure of volume and pace and all of these factors God help us if we have a conscious or unconscious stereotype the ways of the spirit are like the wind and I have sat under ministries that were very soft and almost laborious in pace and tone but I have sensed God came for me in the preaching.

58:00 Oh may God make us preachers who imbibing more and more of the self-conscious identity as heralds will be marked by simplicity and clarity as we address men's minds who will be marked again and again by that vividness of address to the imagination will be marked by directness of application to the conscience and earnestness of solicitation to the heart and will. Now you may get accused of being some bad things if you do that. There's a young woman who's recently been converted under our ministry from a hyper-Calvinistic background whose mother has thrown herself upon the threshold of her door crying like a little child don't go to church and hear that free will Arminian preacher who will damn your soul if you listen to her.

59:01 It's because it's because there has been the earnestness of solicitation to heart and will and you'll be labeled that's alright. What are men's labels when the master smiles? May God help us for his name's sake. Amen.