What's Wrong with Preaching Today?

Introduction and Sources of Observation

0:00 First of all, I want to say that I regret the negative way in which this topic has been cast. I think most of us have enough sense of logic to reason from the topic to ourselves. What's wrong with preaching today? I am preaching today, therefore, what's wrong with my preaching?

0:23 I could have wished that the title had been something a little bit more positive, perhaps hints to improve our preaching, but this is the topic that has been assigned to me, and so I shall seek to move within that framework. By way of introduction, let me say something about the sources of my observation. One would have to be omniscient to be able to make final and absolute pronouncements as to what is right and wrong. What's wrong with preaching today? It would demand, of course, that he be exposed to all preaching, and on that basis, collecting his data, make some official and very pompous pronouncements. Well, of course, I make no claim to omniscience, and I can't even make claim to 40 years of observation, such as the esteemed Dr. Lloyd-Jones can do. So the source of my information may be rather limited, but I trust it.

1:23 At least the observations made from that limited source will be valid. It was my privilege to spend some five years engaged full-time in an itinerant ministry, getting some understanding of the spectrum of our evangelical life here in the United States and a little bit in Canada, and then during these past five years in the pastorate, it's been my privilege to be out a number of weeks during the year in outside ministry, in a number of different denominations and fellowships. So the sources of my observation are things I have tried to learn by observation over the past ten years, as a pastor and primarily as one in itinerant ministry. And then the standard of comparison. I think I ought to say something about this, for something is good or bad in terms of its proximity to an absolute standard. Well, of course, in the realm of what is effective, good preaching, there is no absolute standard, but I do believe we can gain from the Scripture,

2:40 the preaching of the prophets and the apostles and of our Lord Jesus Christ, and then in the history of the term great preachers, I'm not thinking of men who were known for their ability to embellish the truth of God with great rhetorical effects, were known for their, but men who were instruments to move other men Godward. And in that class, I would, this man is Whitfield, McShane, Spurgeon, Edwards, Owen, Baxter, Bunyan, the tenants in Nettleton here in the States. And so taking their sermon, the effect of their ministries, I hope we can make some between the great in our own day. So much then by way of introduction. Now, how should we approach the subject?

The Interconnectedness of Man and Message

3:48 Either of the man who preaches or in terms of and manner of delivery that he preaches. And we can't separate the two. The man. And the message.

4:05 She involves, you can't isolate the man from the message he communicates in the context from that step. And assume the man who, and then secondly, in terms of the message he communicates of the man who apply it in some specific.

4:55 The principle is a fusionary.

The Power of Preaching: Life and Vitality with God

5:04 I forget that it's powerful preaching from all the other arts of communication. They take a well-known live like a common harlot. They take a man equally propagate in his own life.

5:56 Fine. Mine is to be better men, but there's no relationship with how he lived and acted and thought prior to his entrance upon the stage. His performance on the stage to teach you. There are times when men have great and that in the history of the church, there are men who were used solely by God in the exercise that there will be many who say, did we not preach him by name and he will profess them to them. Depart from me. I never knew. But this believe would be primary.

6:47 The problem of those engaged in the kind of ministry where they weren't around enough for their lives to attract from their ministry. And so limiting this to the context of the church. I believe it is a valid rule with such few exceptions.

7:07 Powerful preaching.

7:15 That a minister's through a human in that truth, thus augmented or reduced by the light of Whitfield. Content of their service. If not of any content and form equal to or farce.

8:09 Their power was not in these. realm, but in that life that was so powerful, and lived in vitality with God, that truth became a living principle through that Thessalonians, and it was that understanding, the less way this principle illustrated, and let me suggest the impact of these passages. The Apostle Paul declared in front of the Thessalonians, which he was privileged to find ministry among them, knowing, brethren, beloved of the Christian, for our gospel came not unto you in word only.

9:26 You see, there was a direct relationship between the gospel coming in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance of men who preach the manner of living. You find that same thought developed when he says in chapter 2 and verse 10, ye are witnesses, and unblameably we behaved ourselves among you that believe, as ye know how we charged you as the Father doth his children. Then he says in verse 13, for this cause thank we God without ceasing, because when ye received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God which effectually worketh also in you that believe.

10:36 Between these two things, he says, you know how we conducted ourselves, for it's as Paul then instituted, as living embodiments of the manner of his living, chapter 2, where Paul is giving some impeach and good works. You are not these things by precept, you are to embody them. In example, in all that I've told you before, verse 17, heed to thyself, take heed to thyself,

12:02 that's your first continue in them, for in doing so, thou take both thyself in the dish they do and oversee it. Failure to give purpose in the hearts of those to whom you minister, and I say that with equal conviction of Paul's statements of truth, of the purpose of the surety of the salvation of all that is elect, yet we must not bleed out of that passage. It's obvious implication that Timothy would not be that instrument of God that he could himself, and then, that in the requirement for the teaching elder, beginning with verse 1, and in Titus 1, beginning with verse 6, the requirement for the teaching elder is not doctrinal.

13:21 As of a bishop, he seeketh the good work, the bishop do, and live the principle, that

Area 1: The Personal Devotional Life

14:12 let us consider together some areas in which, by personal observation of my own weakness and the weakness of my brethren in the ministry, I believe preaching. Today is a personal devotional life.

14:39 Observation, I've been to church for a number of years, and one of the most shocking things that came to me, a very young man engaged in this itinerant ministry, in evangelical churches might meet together to begin to share each other's needs and concerns, and try to take down that curse of professionalism, be honest.

15:31 The word of God has, is it no wonder that the application of illumination.

16:17 In 2 Timothy chapter 3, the passage that we love to quote when we are, demonstrating the truth of the, what the apostle Paul said, from a child, he's addressing Timothy, from a child, you own the whole, this is their first, to make thee wise, they have led you, Timothy, that is the only function of, for reproach, for instruction, in righteous,

17:35 that the man, God in part, might be perfecting of the inspiration, with a part, function,

18:04 in their function, is that the word of God is, but thou, that the man of perfect, this

18:56 sanctification, this is a function, must always, and thy joy, rejoicing of, too often we must make the confession, thy words were found, and I did examine them, and thy words were unto me, the form and substance, that thy word, unto myself, function on your open

20:06 book, and the prophecy of the mind, is warm, stigas, Ephesus, he gives the word of commendation, I, and their administration, put them out of your midst, and then they say, against thee, because thou hast therefore, from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works, or else I will come, and remove thy candlestick, see the head was,

21:30 and the hand, and the Lord Jesus, he surely elected activity in the hand, witness, so as the main thing had been defective in the hope to that issue, and he said, unless, dear brethren, must be to us, first of all, of whose reconciling Jesus Christ, we long to know his will, and we long to know his will, and we long to know his will, and we long to know his will, and we long to know his will, and we long to know his will, and we long to be worshipped, we long to have the living word of the living God, and this is equally true of the matter of, to break all the rules, and from a book, in this most,

22:56 it's a book that I try to read periodically, in it he says, private prayer, yet I cannot for better than the better, shall your heavenly influences, which go, make up a man, honored of God in the ministry, I know of none, of all, influential, if refinement, by communion

24:12 with God, the unformed minister, upon the wheel of preparation, potter by which he molds the vessel, paired with our cloth, we grow, we wax, we melted them, so that they are dissolved, and mollified, and sometimes

25:16 dissolved, after the human mold, but it will make you so true, for you will seek out of the heart, and isn't that the meaning of the word eloquence, sacrifice, and be in the delivery of the servant, upon God's spirit, will tell you that their freshest and best are not those which were premeditated, but ideas which came to be, and not those which we can see on the Yukon's side, come by themmetly, be dev Serie G more forward, and so straight goodbye, on our world. A day at our temple, when all the earth will see Christ, and all the people will find God, Christ someone, and whom it will come to God, and, it will be the best, and he who lies

26:33 and walks fast in order to see God, we do go fast, that He is not lying, so

27:41 we gonna cry." When the Apostle, Fr. I often do on my knees in passages that speak of me before I go to the pulpit to preach and read them over and ask God the Holy Ghost to put in my heart that people that I look at, they're going to hear those words, depart from me. People whose voices will say to me at the door, thank you for the sermon, Pastor, are voices that will one day be unmingled.

Area 2: Practical Piety in the Life of the Minister

29:09 As we consider what their peers have said, preaching today lies deeply in the area of

29:57 personal devotion, secondly, practical piety in the life of the teaching elder. It's interesting that we, having mentioned that the man must be in a specific area, and you know what it is, and so do I, home life, use the variety of the wagging tongue of his

31:25 wife. The problem was not basically the man as we call upon God to infuse grief, or it says

32:28 not accuse the variety or not pronounce initial cases for God alone.

32:55 The servant of God once said to me, and I shall never forget it, he said, you cannot be a clown and a prophet. Both, you've got to make your choice. I hope I've made the right choice. That does not mean we'll not be truly human, and that we shall feel that we are.

33:23 The fact to all we amongst all can't make the transition from the clown somberness, but is not the mark of our lives in life amongst us. Let us not expect that when we ascend the pulpit, some kind of magical process will immediately make them sit trembling before the words of God. They'll rather think that we are play actors. If they never believe in God, they'll never believe in God.

33:59 They'll never believe in God. They'll never believe in God. They'll never see us disregarding in their presence individually.

34:06 We shall not experience the power, the sobriety of these Jews as we communicate them when we meet together collectively.

34:16 The problem with our preaching, brethren, so often is the shoddiness of our lives in the realm of practical piety, our home life, our speech, and let me mention another area, the use of our time. Let your people suspect you of laziness, and you can have all night prayer meetings praying for power, and it won't be there. Let your people suspect you of laziness, let them suspect me of laziness, and the respect that is a part of pulpit power will be gone.

Area 3: Purity of Motivation

34:53 Then let me mention a third area briefly. In the realm of the man, not only should we be concerned about our personal devotional lives if we would see our preaching power augmented, the realm of practical piety, but in the area of the purity of our motivation. How often when I've gone to a church, I've seen a man say, I'm going to pray for my into churches had pastors come very apologetically because I think they realized their slip was showing when they said it and they would come to meet together to pray and they would say now brother I'm so glad you're here this weekend there are a couple of situations that if the Lord gives you liberty I'd love to have you just touch on this and maybe touch on that and maybe you could say this and we've got some young people who sit in the back row and fool around and I've just never said anything to them maybe you might be able and all in all they go before their people of motivation if we would experience power in the pulpit let me suggest three areas of that motivation first and primary the fear of God the best definition I know of the fear of God is found in John Brown's commentary of 1 Peter where he has 18 pages on the little phrase fear God in that setting in chapter 2 fear God honor the king 18 pages on the fear of God

36:21 and he summarizes it in this way the fear of God is that attitude walking in that attitude and disposition in which we regard the smile of God as our greatest delight our primary aim and we regard the frown of God as the greatest thing to be granted you see a man who walks in the fear of God but with an eye single to the comfort one that I be not afraid of their faces lest I found thee before they shall fight against thee they shall not prevail against thee for I am with thee saith the Lord to deliver thee ah but I am a child who in God's name am I to stand before many of my fathers in the faith in experience

37:38 in knowledge and God said to Jeremiah say not I am a child for to whomsoever I shall send thee thou shalt go and whatsoever I command thee thou shalt speak Jeremiah this is not a matter of your experience your age but I want a vessel that will be where I put him and will say what I tell him will you be that and Jeremiah said yes God wants a vessel that will go where God sends him and will say what God tells him and he says don't look at their faces if you do I'll confound you that's one verse I don't want to prove experimentally what would it be to have God confound me I want to take that verse by faith I believe it's true but I don't want to prove it in experience

38:23 the Apostle Paul declared a clear way 2nd Corinthians 4 1 then again 2nd Corinthians 2 17 speaking as of God in the sight of God we speak in Christ 1st Thessalonians 2 3 as we were allowed of God to be entrusted with the gospel even so we speak not as pleasing men but God who trieth our hearts and bringeth a snare one of the elements of powerful preaching is from a vessel that's liberated from what from the ensnaring effects of the fear of man men from their smiles and their frowns can be bought by their smiles and bought by their frowns but it doesn't take them long to discern whether or not you're a man who's not affected either by their smiles or their frowns a free man in ashes of light and there are applications that you know may sting and wound some choice member of the church you see if your eyes

39:50 the fear of God and the fear of men fumble you fumble you can't get close to that which you know you ought to but when you're free from your people now you're at liberty to bless admit that if there's to be an increased power in the pulpit there must be a return of motivation the fear of God secondly the love of the truth the love of the truth called upon to declare the whole counsel of God Acts 20 and verse 26 and Paul says only as he did was he pure from the blood of all men he declared the whole spectrum of divine revelation there's only one reason why we preach that men are lost bound in their sins under the condemnation of God God declares it and we love his truth our love of the truth is such that we want the whole world to know all that God has revealed and the third area in this matter of motivation love to men I'm convinced that this is what will drive us to applicatory preaching love for men that we can't stand to see them slumber

41:17 that will enable us to be faithful Shane said the man who loves you most is the man who tells you the most truth about yourself 2 Corinthians 7 Paul says am I sorry that I made you sorry no sir he said I'm glad I made you sorry because your sorrow led to your salvation in another place he said am I loved the less because I tell you the truth he said I'm sorry but I'm going to love you anyway and continue to tell you the truth even if you don't love me you see what hinders us in being faithful to men is really a form of self love we love our own feelings so much and we want to preserve them we're not going to run the risk of offending somebody and getting them mad at us or they may go to hell but that's alright just so long as they perish loving us I've heard people say boy that fellow preached it ought to be said of every true preacher of the God because his love to men is such to communicate the truth that they may not relish but which is for their good and for their salvation what's wrong with preaching today some of the failure I'm convinced is in the realm of impurity of motivation and now let's for the time remaining consider something of the message for there

The Message: Lacking Biblical Content and Doctrinal Substance

42:45 is a direct relationship between the man and the message will you try to picture with me a rather grotesque situation here's Mickey Mantle with all his aches and pains but still his tremendous ability the answer behind reruns last of the ninth base is loaded and up comes Mickey Mantle moves up to the plate and he's got a lead pencil in his hands for a bat you see how in the world is he ever going to knock it out of the ballpark with a lead pencil in his hand you see the problems not with the man but the problems with the thing with which he's trying to deliver it just doesn't happen and it's possible that there can be the measure of personal piety and purity the measure of personal piety and purity the measure of personal piety and purity and the measure of personal piety and purity and the measure of personal piety and purity of motivation and practical godliness and devotional warmth that a man may know and experience may be trying to deliver the goods with a litmus. You see, what is some great measure of importance in terms of the effect and the result attained? And the apostle mentions that, puts the two together in 2 Corinthians 4, 1 and 2. He says, seeing as we have received this ministry, we faint not.

44:04 But having renounced the hidden things of darkness, personal piety, not walking in craftiness, there's the realm of motivation, not being sneaky about this.

44:18 Then he goes on to say, nor handling the word of God deceitfully. There comes the manner, the content of his preaching. But by the manifestation of the truth, the full display of the truth, commending ourselves, there's the man again, to every man's conscience in the sight of God. And you see those two things woven together.

44:38 He vindicates, he says, my motives were pure, my attitudes, my life, and my message. And he joins the two in those two very weighty verses.

44:50 Now, in the area of the matter of our preaching, what's wrong with preaching today? Well, much of it, of course, I trust this doesn't apply to us as much as it does to men who would be found concentrated, perhaps, other than at a reformed minister's fellowship. But what I'm trying to say to you is that much of the preaching of our day lacks real Biblical content. One of the unique things about the ministry of Dr. Lloyd-Jones, regardless of what you may feel about it, is this. You are gripped by the sheer weight. I have a number of his sermons on tape, and some of them I've listened to over and over again. As I've tried to analyze it, I've said, now look, he doesn't even use metaphorical language.

45:39 Very few similes, very few metaphors, very few illustrations. And many times, not even a very clearly discernible outline that gives it its power. Here's the element that you feel standing between you and that preacher is a wall of divine truth. And the issue is not with you and that man, but with you and the Word of God and the God of the Word.

46:08 That's what men ought to sense when they hear us preach. The problem of preaching today is it lacks Biblical content because men are defective in their own devotional life. Their minds and souls are not saturated with the Spirit of God. They're not saturated with the Spirit of God.

46:24 They're not saturated with the Spirit of God. They're not saturated with the Spirit of God. They're not saturated with the Spirit of God. It's as the mind and soul are steeped in the Word of God devotionally that in the context of exposition and preaching, there is something to be drawn up so that an illusion and illustration as much as possible comes in a biblical setting and in the very words of Holy Scripture.

46:48 Preaching today in terms of matter lacks any real doctrinal substance. Again, I say that this is true of us. by the grace of God, as it may be true, of other fellowships, other circles.

The Message: Lacking Practical Application

47:09 And then in the third area that I think may be more true of us, much preaching today lacks in practical application. There may be solid biblical content, solid doctrinal substance, but so little practical application. So that men know how to adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in all things. Now, as sort of a subheading of that, may I suggest three areas in which, if I've observed it all correctly, we are most weak in our Reformed circles.

47:49 Those of us who hold without embarrassment to the system of doctrine set forth in the great creeds that came out of the Reformation, our preaching is weak because of its failure, first of all, to spell out the necessity and the nature of evangelical repentance. In our reaction against some kind of a works of salvation, and in our reaction against Arminian activism, I think some of us have fallen under the philosophical pinch of thinking, how can I preach man's responsibility when I know he has no ability to do this? Well, this problem didn't bother the Apostle Paul. He spoke clearly of man's inability to do anything spiritually good, and yet he spoke most clearly of man's...

48:45 responsibility to repent. And when he reviews his ministry to the Ephesian elders, he says in Acts 20-21, I testify to you publicly and from house to house that men should repent and have faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. In Acts 26 and verse 20, he says the same thing, that at Damascus and Judea and to all the Gentiles, he preached that men should repent and turn to God and do works meet for repentance.

49:16 Now, I make this conclusion because I've had the unhappy experience and very embarrassing experience to be in churches that have repentance on the creed and in the confession and in the catechisms. But when I would preach a three or four message series on the subject and simply doing what a Bible school student could do, taking the concordance, finding all the references, trying to organize them under some system, and preach on the soil of repentance, the grace of God, the roots of repentance, conviction of sin and the revelation of the cross of Christ, the substance of repentance, a change of mind to sin, to God, to righteousness, the fruits of repentance, holiness, obedience, to have people sit there and then come up afterward and say,

50:05 Now, it isn't that they didn't hear the word repentance. Sure, they heard it. But it was not spelled out so that the necessity and the nature of evangelical repentance hit them and they were convinced, unless I repent and I bring forth the fruits of repentance, I shall perish even though my head may be packed full of objective and correct orthodoxy. It has been the mark, again, of the men whom God has used, those names I've mentioned earlier, that they all, without exception, spelled out the necessity, the nature, and the fruits of evangelical repentance.

50:47 Secondly, in this matter of our content, there should be a clear presentation of the whole Christ to the whole man. I fear that we have returned to a Romish concept of faith in our circles. Remember the great issue that the Reformers brought into focus, that faith was something more than a pensus, a mere nodding of the head to the body of truth presented by the Church as the faith. They brought back into focus that faith was fiducia, there was trust, there was commitment, there was involvement of the whole man with the truth that was believed, and with Christ, who is the focus of that.

51:31 And I believe we need to spell this out clearly in categorical statements so that people realize that a mere nodding of a cent to the doctrines that they are exposed to is not the essence of saving faith, but that saving faith involves the commitment of the whole man to the Christ, the whole Christ, prophet, priest, and king, who is set forth in the gospel.

51:57 Then we shall not see people talking about believing but not surrendering, knowing Christ is Savior but not his Lord. All that will disappear if there is a clear preachment of the whole Christ to the whole man. And then there is a third area that is a very sensitive area, and yet I am convinced a very necessary area and one which I have observed. We are weak in Reformed circles.

The Message: Distinguishing True Believers

52:25 That is a very necessary area, and yet I am convinced a very necessary area, and one which I have observed. That is a setting forth of the distinguishing traits of a true believer. And involved in that is setting out the difference between the grounds of salvation and the assurance of salvation. I have found in my brief experience of moving in these circles that the moment a few people begin to do some scriptural self-examination, they just begin to obey 2 Corinthians 13.5, examine yourself, prove yourself, whether you have been to faith, and somebody hears about it, why, you think it was the next thing to blaspheme against the Holy Spirit. People looked upon doubts as the most terrible thing in the world. Somebody is doubting. Somebody is troubled.

53:13 Somebody is searching his heart.

53:17 Well, that isn't a terrible thing. It might be the best thing that ever happened. For as I have said on other occasions in the hearing of some of you, doubts will never damn a man, but presumption will. As long as the Scripture is, again and again, let no man deceive you.

53:33 Let no man deceive himself. Be not deceived. What are those exhortations for? If self-deception is not a very real possibility and an actuality, then why is the Bible filled with exhortations?

53:48 Be not deceived.

53:54 If it's merely talking about a hypothetical possibility.

53:58 And if people can come in to the pale of the external church and be deceived under the ministry of the apostles so that they felt it necessary to say, Brethren, make your call in your election sure. People coming in under our peace-shooting ministries and that we need to echo out again, let us make our call and then spat before them the script-true believer and the spirit that this never harms the true child of God. The most searching in this area will serve to bring the true child of God to a more solid assurance. And I found it again and again and again. Only one thing that stands to be harmed by close examination. That's the counterfeit.

55:01 If I had two $20 bills, I don't, but if I did, and I went to my bank and I said, now I want to deposit these in my checking account and the teller takes them and he says, hey, wait a minute, Mr. Martin, I think there might be a counterfeit here. Now, if those bills are genuine, they stand to lose nothing by close scrutiny. In fact, they gain something.

55:22 If he takes them back and puts them under a magnifying glass and takes a genuine 20, and compares them, if they're genuine, if ever I was confident that they're the real thing, when he comes back and says, Mr. Martin, I put them under the magnifying glass, I've examined them closely, they're the real thing, sorry I disturbed you. If ever I had two $20 bills that I'm sure are the real thing, these two I'm sure because they have undergone close scrutiny and they've come away bearing the marks of the genuine. The only thing that stands to lose anything and it ought to lose something is the counterfeit.

55:57 And this is true in this kind of preaching. Anything under a script setting forth of the distinguishing traits of a true believer is the spurious believer.

56:20 If we make unscripts which was one of the problems of second generation Puritanism where you make all fine distinctions that are not found in the Bible. A plague on that, but brethren, where the Bible gives us explicit statements if you're not hearing and following you have no grounds to claim you're ashamed.

56:55 The reason why I'm speaking is to prove that what you're going to say is totally false and that's not true at all. If you want to know how the Bible makes us releasing and not just a false statement that's not what's going to happen or to explain it. What's wrong with the Bible and how we keep it without knowing if you're all of those tests and everything else and what's wrong with our preaching people are being lulled to sleep beneath it brethren. The conscience needs to be wounded and stabbed.

The Manner of Preaching: Urgency

57:41 Men might ask the question am I truly in the faith? And now in the five minutes that remain I want to touch briefly on the matter of the manner of the faithful. a message, and I'll give you the three things I had hoped to expand, but time will not permit. Urgency, orderliness, and directness. Genuine urgency is the mother of true elegance. You're over there in the dormitory, and some fellow at two o'clock in the morning starts walking down the hall saying, hey, fellas, I think maybe this place might be on fire, and we ought to do something about it. You kind of wake up, and you say, what did that guy say? Oh, he's walking in his sleep, mumbling something about the place might be on fire. Now, you're not going to do much. You let someone who's convinced the place is on fire and wants to get you out of there start

58:42 moving down the hall at two o'clock, and the urgency of the reality of the danger will move him to a native eloquence. He may be very quiet, very retiring, very diffident by nature, but he's going to go down that hall banging on doors, brethren, brethren, this place is on fire. Get up and get out, and you wake up from your sleep. And you hear him and say, hey, there's a note of urgency in that fellow's voice. I don't smell any smoke, but he must know what he's talking about. I better get. Now, the urgency in some, because of personality, because of temperament, because of inbuilt microphones, may come out loud. In others, it may come out softly, but it will have those overtones of urgency. When you've made a wonderful

59:29 discovery, you don't say, you know, I found a nice thing today. Sometime it's your convenience. Maybe life comes to you. No, let me tell you what I saw. I saw something beautiful. That's where it's going. Now, this is what I'm talking about. Urgency. What'll make us work at this matter of audience contact? We haven't come just to deliver our oration. We've come to communicate truth with people. And if we see we don't have somebody, somebody's looking around. Spurgeon said this, when he'd see a little fellow on the front row who wasn't listening, it bothered him. So he'd drop out a little something special for little boys until he got his eyes again. He was urgent. He believed what he had to say was a matter of life and death for his hearers. And so

60:22 he would do anything legitimate to make sure he had their ears. He couldn't make the truth go to the heart. Only the Holy Ghost could do that. But his job was to get it into their ears. And if he didn't have their ears, he did everything to get their ears. That's my job. Get their ears. God alone can get it into the heart. Peter did that. Harken! Then it says, the Holy Ghost. If they hadn't harkened, they wouldn't have been stabbed. And so that sense of urgency will make us work on audience contact. It will make us work in the area of communication. We use a word and people give us that long ago and far away look. We know it hasn't registered. We'll be sensitive to this. We'll use a different word.

61:08 I remember my experience in England a few months ago. It was traumatic. I'd use a, I didn't realize how much I used, well, like just this matter of Mickey Mantle and the bat. That would mean nothing to an Englishman. You don't even have strikes or outs in cricket. And I said something about a situation where you got two strikes against you. And I got this blank stare. Well, you see, recognizing that, I had to change my figure, my metaphor, my analogy. But you see, if there's the sense of urgency, you're sensitive to whether or not you're communicating in the area of contact.

61:44 In the area of understanding. And in the area of specific application. I'm convinced, brethren, this is what will drive us to work in applicatory preaching. If you were a doctor, you went into a community, and because of what you knew as a doctor, you were convinced that that whole community was suffering from a certain disease that six months from now would kill them all, but the symptoms were not such that they knew it, you wouldn't just go in and make a general pronouncement, you're all going to die in six months, you've got a bad disease. They'd look at you and say, this poor guy's nuts.

62:13 Something wrong with him. We're not sick. But if you're convinced of it, you will then set it before them, the symptoms of this disease, to convince them. You just won't make a general pronouncement and go your way and hope a few of them will catch on.

The Manner of Preaching: Orderliness and Directness

62:30 You'll work at this matter until they are convinced and know what you know and what you're convinced of. This is what will make us work at application. Then, this matter of reasonable orderliness. The mind I like to look at as the figure of a sponge.

62:45 Do you want to? I don't know what figure you want to use, but there they are sitting before me with this capacity to embrace certain truths. What I want to do is to drive a couple of sharp stakes into that sponge and then hang some loops of truth on those stakes. So that when they go home, there's a stake there and a stake here and some truth hanging on there, you see.

63:07 That's the necessity of some form of orderliness. The mind can't receive truth in some kind of a big glob. It's got to come with some reasonable orderliness. Mr. Adams dealt with some of this.

63:20 And then last of all, the matter of directness. And at this point, I want to close reading a quotation. I had many other quotations I wanted to read, but I have problems with the clock.

63:35 In Bridges' book, which by the way is being reprinted again by the Banner of Truth, and if you don't have it, I commend it for your reading. Charles Bridges, the Christian ministry, the section on preaching the gospel is excellent. He says this in the area of directness. For this end, we must show them from first to last that we are not merely saying good things in their presence, directing what we say to them personally as a matter which concerns them beyond expression.

64:12 And then you read in the great sermons of the great preachers how there was this directness. You feel, even now, hundreds of years after the sermons were preached and written, when you read them, you feel as though that sermon is...

64:25 It's boxing you up in the corner to where you've got to do something with the truth that you're confronting. Dr. Lloyd-Jones mentioned the use of questions. Joseph Aileans, Alarmed to the Unconverted, is a classic illustration of this, where he backs the sinner against the wall, as it were, with questions, causing him to reflect upon his own way, upon his own state before God.

64:47 Are you at peace? Show me upon what grounds your peace is maintained. Is it scripture peace? Can you show the distinguishing marks of a sound mind?

64:54 Can you show the distinguishing marks of a sound mind? Can you show the distinguishing marks of a sound mind? Can you show the distinguishing marks of a sound mind? Can you evidence you've something more than any hypocrite in the world ever had?

65:00 If not, fear this peace more than any trouble, and know that a carnal peace commonly proves the most mortal enemy of the soul, and whilst it kisses and smiles fairly, it fatally smites, as it were, under the fifth rift. Now, conscience, do your work. Speak out! And then he goes on to press the issue in directness to his hearers.

65:24 May God deliver us from sin. saying good things in the presence of some people, and enable us to so preach that men know we're saying weighty things to them personally.

Conclusion and Final Exhortation

65:36 What's wrong with preaching today?

65:39 Well, I'm sure many of the faults are exemplified in my life and ministry as much as in others, but I suggest that together we consider the problem of preaching today is a problem of the man, in the area of personal devotional experience, in the realm of practical piety, in the purity of motivation. What's wrong with preaching today? Some of the problems in the message, the matter that is being preached, and in the manner in which it is being communicated. May God grant that where any of these things legitimately apply to us, that we may suffer the word of exhortation, and by the grace of God, be more effective in our lives.

66:22 Be more effective communicators of the truth of the scripture.