132. Freedom In The Church - Preaching

Welcome to the For Freedom Podcast. This podcast exists to bring the freedom of the gospel for everyday Christians with everyday issues. Now here are your hosts, James Saferick and Brett Martin. Welcome back to the For Freedom Podcast today. Thank you for being with us, joining us in our In the Church series. We're glad you're here. Then enjoying the past few weeks, every episode has just been getting better and better. We've been doing real good at our churches. I've been doing good at our church. We just had our concert recently that I told you all about. A lot of good responses. A lot of visitors came in. And so praise the Lord for that. But I'm looking forward to today's subject. But before we do that, let's check in with James. James, how are you doing this morning? Sir Brett, I'm doing good. Man, we had a wonderful weekend here as well. It was good to be back in the saddle, been able to preach. And then we had a great time hanging out with some of our church members at their house. We went to Texas a couple of weeks ago. And Texas barbecue is like nothing else. It's great stuff. And they are from Texas. And so they made us Texas brisket, Texas burnt ends, sausage, turkey, all smoked all day during church. Dude, I'm telling you, we got there. They made, I don't know what this wife made. She made some type of cream, cheese, corn in a crock pot. But I swear if I put that in my head, on top of my head, my tongue would beat my brains out trying to get to it. It was so good. She made like to-go plates for me. I've been eating on it for the last couple of days. It was so delicious. And so just hanging out with some church people and getting to know them better, being able to be around those and being around people that we don't have. You know, sometimes we see once or twice a week, but we get to spend time with them. It's been great. It's something I love doing in the ministry is just being around people, hanging out with them. And so it was great. We had a good time there. And then we got back from our preaching conference last week with me and John. And that was a blessing there. Learned a lot. And I've already incorporated a lot of that in my preaching. And so we'll talk through some of that today as well. But yeah, things have been doing really good. We are excited about the we're closing down this series of In the Church. Man, we've had a lot of good response. A lot of people reach out to us and we appreciate that. Continue to share our podcast. Continue to share the episodes that have helped you so they can help other people. And we do appreciate that very much so. I am leaving in the morning. I've got a nine-hour trip tomorrow. We're driving down to Jacksonville, Florida, so I can walk and get my degree, my accredited degree, my bachelor. And they asked, do you want to mail you the degree? And I said, no, no, I don't believe so. I put a lot of time and effort into this degree. So I am going to drive down there and I'm going to walk. And so I am looking forward to walking. And my wife's sister and her family actually live in Jacksonville. So we'll get to spend some time with them. That's great. That's great. So you'll be officially accredited and then you're going to get your master's at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Is that correct? Yes, I've been accepted to New Orleans Theological Baptist Seminary and into their master's program. I'm going to go for my MDF, my master divinity, and I will start that in August. So I'm doing I'm getting this degree, getting accredited bachelor where I can go get my master's because that's the that's the plan. And I am looking forward to getting into that. You know, when I was getting the when I was getting the the degree that I'm graduating for for this weekend. All the Bible stuff, all the theology stuff, that stuff interests me. So, you know, it was nothing to knock off those classes and study for those classes, because anytime you're talking about theology, doctrine, the Bible, that kind of stuff, I eat that stuff up. I live for that stuff. What got me was the English classes, you know, the the counseling classes and and writing the reports every week. And that was the stuff that got me. And so I'm hoping that the master stuff is a lot of Bible theology stuff that I just really enjoy. Yeah. Well, and I think you shared off the air that once you finish your MDF at the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, you're going to transfer that to the Driscoll School of Jezebel Spirit and get your doctorate degree from there. Is that correct? Exactly. Yeah. He's already contacted me. I've been accepted into the program. And we're just we're just waiting on, you know, just waiting on that to go through. Amen. Waiting on the find the scripture for the school of Jezebel and the spirit of Jezebel. I've already been practicing my sword swallowing. Amen. So I'm getting better at it. So I'm going to be performing. But, you know, this time as a good testimony, I'm going to keep my shirt on. That's a good thing to do. Yeah. Yeah. So we've got a couple of things coming up in the future. We've got our Indiana trip. It's right around the corner. Man, we had a close, man. We had a scare, man. We were for me. So we booked a house and I woke up Thursday morning last week and I got an email and it said your house that you have rented. It's no longer available. Here's your refund. And I mean, dude, I was I was freaking out. Like, what's going on here? Well, we were like 30 something days away. We're going to be there in no time. And I got a message from the person that we rented that we were written from. They had sold the house and the new the new owners didn't want it to be a VRBO. And so I immediately went on VRBO. House is a little further away from where we were at. But relatively same cost. And so we're renting another house. But literally, I sent I sent Brett like one image was like, hey, we've got to go forward with it. It's so I booked it. And so we're we're walking through with that and be excited about being there. Still going to go. Still going. We're still sharing the house and hanging out. We'll go see the the holy grounds up in Hammond, Indiana and be able to kiss the feet of Jack House. And so looking forward to that and been able to give Beverly a hug, the statue of Beverly, their hug. And so we're looking really forward to that. So, yeah, we got that coming up. And then November, Brett, what's coming up then? November is we've got the For the Sake of the Gospel Conference in Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, which is Catoosa County at Hope Church Catoosa. Pastor J.C. Groves. And so we look forward to this every single year. And I think a lot of the other podcasts are going to be there as well. They're in the RFP network. And we're looking forward to getting with our audience and getting with some recovering fundamentalists and, you know, have a good time and, you know, talk about the gospel. And so and just have a good time. And so I look forward to this every year. I plan my vacation around it. And so we are definitely looking forward to getting with you. If you're going to be there for the sake of the gospel conference, let us know. If you're a listener, come find us there and talk to us. Tell us who you are. We always want to know more about our audience, know more about our listeners. I've already had some listeners contact me and say they're planning on being there for the for the sake of the gospel conference. And so we are definitely looking forward to that. And as of right now, we are still on for Israel. Absolutely. Can't wait. Israel's going to be great and life changing for me, life changing. I know for Brett and for all of us that went. And we're talking about preaching here in a minute, but I don't spend all. I can't think of a sermon that I've preached that I haven't thought about or even in my mind. I may not physically reference it when I'm preaching, but I will in my mind think about, OK, this is where Jesus was. I'm preaching to the sayings of the cross right now. And so my mind, every time I preach all seven weeks that I will, I'm in week five right now. But every week I've went back mentally and went back to Calvary. And I see that that spot where it was that I go to the garden tomb like in my mind. I'm seeing those things and it just it changes everything changes the way I preach. It changes the way I teach. Then I had even conversations with family members just a couple of weeks ago about it and about the trip. And so, man, we hope you want to go. We want you to go. It's an affordable trip. And our details are on the website there at forfreedompodcast.com. And so go check that out as well. Brett, speaking of our meetup a minute ago, you said that other hosts of the podcast are going to be there. One thing that we have done in the past that I would like to do again, we got to reach out to them, is do some crossover episodes with the other podcast hosts of the RFP network. And so we're looking at reaching out to them and doing some crossover stuff and some talking through there just to lead up before we get to the meetup. And so, man, we're really excited about doing that again with some of those other people, other hosts. And hopefully that will encourage them to show up because, you know, like I said, the last meetup, it was just me and Brett there. And so hopefully we can get some of our other networks there and be able to have a great time. But hopefully you'll be making plans in November to join us. James, we all know the reason why you want to do a crossover episode with Beers and Bible. I just want to ask one question. Were y'all too drunk to show up to the For Freedom to the RFP meetup? I think that's what it was. They got too deep on one side of their name there, Beers and Bible. They recorded too many episodes in one day. Right, right. And were unable to travel. Love it. So, well, speaking of the Bible, speaking of preaching, we got back from a preaching conference last week. Me and John went there in Asheville. I think I said Asheboro a couple of times in my episode. It was in Asheville there in Black Mountain. And it was a great time with Steve Lawson. And we had planned to do this episode. We do our schedule out for the In the Church series. We had already planned to do a preaching episode. And it just so happened that I came back from a preaching conference at the same weekend. And so we're using some of these notes from the Steve Lawson One Passion preaching conference that I went to. And he spoke Wednesday about a seven hour lecture on what is a sermon, how to preach, how to dissect the message, how to go through a message. And so we're going to take a little snippet of some of those notes, use it as a guide for us today and talk through preaching. And how do we know what we're sitting under is biblical? And so one of the things that he had said, and we've said this before in the past, is when we listen to preaching and when we preach, because preaching is part of the church, right? The mission statement of our church is to preach the word, to promote hospitality, and to penetrate the darkness in our community. So the first and foremost thing in our church is preaching of the word. And that's the instruction that God has given to the church in order for the church to grow. And so when we hear preaching, oftentimes this is the type of preaching that we hear. We hear preaching that we were growing up hearing, or we may even preach this. We preach how we heard things growing up. We may start preaching something that we heard at a conference. And then we also preach and teach things that we read. And so, Brett, growing up, we'll start with sort of this. Growing up, what was the type of preaching that you heard growing up at your church as a young person, as a kid, pre-Hiles Anderson? I know you said you surrendered to preach under the great Jack Scott, preaching America, America. But what was the style of preaching prior to that that you heard growing up? My pastor, at first, my pastor was a funny guy. He would get up and he would make people laugh. He could do that easy. A lot of people would come listen to him just because, you know, they made him laugh, that he made them laugh. And so he was a funny guy. But mainly, you know, he could also he could preach. He had a good presence. He could speak. You know, he could hold your attention. He could captivate you. He knew how to fluctuate his voice. And so I'm not at all denying that my pastor growing up wasn't a great preacher because he definitely had a talent for that. Now, you peel back the layers a little bit and you investigate, you use hindsight, you dig a little deeper beneath the surface. And what you found is like he would preach the same 10 sermons over and over and over and tell the same stories. And you had to pretend like it was the first time you'd ever heard that story. And it was just a topical way. It was very topical. Pull out two words. And it was such a waste, I think, because he did have such a talent for preaching that if he would have actually exegeted correctly, man, there's no talent. What he could have done, because I have to say he really could speak. But that's mainly what it consisted of. It consisted of maybe 10 or so sermons. He would always find a way to bring every passage back to the same subject. He would always bring it back to, you know, the King James Bible. He would always bring it back to man is the head of the house, the woman submit. And so he would always find a way to bring every passage back to his kind of pet peeves. And so that's the type of preaching that I grew up under. And even though I went to house Anderson, they didn't change that. They reinforce that. And so then when I got out into the ministry, the first decade of my ministry, that's the kind of preaching, you know, that I did because that's what I was taught growing up. Absolutely. And I would say that mine wouldn't necessarily be the same. We my pastor was a grad from Tennessee Temple, and so he was under the great Lee Robertson and that area. And ours was not as legalistic and King James only. I've shared before, I did not hear the name Jack House until I was a senior in high school. And so we were very insulated from the IFB movement. And my pastor did not even begin to use the terminology independent fundamental Baptist pre-millennial pre-trib King James only. He didn't use that terminology until I was like ninth or 10th grade. He went to a sort of Lord conference and then came back and started using some of this terminology. And so I felt like it was more of he he went and some of the brethren were saying these things and he felt like he needed to change some of his rhetoric a little bit. And so but but we were very insulated. I felt like he was very balanced man in his preaching. Now, some of his ethics and other things was a different story for a different podcast for a different time. But we we got some good teaching and I grew so much as a young person under his ministry. I'll say like this. I grew so much that when I got ordained, he couldn't make it to my ordination. And so I requested my ordination certificate two weeks prior to me getting ordained. And I mailed it in an envelope for him to sign it to mail back so that his signature would be on the on my ordination certificate. So so it made a great impact in my life. Fast forwarding to our college days. So, of course, I went to Champion and at Champion, we of course, Eric was a fantastic speaker, a fantastic orator. And he was able to really bring out the word in a lot in a very different way than I'd ever heard in my entire life. And so this was the reflection of men like Jack Howells and other men in ministry influencing him. One thing that you'll understand when you hear preaching is we replicate what we have heard. And so the more we one pastor friend of mine said we're a cheap knockoff of our three favorite pastors, a preacher is. And so who you listen to the most is who you're going to knock off inadvertently, not because because you're trying to. It's just the mimetic nature of us as humans. And so as pastors, we must be careful of who we listen to, because eventually we'll begin to speak or give some same thoughts and terminology and our inflection of voices. And and we'll begin to be you listen to someone who naturally likes to listen to. Let's just use an Andy Stanley, for example. He will eventually begin to speak and sound like Andy Stanley because that's who he's listening to. And so, Brett, your your days at Howells Anderson and then at Heartland or wherever it was, the other place you went to talk about those days. Like, I definitely remember growing up, you know. Even today, while I preach, I still catch myself, you know, saying sayings and little things that my pastor said growing up. His mannerisms, how he would hold his hand to his face when he was trying to bring a point home. I catch myself still doing that because I heard him preach for so many years and talk about favorite preachers. It's funny you mentioned that because we have this one evangelist. Not a lot of he not a lot of IFB people know him that I've asked about, but he is a well-known evangelist that we used to have every year at our missions conference. His name was Paul Swanky. And I used to do an impression of Paul Swanky. And to the point where even when I preach today, I can hear myself getting back into that Paul Swanky type of message. He would he preach like this. He would say, take your Bibles and turn with me, please. The book of Psalm chapter one and verse number one. Now, blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly. And that's his cadence. And that's how he spoke. And I would I find myself falling into that how he used to do it just because I used to listen to preach all the time. I would play his tapes all the time. And even today, I still listen to his messages because I just love to hear him hear him speak. You know, he's hardcore IFB. So there are some sections I ignore. But he is one of my favorite preachers. And I'll find myself at times falling into that of, you know, my three favorite preachers. So I think that that's that's a great observation that he made. But, yeah, when I was at at House Anderson and Tri-State, you know, listening to the preaching and being taught preaching and, you know, there was just it was all just topical. It was just all let's bring everything back to the bus kids. Let's bring everything back to the King James Bible. Insert yourself into all these things in the Old Testament instead of Jesus. And that's just the kind of stuff that we were taught. Take two verses out and put the Bible down and preach on your pet peeve. And that's when I got out of that topical surface level type preaching. I left thinking that, you know, whatever subject came to my mind when I read a passage in the first thing that popped in my head is what God wanted me to preach. And it just caused some of the most cringeworthy sermons. And so that's my my experience in college when it comes to preaching. Absolutely. Same way here, Brett, man. I I will or I'm sort of getting ahead of myself. But before I was back up for a minute, I think I think when you when you were about to say my favorite preacher, I really in my mind thought you're about to say Andy Stanley. In my mind, I said, I don't think you were going to. And you're shaking your head no, which is great. But same thing here. I grew up hearing topical preaching, especially when we got into college and then in in Idaho when I was there. And I will say this, Brett, I was not I did not hear. An expository because this is where we're going today. Expositional preaching is biblical preaching. If it's not expository, it's not biblical. I did not hear a an expository preaching and preaching through an entire book until I was 28 years old. Sitting in a church anywhere else. Took me 28, 29 years. And it was at my former church in Hidnight. Sitting under my pastor, who I love and respect dearly. And it was the first time I ever heard preaching through an entire book of the Bible. And my mind was just my heart was opened up to this amazing amount of wealth of knowledge. And it took me going through that and over the last years of studying and going through what I did this past week. Going to a preaching conference and and listening to other preachers and listening to guys like H.B. Charles and Votie Bauckham and some of these other great theologians of today teach and preach on what is preaching. And so that is what we're going to talk about today. What is a sermon? And part of understanding what something is, is understanding what it's not. 90% of an investigation. I like how Steve Lawson said it. 90% of a detective. He goes in and he uncovers everything that's happening in a crime scene. He wonders why the windows open. He wonders why the pictures twisted a little bit. Why is this rug pulled up? Why is this hair fiber here? And they document everything. And through negation, they take away the things that aren't necessarily part of what happened in that crime in order to get down to what actually happened. But they have to take away certain things. You can't just go in and say, well, this coffee mug's here. Well, was this coffee mug? It had to be part of the crime scene when that coffee mug's been there for 13 years and never moved. And so it's taking away things in order to figure out what things are. And so the first thing we've got to do is look at what a sermon is not. And I'm going to give a list of 16 things that a sermon is not. And when we go through this list, we have to understand that all these things can and should be part of a sermon. But if you take one of them and you just use it, it's not a sermon. And so let's go through the list that he gave. The first is this. It's not a term paper. It's not just simply getting up and reading a bunch of facts. It's not an exegetical digest. It's not like your reader's digest while you're sitting on the toilet and you're reading the old school reader's digest. It's not a classroom lecture. It's not a transfer of information from one mind to another, although you should be transferring information from one mind to another. It's not an essay. It's not an editorial. Your opinion doesn't matter. It's not a blog. It's not a data dump. It's not a running commentary of just simply stating facts. It's not a conversation. It's not a debate. It's not a TED talk. It's not a form of entertainment. It's not a collection of sound bites. It's not a Q&A. And it's not a series of comments on a text. Although these things should be part of your sermon. They are not in itself a sermon. All these things should be part of your sermon. All these things should be there, but it's not simply just this. And so we'll go through it in a minute of what a sermon is. But, Brett, in your brief thoughts, what would you say a sermon is not after we talk through those things? You know, some preachers, they get up and they just give you the information like an info dump. They just let you kind of draw your own conclusion. They give it to you. And I just disagree that I think without application, you don't have a sermon unless you do something with it. Those are the three steps to any single point in any sermon that I preach all have the same thing. You explain it. You illustrate it. You apply it. If you don't have application, you don't have a sermon. A sermon is also not an excuse to get up for an hour and harp on your pet peeves. It's not an excuse to get up and regurgitate the same stories you've told over and over for the last decade and make the same points over and over because you're too lazy to study to look for new stuff. You have to work. It's labor. You have to bring something fresh to the table. Listen, teaching is good and teaching has its place. But I agree, a sermon is not a lecture. And also, there's got to be some dynamics in your preaching. You know, it's not a sermon isn't just ho-hum and drab and boring. Now, listen, I understand that people have different styles, and that's fine. Okay? I said earlier that a lot of people like to go listen to my preacher because he was funny. He could make you laugh, and that's a good thing. Humor is a good thing. But on the one side, we don't want to be just so drab or putting everybody to sleep. But on the other side, you know, we're not coming to church for comedy hour. We're not coming to church to be entertained. You know, we're not coming for night at the improv. We're here to be changed by the Word of God. A sermon is also not your opinion of what a text is. Like I've said this several times. When I left House Anderson, that's what I thought a sermon was. It was whatever my opinion. Like you read the text, whatever comes to your mind, that's what you preach. And I've said before that I preach some of the most God-awful, cringeworthy stuff because I thought that that's what it was. I was not taught to study for a sermon. I wasn't taught to use commentaries. You know, I wasn't taught to do the normal things that you would do to prepare for a message. Let me give you a quick story. So at First Baptist Hammond, we had night bus. And if anybody from House Anderson knows about night bus, you know the heresy that takes place on a night bus. So what would happen is, is in the mornings we would go drop the bus kids off and then we would go to Burger King for two hours. And then we'd go back and pick up just the teenagers and bring them to Sunday night church. Then after Sunday night church, we'd take the teenagers home. And then on the way from the last teenager's house to the bus barn, where we dropped off the rental, and by the way, girls usually weren't allowed on night bus. It was just the preacher boys. And so between the last stop and the bus barn, we would take turns and we would all get up and preach. And we would yell and scream. And they were dents on the top of the bus. Or we would slam our fists against the roof of the bus. I don't know if I'm going to lie. I had a good time. But talk about some heresy, right? Some stuff that was preached on night buses. And this is our podcast, so I can kind of say this without getting in too much trouble. I remember, James, I preached one particular message, and it was called Up Yours. And what I would get up and I would say, I upped my soul winning. Up yours. I upped my prayer life. Up yours. I upped my Bible reading. Up yours. Up yours. And, man, it got such a good response. Man, they were loving it. They were hooping. They were hollering. Fast forward a couple weeks. Every once in a while, we would let the girls on night bus. So the girls get on night bus, and I get to thinking, man, I preached that message a few weeks ago, and I killed it. Now I'm going to preach the same message with the girls on the night bus, and they're going to think it's funny too. So I get up and preach the classic message, Up Yours again. And it didn't go over well. I don't know why. Didn't go over well. Every preacher after that took their shots at me, every single one. But that's the kind of stuff that happened on night bus. Yes. Okay. Now when the women went on the night bus, were they allowed to get up and preach as well or no? No. They were not allowed to get up and preach. They could wave their hankies. Amen. Amen. Okay. So, but that's the tip of the iceberg of the stuff that happened. There were other stuff that happened. So then I get to Bethel, and I'm on the bus on a Sunday morning, and they want me to preach going from the last stop to Sunday morning church. So I get up, and I preach on the bus like I'm a night bus. So I'm hitting the roof of the bus. I'm screaming at the top of my lungs. And the bus captain is, you know, she's a woman. She was sitting on the front row with a front bus seat with a little girl. Little girl's crying. She's trying to comfort the little girl and say, oh, honey, he's not yelling at you. He's not screaming at you. But, you know, that's what we thought preaching was, just getting up, yelling, screaming, you know, hitting on the big points. Hitting on your pet peeves. Never digging into the passage. We just had a flawed concept of what preaching was. Absolutely. I think so, and I think that's where we get to it. Our concept of preaching is so we heard the amens. We saw the altars full, and we thought, if I do this, this is the response. And in reality, we understand now looking back, it's the manipulation that got those responses. It wasn't necessarily what they were actually saying or doing. Right. You're not trying to faithfully convey the word of God or dig into the word of God. You're trying to get your echo chamber going. You're trying to get the amens. And that's a successful message if you get a lot of amens. Yeah. Which leads us into what is a sermon. So what it is, is it's its own unique form of information. It's no other organization, no other conveying of information is done like a sermon. You are, the goal of a sermon is one word, it's transformation. It's transforming life into, death into life. It's transforming sanctification. You're confrontating. You're giving conviction. You're building up. Sometimes you're tearing down. You're motivating. There's a wow factor to preaching. You've heard this wow factor. You've sat under it before. You've seen men that were used by God that would stand up and they would expound the scripture. There's a waking up. There's a firing up for the cause of Christ to go out and to reach the world. There's a persuasion. First Corinthians 12 talks about persuading those to follow Christ. There's a application, as we talked about. There's exhortation. There's a invitation. There's a self-examination. A sermon is written to be declared, not read. I thought that was one of the great points that he said, is it's wrote in a way that is delivered in a way that brings power, that brings God glory, not just simply to be read. It is intended to move the listener to a response of the truth presented, and it's designed to drive the listener to God and to Christ. That's what a sermon is. That's what all encompasses a sermon is this holistic view of transforming someone's way they're living into a life that is now being brought to Christ. You know, when I preach a message, these are the questions I have written on a three by five card, and I read them before I write any message. And these are the five questions that I ask before I write a message. Number one, what do they need to know? That's information. This is the burden that I have to unload. I have a burden. And I'm asking, what is the hidden spiritual truth in this passage? I have a burden that I have to unload. It's in me. It's got to come out. So number one, what do they need to know? That's information. Number two, why do they need to know it? Okay, that's that's motivation. That's the tension that you create in your sermon. The motivation behind it. Why do you need to know this? Number three, what do they need to do? That's application. Every sermon has to have some sort of application for it to be a sermon. In my opinion, how can I apply this truth to my life? How can it change me? How can it make me a better Christian? How can I better apply the gospel? Number four, why do they need to do it? And that's that that that's inspiration. Okay. You know, this is, you know, the motivation behind it. And then number five, how can I help them remember? And that's reiteration. So those are some questions that that help me when I write a message. But to answer the question, what is a sermon? Listen, there are some preachers out there. They can get up and preach. And they're just naturally gifted. Just just talking to people. Okay. They have a they have a psychology background. One person I'm thinking of is Matt Chandler. I love to hear Matt Chandler preach. I love to. And I've tried to imitate Matt Chandler. He is so smart. There's no way I can imitate him or be like him because he gets into these deep terms and this psychological stuff. And I love listening to him. And I know some people dog Matt, but I love to listen to Matt preach. But but they can get up and do this stuff. And and I can't do that. But what I can do is I can get up and I can talk about the word of God. I you know, because that's my job. I get up. It's my job to exegete the scripture to people, to put it into context. What did it mean back then? What does it mean to us today? Now, listen, there are some people out there. And I know you went to a Steve Lawson convention. I love Steve Lawson. I've listened to him teach at the Master's Seminary. I've listened to podcasts. I listen to him. He's got a preaching podcast that I've listened to. I love to hear Steve Lawson teach on preaching. But one of them, I don't know what he said at the conference. I didn't go. But one thing that I've heard him say in the past is that if you're not preaching verse by verse through a book of the Bible, you're not doing it right. And, you know, there are some people that say that that that's you know, I think you should always be an expository preacher no matter what. But I don't think necessarily you have to only preach verse by verse through every, you know, through a book of the Bible all the time. I don't think that's necessary. There are some people that do preach verse by verse through every book of the Bible, and then they shame and guilt other people that don't. And I don't think that's right. Listen, expository preaching is something we should all be doing. But just because you're not starting at the beginning of the book and ending at the end of the book all the time doesn't mean that you're wrong. And listen, I get it. Like topical preaching is jumping around in the Bible. You're skipping stuff. I get that. So what I'm advocating for is contextual preaching. Now, listen, I do pick a book of the Bible and I'll preach through it. I do that all the time. I'm not saying don't do that. But I also preach. I also preach sermon series where I'll get jump around with different passages, different subjects. Right now we're going through the book of Jeremiah. I'm not preaching verse by verse through the whole of Jeremiah, but I'm jumping around into main events in Jeremiah's life and preaching through that. But when I pick a passage to preach, I preach that passage contextually and exegetically. Like I still preach verse by verse, but a passage over here and a passage over there. And I don't think there's there's there's anything wrong with that. And I also do preach through through books of the Bible. I've talked through Philippians last year. This year I'm going to preach through another book at some point. But as long any message, it needs to be contextual. That's the that's the word that I want to focus on. It needs to be contextual no matter what you preach. Absolutely. I heard it the other day like this, not at Steve Austin's conference, but another conference. I was listening to a podcast. The guy said that he thinks there should be a spattering of expositional preaching to books of the Bible. But also he called it topical textualism, which is topics that you're using the text and you're preaching the text that it is. And you may not be able to preach the whole book in that setting, but you're being faithful to the text. You're preaching it the way it should be preached. And I thought it was great. I think it was an RFP. Maybe it may have been the most recent episode that came out that maybe I heard. And so what is what does the Bible say about preaching? Because that's that's part of this whole thought. What is a sermon? And I think a good verse for us to read right here is 1 Timothy 4, 3. 1 Timothy 4, 3. Paul talking to Timothy and he's charging him in his first letter. And he's he's telling him he's saying these are some things that you should do. Don't let anyone despise your your youth. Be an example of your speech. And until I come in verse 13, he says this until I come. Devote yourself to public reading of scripture to exhort and to teach. Don't neglect the gifts that you've been given. And so if we take that right there as a prescription of how a sermon should be, it's simply like this. It's preaching the text. I'm sorry. It's reading the text. It's teaching the text. And it's exhorting the text. And we see this all throughout scripture. We see Moses did this. We see that Jesus did this in Matthew chapter five. Jesus reads the text. Jesus explained the text. And then Jesus applied the text all throughout the Sermon on the Mount. The sermon he gave application as he went through it. And I wrote this statement down because you mentioned application. I'm an applicable guy. I like to give illustrations and applications. And he said one of the things that Steve said was a sermon without an application isn't a sermon at all. It's a bridge that takes us to the application is the bridge that takes us to the island of adventure. If we don't connect it, then we lead people to a pit. That's what application does. It takes you from where you're at to this adventure island where you're able to really explore the text. And if not, if you don't ever apply it, you lead people into a hole of nowhere because they never can see. Spurgeon said that applications are the windows to your message. And so as we think through that, we begin to think and we begin to see all throughout scripture where this is what when Peter got up and preached, he got up and he read the text. He said, listen, church, listen, people of Jerusalem. He read the text. He taught the text and then he explained the text that he just read. And he summarized it. He applied it. He exhorted it. He began to go through and talk through what the text meant. And that's what a sermon is. It's unique. It's not like anything else we've ever seen or heard or ever will see or hear because a sermon changes and transforms lives. It's through the preaching of the word that God calls sinners to be saved. It's through the preaching of the word that God calls us from death into life. All right, Brett. So we've talked about what a sermon is not. We've talked about what a sermon is. And the last thing, and we'll be finished up here, is what does a sermon do? What does it do? How do we understand? And there's really two thoughts here. There's a comprehensive view and there's an inadequate view. The first thought is a comprehensive view is a sermon addresses the whole person. It addresses our mind. It addresses our affections. And it addresses our will. And when we think through a sermon, we have to understand that we learn in our mind. And a sermon must be, must have transfer of information. It can't just be that, but it's got to be transfer of information. It's got to grow the listener's mind. It's got to have something in the message that someone's going to be able to grab onto and say, wow, I didn't know that. I need to research that more. And one way that I've always been taught is keep the cookies on the bottom shelf, but it's okay to throw a little bit of steak out there for those who are needing steak. We can't just give a sermon of steak because we're going to lose people. We've got to keep something on the bottom shelf for those that are just baby new Christians that are just growing in their faith. And if all we're doing is serving steak dinners, someone's going to starve to death. And so transferring information, giving information to the mind and allowing that mind to grow, giving the love in the heart, so the affection, giving this information and showing through the text that this is a way that our heart changes and then living it with our will. How do we apply this so that someone can step out Monday, Thursday, Saturday, and take that text and apply it in their life? It addresses and proclaims the whole truth of the Bible. Every sermon does this. Every sermon proclaims the whole truth of the text. An inadequate view will only address one of these issues. It's a sermon that gets up and it's just a lecture. It's just a mind meld of information. It's a manipulation. This is the emotions where a pastor will get up and he'll read a verse of scripture or a word of scripture and he'll springboard into a manipulation of emotions and say, this is why you need to do these things. And there's no foundation of text. There's no foundation of anything. It's just simply he has a bone to pick with someone. And so he's using those emotions to drive it forward. And then the last one is it only addresses the will. It's not necessarily addressing our mind or emotions. And it's just directly affecting what you do say where the legalism that we have been addressing since this podcast started. And this is what sermons can do if they're done improperly. And so we have to understand that we need training when it comes to pastors. We need to understand it's the highest calling that's ever been given. And in everything we do, Brett, we must drive to be excelling and be excellent in our preaching. Absolutely. And I agree with what you said. I think every sermon needs to have the milk and also needs to have the meat. You know, you've got to have something for everybody because you've got different people in your church listening to you on different maturity levels. So, you know, you have to feed everybody. And it's so true. It makes so much sense that the inadequate views of preaching only address one of those three areas. Like you've got the one that only addresses the mind. And this is the guy that gets up and he's just data dumping. He's just giving you facts. He's giving the information and not telling you what to do with it, not telling you how to apply it. Then you've got the other guy that stands up and he plays on your emotions. And that's all he's there to do. He's there to emotionally manipulate you to get you down on the invitation. Feel that front up, because if he has more people on the front of the altar, that means that his sermon was successful. So it's just, you know, emotional manipulation. And then the guy that gets up and just addresses your will. Like you said, he's just up there just giving you the rule book. And it's all legalism. And you have to look a certain way for God to accept you. You have to do this. You have to do that. You have to follow the rule book. And it's all law. And it's no grace. And we definitely, you know, live by the spirit, live by the grace. We don't live by the letter of the law. And so I think all of these are good points when it comes to preaching. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I hope that this has helped you. And what we're wanting this whole episode to do, if you've lasted this long, is it's not that we're trying to tell you how to preach. It's we want you to understand when you walk into a church, what should you expect from that pastor? What should you expect the information to be given through that sermon and how it should be? Because this is sort of the metric that you're going to be able to take and say, I've got some guardrails up. I've got some things up that's directing me. If I hear there's some legalism or whatever, you're going to have some red flag go up. And so this is a way to say, okay, this is what I should expect from a pastor and a preacher and what preaching should be. And we've tried lining up a couple of interviews. They've not worked out for this thought of preaching. But we hope this helped and we hope this information, again, it's not just coming from us. It's not just me and Brett's thoughts. It's guys that we have listened to that we respect in the world of preaching that have done a whole lot longer than us. That is giving great information that have spent their whole life teaching and preaching the word of God. And so hope this helped today. If it did, like I said, share it. Give us a like and review. But until next time, to God, not the pastor, be the glory. I found my new name. I found that good grace. I found that healing. And the tears fell down my face when I found my beginning that has no ending. I found that second chance. I found my best friend. I found my forgiveness. I found my happiness. I've been singing ever since. I found my freedom in you. Thanks for listening to the For Freedom Podcast. If you enjoyed our content, do us a favor by liking, subscribing, or sharing our podcast on whichever podcast platform you use. Be sure to join us next time for the For Freedom Podcast. For Freedom Podcast. I will find my—— I will find my—— Thank you.

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