Hi everyone, welcome to the Oak Hill podcast, Deep Roots, conversations about theology and
ministry. Thank you for being with us. My name is Eric and I teach Hebrew and Old Testament
at Oak Hill.
My name is Andrew Nicholls. I'm director of pastoral care here.
My name is Tim Ward and I teach preaching and teaching and Bible interpretation.
And Tim, you are in the hot seat today.
This is the hot seat and I am in it.
Also you've been doing a lot of thinking and reading about preaching, the theology of preaching,
the nature of application.
We'd like to pick your brain on that. So lead us into this subject.
Yes, I've normally sat on that side. It's nice to be over here.
Yeah, we said we talk about preaching.
And I want to put on the table the question of the theology of preaching.
Theologically, what is preaching?
And I think, and I think I'm not the only one who thinks this, that in some evangelical
circles, not all, but kind of generally, that's been an area that hasn't been as worked over
and thought through theologically maybe as some other areas of our theology.
And I also want to think about application.
I think many, many preachers would feel it's in and around application that I can feel
weakest.
I mean, not everybody, I'm generalizing, but that's what I felt for myself and I've heard
a lot from others.
And I think over the years, it's kind of dawned on me that really good thinking about the
theology of preaching is necessary for really good application.
And if application is weaker, I mean, that can be for a number of reasons, but it might
be because below the surface, there's either a poor theology of preaching going on or maybe
one that's not been thought through as richly as it might have been.
So yeah, so those two topics, what is preaching theologically?
What actually is good application?
What it try to do?
What will it sound like?
What will it feel like?
Yeah, those are things that have been going around my mind for a while.
Okay, so Tim, can you tell us what's brought this to your attention?
Why you feel a sense of urgency about this?
What ministers stand to gain here?
You know, the really kind of personal, what brought this to my attention is a few years
ago, I was teaching on another course, had a happy time teaching at the Cornhill Training
Course, which trains people in teaching and preaching the Bible.
And it did dawn on me early on in my time there that I didn't feel that I had a very
good theological description for what preaching is, which felt like a bit of a lack for someone
who, for whom frankly, training people to do that thing is your day job.
The question that sort of floated around that is, I think I had a reasonable grasp of a
theology of word ministry in the round, as in what is going on?
What is God doing when people encounter the word of God in whatever form?
You know, reading it for themselves or in a small group or hearing a sermon.
Yes, that, but the whole question of is there something distinctive about preaching or is
there not?
That was something I felt was a bit of a gap in my thinking.
You ask what preachers have to gain from this?
Just at the simplest level, if a preacher has never really engaged seriously with the
question, do my Sunday sermons have something theological distinctive, theologically distinctive
about them that my evangelistic one-to-one in a coffee shop doesn't have?
Now, clearly I've got a view on that, which I'm fairly invested in persuading people is
right because it's not just my view.
It's a, you know, it's got good historical pedigree to it.
But even before that, I think I'm much more interested in getting people to realise that
that's a question worth thinking about because I don't think I'd thought about it for a while
in ministry.
And I think I've met a lot of people who haven't.
I suspect many people listening to this podcast are thinking, man, you were slow on the uptake.
I thought about this.
Fair enough.
But for someone who hasn't thought about it, why is it worth thinking about?
In simple terms, it's because the historic reform tradition, the absolute mainstream
of the historic reform tradition has been pretty confident that there is something theologically
distinctive about what we would call the Sunday sermon in the main gathering of the local
church.
And if someone generally wants to be reformed with a bigger or smaller capital R, let's
say in their doctrines of grace and doctrines of salvation, they ought at least, I think,
to take account of what that same tradition has wanted to say about ministry, theologically,
particularly preaching.
And yeah, if you're a Protestant, you're entirely free to distend from the tradition,
apparently without too much cost.
And that's all fine.
But at least face up squarely.
I mean, in simple terms, if you really love reformed doctrines of grace, face up squarely
to what people who believed that also believed about ministry.
And they saw their soteriology and their doctrines of ministry linked.
You don't have to agree, but at least face up to what's been out there.
So tell us what the theology of preaching is among reformed theologians that you would
say.
It is that there is, I think the way I put it is that the, as it were, the exemplary,
the central, the kind of primordial encounter that the people of God have with the Word
of God is as they gather in order to hear it preached by God's appointed ministers,
that it's particularly in that gathering.
So at this point, you see already in answering your question about the theology of preaching,
I'm also talking about the theology of the gathering, the main gathering of believers.
And again, at least in my experience, others tuning in may be completely different.
At least in my experience, I think a lot of folks I've known, I've needed to do some
sort of plain catch up on what is my theology of a Sunday gathering?
Is the Sunday gathering just kind of theologically the same as a small group Bible study or a
Christian conference and only pragmatically different or is there a theologically, is
there something theologically distinctive about it?
And I think that the mainstream referral tradition wants to say that the Sunday, we would call
the main Sunday gathering, is a distinctive biblical theological thing, a particular event
in the life of the church, which is in biblical theological continuity, well, starting with
Sinai and the gatherings of Israel, that in our gatherings now looks up to and in some
way participates in the heavenly gathering.
And so it's a key moment when we mark who we are as the people of God, looking forward
to our gathering around the throne.
And let's say Hebrews chapter 12 very much has got the main Christian gathering in mind
and sets it very much in that kind of context.
And so if that's what's going on in the gathering, then the preaching of the word by the ministry
in that gathering is, I mean, in the words of William Perkins, around 1600, wrote a book,
The Art of Prophecy, extremely influential.
I mean, very early on, maybe even beyond page one, he talks of preaching as a place in which
the Lord gathers the elect and drives away wolves.
And that particular divine act is particularly going on in the main gathering.
So what I'm hearing is theology of preaching elevates the Sunday morning sermon in all
the different ways the Christian encounters the word of God that is elevated both in importance
and intensity and biblically, theologically in terms of all covenant means of grace and
looking forward ahead eschatologically to the new creation, that the Sunday morning
sermon has especially unusually distinctively strong ties to earlier and later forms of
worship.
That's what I'm hearing.
You summarized in about 23 seconds what I rambled on for about three minutes.
That's brilliant.
Thanks, Eric.
Can you write that down for me?
Because I'm learning from the best.
That's why.
So reform theologians have helped you in this.
If you were pushed, how would you justify that theology of preaching biblically?
You mentioned Hebrews 12.
I'm persuaded that if we are looking in scripture for an understanding of what happens when
Christians gather, you get places like Hebrews 12, which put it in the context of Sinai.
The New Testament language, the Greek word ecclesia for the gatherings.
That's also the word used in the Greek Old Testament for those particular gatherings
of Israel in the first century.
It's in the Greek form that many would have been encountering the Old Testament.
The New Testament writers, it's very likely that they're using that word rather deliberately.
In addition, you get Paul in 2 Corinthians chapter 3 speaking of his own ministry and
again in Sinai terms.
I think it's one of those topics where if someone's criterion for saying a theology
is really taught in the Bible is I need a proof text, I need a verse.
If you can't give me that, I'm not going to buy it.
There's probably an understanding of preaching that they're going to struggle to think is
really clearly there in scripture.
This is how I think a number of reformed theological instincts come into play here.
If you are someone who thinks that if something is there by good and necessary consequence,
then I think you're more likely to see it there.
It seems to me it is good and necessary consequence from the kinds of passages we're talking about.
You put the pieces together and this starts to look like this is the New Testament's view
of what's going on in the gathering.
It's very helpful to hear you contrast the view that is looking for a proof text and
the view that is seeing the development of a theme.
I was just dipping into Hebrews 12 since you mentioned it.
There's a language about you haven't come to a mountain that can be touched, but you
have come to a mountain.
You've come to Mount Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem.
There's a strong eschatological sense about that.
Then there's verse 25, see to it that you do not refuse him who speaks.
Yes.
There's a strong sense that God is addressing this assembly now.
It can't just be all about a future reality.
There's an embodiment, there's an experience of it in the here and now.
God speaks to a gathered assembly.
That's a big deal.
Absolutely.
There's a number of things going on in Hebrews, which I think towards the end point clearly
towards the, it is the gathering that's in view.
So a little bit earlier, chapter 10, don't give up meeting together a summer in the habit
of doing.
Then a little bit later, chapter 13, it's obey your leaders.
I can't remember the exact wording.
Is it 13, seven?
Remember your leaders who spoke the word of God to you considering the outcome of their
way of life.
Okay.
Remember your leaders who spoke the word of God to you.
Yeah.
So between, don't give up meeting together.
Remember your leaders who spoke the word of God to you.
You've got that very interesting line that you just quoted in chapter 12.
Do not, see that you do not refuse him who speaks.
And some of the commentaries, I think some of the sharper ones grapple with, who is him
who speaks there?
You said it's the Lord.
But you might say it's the one appointed to deliver the words to the people or, or maybe
it's both.
Maybe it's very deliberately the Lord speaking through the one appointed.
And then I ought to, let me happen to Hebrews.
The other thing I'd throw into the mix there, which is, I think as far as I'm aware, has
been increasingly pointed out by writers on, I mean, it's been noted for a long time, but
writers on Hebrews have increasingly pointed this out.
Right towards the end of Hebrews chapter 13 verse 22, he says, brothers and sisters, I
urge you to bear with my word of exhortation, word of exhortation, Greek, logos tast paraklesios.
That is the kind, the semi-technical term for a sermon in the Greek, the Greek term
for it in a synagogue in the first century.
Interesting.
And quite a number of writers on Hebrews build on that and say, okay, Hebrews really is in
the structure of a sermon.
It may be the first kind of full extant Christian sermon that we have.
So what you've got is the whole letter self-describes as sermon in ways that would have been recognizable.
It talks about not giving up meeting together.
It talks about, remember your leaders who spoke the word of God to you and you don't
refuse him who speaks and you've not come to a mount.
I mean, if someone says, okay, I'm still not buying.
I'm struggling to escape the conclusion that something distinctive about those who speak
the word in this Sinai model assembly that we now have seems to be pretty compelling
something like that's going on.
Tim, of course, you are not saying that God can't speak his word powerfully through the
Spirit.
I had my devotions this morning or pastor meeting one on one, but there is something
distinctive and unique about Sunday morning.
Yeah, that's absolutely crucial to say that.
And if I had a worry about the theology of preaching, the worry is precisely that it
over-exalts the pulpit, over-exalts the Sunday sermon and diminishes and demeans us ministering
the word one to another.
That is always a danger within this theological understanding of preaching.
Now, I think it's a danger that can be countered.
And I think denying it as a theology of preaching is a fairly effective means of exalting personal
Bible reading.
But I think it swaps one set of problems from another set.
Sure.
Two of the verses that come to mind in Romans 10, Paul asks, how will they hear the gospel
of whom they have not heard?
And the Greek is a kua with the genitive, which doesn't mean to hear about, but to hear
someone speaking the word so that Christ himself is speaking.
Now, this isn't talking specifically about Sunday morning.
And yet through Paul's apostolic preaching, they're hearing Jesus.
You get a similar verse in Ephesians 2 about Christ preaching to those who were near those
who are far.
It probably doesn't literally mean Jesus went and preached to people living in ancient
Turkey or something.
And yet through the apostolic preaching, people had heard Jesus as if they had heard him deliver
the Sermon on the Mount or something.
That's what I understand those verses to say.
Yeah, I agree with you on the Romans 10 one.
As I remember, the commentaries are pretty divided on that.
I'm persuaded that he's speaking of Christ as the one who is preaching.
I think that's absolutely right.
So tell us more about your thinking about the material impact, how this changes how
you preach and especially how you apply.
Currently my best straightforward way, I mean, I'll probably come hopefully come up with
better ones over time, my best straightforward way of trying to express the difference that
this makes is in preaching.
It is not so much that we are, as it were, saying, look, look, everybody, ignore me,
look, look.
It is more through me as I now stand here, the Lord is speaking this word to you.
That's a fairly deliberately stark way of expressing it, slightly provocative because
it feels like in many ways that should be the right, not me, but this should be right.
And this has all the dangers of the very clear and present dangers of frankly, preachers
who are too big for their boots and are developing an authority they shouldn't have and that
they can abuse.
And we need to face that full in the face.
But it seems to me all sorts of good doctrines are only half a step away from error and abuse.
They're always in that danger.
That doesn't mean they're bad doctrines, it just means we've got to do them really well.
That distinction, I find exemplified in, I guess, two of the most influential preachers
in Britain in the 20th century, John Stott and Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones.
And their two books, Stott's book, I believe in preaching, published in the States, I think
is Between Two Worlds, and Lloyd-Jones' book, Preaching and Preachers, make for an absolutely
fascinating comparison.
I do think people should continue to read both of those books.
I mean, increasingly they will be of their time, written by the men who wrote them, and
that's fine, everything's like that.
But there's great wisdom and I think great insight into what influenced preaching in
Britain particularly in the 20th century.
What Stott basically says, I think at a key moment is, the preacher should stand back,
not me.
Don't look at me, don't look at me.
The Bible in Jesus, the Bible in Jesus.
You know, little plaques you sometimes get in pulpits, that quote from the scriptures,
so we would see Jesus.
Turn up, pulpit.
Yeah.
There is a wonderful truth in that, as a warning, we don't, I haven't come here to hear your
wisdom, Mr. Preacher person.
I've come here to hear the Lord Jesus, and if I haven't come here to hear the Lord Jesus,
it's Jesus you should be giving me.
But I think Lloyd-Jones' way of putting it, no, no, something, and he'll get all flarrery,
it's his style of writing and expressing himself, thrilling through you to the people.
I think captures better this biblical notion that the great shepherd appoints undershepherds
through whom he will pastor the flock.
It seems to me, you're addressing a thought I've often found myself wrestling with, that
it feels like it should be possible on, if I can crudely, the stock model to say, not
me, just look at the text.
Is it possible for that to be done by someone who wasn't themselves personally moved by
the text?
Which, of course, stock doesn't mean.
Indeed.
And it's evident in a way entirely appropriate to his background and education and so on,
he is deeply under the authority of Scripture as he speaks in his own way.
He embodies the call of Scripture in everything he does, as far as I can see.
And Lloyd-Jones does in a different way, but I think Lloyd-Jones is more explicit that
that's what's going on, that he himself must be moved, there must be, his passions need
to be stirred by, and that he is stirred by is part of the persuasive power that such
a gifted preacher has.
And it's not simply a gift of preaching gets used.
It is that God's gift in that moment to the people is this living embodiment.
And not just the gift of preaching, but through the particular preacher.
And in that particular moment.
Yeah.
I think I can't help but think that with Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, they hear, I think
they literally hear God.
And yet if you read each of the three books, you always sound slightly differently.
I assume the best way to explain that is God is speaking through the prophet's personality.
It is still absolutely the fiery words of God.
And yet the person of the speaker is not put aside or shut down when God's word comes.
Exactly.
The Lord gives us embodied examples of what it is to be a follower of the Lord Jesus.
That is partly how we know how to follow him.
Paul in one Corinthians followed my example as I follow the example of Christ.
We have those models in front of us.
And I think that notion, which I think is there in the scriptures, I think is captured
better by Lord Jones' notion that you are...
It's in Spurgeon too.
Spurgeon has it in his own quaint Victorian language.
He describes preaching precisely in Sinai terms.
You come down from the mountain with your face still glowing.
You've been communing with the Lord in your preparation for this sermon.
And so what people are getting from you is very clearly, as it were, the overflow, the
glow of your communing with the Lord.
Can I just say one more thing on Stottenloy Jones?
I doubt it's a coincidence that they each end up where they do on this particular point.
Their own particular sociological background, I think, must play in.
Stot with someone who grew up in a culture which on the whole did not prize public displays
of emotion, rather look down on it.
For Lord Jones, for Wales, not from that high strata of English society, a very different
culture.
So although they've got biblical theological things going on, I think we have to acknowledge
how each of us feel about this.
There will be deep, probably unquestioned cultural things going on.
Sorry, I cut you off.
No, no, that's fine.
So Tim, counsel me.
Every single time I preach, whether it's at church or an Oak Hill Chapel, when I sit down,
every single time for about 60 to 90 seconds, I experience a sense of crushing embarrassment
and inadequacy.
And I just sit and stare at my feet, and I don't want anyone to look at me, because I
need about 60 to 90 seconds to regain my composure.
And usually in God's kindness, after a minute or two, I think, okay, I don't think that
was a total disaster.
But inasmuch as you are inserting the person or the preacher into the equation in a strong
way, there is nothing to make you feel inadequate like preaching, and nothing that will push
someone up against the limits of their gifts like preaching.
Help out a fellow struggler in this.
Given what you've just said, which I'm convinced, how would that apply to that sense of, I mean,
apparently after Augustine died, the person who had to preach after him, Augustine retired,
he's sitting in the crowd, and the preacher looks at him and says, you know, a sparrow
chirps, the swan is silent.
He just feels so inadequate in comparison.
What would you say?
And then I want to ask you about application.
I think for many preachers, that is just the norm.
Experientially, that appears to be the norm.
It's not a deficit.
I mean, if I put it strongly, I would really worry about a pastor who didn't experience
their own version of that.
I've been a pastor and I still preach from time to time, and now I mainly lecture.
Preaching is way more exhausting than lecturing.
I think that's the way it should be.
The fact that somebody has what a whole church may identify as a gift to preaching is not
that they find it easier to do than anybody else.
I think when God gifts anything, it doesn't necessarily mean they find it easy, but there's
a willingness and an ability to put in some very hard yards in your area of gifting in
the process of which God does his work in you, which becomes your blessing to the congregation,
his blessing, I should say, through you to the congregation.
It's that sense of labor.
It's the sense indeed of a life laid down again before God's word, under his authority,
for the sake of Jesus and his people that is part of that communication.
There is something that I feel, as someone who also preaches, I feel is unique about
the preaching act for me, but I think it's something that other people experience in
other areas when they use the gifts that God's given them in the service of other people.
I don't think it's simply about, God's made it easy for me.
I think it's God's made it possible and given me a willingness to do it.
That's really interesting.
There might be people who just find it so debilitating that they just couldn't function
during this week by week, but we all know, don't we?
Many pastors will just experience that Monday morning slump.
Not all of that, but part of that will be, I poured myself out to the people.
That actually shows the gift is operating after the Monday morning slump.
One grace, I think we could say, in more strongly inserting the person of the preacher into
the equation is it gives the preacher freedom to say, I don't know, Isaiah doesn't have
to preach like Jeremiah or like Ezekiel.
I don't have to be like Lloyd-Jones.
There's a particular way God has made me, and I can be comfortable in that.
That's a really nice thought.
We do want to hear a bit more about application, don't we?
Maybe this is a helpful way into that.
I was actually having a discussion just last night with a friend who was in discussion
with a friend about whether preachers are even irresponsible to try out application
because, and this was how strongly the case was put, I will never understand a particular
individual well enough to say exactly how the word should connect with them.
Even if I could do that for one person, that will ignore everybody else in the congregation.
All I can do is give broad principles from God's word and trust the Spirit to do his
work and so application never really in that particular ministry gets beyond some version
of repent, read your Bible, pray, and so on.
How do we feel about that?
Hey, that's been an easy one.
Yeah, there's an illustration that sometimes goes around which feels compelling.
That I've sometimes heard to back that up, which goes something like if you've got a
series of, if you've got a tray of glasses in front of you, tall things like each of
those representing a particular Christian and you want to fill them, you want to teach
them well and apply scripture well to them, what you don't do is kind of get a fire hose
and spray in a few drops of ego in that one and that one.
What you do is you take a jug and you carefully pour it into each.
I think the point of that is in the end, really effective word ministry is going to be one
to one, small group.
And there are massive limits to the actual pastoral effectiveness of sermons slightly
derided as fire hose attempting to fill a tray full of glasses.
I think that's basically wrong headed.
Let's go to it this way.
In front of a preacher, even if it's a small church, will be a variety of different spiritual
states.
In relation to the message that you've just preached, there will be some who are basically
going on well.
The Lord will say to them, well, you're not yet perfect, but on the whole, in relation
to this message, I want to say, well done, good and faithful servant.
Within that, there'll be some where he wants to say, I think you know you're going well.
There'll be others to whom he wants to say you are going on well this, but you don't
know you are.
You feel constantly crushed in this area, but the Lord would say, okay, you still got
a way to go, but you are absolutely heading in the right direction.
You just don't know it.
Then you'll have some others who are not going well in relation to this message.
Now the first two categories don't especially need to hear repent, not in relation to this
message.
But there are folks who really do need to hear repent.
Some of them will arrive at church knowing they need that.
They carry so much guilt.
And in a sense, rightly, they just, what do I do with this?
How do I repent?
How would I?
There are others who trip happily to church feeling that all is well with the Lord and
the world and them.
And they need to be told your thinking is completely out of line.
Now if an undifferentiated message of repent that doesn't speak into those different
spiritual that is thrown out there, the first two categories going on quite well as regards
this message, what they hear is the Lord is really unhappy with you in relation to this
message.
That's all they hear.
That is not what the Lord would have them hear in that moment.
So what I'm going to call undifferentiated application, pastorally undifferentiated,
doesn't distinguish different kinds of application from this one message into different spiritual
states is never pastorally neutral.
It will always pastor a number of the people in front of you very badly.
It's a problem.
Strong words.
Is that too strong, Andrew?
Well, no, I don't think it is because you often hear people who have over years of involvement
in a particular church, let's say under a particular ministry or team ministry, they
have formed a view of the culture of the church, part of which is the character of the preaching,
the kind of message that they hear.
Sometimes, I'm sure, sometimes there is a kind of deafness or unwillingness.
But I think what often people are doing is saying perhaps because the application is
undifferentiated is that they feel as if they're always being spoken to in a particular
way and they feel that actually almost every week and whatever their own personal spiritual
journey is, they're hearing something which seems to be from the Lord of a similar kind
of way.
And in the end, I think there's an instinct in which says, I'm not sure this is all from
the Lord.
I wonder if I want to try a different church.
I once had Sinclair Ferguson in a recorded interview, say from his Lessons He's Learned
from Pastoral Ministry.
The people in the church family will always see Jesus shaped kind of around you, the pastor.
And he said that ought to be incredibly frightening.
But what you can't do is deny that it's going to happen.
It will.
Yeah.
So if what people constantly hear is, here are all the ways you're failing, repent, they're
going to come to see God in a certain way, a God who is always on their case, who basically
wants to say to them, pull your socks up.
That's all I really have to say.
So this kind of thing you're talking about with your friends, I think what I want to
say is you, pastoring in the pulpit is unavoidable.
So you might as well attempt to do it well.
And identify and thinking about categories of people, the kinds of the tender conscience,
the seared conscience, the believer, the unbeliever, those kinds of categories.
Because someone could say, well, of course it's possible to preach the same message every
week.
But you could be guided by scripture, by the tone of the passage, by the stage of salvation
history, the genre.
There could be huge variety from week to week, but still no differentiation in the week.
So why would you still, well, perhaps you've already said, but say again, how would you
say to a preacher who is actually broadly preaching in a wide variety of ways and modes
from week to week as they move through scripture, why is it still worth them thinking about?
Yes, but there are different people in front of you each time.
Because in preaching you are pastoring.
You are not just a Bible teacher who goes around dispensing information about the content
of the passage and its textual aim as far as you can discern that.
You have been appointed by the chief shepherd to be an under shepherd to these particular
people at this particular point in time.
You are a pastor to them.
He has given you the task of diagnosing what their particular spiritual ills are, discerning
what particular pressures they come under culturally, temperamentally, to walk away
from the Lord, to discern the particular objections to this biblical truth that would come to
their minds given the kinds of people they are, to discern how obedience to this particular
command if it's a command in the text, to discern the particular shape that will take
given who they are, demographically, sociologically, ethnically, economically, educationally.
It is our task as pastors to help people with those things.
And the pulpit is not the only place.
But I think that must be where it comes out.
Now, I suspect just about every pastor is doing that one to one.
If a pastor says, I do that one to one, I just don't do it in the pulpit because I think
that's, it just doesn't work because I can't address everybody.
I think the key objection I hear on this, and I feel it, is, but I can't, I won't address
everybody in a sermon unless I take like four hours to apply and I'll probably still then
miss some people out.
I think what I want to say to that is, if in a particular sermon you say, you know,
I'm only, we're coming to the application, I'm only going to speak to one particular
kind of person here.
I'll be really explicit about that.
It's a person who spiritually is in this kind of state.
Let me describe it to you.
See if you feel this is you.
And if it is, I'm speaking right into it.
What am I saying to all those who are not like that?
Well, in that particular sermon, I am allowing them to overhear how the Lord would pass to
someone who is not like them.
Well, there's an application.
There's not no application for them.
For them, the application, and you might make this explicit, is, so for the person sitting
next to you in church who feels like this spiritually, here is how you could pass to
them.
I love that thought.
When Ephesians 4 talks about the role of the pastor teacher being to equip the saints for
the work of ministry, there is a danger in this undifferentiated preaching that what
you're teaching people is.
If you ever get to have a spiritual conversation with somebody, this is what you say to them.
And it doesn't matter what stage of life they're in.
All you have to do is think about a scripture which you heard and you just pass it on.
Whereas the rehearsing of the idea that people are in different states is, of course, exactly
what people need to know in order to have a good conversation with somebody.
Because the first thing they need to know is, how are you doing?
How are you really doing?
How's your heart this week?
I think I know what you will say to this.
Can I ask a question from the opposite direction about over-application?
I think I know what you'll say.
But let's say one of your students is convinced about the importance of the person of the
preacher through whom God speaks on the basis of God's Word.
They go out into ministry and you hear back from one of their elders and they say, a lot
of good things are going on with your student, Tim.
They will stand up with their Bibles open and really wonderfully, with their face aglow,
as it were, talk about the text.
But when they come to apply it, it's like they shut the Bible and they are so aware
of their amazing role that God has given them that they presume to apply and the Bible is
shut.
What would you say to a student who had made that perhaps understandable mistake?
Oh, I think, assuming I have a good relationship with them and have the right to speak openly,
I'd want to say some fairly strong words of warning that they are potentially planting
the seeds of some major, major problems for themselves and for those they serve.
We all know what those problems are.
The problems are of laying down my law, not the Lord's law.
I think helpful here is a distinction between what is commanded in scripture and what is
wisdom.
As in, what is this thing?
If I didn't do this, am I in flat out obedience to the Lord in his word or am I being potentially
foolish but that remains to be seen?
So I hope I think you will develop on this and I'll get better at describing this.
I think it can be helpful to distinguish between you must applications and you might.
If a preacher starts to confuse those, then?
That is often when the problems come.
That's when it becomes overbearing.
That's when it becomes an abuse of pastoral authority.
This will apply, anybody engaged in pastoral ministry is wrestling with this all the time,
aren't they?
If you've got someone and they are a believer and they struggle with alcoholism, I think
from the scriptures we can say, the Lord says you must not get drunk.
That's pretty straightforward.
But if there's a situation that they sometimes find themselves in, I don't know, going out
with colleagues after work, let's say, and they find that sometimes to be a particular
temptation to drink too much that they sometimes fall into.
Do I have the Lord's authority to say to them, and they describe that to me quite openly,
do I have the Lord's authority to say to them, thus sayeth the Lord, thou shalt not go out
with your colleagues after work?
Do I have that authority?
No, you are never allowed to do that.
No.
I think I can say, might it not be wise for you not to do that or to think about doing
it in a different way?
This could entirely come out in the pulpit.
If my text is don't get drunk on wine, don't get drunk on wine.
And while we're about it, don't get drunk on vodka or any other form of alcohol.
But now let's dig into this.
If this is a problem to you, what are wise ways of living?
So I think that moving between, I know I'm using these complex categories slightly loosely
here, but law and wisdom within pastoral ministry and thinking about that in the pulpit and
being very, very clear about that, I think can help with these things.
One final question for me.
Let's say a listener is engaged in regular preaching and feels and is aware of as an
encourage by the immense privilege that God gives to under shepherds, but doesn't sense
that God has been speaking through them.
And let's say for the sake of argument, there are some years, it's not just one or two
sermons, but for some years they are sensing that their preaching does not match this noble,
amazing thing that the New Testament describes.
What would you say to a pastor who's perhaps thinking that?
I mean, what a wonderful question.
I think I want to be careful on that because each individual situation that might come
under that is going to have its specifics to it that would want to pastor into the specifics.
Of course.
So I want to be careful about giving a kind of general one size fits all answer to that
question.
I think one thing we can, I mean, let's assume this person as it were, by any objective measure
listened to by reliable people would be judged to have the gift of preaching.
They are apt to preach.
They're a faithful pastor.
Their gifts may not apparently be as obvious as others.
They may not write books.
They may not get invited to speak at conferences.
Those are things that in pastoral ministry, I think the Lord doesn't care too much about.
He's very good at working through the average.
So let's say it's a faithful pastor that they have the gifts may not be in spades, but they
have the gifts.
It is as to labor, isn't it?
And the Lord produces the fruit.
The word is always going out in power.
The word, I mean, back to Stott and Lloyd Jones, in a sense, those two camps have kind
of debated this issue a little bit.
Stott with his notion, sorry, Lloyd Jones, at one point in preaching and preachers, he
actually says, looking back on my whole preaching career, I'm not sure I've ever once really
preached.
At which point you go, well, mate, if that's how you feel, what hope for the rest of us?
Then who has?
And I think that's him speaking from his lifelong longing to see the revival come about in this
country.
And if the Lord could use him, how wonderful.
And I think he was wanting to say, I haven't seen revival through my ministry.
And that was my lifelong heart's desire.
A wonderful desire, I think it's a poor way of expressing it, though, if I'm honest.
Of course you preached.
You preached every time.
You held out the Jesus of the Scriptures from the Scriptures, and you urged people to come
to him.
That's preaching.
And as you preached, God spoke.
God spoke.
And the Spirit was always accompanying that word, not always in the way you would have
wanted him to.
At times he was air defying, quietly, not spectacularly, a tiny little bit.
So someone would be faithful for another week and not fall away.
In other people in the same room, he was hardening.
And the Spirit is always doing one of those two things.
One question from me.
Let's say there is a preacher who is moved to try again, to gain some ground in the business
of application.
They want to make a little progress, keep going down this road.
What do you say to preachers to help them?
It's another week.
It's the same old thing.
How are they going to face the task with hope and a practical thought or two?
A practical thought or two?
Pray, pray, pray, pray, pray again.
I so easily forget that.
Here we go.
I've got a sermon to crank out.
I've got a study of the passage.
I've got to read a few decent commentaries.
I have tried over the years to grow, to be prayerful at each point in preparation.
Not just a kind of perfunctory prayer at the beginning, but I'm studying the passage and
I see something wonderful.
Try and pause to pray, wrestling with some naughty verse, hoping the commentaries will
all give me the answer and eight commentaries, 10 different views.
This is no help.
Pray.
I need an illustration.
Pray.
I can't speak into every spiritual state, Lord, which one, which one?
And I don't have hours to suicide this because I have other responsibilities.
I know that's not enormously practical, but yeah, pray.
In terms of if someone wanted to think more about application into different spiritual
states, the fairly straightforward book I've been most helped on by this is by a man called
Murray Capil, C-A-P-I-L-L, Murray Capil, called The Heart is the Target.
He's particularly drawing on Puritan, preaching that he studied quite extensively and they
were the absolute masters of this.
I mean, kind of to excess from our perspective, maybe, but he distills it very beautifully
at the end of his book into a little four grid thing, which is in related, I've actually
kind of alluded to this already in relation to this message, he says think of four spiritual
categories.
Going well, know it, don't know it.
Not going well, know it, don't know it.
And I've just found that hugely helpful in trying to learn to think through application
in these ways.
That's a good note to end on.
Thank you so much for joining us, Tim.
It's lovely to see your excitement and the thought that you put into this.
And thank you, everyone watching us.
We're very glad you've been here.