Preaching with Joyful Perseverance
Originally recorded at Cities Church, St. Paul, MN — August 21, 2025
Full transcript
It's a joy to be here today. We can always grow in our preaching. This really is a journey of a lifetime. I love how Paul says to Timothy, let them see your progress. I want people to see my progress.
I think about this often when I go to the gym at the YMCA where I work out. I work out mainly with senior adults just to give you a clue about my level of strength training. But I have a friend in the gym, Tom. He's 81 years old and he benched 235 on his 80th birthday. Yeah, Tom weighs 140.
He's been he's been in this gym for about 52 years. And when I go in, I see Tom and his buddies. They got their little notebooks tracking progress at 81. They're still tracking progress. And every time I go to the Y and I see this, it's a it's a sermon to me to always start, keep growing in the skill of preaching and in the work of ministry in general.
And so as we come to these events, there's always something we can pick up. You hear a lot, but maybe it's one or two things that you pick up. But more often than not, what I've experienced in these sorts of settings is what we need in addition to instruction is really just encouragement. Right. What we really need is for someone to tell us, hey, you're doing the right thing. Just keep doing it. Just keep preaching Christ until you see Christ.
I know it's difficult out there. I know it's challenging. I was recently talking to Ligon Duncan and he was talking about the podcast he's doing, Matt Smethurst. And Ligon said, it has just struck me in the course of this podcast that we're doing for pastors, how discouraged pastors are and just how they appreciate the podcast that's not yelling at them or criticizing them constantly, but is trying to encourage them. And I hope today to do a little bit of both to instruct and maybe more than anything, just to encourage you.
What we need is not superficial encouragement. What we need is is deeply theological encouragement, right? We need spiritual edification to to continue pressing on. And so let's think in that direction, as I think today with you about this topic of preaching with a joyful perseverance. Preaching with joyful perseverance.
Paul says to Timothy, 1 Timothy 5, 17, let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching. It's labor. I love preaching. It is a privilege to do what I get to do. I've been a pastor since I was 27, 48 now, and I still remember being called into the ministry. I became a Christian in college.
I was on a baseball team. My second baseman led me to faith in Christ and began to study the Bible and heard a guy who would later become my mentor and preaching professor my junior year of college who went to be with the Lord this year, Jim Shaddix for three consecutive nights. He did what I later learned was called expository preaching. And I didn't know what you called it. But as I was sitting under it for three nights as a young college student, I said, I want to do that the rest of my life.
And I ended up graduating, sold my car, which was a beater, but would never make it to New Orleans. That's where he was teaching. Got on an airplane and flew down to New Orleans to to study with him. And it is a great privilege. With that said, it's very challenging and preaching can be quite exhausting as you add to it all the levels of responsibility that come with pastoring to preaching.
And so why is it? I think it's helpful sometimes for us to just step back and think about what we're doing and the craft of preaching, the work of preaching. Why is it difficult and how might we continue in this work? For starters, preparation and delivery can be very tiring. The study is often a thankless place to be.
You don't have people every time you write a sentence giving you a high five. Right. Oh, that's a nice little quote you just added there. Like you're you're spending hours often in isolation by yourself, digging through the books, thinking and praying and so on. And then as you've got all this adrenaline building up and you've got the moment of delivery and you deliver it and you've just had a week full of activity and responsibility and you think, man, the Sunday afternoon, maybe I'll go take a walk. You're going to take a nap, right?
Like you, you know that in that moment. First time I went to San Francisco, I saw the sea lions and the sea lions around the wharf and they just sort of flop around and make noise. That's what that's what I'm like on Sunday afternoon. It's just kind of like there's no real words. It's just kind of moaning, you know, for for a couple of.
That's because this work is exhausting. Now, it is exhausting for many reasons. And one of them is your results are often invisible. And that makes this line of work very strange. There are some professions where you can see immediate impact.
So I like to cut the grass. OK, I imagine up here you snowblow, right? I don't know what you do up here. Do you have grass? I've seen a little bit of grass. Yeah. But man, when I cut the grass, I drive my wife crazy because I'll walk out and look at it multiple times on a Saturday.
And you're thinking, I am somebody, right? You see what I did right there? That looks fantastic. But that's preaching is it's often invisible. You sometimes you see some visible results, but are they real?
Like, is that real fruit? Sometimes it is. Sometimes, you know, it ends up not being so. And then there are times where you think nobody's listening to you at all. And they come up to you. This happened to me many times speaking at youth camps through the years.
I think these kids are just asleep. And they're like, that changed my life like that. We never know. And so that's a weird place that can be tiring. Another reason it's exhausting is your message is controversial.
You deal every week with things that people have a hard time accepting and believing. Like we don't have the luxury of having a profession where what we're talking about is of marginal importance. What we're talking about, if we're preaching the Bible, will be well, people will find offensive, will be difficult, and we're handling it all the time every single week. In addition, our listeners are often very critical. Someone once said that preaching is like dying naked a little at a time and then knowing you've got to do it all over again next week.
People will always see your flaws. Luther, in his great little book, Table Talk, there's a sort of a collection of sayings he said around the dinner table. He has nine traits of a great preacher, and one of them is this. He should suffer himself to be mocked and jeered at by everyone. In addition, many people just straight up hate the idea of preachers and pastors.
I remember being in England several years ago and I was talking to the waitress. She was coming by, doing a great job, being very friendly, asked me where I was from. I told her, and she's refilling drinks, so what brings you to England? And I said, I got some meetings. And what do you do?
Said, I'm a pastor. And the look on her face, I will just never forget it. I might as well said, I kill kittens. That's what I do. I kill kittens because she was just so startled by this.
Like, I can't stomach being around a pastor. Well, this is not new, the disdain for preaching. And I don't think it's going to improve necessarily. In 1857, the novelist Anthony Trollope wrote, there is perhaps no greater hardship at present inflicted on mankind in civilized and free countries than the necessity of listening to sermons. No greater hardship at present inflicted on mankind.
So what are you preparing to do on Sunday? I'm going to inflict some hardship on some people. Put that on your business card. He went on in that article to say that the preaching clergyman was the boar of the age. One definition in the old chamber's dictionary of preaching is to give advice in a tedious and obtrusive manner.
And the sermon is defined as a lengthy moral or advisory speech. In 1954, W.E. Sangster said, preaching is in the shadows. The world does not believe in it. Perhaps it never believed in it much, but in England, at least, it believed in it once more than it believes now.
That was in 54. In 58, Donald Cogan, the late Archbishop of Canterbury, said that the devil had effectively silenced many preachers. He said they go to their pulpits as men who have lost their battle before they start. The ground of conviction has slipped from their feet. Oh, that's why we do these things right here, like these events, right?
To deepen our convictions. Many today think that preaching is like fighting a war with a sword when there are much better weapons today. Isn't there a better methodology? And so the general mood of the church in the world, in many places, not everywhere, but in many places, is against preaching. Some will view it as hate speech as society continues to move in a secular direction, and many will be constantly skeptical of the motivations of preachers as they read about scandal after scandal.
And in the tech age, we're going to continue to hear these arguments that there's no place for a 30 minute or 40 minute, or if you're a bee back there in the back, a 50 minute monologue on a good day. Besides, if they wanted to listen to a great preacher, they can just go online and listen to one of the best. We're up against a lot. And on top of all of that, what we're doing is spiritual warfare. You ever think about the parable of the four soils where Jesus said that the seed is thrown on the path and then the rocky soil on the thorns on the path.
He says the devil comes and takes the word. I think about that often when I'm thinking about preaching, that there is an activity of the evil one present in the room as the word is going out, who wants to take the word out of people's hearts. It's spiritual warfare. It's the text that Lewis brought to us in 2 Corinthians 4, that the God of this age has blinded the minds of those who are hearing the gospel. And so why is it exhausting?
You're doing that. All of those things up against culture, up against your own self, up against the evil one. And so how do we continue? How do we respond? How do we keep preaching with joyful perseverance when up against these challenges? I think the secret for me is we must think theologically about this task.
I think to continue preaching, you have to have deep theological convictions that undergird preaching. These preaching, these convictions are timeless. And these convictions are energizing. This is where the joy comes. In our theology, this is where the energy comes from.
John Stott in his classic book, Between Two Worlds, said the essential secret to effective preaching is not mastering certain techniques. It's being mastered by certain convictions. Technique is important. Rhetoric is important. We need to be as good as we can and all of those things.
But what is the real secret is being mastered by something, being dominated by certain convictions, convictions that brought you to preach in the first place, convictions that keep you faithful for the long haul. What are some of those convictions? I'm glad you asked. Here's five of them. One, your belief in the word of God is absolutely fundamental.
We'll come back to St. Timothy three and four here in just a moment. But what you believe about the Bible will inevitably shape how you use the Bible. Right? You look at mainline traditions, you look at liberal traditions, you look at their theology of the Bible, and it's no surprise that you see what you see in pulpits.
Preaching, Stott says, is indispensable to Christianity. Without preaching, a necessary part of its authenticity has been lost. For Christianity is, in its very essence, a religion of the word of God. Now, that's never changing, no matter what culture does. And that's how we continue preaching is to keep believing that, right?
The nature of the Bible is unchanging. Christopher Ashe has a great little book called The Priority of Preaching, and he builds his whole case on preaching around the book of Deuteronomy. And he basically says, you know, Deuteronomy is not the most exciting book. There's not a lot of action. Moses dies.
Wouldn't be a great movie. But what's he doing? He's taking the law of God, as we just heard, and he's announcing it. He's preaching it. And he says, well, here we have a situation where we have the word of God written, and yet Moses is called to preach it.
Preaching is tied to this, right? Paul could write the inspired letter to the Romans and write in chapter one, yet I'm eager to preach the gospel to you who are in Rome. If you thought, man, you've just written the greatest letter of all time. You don't need to go to Rome. I'm eager to preach the gospel to you who are in Rome.
That's important. Your belief in the resurrection impacts your view of preaching. Paul says, if there is no resurrection, then our preaching is in vain. Because the tomb is empty, we do have something to preach every single week. That's not changing.
That tomb's not going to be reoccupied by him. He died never to die again. And if the tomb is empty, the pulpit is to remain occupied. Week by week, by week, by week. Your belief thirdly in the supremacy and sufficiency of Christ necessitates preaching.
In Colossians 1, 15 and following, Paul gives that beautiful Christological hymn where he talks about Christ and how he makes the invisible God visible. He speaks about Christ in creation, Christ sustaining all things, and Christ's cross, Christ's church, and so on. And then he gets down to chapter one, verse 28, and he says, him we proclaim. Or as the Phillips paraphrases that verse, so naturally we proclaim him. If all of this is true about Jesus, then we must preach.
And it is all true. Your belief about the Holy Spirit is a fourth theological conviction. Acts chapter two, on the day of Pentecost, a lot happened, right? But after all the signs that happened in Pentecost, the very first thing that happens once this new age dawns is Peter preached the sermon. 3,000 were converted.
The coming of the Spirit did not mean we do a wayward proclamation. The coming of the Spirit actually empowered the proclamation. And the Spirit is still at work in our preaching. And then a final conviction I'll mention is our belief in the office of pastor, elder. It is true that all Christians should be teaching, but it's also true that God has appointed some to the office of pastor and elder in the context of a local church, and they should devote much time and energy to prayer and preaching the word.
Now, all of those are very important and we could add more to that list, but my point is, as you think about the challenges of preaching and the temptation to abandon preaching or neglect it, or beat yourself up when you think you do a bad job about it and mope around and just give up altogether, I would say, use your theology, right? Just don't sign to it, yes, I agree to it, but let it work itself deeply in your soul where you say, Jesus Christ is alive, I'm going to go preach. This is his word, I'm going to go preach. The Spirit is at work when I'm preaching, I'm going to go preach. I've been called to the office of pastor and central to that task is preaching and teaching. Now, oh, that's just a little introduction.
2 Timothy chapter 3, I want to think through this particular text with you and drill down, hopefully by way of encouraging you in one particular text to keep at it with joy. All right. 2 Timothy 3, 14 down to 4, verse 4, a passage you're all very familiar with, I'm sure. There are two things here, two categories or two sections we can look at this text, verses 14 down to verse 17, and then 4, 1 to 4. And what you see in this passage is the logical connection between if this is true about the Bible, then naturally we should want to preach it, right? A story I use a lot around my neck of the woods, UNC Chapel Hill, it's from Bart Ehrman, one of the leading agnostics in the country. He does this little experiment with freshmen every year at UNC Chapel Hill where he'll ask them three questions.
First question I'll ask him is how many of you believe that the Bible is God's word? And at UNC Chapel Hill, a number of students will raise their hands, a very large class. Then I'll ask them a second question and he'll say, how many of you have read? And he'll just pick a popular book at the time. How many of you've read? I don't know what that would even be right now. Hunger Games is not new anymore.
That's what popped in my head. But they all they all raise their hand, you know. And then he asked the third question. How many of you read the whole Bible? And like no hand goes up in the air.
And I've had students who've been in this class to tell me about this whole experience. And Ehrman, who wants to poke holes in everything, will say what we would say probably. Listen, I could understand why you would want to read Suzanne Collins' book, The Hunger Games. She's a great writer. But if you really believe God wrote a book, wouldn't you want to read it? And I think Paul takes it in the next step for preachers. If God wrote a book, wouldn't you want to preach it?
And it's so bizarre to me that people who would sign a doctrinal statement stating they believe that the Bible's God's inspired word failed to preach it, failed to have any substance in their messages. Like, what do we think we have better stuff? If God wrote a book, wouldn't we want to preach it? So he tells Timothy to continue in this book, verses 14 to 17. Notice how he sets it up when he says, but as for you, that's a that's a key little phrase in the pastoral, especially in Second Timothy.
He's essentially telling Timothy to be different. He's contrasting what he's about to say to Timothy with the false teachers that he's just been talking about. You see that pivot again in verse five, as for you, he'll set some things up and then he'll say, essentially, you do the opposite, you be different. But as for you, goes on to say, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and from childhood how you've been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ. The first thing, the first exhortation there is to continue.
Continue. Now, that sounds very ordinary, sounds almost boring to continue. But at the heart of the Christian faith is just that, continue. At the heart of our ministry of the word is continue. A wonderful Christian life is a Christian life that continues, that continues to be faithful.
A wonderful Christian ministry is one that just keeps going in the face of opposition, in the face of trial, in the face of difficulty. Keep going. Continue. Notice what he's continued to do. Continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed.
So I love that first bit, keep learning, continue learning. This is one of the ways in which our preaching is always alive. It's fresh, as people can drink from a living fountain and not a stagnant pond, is that we're always learning. We're always embracing. We're always thinking.
We're never experts, as H.P. Charles says. We're always learners. I'm never an expert. We should take that posture.
I'm always a learner. Let them see your progress. I think it's important for people to see you progress in your learning as a leader and as a preacher. I was talking one time to Old Testament prop Jim Hamilton at Southern Seminary, and he was telling me about a panel discussion. He was on with Peter Gentry and Dwayne Garrett, some premier Old Testament scholars, and they were discussing typology in the Old Testament, specifically the person of Joseph in Genesis.
And in response to a question, Gentry, whom Hamilton considers as one of the premier Bible scholars of the day, said to him, it may be that I need to do further study in the Old Testament, and I'm quite certain of that. He was the key translator of the Septuagint in Ecclesiastes and Proverbs. And he's saying, I think I need to learn the Old Testament a little bit more. I think I need more study. Keep learning.
I love how Paul even says in this chapter, right? Bring the books. Like, Paul, why do you need books? Because we continue learning. Now, what I tell our people a lot, I just said this last Sunday, actually, is you learn what you want to learn.
It's amazing what guys can learn. They can be experts in fantasy football, right? They can learn how to fix stuff on YouTube. They're amazing when it comes to learning. But what is it that you are learning?
Paul says to Timothy, keep learning, notice, and keep believing. That's also important. Continue believing. In a day of apostasy, in a day of deconstruction, don't ever stop, brothers. Believing the truth of the Bible, the truth of the gospel.
Don't adjust the Bible, but trust the Bible. Keep reminding yourself of why you need the Bible. Now, why should we continue in the word? Well, he answers that in verses 15 and 16. Three reasons.
Continue learning and believing because, first of all, the Bible leads us to Jesus. The scriptures are able to make us wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. For Paul, of course, this referred to the Old Testament. That the Old Testament is a book that is pointing us to Jesus. This is like Paul saying in 1 Corinthians 15, Christ died for our sins.
According to the scriptures, he was buried and he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures. That the Bible is a book that leads us to Christ. When Philip found Nathaniel in John 1, he says, I think we found him whom Moses and all the prophets spoke about. And you think, well, maybe he just got a little too excited. And then we read in chapter 5 of John, where Jesus tells the religious leaders, you search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life.
Yet it is they that bear witness about me. If you actually believe Moses, you would believe me because Moses wrote about me. I'm like, I think Philip got it right. The Bible is a beautiful book of redemption of which Jesus is the hero. And there is a messianic wind that just blows through the pages of the God breathed Bible.
Everywhere we go, we hear whispers. We see signs. We see pointers, predictions, echoes, all woven in the pages of this book. Why do we keep learning it and believing it and preaching it? Because we see Christ in it.
As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 1, for all the promises of God find their yes in him. I love that. All the promises of God, what God pledged, Christ fulfilled. And I love that idea that Jesus has God's big yes to the world. A lot of people hear of Christianity and they just hear it as a no religion, all the things you can't do.
And there are a lot of nos, but there's a big yes. Jesus is God's big yes that all of the anticipations and predictions of the Messiah have been decisively and irreversibly declared to be yes in Jesus Christ. All of the types and shadows and echoes and illusions and predictions and promises. That's why we love the Bible, right? Jesus is God's big yes to the ancient promise in Genesis 315 that he would crush the head of the serpent.
He's the better ark who provides salvation to everyone who runs to him for refuge. He's God's big yes to the promise of Abraham that through him, all the nations of the earth will be blessed. He's the greater Melchizedek, that mysterious figure who comes to Abraham with bread and wine. He is the beloved son who was not spared like Isaac, but was delivered up for our salvation. He is the yes to the promise that the scepter would never depart from Judah.
He's a disruptive baby like Moses, and he is a greater mediator than Moses and shepherd than Moses, who's given us a greater deliverance than the one in the Exodus. Paul says, Christ, our Passover lamb has been slain. The lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He's the true manna from heaven that satisfies hungry hearts. The water from the rock that satisfies the fulfillment of the law, the true Sabbath rest, the ultimate temple and tabernacle who gives us access to God's presence.
The better Joshua who's leading us to a better promised land, a greater Boaz who feeds the hungry at his table and brings us into the family. He's God's big yes that one from David's line would reign forever. The royal king of Psalm 72, whose reign would be endless and boundless and gracious. Micah's shepherd who's coming forth from Bethlehem is from old, from ancient of days, and he shall be our peace. He's all over Isaiah's book, isn't he?
The chosen servant, the suffering servant, and Daniel, he is the stone fashioned out of nowhere who will conquer empires. He's the bright and morning star who will come again and dispel all human darkness and wipe tears off of our faces and give us a new body fitted for a new creation. And that's just the beginning. To read the Old Testament without Jesus's ministry and view would be like reading a mystery novel without the final chapter. We would call the publisher and say, where's the chapter at?
In other words, we love the Bible because the Bible is about our Messiah. We know about God generally in creation, but you can't go from sunsets to substitution apart from the Bible. You can't go from a pine cone to propitiation apart from a Bible. See, we rejoice in the Bible because we love the hero of the Bible. And as we open it up, we see him.
We see his glory. We see his beauty as Lewis reminded us of glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. And that's who we point people to. So personally, let's study to see him. Let's delight in him.
J.C. Ryle said, I charge everyone to ask himself frequently what the Bible is to him. Is it a Bible in which you have found nothing more than good moral precepts and sound advice, or is it a Bible in which you have found Christ? Is it a Bible in which Christ is all? If not, I tell you plainly, you have not used your Bible with the right purpose.
You are like a man, listen, who studies the solar system and leaves out in his studies, the sun, which is the center of it all. And he adds, it is no wonder you find your Bible to be a dull book, studying the solar system without looking at the sun. I like that quote. That's why I quoted. It's been not just personally, we study to see him, but evangelistically, we open the Bible like Philip in the Ethiopian eunuch and we point people to him.
And pastorally, we're walking people down the aisle, we're walking the bride down the aisle to see the groom week by week by week. Why do we continue learning and believing? Because the scriptures lead us to Jesus. Secondly, he says God speaks to us from it, that the Bible is God breathes, breathed out by God. This is affirming, of course, that our view of the total inspiration of scripture, that the Bible is, uh, as we could say, expired, it's breathed out by God.
I used to tell my kids, Hey, if you want to hear God speak, you need to open this book. Like I said, you can think of it like God's mouth, right? When you open the word of God, you open the mouth of God. It's not just that God was speaking, that God actually is speaking in the moment as we, as we encounter him. And that's why we, we are giving ourselves to an expositional model of preaching is because again, we believe that God wrote a book.
We would want to preach it. This is affirmed in various places. As you guys well know, second Peter one, 20 to 21, as Peter talks about that process of inspiration. And I love what precedes that in second Peter one 19, when he says, and we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. Keep looking at this book.
It's like a lamp in a dark world until you see Jesus. We're like pilgrims journeying through this world, journeying through the night with the scripture, lighting up our paths until the day dawns and the morning star rises in our hearts. A reference to the, to the coming of Jesus, Peter David's in his commentary says on that verse, then the light of Christ will be in our hearts and we will no longer need the scriptures. One treasures a love letter while the beloved is absent, but once he or she is present, the letter is laid aside in exchange for personal contact. Isn't that amazing?
So God speaks to us from this book and then God matures us through it. Verses 16 and 17, that's where he says, you know, of course it's profitable for teaching, reproved for correction, training in righteousness, teaches us many things, who we are, where we came from, what it means to be part of a church, how to organize a church, what, how to view marriage rightly and all of those things. And it also corrects us. It convicts, it consoles, it cuts, it comforts, it sets us on the right course. It disciplines, it trains us in righteousness.
We, we don't excel in holiness apart from the world, from the word and all of this, the imagery used there is that we may be complete, that we're incomplete. And here we're on about the sufficiency of scripture, right? That it's doing this work of completing us. Kevin DeYoung help, uh, offers a very helpful acronym about the nature of the scriptures with SCAN, S-C-A-N in his little book on the scriptures, sufficiency, clarity, authority, necessity, scan, sufficiency, that the scriptures contain everything we need for salvation and godliness, clarity, that we believe that the Bible is understandable, that it makes wise the simple, right? Authority, that the last word always goes to God's word.
Like the Bereans, we search to see if it's true. And if it's true, we believe it. The necessity of scripture, I've already mentioned that general revelation is not enough to save us. We need the gospel contained in God's word. And often in the church, the real challenge is, well, all of those can be challenges, but as in my own experience, it's the sufficiency of scripture that, that I'm often up against.
And this text is very, really important as we think about that. It doesn't mean that the scripture tells us everything we've ever wanted to know, but it does tell us the main things, the most important things. And so why do we continue learning and believing the scriptures? It leads us to Jesus. God is speaking to us from it, and God is maturing us by it.
In light of that, his exhortation, as you well know, in verses one to four is preach the word, you know, I say this a lot at Sin Network, we're not the only religions, religion that has preachers and missionaries, other religions have them, what makes our task unique is what we preach. It's, it's why we go to the nations. It's our content. It's the gospel. And as Paul says here, I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead and by his appearing in his kingdom, preach the word, just notice there, just the audience that we preach in the sight of God, we are, we are never unnoticed by God.
You may feel unnoticed by people. If you don't have a big church or a big following, but God is present when you preach that ought to be enough. Jeremiah, let the prophet who has a dream, tell his dream, but let him who has my word, speak my word faithfully. What has straw in common with wheat declares the Lord is not my word. Like fire declares the Lord.
And like a hammer that breaks the rock into pieces. This is what we preach or Paul in second Corinthians four. We have this ministry by the mercy of God. We do not lose heart, but we have renounced disgraceful underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God's word, but by open statement of the truth, we would commend ourselves to everyone's conscience in the sight of God.
The gospel is an open declaration. And the goal in preaching is to be clear, to openly declare that the goal is not for someone to think you're smart. It is for an intelligent 11 year old to track with you, to be clear. As Calvin once said, I have not corrupted one single passage of scripture nor twisted it. As far as I know, I have always studied to be simple.
My aim as we talk about methodology, we're not doing that here today necessarily, but as I've talked through a process of preparing weekly expositions, I usually use the words clear, compelling, and Christ-centered. And this clarity piece is so important because not everybody will be equally compelling, but one thing I think every preacher can really work hard at is to be clear. And if you're clear, it will bless people, right? If you can dive deeply into the word, giving yourself to great study of it, and then unifying a theme found in that text and developing a structure that supports that big theme, and then working it out as you explain the text and apply it and illustrate it, you'll have impact. So preach that word with clarity.
Notice what else he says, we preach constantly, in season, out of season. I think this means practically that there are going to be days where you don't always feel like bringing it, right? You may have some kind of family drama in the house, or you didn't get great sleep, or you could be under the weather, or there are many reasons why you might feel like you're out of season. COVID was a really out of season time in 2020. We were preaching out on a baseball field, like what in the world is happening right now?
We called it the sermon on the mound as we were out there. It was an out of season time, but you keep preaching. People got converted during those out of season moments. So it's not always about our feelings, right? It's really not about us at all.
As Luther said, regarding the Reformation, I simply taught, preached, and wrote God's word, otherwise I did nothing. The word did it all. That's important to remember because there are going to be times where you're up there and you feel like a Southwest Airline commercial when they're like, need to get away. And you're in the moment. You're like, ain't nobody, ain't nobody tracking on me. Right. And it can feel like a very hopeless exercise.
And I'm always encouraged by Paul in Acts 19 when he's in the Hall of Terenas. For two years, most scholars think he probably used the siesta time, rented a dumb hall. People gathered up and he taught. And you're like, well, what good can that do? Isn't there a better plan than that? And people start burning their magic books.
A riot has started in the city. Paul has to get out before they kill him. What's his methodology? He's over there teaching for a couple of hours during the siesta. Oh, that's harmless.
And I wonder what Paul felt like in some of those moments. Did he, did he see this sort of fruit? You never know what's happening. You just turn the word loose. In season and out of season.
Preach it constantly. And we preach it confrontationally. As he says, reprove and rebuke and exhort. Rebellious sheep need rebuke. Wayward sheep need corrected.
Anxious sheep and burdened sheep need to be encouraged. You know, and what I've experienced as both a pastor and a guy who preaches in various places is that pastoral preaching is so much different than the conference circuit. Because your, your listeners are not an audience. It's a people that you're shepherding, that you're accountable to. And I think in some ways that takes a little bit of pressure off.
Like you're, you don't have to hit a home run every week. Uh, what you are trying to do is to feed God's people, to lead God's people, to protect God's people, to guide God's people. And sometimes you've got to, you've got to say some hard things as you're in the text that's saying some hard things, some uncomfortable things. It's one of the reasons I like exposition is it forces me to talk about stuff I would otherwise not probably choose. Right?
Um, and so we preach it confrontationally and then toward here, the end of this exhortation in verse two, we preach it patiently. I think this is maybe the most challenging part. I'm not the most patient guy. Um, and I'm glad this verse is in the Bible. Preach with complete patience.
Back when I was in high school, we played a, I grew up in Kentucky. We played a high school basketball team, Muhlenberg North. And they had one play, this was before, there was no shot clock. They called it patience. They moved around and passed forever before they took a shot.
I hate it. I coached, they'd come down to court, I coached it patience. And that's kind of how I view the word and the whole concept of patience. And the whole concept is like, this is just going to be awful, right? But we must remember that this is actually consistent with how God grows people.
Sanctification is a slow process. The end gathering of people into the kingdom is a gradual, slow process. All the parables point in that direction. Even the analogy of fishing is helpful here. It helps set expectations.
I'm not a fisherman, but I have fished. And ordinarily when I've been out there, I'm thinking I should have brought a book. Like it says boring, like it takes forever. But you keep casting, you keep casting, you change lures, you keep it. This is, this is what we do over the world of farming.
We keep sowing. We keep trusting. We keep asking God for rain or in the world of fitness. You ask anybody about exercise at the keys of fitness. And one of the things you're going to say is once you get on a good plan, be patient, be consistent.
And that's important when preaching. We have a divinely ordained methodology to preach the word. And so keep doing it and be patient. My mentor Shaddix used to use this analogy that I've never forgotten. He said, you know, when your kids come down for breakfast in the morning, they don't look really much different than they did yesterday.
In fact, some of them had the same clothes on, right? And you feed them and he says, I go up to my, to the shower to clean up and I pass their pictures on the stairwell. And I think, man, they've grown. How did they grow? It wasn't instantaneously, right?
It wasn't overnight. It's because they were at breakfast every single day. And over time, there is a cumulative effect of feeding your children that leads to their growth. And so it is. I think with preaching, there is a cumulative effect of long-term faithfulness.
You have to be patient to see that kind of maturation. It is true. Sometimes the Lord, by his spirit, brings astonishing results in a moment. Praise God for that. And often it's the slow grind.
I think about Nehemiah 8. Ezra had preached somewhere around 14 years without seeing any extraordinary results. And then something happened in Nehemiah 8. He saw more responsiveness in one day than he saw in 14 years. You can imagine what this must have done in his soul.
But what's he doing any different? Is he doing anything differently? Doesn't seem to be. His whole ministry had been marked by faithful study and teaching of the word. David Morgan was once involved in the Welsh revivals and he experienced this.
He was known as a rather ordinary preacher, saw a little fruit, and then the Lord did something remarkable in a season of his ministry. People were converted. He saw fruit like he'd never seen before. And this is what he said. I went to bed one night like a lamb.
I woke up the next day and I knew I was a lion. And then after this season of revival, he said, I went to bed as a lion. And I woke up and I was a lamb again. You never know what God may do in a season. Like our responsibility is to be faithful in this moment, wherever we are.
And so we need to try to cultivate patience, right? And I think it's important to have the proper expectations with people. Not even Paul had 100% success rate. Judas heard Jesus preach. It wasn't like, man, if he could have had a better preacher.
Right? We need to meditate on God's patience with us regularly. We need to repent regularly of our lack of patience. We need to work the gospel deep down in our souls to realize what we deserve, but what God has given us instead to keep us from being harsh with people and having unrealistic expectations. We don't deserve to be preaching.
We deserve to be in hell. And I really, if you start every day with that in mind, it's a good day. You know, Ice Cube used to say it's a good day when you have to use your AK, right? It's a good day when you're not in hell, right? And so if you start with that sort of that place, then man, it really helps my disposition towards weird people.
It really helps my disposition towards people who are like, I just taught that. We taught 12 weeks in Genesis on reconciliation, and you guys are at odds with each other. They do not listen to anything I said. Boy, we need the gospel in our own souls. I used to tell my kids, do you realize people pay me to talk?
And you won't listen to a word I say. That's not a good thing to say, by the way. So how do you handle it? How do you preach with patience? I just have to go back to the well every, you know, my own.
I have to remember who I am and what God has done for me. This is not what I deserve. It requires a lot of prayer that the Lord would give us joyful perseverance. I think it involves reading good biographies. I've been blessed through the years by Piper's little biographies.
I still remember the first time he did Charles Simeon. And how they locked the church pews for seven years. And he stayed there for 54 years preaching in that church. Something that is really helpful isn't to get out of our world, in our time, and to realize you're not the first pastor to suffer, pal. So we preach it with patience.
Final piece here. I'm done theologically. He says that we preach it with complete teaching. I love how these two are put together, right? That preaching is heraldic.
It's an announcement of good news. It's statements of facts. The tomb is empty. The throne is occupied. Jesus is Lord.
Jesus is Lord. We're announcing good news, right? Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. But we have to come behind that sometimes and teach it. To tease out what it means to repent.
Tease out what it means to believe Jesus is Lord. Tease out why we believe in the resurrection and so on. So when we're preaching, we're also going to be doing some teaching. And we're specifically doing this as we think about theology, as we're catechizing our people, as we're trying to keep them away, as the text says in verses three and four, from turning away from listening to the truth. And that's one of the things you see is very striking about verses three and four, when he says the time's coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears will accumulate for themselves, teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.
You might imagine if that's the case, Paul would tell Timothy to try something else. It's very counterintuitive. It's like he's saying, people don't want this, so keep doing it. Right. They're going to turn away from sound doctrine, so keep giving them sound doctrine.
And it's also a reminder to us that mankind will believe something. Right. Freud used to say that mankind is incurably religious, that they will believe something. And that's why the prosperity gospel is taking root in so many places around the world. It's because there's no presence of sound doctrine in those places, which is why we have to saturate the nations with sound doctrine, because people will believe something.
We need millions of faithful preachers around the world. We don't need 20 more sensational conference speakers. God bless those guys. What we really need, though, are millions of faithful expositors and to saturate the globe with them so that sound doctrine is taught and people believe it and embrace it, and they don't build their life on a false hope and on a false gospel. So preaching with joyful perseverance.
I just point you back again to our theology. That theology keeps us faithful. It energizes our work. And to do this with a Christ-centered focus, to preach Him, brothers, until you see Him. Then I won't have to open his iPad and preach any more sermons or open those notes, right?
That I will see him face to face. And when we see him on that day, we will be glad we preached with joyful perseverance. May God grant us a marathon ministry that is faithful in one season to the next season. What a gift it is to be able to do what we do. May the Lord grant us a special unction in this season.
As we're learning together today, may we also pray together today that the Lord would do something in our own hearts, in our own ministries that would really just blow us away. Not for our credit or our glory, so grateful for Lewis's vision, but for his glory and for people's good that he would do beyond anything we could ever ask or imagine as we open our mouths to declare the unsearchable riches of Christ. Father, we thank you for your word. Today, we do pray that you would give us a marathon ministry. We know that this task is challenging and exhausting, but we thank you.
You've given us everything we need to be faithful. Help us to believe, to keep believing what we believe in this present hour. Lord, keep these brothers, keep myself away from false beliefs. So many of my friends have embrace. Keep us from moral failures that derail our ministries.
As one of my friends says, I'm one hotel away from ruining my life. Lord, help us, keep us, protect us. Grant us much favor and grace as we deliver your word, as we study your word. I pray for our young preachers here, guys who are just starting. One of my brothers said he preached his second sermon recently.
Lord, fill him with fresh encouragement today. Give him vision and give him a ministry that is incredibly fruitful and faithful to you. Thank you for older, seasoned ministers who are with us. I pray that you would give them a great final chapter, however long you allow them to have this season, as the psalmist says, that they would bear fruit in old age. Or what a great, what a great thought that is, that our latter years could be even more profitable and fruitful for your kingdom.
Keep us ever learning. May they always see our progress. May our people drink from a living fountain and not a stagnant pond. Just going back to tired cliches, may we always be eager to learn, study and preach. Give us fresh energy today.
Bless this, the Sundays that are coming up. All my brothers here in the room as they prepare, it's all, it's easy sometimes in these workshops, Lord, to feel overwhelmed by all of the things that people say. I pray that you would grant them hope. You grant them a sense of freedom and joy in the task and not a sense of burden for the task, but give them a reason to enjoy this work, Lord, as they put their hand to it, as they put their heart to it. And we give you all this together in Jesus' good name.
Everybody said, Amen.
