Transformative Preaching: Embracing God's Holiness and Assurance

I would say the three books that have most marked my life would be Thomas Watson’s Body of Divinity, which was the first book that Lloyd-Jones printed to begin Banner of Truth. Reading Watson is just so easy to read. Second, Forgotten Spurgeon by Iain Murray had a very defining effect on me that to hold to Calvinistic doctrine does not mean that you’re not evangelistic, but that to hold to high doctrine would mean that we have great freedom to passionately proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ. [00:01:39]

Listening to my father earlier today recounting – and I’ve heard the story before of his conversion and those weeks afterwards, and the wrestling and the realizing that God plays for keeps. Because I’m his son, I didn’t have that same experience. I didn’t grow up in a liberal church. I grew up in a church where the gospel was preached, and so I didn’t have that conversion per se, but there was in reading that book for me a very much, an awakening, almost a baptistic thing, like I can’t inherit this. I have to own this, because God’s not going to take me by looking at my birth certificate. He’s a little too holy for that. [00:05:56]

That book had a profound influence on my life, Chris. And for me as I read that book, and after I read that book, it’s what God used in my life. As I was considering where I would pursue my next degree, my thought was, wherever this man is teaching, if it were possible, I would like to study under this man. And so having read the holiness of God, that’s why I enrolled in Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, where Dr. Sproul was teaching at the time, just so I could have a first hand encounter with whoever it is that has written this book. [00:07:19]

I think one of the things we’re all thankful for is the way, not only the way God shaped R.C. to be able to write such a book, but that – and this is actually more important, I think – that God was working among Christian people to make them receptive to the recovery of that truth, because it’s so reminiscent of Luther saying to Erasmus, “Your God is too manlike, Erasmus.” And that really is just absolutely a fundamental problem, the… our ability to make God in our own image. [00:13:33]

I would say that Satan corrupts the Word of God at the most strategic and essential parts that are non-negotiable, that he attempts to corrupt – one, the nature of Scripture itself. And to miss that is more than just I have a misunderstanding here. The Bible claims to be the Word of God, and for one to miss that is to miss what is so glaring. Some 38 hundred times, there is “Thus says the Lord,” or its equivalent. [00:20:34]

The other thing I think is really crucial here is that Christ has called us to be part of His church, and so it’s in the context of the church that we can weigh whether we’re really understanding the Word or rather we’re misunderstanding it. You need to be a part of a church that isn’t a false church dedicated to rejecting and undermining the Word of God. That’s got to be the very first criteria by which you evaluate a congregation. Does this congregation stand on and for the Word of God written? [00:26:28]

I think for some Christians, there’s a tendency to say, “Just tell me where things can go wrong.” Well, that’s endless. And it’s also in a sense immature because what we want for our Christians is for them so to learn the good money of the gospel, that they will be able to at least sense the counterfeit when they see it. So that’s one thing. The second thing is, I’ve always been struck, the quirky side of me has been struck – he thinks that’s most of me – the quirky side of me has been struck by Paul saying about Satan, “We are not ignorant of his stratagems,” or however translated differently. [00:28:57]

I think it’s really helpful too – and Steve just touched on this at the end in Romans 6 – to remember that we are justified by grace alone through faith alone, but the faith by which we are justified is also the faith that unites us to Christ. And what Paul is saying, for example in Romans 6, and I think very wonderfully in Colossians 3, is that the faith that unites us to Christ, brings us really into a new order of reality altogether, in which the dominion of sin over our lives has once and for all been broken. [00:54:10]

I think my experience is probably closest to Bob’s. I think he touched on there’s two different kinds, at least two different kinds of doubt. Is it true? And do I trust? And I never went through the first one at all. I always believed the Bible was God’s Word, that Jesus was His Son, that He died for sinners, that He was raised from the dead, etc. I never actually thought about it in terms of doubt. I never was in a place where I thought I’m not sure if I’m saved. I was in a place where I thought I’m sure that I’m not, and that’s when I was in high school and sort of the reverse of you and your football team. [01:09:57]

I think there are way too many ministers who are good at that. And I just think our churches need clear, careful, consistent exposition of the Word. [applause] Now, all of you who are clapping ought to ask, do you actually encourage your minister to spend time in the study? [applause] In the long run, there is no good preaching except for ministers who are enabled to be in the study, studying the Word, and congregations have to help ministers do that, especially the ministers who are really good at visiting. [01:11:42]

I think it really matters to God how His Word is preached, and I think there is a certain simplicity about preaching, that too many preachers try to make this complicated and try to make it complex, and they overcook and over analyze what preaching really is. You read the text. You explain the text. And you apply the text. And I’m amazed at how little reading of the text there is in most preaching, how very little explaining with historical background, word studies, progressive revelation, cross references, etc., that there is to make the Scripture come alive in its meaning where lights are coming on, and then how… and then the exhortation from the text. [01:19:21]

I believe the most powerful preacher on the planet is the Calvinistic expositor, who is an evangelist in the pulpit. He is the only preacher who plays with a full deck. [applause] He is the only one who has all 52 cards at his disposal. He preaches a high view of God. He preaches the Bible. He magnifies grace. And he calls for commitment to Christ. And… and we are hyper-Calvinistic when we are not burdened for lost souls, when we do not preach the gospel, when we do not call people to commitment to Christ. [01:27:34]