Real Sermons Are Not Lectures or Moral Stories
00:00:00.000 | We're joined today by Burke Parsons. Burke is Senior Pastor of St. Andrew's Chapel in
00:00:09.120 | Sanford, Florida, and he edits Table Talk, the monthly magazine of Ligonier Ministries.
00:00:13.960 | He's on Twitter too, in a way that is very compelling. Thank you for joining us today,
00:00:17.520 | Burke. In fact, that's where I want you to start. I want you to riff on a tweet that
00:00:21.760 | you posted back in May. It was on preaching, and you posted this, "Pastors who deliver
00:00:28.620 | merely intellectually stimulating lectures and not gospel-saturated intellectually stimulating
00:00:35.040 | worship-driven sermons will always produce auditors and spectators rather than participants
00:00:42.200 | and passionate worshippers." Explain for us, Burke, what's at the heart of that tweet?
00:00:50.000 | Thanks, Tony. Essentially, at the very heart of that is really my understanding of the
00:00:59.820 | role of the pastor. That the pastor is not merely a preacher. That the pastor does indeed
00:01:06.780 | preach, that we are called to preach, but we are not merely called to preach. Pastors
00:01:11.860 | are shepherds, and we shepherd God's people, and we serve the Lord's people. These are
00:01:17.380 | God's flock, as Peter writes, of course. And we are called to serve them in numerous
00:01:22.740 | ways, and preaching is one of the ways that we do that, and albeit a significant way in
00:01:27.300 | which we do that, of course. So, the pastor in preaching is serving a congregation, serving
00:01:33.620 | families, serving individuals, serving singles, serving young couples, and serving children.
00:01:39.340 | And so, one of the most significant things that I think we're facing in our day is sort
00:01:44.940 | of the notion of the pulpiteer. You know, we talk about the podcast pastor, which you've
00:01:50.740 | addressed, I know Pastor John has addressed that, and many well-known pastors and preachers
00:01:55.700 | who have preaching podcasts have addressed that and the problem of it. Well, I think
00:02:02.340 | so often that the notion of the pulpiteer and the preacher-only pastor, that is to say
00:02:09.860 | the one who is only preaching, there tends to develop, I think, within so many churches,
00:02:17.340 | a sort of lecture-style sermon wherein they come to instill or condition a people to think
00:02:28.180 | that what they're coming for, why they're coming to worship, why they're present there
00:02:33.620 | at church in corporate worship, is really to be taught, really that they're there for
00:02:39.780 | the sermon. That, you know, all the other things and all the other portions of the worship
00:02:44.900 | service are really not that important, that our time of prayer, our time of observing
00:02:51.220 | the Lord's Supper and baptism, those are really not that important. So, it's okay if you miss
00:02:57.220 | those. The benediction, the call to worship, whatever elements different churches have
00:03:02.740 | in their worship service, that those things really aren't as crucial or as essential to
00:03:08.940 | our corporate worship. You know, you have some Christians, of course, who say, "I come
00:03:13.460 | because I really just need the fellowship. I come to worship, I come to church because
00:03:17.080 | I need the fellowship." You have some come and say, "Well, I really just want to sing.
00:03:22.580 | I want to sing more and I just want to sing," and they typically equate singing with worship,
00:03:28.740 | not understanding worship being the entirety of the service, of course. And then you sometimes
00:03:33.300 | have people, and I think, I would say that by and large, the majority of Christians in
00:03:38.980 | Reformed churches, they tend to say, "I don't really need the singing. I don't really need
00:03:44.340 | anything else. I just need the preaching." That's what's really the most important thing.
00:03:50.100 | Now, we need to stop and say, "Well, preaching is a very important part, a significant part,
00:03:57.420 | but we need to make sure that we don't develop within our people this notion that everything
00:04:03.580 | is centred and fixed around and the spotlight is solely upon the sermon." And so, I think
00:04:10.580 | what happens is, is that pastors begin to feel the pressure to sort of have this perfectly
00:04:18.940 | polished message that ends up looking more like a lecture, more like a lesson that could
00:04:26.480 | be taught really in any Sunday school class, rather than a sermon as a part of the worship
00:04:31.980 | service, helping people not simply to come in and sort of fold their arms and say, "Okay,
00:04:37.540 | let's see what this preacher has for me this week. Let's see what new thing he's going
00:04:41.980 | to teach me this week. Let's see what new fresh thing I'm going to learn that I've not
00:04:47.100 | learned before." And they fold their arms and they sit there with their arms folded and
00:04:51.580 | they say, "Okay, let me just spectate, let me just watch, let me audit," rather than
00:04:57.540 | seeing themselves as participants, not only in that worship service, but participants
00:05:03.120 | in that local body, that local congregation, as vital living organisms, as a part of the
00:05:08.460 | larger body of Christ in that congregation, coming not only to sing and coming not only
00:05:14.520 | to affirm the faith and to pray and to be prayed for, but to come and to sit under the
00:05:19.620 | ministry of the word. You know, that language is all too quickly passing away from the church
00:05:25.300 | today, that we are coming to sit under the ministry of the word as a part of our worship.
00:05:32.060 | And so that means that pastor sermons, our sermons really need to be engaging, that our
00:05:37.300 | sermons need to help fix people's eyes on the author and finisher of our faith, Jesus
00:05:45.100 | Christ, that they need to help fix people's eyes on all that Christ has called us to obey.
00:05:53.100 | As we know from the great commission that Jesus has taught us not only to go and teach,
00:05:58.140 | but he's called us to go and make disciples, teaching them to obey or teaching them to
00:06:03.900 | guard and observe all that Christ commanded. And so the sermon as a part of the whole worship
00:06:09.700 | service of course, really needs to strive to fix people's eyes upon Christ, looking
00:06:15.980 | to him and him alone and his finished work for us as our sole grounds for our being declared
00:06:21.940 | righteous, our being justified by the father and helping people and resting in that and
00:06:28.620 | having assurance in that and finding the freedom that we have in Christ, being engaged now,
00:06:34.620 | not just as auditors, not just as listeners, not just as people looking for something new
00:06:39.380 | or something fresh or something they've never heard before, waiting to have their sort of
00:06:44.580 | theological ears tickled in just the right way with something that sounds so cool and
00:06:49.820 | so new, but rather coming to be engaged, to be disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, striving
00:06:56.940 | as we rest in him to follow him in all that he has commanded.
00:07:01.140 | Yeah, that's a good word. The sermon is not offering up new novelties. They are an encounter
00:07:08.740 | with the affections of our hearer's hearts. It's the word confronting hearts. That's so
00:07:14.260 | right, so good. I'm not a huge fan of theologian Karl Barth, but he was once asked if one of
00:07:19.540 | his sermons that he was preaching could be recorded and then released as an audio recording
00:07:24.140 | later. And he said, "Yes, as long as the whole service was recorded and released along with
00:07:29.340 | it too." That sounds foreign to us because we're rather used to abstracted sermon recordings
00:07:36.300 | pulled out. But his point is that really every sermon is part of a broader worship experience,
00:07:42.300 | and it should feel a little weird to us extracted from that.
00:07:45.820 | I think you're exactly right, Tony, and I think that he was onto something. I don't
00:07:52.060 | distribute my sermons. I never have these many years. They're not online. Our people
00:07:58.060 | at St. Andrew's Chapel can get copies of the sermons from the week before if they were
00:08:02.900 | absent, that sort of thing. But the only way I would go about ever letting my sermons be
00:08:09.100 | out there in public, because our sermons are for our people. I'm not against other people
00:08:13.140 | doing it. I get it. I really get it. I understand it. I get the reasoning behind it. I think
00:08:19.020 | there's something special that the Holy Spirit is doing through that local church pastor
00:08:24.140 | with his people that he's striving to shepherd faithfully. And so it would really only be
00:08:31.180 | something that I think would be allowed if it was the entirety of the worship service,
00:08:36.340 | and then maybe online through password for our people at our website, that sort of thing.
00:08:42.220 | Yeah, that's worth thinking about for local churches, for sure. So people say, yes, the
00:08:47.180 | sermon should affectionately influence people. So you had the lecture on one side, but a
00:08:52.260 | novelty for curious eyes of spectators and auditors, that's on the other hand. How do
00:08:58.900 | we protect the sermon from the form of preaching that's merely trying to get some emotional
00:09:05.180 | response from the audience? How do you push against the sort of preaching as emotional
00:09:10.700 | story time kind of a sermon?
00:09:13.140 | Well said, and a very good point. Well, I think it's very important that we establish
00:09:17.220 | at the very outset that sermons must be filled with teaching, filled with exposition, filled
00:09:23.660 | with explanation, looking at the original audience, looking at the context of what's
00:09:29.740 | being said by the Lord and His word. And we really need to spend a great deal of time
00:09:34.900 | not only looking at words, not only looking at phrases, looking at all the doctrine within
00:09:40.220 | that verse or that passage and expounding as much as we possibly can. So sermons need
00:09:46.980 | to be, of course, as we all agree, I'm sure, need to be filled with the explanation and
00:09:52.340 | exposition of scripture. But it's not just tacking on a little application at the end
00:09:59.140 | that causes people to think about something. It's not just sort of throwing on a little
00:10:04.020 | imperative here and there, but rather helping people see how the gospel relates to every
00:10:11.500 | aspect of our sermon and every aspect of what the word of God is teaching them. And at the
00:10:16.940 | same time, how it is they're able to understand the gospel through scripture and the imperatives
00:10:26.220 | that come in light of the gospel. And so to your point regarding sermons that are just
00:10:32.860 | filled with stories or filled with illustrations and really lacking the important content and
00:10:40.460 | exposition of the passage, well, the truth of the matter is they're not really feeding
00:10:44.600 | their people. They're not feeding their people with the word of God. And that's the only
00:10:48.060 | way God's people are really going to be nourished. And so I think they know that. I think they're
00:10:53.820 | usually typically interested more in sort of attracting more people and getting more
00:10:59.180 | people and not offending too many people because the word of God, when it's preached, it will
00:11:03.940 | not only comfort, it will not only encourage, it will also rebuke and challenge and it will
00:11:08.980 | make people uncomfortable. We know that. And so I think too often they're filling their
00:11:13.300 | time with stories and illustrations simply because it's a little bit easier and it doesn't
00:11:18.780 | really offend anybody. But we are called, as you know, in the preaching of the word
00:11:23.140 | of God to rebuke and to reprove and to exhort and also to comfort and to encourage as we
00:11:29.420 | point people to the gospel of Jesus Christ and our justification in him.
00:11:34.300 | - Very good, Burke. Thank you. Well, speaking of the end and aim of preaching, that's the
00:11:38.900 | topic of John Piper's new book titled Expository Exaltation, the capstone of his new 1000-page
00:11:44.220 | trilogy. And I feel compelled to plug it here. It seems like a good place to do it. The trilogy
00:11:48.940 | answers three critical questions. Question number one, can we trust the Bible? That was
00:11:53.580 | answered in book number one, which is titled A Peculiar Glory. And then question number
00:11:58.020 | two, how should I go about reading the Bible to get God's meaning from it? That was answered
00:12:02.620 | in book number two, Reading the Bible Supernaturally. And finally, question three, what should I
00:12:07.620 | expect from my church and my pastors when they proclaim this book to me? That's answered
00:12:12.660 | in book three, now out, entitled Expository Exaltation, Christian Preaching as Worship.
00:12:18.140 | Well, we are going to return with Burke Parsons on Friday. Burke serves as senior pastor of
00:12:22.500 | St. Andrew's Chapel in Sanford, Florida, a church founded in 1997 by R.C. Sproul. And
00:12:27.900 | R.C., of course, passed away into glory 38 weeks ago, back on December 14th. On Friday,
00:12:34.260 | I'm going to ask Burke to explain the legacy of R.C. on his ministry and what it's like
00:12:38.140 | for him now pastoring without his friend. That's next time. I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:12:42.900 | We'll see you then.
00:12:43.380 | [END]
00:12:44.380 | R.C. Sproul, Senior Pastor of St. Andrew's Chapel in Sanford, Florida, a church founded
00:12:45.380 | in 1997 by R.C. Sproul. On Friday, I'm going to ask Burke to explain the legacy of R.C.
00:12:46.380 | on his ministry and what it's like for him now pastoring without his friend. That's
00:12:47.380 | next time. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. We'll see you then.
00:12:48.380 | [END]
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