We're joined today by Burke Parsons. Burke is Senior Pastor of St. Andrew's Chapel in Sanford, Florida, and he edits Table Talk, the monthly magazine of Ligonier Ministries. He's on Twitter too, in a way that is very compelling. Thank you for joining us today, Burke. In fact, that's where I want you to start.

I want you to riff on a tweet that you posted back in May. It was on preaching, and you posted this, "Pastors who deliver merely intellectually stimulating lectures and not gospel-saturated intellectually stimulating worship-driven sermons will always produce auditors and spectators rather than participants and passionate worshippers." Explain for us, Burke, what's at the heart of that tweet?

Thanks, Tony. Essentially, at the very heart of that is really my understanding of the role of the pastor. That the pastor is not merely a preacher. That the pastor does indeed preach, that we are called to preach, but we are not merely called to preach. Pastors are shepherds, and we shepherd God's people, and we serve the Lord's people.

These are God's flock, as Peter writes, of course. And we are called to serve them in numerous ways, and preaching is one of the ways that we do that, and albeit a significant way in which we do that, of course. So, the pastor in preaching is serving a congregation, serving families, serving individuals, serving singles, serving young couples, and serving children.

And so, one of the most significant things that I think we're facing in our day is sort of the notion of the pulpiteer. You know, we talk about the podcast pastor, which you've addressed, I know Pastor John has addressed that, and many well-known pastors and preachers who have preaching podcasts have addressed that and the problem of it.

Well, I think so often that the notion of the pulpiteer and the preacher-only pastor, that is to say the one who is only preaching, there tends to develop, I think, within so many churches, a sort of lecture-style sermon wherein they come to instill or condition a people to think that what they're coming for, why they're coming to worship, why they're present there at church in corporate worship, is really to be taught, really that they're there for the sermon.

That, you know, all the other things and all the other portions of the worship service are really not that important, that our time of prayer, our time of observing the Lord's Supper and baptism, those are really not that important. So, it's okay if you miss those. The benediction, the call to worship, whatever elements different churches have in their worship service, that those things really aren't as crucial or as essential to our corporate worship.

You know, you have some Christians, of course, who say, "I come because I really just need the fellowship. I come to worship, I come to church because I need the fellowship." You have some come and say, "Well, I really just want to sing. I want to sing more and I just want to sing," and they typically equate singing with worship, not understanding worship being the entirety of the service, of course.

And then you sometimes have people, and I think, I would say that by and large, the majority of Christians in Reformed churches, they tend to say, "I don't really need the singing. I don't really need anything else. I just need the preaching." That's what's really the most important thing.

Now, we need to stop and say, "Well, preaching is a very important part, a significant part, but we need to make sure that we don't develop within our people this notion that everything is centred and fixed around and the spotlight is solely upon the sermon." And so, I think what happens is, is that pastors begin to feel the pressure to sort of have this perfectly polished message that ends up looking more like a lecture, more like a lesson that could be taught really in any Sunday school class, rather than a sermon as a part of the worship service, helping people not simply to come in and sort of fold their arms and say, "Okay, let's see what this preacher has for me this week.

Let's see what new thing he's going to teach me this week. Let's see what new fresh thing I'm going to learn that I've not learned before." And they fold their arms and they sit there with their arms folded and they say, "Okay, let me just spectate, let me just watch, let me audit," rather than seeing themselves as participants, not only in that worship service, but participants in that local body, that local congregation, as vital living organisms, as a part of the larger body of Christ in that congregation, coming not only to sing and coming not only to affirm the faith and to pray and to be prayed for, but to come and to sit under the ministry of the word.

You know, that language is all too quickly passing away from the church today, that we are coming to sit under the ministry of the word as a part of our worship. And so that means that pastor sermons, our sermons really need to be engaging, that our sermons need to help fix people's eyes on the author and finisher of our faith, Jesus Christ, that they need to help fix people's eyes on all that Christ has called us to obey.

As we know from the great commission that Jesus has taught us not only to go and teach, but he's called us to go and make disciples, teaching them to obey or teaching them to guard and observe all that Christ commanded. And so the sermon as a part of the whole worship service of course, really needs to strive to fix people's eyes upon Christ, looking to him and him alone and his finished work for us as our sole grounds for our being declared righteous, our being justified by the father and helping people and resting in that and having assurance in that and finding the freedom that we have in Christ, being engaged now, not just as auditors, not just as listeners, not just as people looking for something new or something fresh or something they've never heard before, waiting to have their sort of theological ears tickled in just the right way with something that sounds so cool and so new, but rather coming to be engaged, to be disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, striving as we rest in him to follow him in all that he has commanded.

Yeah, that's a good word. The sermon is not offering up new novelties. They are an encounter with the affections of our hearer's hearts. It's the word confronting hearts. That's so right, so good. I'm not a huge fan of theologian Karl Barth, but he was once asked if one of his sermons that he was preaching could be recorded and then released as an audio recording later.

And he said, "Yes, as long as the whole service was recorded and released along with it too." That sounds foreign to us because we're rather used to abstracted sermon recordings pulled out. But his point is that really every sermon is part of a broader worship experience, and it should feel a little weird to us extracted from that.

I think you're exactly right, Tony, and I think that he was onto something. I don't distribute my sermons. I never have these many years. They're not online. Our people at St. Andrew's Chapel can get copies of the sermons from the week before if they were absent, that sort of thing.

But the only way I would go about ever letting my sermons be out there in public, because our sermons are for our people. I'm not against other people doing it. I get it. I really get it. I understand it. I get the reasoning behind it. I think there's something special that the Holy Spirit is doing through that local church pastor with his people that he's striving to shepherd faithfully.

And so it would really only be something that I think would be allowed if it was the entirety of the worship service, and then maybe online through password for our people at our website, that sort of thing. Yeah, that's worth thinking about for local churches, for sure. So people say, yes, the sermon should affectionately influence people.

So you had the lecture on one side, but a novelty for curious eyes of spectators and auditors, that's on the other hand. How do we protect the sermon from the form of preaching that's merely trying to get some emotional response from the audience? How do you push against the sort of preaching as emotional story time kind of a sermon?

Well said, and a very good point. Well, I think it's very important that we establish at the very outset that sermons must be filled with teaching, filled with exposition, filled with explanation, looking at the original audience, looking at the context of what's being said by the Lord and His word.

And we really need to spend a great deal of time not only looking at words, not only looking at phrases, looking at all the doctrine within that verse or that passage and expounding as much as we possibly can. So sermons need to be, of course, as we all agree, I'm sure, need to be filled with the explanation and exposition of scripture.

But it's not just tacking on a little application at the end that causes people to think about something. It's not just sort of throwing on a little imperative here and there, but rather helping people see how the gospel relates to every aspect of our sermon and every aspect of what the word of God is teaching them.

And at the same time, how it is they're able to understand the gospel through scripture and the imperatives that come in light of the gospel. And so to your point regarding sermons that are just filled with stories or filled with illustrations and really lacking the important content and exposition of the passage, well, the truth of the matter is they're not really feeding their people.

They're not feeding their people with the word of God. And that's the only way God's people are really going to be nourished. And so I think they know that. I think they're usually typically interested more in sort of attracting more people and getting more people and not offending too many people because the word of God, when it's preached, it will not only comfort, it will not only encourage, it will also rebuke and challenge and it will make people uncomfortable.

We know that. And so I think too often they're filling their time with stories and illustrations simply because it's a little bit easier and it doesn't really offend anybody. But we are called, as you know, in the preaching of the word of God to rebuke and to reprove and to exhort and also to comfort and to encourage as we point people to the gospel of Jesus Christ and our justification in him.

- Very good, Burke. Thank you. Well, speaking of the end and aim of preaching, that's the topic of John Piper's new book titled Expository Exaltation, the capstone of his new 1000-page trilogy. And I feel compelled to plug it here. It seems like a good place to do it. The trilogy answers three critical questions.

Question number one, can we trust the Bible? That was answered in book number one, which is titled A Peculiar Glory. And then question number two, how should I go about reading the Bible to get God's meaning from it? That was answered in book number two, Reading the Bible Supernaturally.

And finally, question three, what should I expect from my church and my pastors when they proclaim this book to me? That's answered in book three, now out, entitled Expository Exaltation, Christian Preaching as Worship. Well, we are going to return with Burke Parsons on Friday. Burke serves as senior pastor of St.

Andrew's Chapel in Sanford, Florida, a church founded in 1997 by R.C. Sproul. And R.C., of course, passed away into glory 38 weeks ago, back on December 14th. On Friday, I'm going to ask Burke to explain the legacy of R.C. on his ministry and what it's like for him now pastoring without his friend.

That's next time. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. We'll see you then. R.C. Sproul, Senior Pastor of St. Andrew's Chapel in Sanford, Florida, a church founded in 1997 by R.C. Sproul. On Friday, I'm going to ask Burke to explain the legacy of R.C. on his ministry and what it's like for him now pastoring without his friend.

That's next time. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. We'll see you then.