Transcript
Well, I want to welcome you today. My name is Dick Staub, and it is my honor to welcome you to what promises to be a very important day. I've known Reverend Earl Palmer since he was pastor at Berkeley Presbyterian. He was probably the first pastor that really introduced me to the idea that you could be warm-hearted and also have a keen mind and pull it all together in your preaching ministry. And it's when I got
a vision of what expositional preaching was and can be and should be for the church today. I know how important this day is to Reverend Palmer and to Shirley and to the team that put this event together, because we're all aware that the American church is undergoing a radical transformation, and at the heart of the matter is really the role of words, the written word of God and its communication. One person commenting on this subject says
that when it comes to preaching, it could be said, as in Tale of Two Cities, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness. It was the epic of belief, it was the epic of incredulity. And we look at the landscape around us and recognize that preaching and teaching and how to handle scripture is an issue that has become increasingly important, particularly
we think about intergenerational issues. For today, we're not going to just be dealing with the tools of exposition, but we're actually going to be talking about the case for expositional preaching. To illustrate the importance of that, let me quote one of the leaders of the postmodern church who said recently, if the church is to be relevant to millennials, today's teens and young adults, I don't think we'll have orators much longer. Art, dance and music are the
new forces that will play increasingly larger roles. Now, if you're seeing a special beaming look on my angelic face this morning, it's because our son is the director of visual effects at Disney Animation and his animated short won the Academy Award last night, Feast. And I mention that only to say that while we're proud of his accomplishments and if you've seen Feast, you know that there are no words in Feast, it's entirely visual. And yet, Josh
represents this younger generation and what I'm most proud of him is the fact that he loves scripture. He leads a home fellowship where they go verse by verse through scripture. He has had many artists tell him that they were inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien or C.S. Lewis, even though they aren't Christian, and they've reached these places in this generation where they're playing key roles in the media entertainment world and they still understand the importance of
ideas and words. And so I have to say personally, I take this subject very, very seriously. We're so fortunate to have as our guide today, Reverend Earl Palmer, who really needs no introduction. And every one of us here have some special encounter or understanding of who this man is and how he has shaped so many lives, including speaking for myself, my own. And today we're not going to do a lot of introductions. As you've got the
program in front of you, each person will come up and do their part of the program. I do want to mention that there will be questions and answers throughout today. So if you want to ask a question, jot it down very carefully, try to make it succinct, and during the question and answer times, we'll give you an opportunity to ask your questions. We're going to get started this morning with another man that I have a lot of respect for, Dr. Stephen Newby.
[music]
O gracious, eternal God, we who you have called to have your word. Lord, continue to teach us and to speak
to us today in a great way, fill us with your spirit. And we thank you for your mercy and your grace. Christ, holy name. May God's people stay with you. Amen. Amen. Please join me in prayer. We thank you, eternal one, for this glorious day. We thank you for your presence with us this morning, as always. And as you so often encourage us through Scripture, this morning we pray that you give us eyes to see, ears
to hear, and hearts to embrace all that you have for us. Amen. Steve, thank you for that wonderful song. What a way to begin. And welcome to every one of you who are here. I feel so honored that so many of you are here. What a wonderful balance of men and women and young and old. I just think it's just exciting. And imagine you've come to hear the case for exposition. Some people wonder what in the
world does that word even mean? Exposition of Scripture. The explaining of the text so the text makes its own point. Well, from me today you'll have a chance to hear three Bible studies. And the first one I will start with right now. I have a text for you today. The text is 2 Thessalonians 3 verse 1. It's the first verse of the third chapter of 2 Thessalonians. This is one of Paul's very first books. In fact,
almost all interpreters believe the first book written in the New Testament is 1 Thessalonians by St. Paul. And that would make probably the second book written in the New Testament may well be 2 Thessalonians. And in it he has just said this before this sentence that we hear. He has said, Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father who loved us and through grace gave us eternal companionship. The word in the RSV is
comfort. It's the word parakalatos. He has come alongside of us. And he has given us hope. He comes alongside our hearts and he strengthens us in every good work and word. And then after that wonderful statement about the love of Jesus Christ and his companionship with us, he then has this prayer request he gives to the Thessalonians. And here it is. We'll look at that together. He says, in fact, the text is in front of you.
I've got four renderings of this text, four translations. It gives you one of the clues I'm going to give you on exposition. When you're doing exposition, one of the first things you can do is to get three or four translations of the Bible in front of you. See how the translators have worked with the words, have worked with the language, how they try to express what the text is saying. And even if you don't know Greek
or Hebrew, if you're reading an Old or New Testament text, just looking at the translations will help to alert you to key words that are in the text, key ideas that are there. And sometimes they're words that the translators are struggling to try to explain. I just did that with the word parakalatos, which was in chapter three. It's the word to come alongside. It's the word our Lord uses for the Holy Spirit. I will send the
parakelete, the one who comes alongside. Though here the revised standards said comfort, uses the word comfort. If you looked at another text, they might say companionship or the coming alongside of your life. So seeing translations will give you a clue as to sometimes what... Louis has a great line in his book Experiment and Criticism. Tell me what the hard words mean. And you've done more for me than a thousand commentaries. What do the words mean? What
did they mean when they were first used? And so here St. Paul writes to the Thessalonians and he uses some language. And I give you four renderings of verse one of chapter three, second Thessalonians, just to alert you to that. Finally, brothers and sisters, here's the new RSV. Finally, brothers and sisters, pray for us so that the word of the Lord may spread rapidly and be glorified everywhere, just as it is among you. Even when I
read the RSV, I realized there are two key thoughts there that you've got to be explained. Got to understand what Paul's getting at. One is, what does he mean by spread rapidly? And what does he mean by be glorified? We know the word glory, doxa. We get the word doxology from that word. The word glory as a noun is used a lot in the Bible, the glory of the Lord. Okay, but what about when it's a
verb, be glorified or to glorify? And we know that is a key word. What does it mean? Well, we know that in classical Greek, to be glorified is used to recognize the high dignity or the high worth of something, or the high worth of a person in this case. That would be to glorify something. To glorify the Lord would be to recognize his great reality and his great truth. And so that's the way the word would
be used. So here I was alerted immediately, just reading the RSV text, that we've got some key thoughts being brought here, but I want to understand what spread rapidly means, and I want to understand what glorified means. So notice then I took James Moffat's translation. It's called the New Translation by James Moffat. He did it in 1926, but that's what they called it, the New Translation. Here's how he translated it. Finally, brothers and sisters, pray for
us, all right? That's the same. That the word of the Lord may speed on in triumph, and triumph, as in your own case. Notice now he's translating to be glorified with triumph and speed on. Now he's very screwed to give that translation, because actually in the Greek the word is trexo, and it's used rarely in the New Testament. That's the word Paul uses here that the RSV decided to translate spread rapidly. But it's the word trexo,
T-R-E-X-O would be in English, I guess, but that Greek word is only used rarely in the New Testament. I'll give you two places where it's used. It's used in Matthew 28 when the two women came to the tomb, and Jesus was not there, and the angel said, Go and tell the disciples. And the text says they ran to the disciples. That's the word trexo. It means to run. It means to run. And
it's used also in Hebrews 12:1, a text we all love. Therefore, since we're surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us run the race that's set before us. Christ himself has gone on ahead of us. Run. That's the word. Moffat saw it. That's better than spread rapidly. Speed. It speeds on. And triumphs. Its great worth was won over to us. And he says, as it did among you. You saw the greatness of this
word, this living word, Jesus Christ. You saw that in the text that led just to this, the word is referred to Jesus Christ, the word of the Lord. Notice here, it's called the word of the Lord. Just that passage that was finished that tells about Christ coming alongside of us. Christ giving us hope and his love, which was used decisively in the sentence just before this prayer. And now he says, now, brothers, finally, brothers and sisters,
pray for us that the word of the Lord, this word we just looked at about Christ's love and his person may speed on rapidly and triumph as in your own case. All right. Then Eugene Peterson, he caught it perfectly. Listen to Jean Peterson in his message. One more thing, friends, pray for us. Notice they're all the same there. So that we haven't learned a great deal different from James, from the Eugene Peterson translation from the others.
But notice how he does. By the way, the message is not a strict translation in the tradition of translations. It's a free translation. In the strict tradition, you're supposed to use one word for one word. If a word in the Greek is usually supposed to try to find one word in English, it will go for that word, which is what you get in authorized translations. But this is a free translation. So Eugene Peterson decided he could
use a whole lot of words instead of just one word. And sometimes he wins. Sometimes he loses because sometimes you get a little bit murky in some of the things that Jean Peterson is. And I think especially in my opinion, Jean is far better in handling Paul than he is in handling the words of our Lord. Because when he starts to add a lot of words to what our Lord said, Jesus doesn't need a lot of
words added usually because his words are so economical. So I'm not sure the message is as effective in the Gospels as it is in St. Paul. But here, Eugene Peterson, one of my great friends, and one of the great free translation writers that we have in the Bible, here it is as a translator. One more thing, friends, pray for us. Pray that the master's word will simply take off and race through the country. He saw that
trexo was the word used there. Jean Peterson knows Greek very, very well. And he saw that trexo means run. You've got to get somehow the idea of run in it. And simply take off and run through the country to a groundswell. And that's a wonderful translation of to glorify. Glorify means that you see a groundswell and you realize how important this is, how great this is, how true it is so that it makes sense to you.
As it did among you. Notice, just as it did among you, it made sense to you. And I think that's what Paul is saying. He's praying that he says, pray for me that the word of God may speed on. And people will see that it makes sense and they'll believe it because it will triumph. See, it'll be glorified. And now the King James, you know, I come back to the King James. Usually when it comes to
the beautiful use of the English language, the King James Bible didn't have as many manuscripts to work with as the RSV did because a couple of the great manuscripts hadn't yet been discovered when the King James Bible was put together. But it's a magnificent text. And especially here, it has a wonderful rendering of this text. Listen to it. Finally, brethren, brothers and sisters, pray for us. Notice they're all the same there. That the word of the
Lord, the same, may have free course. Wow, what a way to talk about a word, a word that can run. Nobody is going to stop it. Nobody is going to hem it in, turn it loose. By the way, that's what exposition is all about. I hope we can learn how to do that. How to turn the text loose so that it gets to make its mark and gets to have free course. Isn't that beautiful? That it
may have free course. And then the King James said, and be glorified. That's the word. They don't try to work with glorified like Eugene Peterson did, or like Moffat did when he said triumph. But again, be glorified even as it is with you. There's our text. There's the text for the case for exposition. Notice that what we have there is some keywords that were alerted to us in the text. And when you're doing Bible study, you
want to look for those keywords. You want to look for the key themes that are there in the text. What is Paul getting at? What is, what's on his heart? What is the thing that he's trying, the point he's trying to make? Now, sometimes you can win and sometimes you can maybe blur it. So be careful. That's why you always need a check and balance. You need the Greek text to back you up. You need to
look at other translators to see if they agree with what you did. You need to test it in a small Bible study group with other people to see how they handle it too. And that's where the brothers and sisters help us to do good Bible study, rather than just do it as a lonely thing you do by yourself. Though that's valuable too. But notice, here you have this first thing that the text did. It alerted us
to two key ideas. What does he mean by spread rapidly? Frankly, I don't like that RSV translation, spread rapidly. I don't know. It's good, I guess, but I like the King James. Have free course, better. Have free course. Let the word spread. Let it speed. Let it make its mark. And then you'll see the truth. And the truth will, that truth of the glorified. So obviously this text stirs you up to want to understand what glorified
in the verbal sense means. What does it mean to something being glorified? And that will then get you going on looking at other places where St. Paul uses a word. I have found it very helpful and you don't need to know Greek to do this. If you see a word that's used, see other places. You can take just a simple lexicon or a simple guide to the Bible and see other places where Paul uses the word
glorified now as a verb. Here's an example. He does it in 2 Corinthians. In 2 Corinthians, he does a play on the word glorify. And that play on the word helps you really to understand how exciting the word is, what it appears in 2 Thessalonians. In 2 Corinthians, the third chapter, he talks about the word glory. Listen to it. For if there was glory in the ministry of judgment. In other words, when judgment happens, we see
the glory of God, the truth of God. It's up there when God judges us. So Paul says, if there was glory in the ministry of judgment, much more does the ministry of justification abound in glory. See, it's a play on words now. There's glory when God judges. Like the Supreme Court is one of the most glorious buildings in Washington, D.C. It may be the most glorious building except for the Capitol itself is the Supreme Court
building where judgment is happening. And a judgment is happening. It's a glorious moment. When judgment comes down, Paul says, all right. Especially, you know, if you know, vengeance is mine, says the Lord, all right. When the Lord does his own vengeance, when he does it, that is glory. When we try to do it, it's terrorism. When we try to do it, it's evil, pure evil often. Pascal is the one who said, men never delight in doing
evil as much as if they can do it for religious reasons. And there's nothing worse than when we try to exercise vengeance. That's not glorious. And that's not what Paul says here. He says, if there is glory in the ministry of judgment, much more now does the ministry of justification abound in glory. Second use of the word glory, doxa. Indeed, what once had glory, third use of the word, which would be judgment, what once had glory
has lost its glory because of a greater glory. Now he puts the word hyper, hyper glory, a hyper glory, a greater glory. What could be a greater glory than the Supreme Court? What could be a greater glory than judgment against sin when sin should be judged, okay? For if what was what? Because of a greater glory. For if what was set aside came through glory, much more has the permanent come in glory. And what's the permanent?
The grace of God. The grace of God is the thing that lasts the longest. It lasts the longest. That's what Paul is saying there in 2 Corinthians. The grace of God lasts the longest. It's the most glorious thing when that grace dawns on you. And so notice, that's exactly what Paul's saying in 2 Thessalonians. He's talking about grace in the third chapter and now he comes to a prayer in the second chapter and now he says,
pray for me, folks. And now I'll read it again. Pray for me, brothers and sisters, that the word of the Lord may speed on and triumph and make its case and win people to see how wonderful God's grace is, his lordship is, as it has in your own case. One more thing, friends, pray for us. Pray that the master's word will simply take off and race through the country to a groundswell of response, just as it
did among you. Finally, brothers, pray for us that the word of the Lord may have free course. Don't you love that? It may have its chance and win its case, even as it did among you. All right, I want to talk about that today and we do it in three different Bible studies. Here's the first one we just had. I'm sold on this allowing a text that when the text makes its own point and we see
it for ourselves, I'm sold on this for personal reasons as well as for theological reasons here. It's a big part of how I myself became a Christian, how I followed Jesus Christ. I came to Cal Berkeley as just a sophomore, as a freshman, and I was really just a secular kid. I was raised in a wonderful family. My mother was Episcopalian. We went to church and stuff like that. Went to the community church, but somehow it
didn't really stick with me. And I came to Cal. I didn't even go to church for the first couple of years. I was so busy in hiking. Hiking was my life. I climbed Shasta so many times and that's the whole thing I was living for. And it's a small thing to live for. But I loved it. And I was doing that with the hiking club and the Sierra Club and doing all that in the weekends, so
there was no time for that. But a friend of mine invited me to a Bible study. In my sophomore year, I went to that Bible study. It was in my dorm. It was an all-male dorm called Barrington Hall. And a bunch of guys just read the text of the New Testament together. And we'd just do it for an hour. And I didn't even have a Bible when I went to the first meeting of the group
when I was invited by Arba Hudgens to come to it. And I had to go out and buy a Bible for that class. And I did. I went out and bought a Bible. It shows you a little bit of my personality. I went to Sathergate Bookstore and they said for one dollar more, I could have my name put on the Bible. And so I had my name put on that Bible. I still have that. It was
the King James Bible. And it was wonderful, though, except that when I showed up to the group the next week, they said, oh, that's a wonderful Bible. We're using the RSV here. So then I had to go buy another Bible in order to be up with the group that was studying. But what happened was, in looking at that text and then getting involved with the university group there at the First Preventatory Church of Berkeley, where I
later became senior pastor, what happened was the text won me over. And here's how they did. They pointed me to Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ won my respect. And then respect is a few inches away from faith. It's not faith, but it is the beginning. And then when I began to see the promises that Jesus Christ was making and realized that I could put my weight on them. Dr. Munger put it this way at a conference.
It was the turning point for me. He said, when on the basis of what you know about Jesus Christ, you're willing to trust in his trustworthiness, then you're ready to become a Christian. And I realized that summer, I was ready to become a Christian by putting my weight down on the trustworthiness of Christ that I saw in the Bible. It was the Jesus Christ of the Bible who won me. Not the Jesus Christ of myth or
that somebody makes as a great Christ myth that somebody comes up with. It was not the faith of my friends. It was the Jesus I met in the text in the Bible. And he won me. He won my respect and he won my faith. And it's interesting, Calvin says, the authority of the Bible comes the same way. He says the authority of the Bible gets its authority from its living center. The Bible gets its authority from
its center outward, from Jesus Christ. It surrounds Christ. The Old Testament by anticipation and the New Testament in witness surrounds Jesus Christ. He wins your respect and he won my respect. And I became a believer. And then when I went, I decided finally this Bible study group became very important to me. And one day I went to Dr. Munger and said, I think I'd like to be a pastor. I didn't know anything about being a pastor
because I liked our youth pastor there at the church. And I said, I'd like to be like him so I could work with college kids because I'm loving this as a college student now. And so I applied, went to Princeton Seminary, and then I got involved in a Bible study there. First with a bunch of guys in the seminary. And then it just happened that I got into a Bible study with some young men. Princeton then
was an all-male college. I got in with some young men at the college and did a Bible study with them. And I ended up with about five of those Bible studies. I only started one. And the others, the guys asked me, would you help us with our Bible study group? And I watched young men for the next three years, my three years at Princeton Seminary. I saw young guys reading the text. I never tried to
make anybody a Christian. I just said, look at the text. I figured some weeks Paul wins, some weeks he loses. I mean, he doesn't always win you. Sometimes he makes you mad. But Jesus always wins you. He wins your respect. Sometimes he upsets us too. But then he always comes around and fulfills even the upset so that we decide that I respect him and then trust him. And I saw guys become Christians. And then I went
into the ministry and I'll tell you, it has become a fundamental part of my ministry. If I could get somebody to look at the text, I saw it with these young college guys. I saw it in my own life. If I can get somebody to look at the text, sooner or later, not always sooner, but sooner or later, the text would always bring them to its living center. And that's Jesus Christ. Exotic, curious, weird religious stuff
happens when people don't let the text bring them to its center. But when the text brings you to the center is Jesus Christ, you don't end up with weird stuff. You end up with healthy faith because he's healthy. You end up with his grace and his truth. His judgment, his grace. And the grace, thank God, is the longest lasting. It's what lasts the longest. I'm so glad. So you make that discovery. And so therefore, when I
got into the ministry, it had a big effect on my philosophy of evangelism. I started my career here at University Presbyterian Church Seattle as a student pastor. And really, I think I built, here is Ed Schnebele sitting right here, was in that original group. I built my college ministry around we had a public meeting for sure on Tuesday night. But the small Bible study groups, I think, were the soul of the way people really became Christians.
They met other guys and women, men and women, and they got into Bible study and they saw the text for themselves. And it made sense to them. So I built my evangelism around it. I believe that the finest evangelism happens when people have a chance to see the text for itself and meet the Lord of the text, Jesus Christ. So I also found that the best discipleship happens. Discipleship happens in seeing the text. I know sometimes
when I'm a pastor and I get certain concerns on my heart, I'll say I must preach now about these concerns. I must give now a stewardship sermon. You know, I don't like that. Then that means that I'll pick a text that's going to help people be generous with their money. And then I may pick a text, but you spring out of the text and then everybody forgets the text because I've got now anecdotes and stories about
how generous people get the blessing of God and stuff like that. And it's all built on my anecdotes and built on themes that I'm creating. But in effect then, the people didn't see it for themselves in the text. They saw my advocacy for something. And the danger with that is that after a while, people have faith because you have faith. They don't have faith because they saw it for themselves. Or they're good stewards because the pastor
said we've got a stewardship campaign and we've got to raise so much money now. Okay, now come through, be generous. God will bless you there if you do it. But where is that in the text? Let the text teach. By the way, the texts in the Bible have more to say about money than almost any other ancillary theme. But let them say it the way the text says it. Then a person can see it for themselves.
That moment, the great moment in preaching, is when a text is unfolding and the people in the room see the point before you say it. Like today, it was fun to see you spark to run when you saw it in the text. It means run. And thousands of things went through your brain when you saw it. Isn't that right? Before you heard Eugene Peterson tell you that, that it took off. But you saw it in the
text and the text then got very exciting. And I saw that for discipleship, too. Discipleship is not you should have faith because I have faith. You should have hope because I have hope. You should have faith because you discovered it and the trustworthiness of Jesus Christ, that's why you should have faith. So that becomes the solid ground. Now the question is, how do you prepare to do exposition? How do you prepare to do this kind? I
hope today's going to be a help because the next hour I'm going to use a Gospel text and then make some comments on how to use a Gospel text and to be faithful to it so that it can make its own point and you can see it. And then finally, we'll look at St. Paul again from the book of Philippians in the afternoon. But how do I prepare for exposition? I'm going to give you now just
five steps to get you ready for exposition. One, begin with curiosity. Curiosity is the way to begin. I think it's the way to begin Bible study. It's the way to begin getting ready for anything. Curiosity. Take a journey yourself with your questions. Start with questions. What are you curious to know? Like when you read that text, what struck you as something, what does it mean by spread rapidly? I don't know when I read the RSV, I
said, what in the world does that mean? Now, I do know Greek, so I went immediately and looked at the Greek text and saw that it was trexo. And I realized then that trexo is only used three times in the New Testament. Okay, that's been fun. It means run. Okay. And I got on my way with a curious question. Raise the question. So Bible study will begin with curiosity. And I'm going to suggest a five-step
approach to getting ready for exposition. And the first is, first you start with establishing the text. That's what we did when we tried to see the words. Tell me what the hard words mean. It's establishing the text. And sometimes that becomes more complicated than other times. What is the best text? And all your translations will definitely help you with that. You're going to establish the text first. Start with it. Then two. You want to then ask
the historical question. What is happening inside the text and behind the text? Well, the historical question would be something about maybe the Thessalonians. And this is where you're getting into a little more questions about when you see something like in a gospel account, you read a word where Jesus is having an argument with the Pharisees. The historical question then gets you to do something in Bible study that takes some research on your part. You've got to
get a dictionary of the Bible and look up Pharisee. And that will help you a lot. It will save you from making foolish statements that some pastors even make. I've heard pastors who used to talk about the Pharisees and refer to them as clergymen who are super righteous. But that's one thing they weren't. They were laymen. So if you're going to blast anybody for the Pharisee movement, they're lay people who were too proud. The clergy were
the Sadducees. Okay, but get it right. Don't make somebody angry with you for the wrong reasons because you didn't get it right. So you do the historical question. If a word like Pharisee appears, if something appears in the text that stirs you up, where is it? Where is Caesarea Philippi? Well, look it up. You can do that with a dictionary of the Bible. That's the simplest thing you can do and find out the historical question. And
then sometimes the historical question behind the text. For example, in the book of John, John starts his gospel by saying three times in the prologue that John the Baptist is not the Christ. Why would he repeat it three times that he's not the Christ? Is there a problem there? Is there something that I need to know? Did some people get confused and think that John the Baptist was Messiah? All right, that gets me going at a
deeper level with the historical question. I want to know something about that. That's called form criticism. I'm trying to get behind the text to find out why John is repeating three times that John the Baptist is not the Christ. Did some people think he was? If you read closely the gospel counts, you realize they did. Remember when Apollos came to Ephesus and Priscilla and Ocula met him and said he was worshiping John the Baptist and didn't
know about Jesus Christ and the fulfillment of John the Baptist. So it's true. John the Baptist was a very famous person. So that helps you to understand all those texts that had to do with John the Baptist. That's the historical question. Then the third step is what I call the words. What do they say and what do they mean? Now this is the theological question. Where I'm now taking a text and looking at the words in
the text. First of all, what do the words say? Then I'm going to try to make a move from what they say to what I think they mean. What is Jesus getting at when he makes this reference? Be careful I don't misunderstand him. But what is he getting at? And here's where I start doing work where I write. And you know writing is a terrific thing to do. Writing and talking and meeting with people. A small
Bible study group where you can take a sentence of Jesus and try to figure out what's he getting at. We'll do that in the next hour when we look at John 15. What's he getting at? What's he saying? What does he mean? Try to understand that it's true. And then the fourth question is how would people that heard him in the first century, how would they react to what's happening here or what's being said? Very often
the text itself will give you the clue to that. What's happening when you get a... I like what one person said about the Gospel of John. One of the great things about the Gospel of John is that John, more than any other Gospel writer, shows you how much of a strain Jesus was on people because he reports all the arguments against Jesus. Matthew, Mark, and Luke do not. They really don't. They tell you what Jesus did,
but they don't give you an insight into what bothered the people. We owe a great debt to John because there's 34 times in John's Gospel where he shows arguments that the people have against Jesus. So we owe that to John. We owe it to see what were the things, if Jesus said something and he bothered them, what was it that bothered them? How did his generation understand? And then you can go 21 centuries and say, and
what bothers our century about some of the things that he's saying right now? And what bothers me? That would be what I would call the contemporary question. And then finally, the fifth and the most important, according to Schnakenberg, a great theologian, no commentary is a valid commentary if it doesn't raise the discipleship question. What does this text say to me? What does it say to me? Don't ever be a preacher who talks about the they out
there, what they need to know. What do I need to know? What is this text saying to me? How is it getting a grip on my life? And that's what I call the discipleship question. Well, there's a way to start. And it's a way to prepare for exposition. And there's a great moment, it seems to be a great moment in teaching, is when a text is unfolding, maybe I hope can happen in the next hour or
so, when we look at the text from John 15, a text will open. In that case, our Lord is speaking. And as a preacher or a teacher, it's just a great moment when you're looking out over an audience of men and women of all ages and there you see a light and you realize that aha, aha. It becomes an aha moment. I see it. And I want to tell you something. When you see a point yourself,
before a pastor tells you the point, when you see what love is, before a pastor who tells you this is what love is, be careful. Be careful what you say something is. Let a person discover it if they can from the text. And I'll tell you something. When you discover a great truth like love, glory, and even some of the negative themes, when you see what sin really means in the Bibles, and when you see what
justification really means, what sanctification means, what reconciliation really means, when you see it for yourself, you'll remember it. It's yours. It's, you know, kind of worries me about today, one of the biggest problems in students writing term papers now is that they can go to Google and they can go to various apps and they can get citations from Martin Luther or citations from even my beloved Karl Barth or C.S. Lewis or other citations. Read them
in an app, put them into their term paper, and then they get a good grade. Unless they didn't do approbation. If they didn't give a citation, then the professors are going to get them. And that can happen to you too. This is what I said. Oh, no, no. That was said earlier by Martin Luther. Oh, I see. I didn't know. So without, then you lose your Ph.D. They take your Ph.D. away from you if that happens.
And that's happened to several people. Okay. But I'm still worried about the fact that what you can do today because of technology and because of the computer and because of apps, you can get citations and put them in your term paper. But the problem is the citation went from Martin Luther to your computer to your paper. It did not go through your brain. And the proof of that will come when a professor sits you down and
says, hey, I noticed you quoted Karl Barth there on that from his dogmatics and outline. I noticed that. Tell me, what was it that really struck you by that? No, I saw it in an app. You would never dare say that because then the professor would say C instead of A. But it's a sad moment when a person asks you a question and you realize I saw something that was said, the pastor said it and I
put it over here and I put it into my so-called belief system. But it didn't go through my head. It didn't go through my heart. I did not discover it. And folks, if there is one great value to exposition for you as an expositor, first of all, a teacher, but it means you don't go to a class, even a small Bible study group in your group, having not thought about it. But the great advantage to
exposition is that the text gets to go through your brain. It gets to go through your heart. You get to weigh in on it. You get to figure out what you think it means first. See what it means. Tie it out on others. There's the fellowship of believers that help you. And then it's yours. And it has its lasting effect. Heavenly Father, thank you for this text in Thessalonians. That it was so good to realize that
your truth and your love can speed on and it can win a hearing and it can even triumph in our lives. Lord, we're grateful for that. And we're grateful that Paul prayed that and that he believed it. And that's why he probably did so much exposition of great texts. So Lord, now bless us. And the rest of this day too, in Christ's name we pray. Amen. And now I think I have some responders. Earl Palmer, wow.
Been following you a long time from the Bay Area. I grew up in the Bay Area. Tended a predominantly African-American church, the Baptist tradition. And my first question to you, growing up in Richmond, California, where your wife Shirley was a teacher in the Contra Costa school district, I knew this was going to come around one day. Earl, when I first heard the term biblical exposition, I took that to mean an approach to the study of
the Bible that required college or seminary training. Further explain why that is not necessarily the case. Because when you hear that term for the first time, it could be a little foreboding. Explain why that's not necessarily the case where you have to go to school and spend half of your life studying the Bible in order to teach the Bible. Wow. Hey, thanks, Rick. I love that question. Because that's why I started this journey with the word
curiosity. I think that's the key. It's the curiosity of a, in this case, a Christian that wants to teach the Bible. Well, you're curious and you have questions. And you build questions in. And then that's why, you know, today, I wanted to use four English translations of one Greek text rather than to say, okay, now in the Greek it says this, in the Greek it says that. I wanted you to see that you don't, you can
just use the English translations. And now there are so many of them. And you could just array them and use them and they will get you going in a very valid way. Because the translators are struggling to see what the words mean. Because we do want to know what the words mean. And what they meant then and what they mean now to me. But of course, to do what they mean now, you're as good an authority
by living now as anybody that writes 20 or 30 years ago. So you're an authority on that. For you and for me, I'm an authority on what they mean now, at least to the people I know. But what they meant then, I may need the help of the translators. So hey, you're right. I don't think you need to have. That's freeing because for many pastors like myself, we're aware of the term Saturday night. Special, which means
we're trying to get that sermon together before Sunday. This process here seems like it would take a little more time. Explain that letting the text speak for itself and going through the five-point process for a pastor in order to be relative and yet honest to the text. Well, I did not coach him on that question either. But it does take time. And I'll give you one guideline from my own experience. And I'll share it. Now,
this may not be yours, but it was for me. Early on in the ministry, I decided to move the dates earlier rather than later on the emergency moment, which is when you actually have to stand up and speak. Whether I had to stand up and speak before my college group on Tuesday night, or if you're a Young Life leader, you have a club meeting on Wednesday night, or I had to stand up and speak on Sunday
morning in church. So I made it a policy, and I did follow this. I followed it all my life. That I would move the date earlier in the week than Saturday and make Saturday my day off. I made Saturday my day off. And I never even thought about the church and things like that, hopefully, on Saturday. But that meant that Thursday was my emergency day, was the day I had to have my sermon. I preach from
one expanded outline, both sides of a yellow pad. And I've always done my preaching from an expanded outline, both sides of one page. Now, I'm not against a full manuscript. That's fine, too. But I had this part, both sides of a yellow pad. And then quotations would always be noted with a special quotation tradition that I developed. When I quoted somebody, I would always have the book present in the room, if I'm gonna quote somebody, rather
than have it on a card, or quote from my brain. I quoted Pascal from my brain, because I know that quote. But I would have my sermon done by Thursday noon. And I made that my rule. And I can honestly say I rarely ever miss that. Thursday noon, I knew what I was gonna say on Sunday. Now, the value of that was that then on Thursday afternoon, I worked on the next week. And I found that
if I worked well on the next week, on Thursday afternoon, then that protects you from throwing everything into the sermon every week. Then you don't steal the thunder from next week, if you know you're going through a text. So I would work on next week. And I can honestly tell you that in my years of preaching, not every single week, but if I finish Sunday on the text that I had for this Sunday, I already know
so much of what I wanna do the next week. I have to be careful not to get it in and ruin this week. But I could go right on and give you next week's sermon too. Pretty much, it would be raw, but I could do it. Because I had worked on that on Thursday afternoon. So that was my tradition. Thursday morning, and that's the only time I was nervous. By Thursday morning and Thursday noon, it had
to be ready. And then Thursday afternoon, I worked on the next week of the next assignment that would be in that cycle. And I found that protected Saturday night. And then what happens is Friday and Saturday, your brain is mulling over all this. And amazing, some of the best illustrations came because it was in my head. I knew what the text was. And then during Friday and Saturday often, because I would try to do a wider
reading on Friday. But on Saturday, maybe you'd go to movies, or we'd go to something, and something would come in that would often become a wonderful help, an illustration would come because my brain was mulling on it. But I think that is defeated if you have Saturday night emergency like we talked about before. And I know I've taught preaching classes too, that that is a huge problem for the number of pastors who wait till Saturday night
to write their sermon. And it's a great mistake in my opinion. That's very freeing. And taking this approach, I'll have more date nights with my wife on Saturday. Earl, what is the difference, my final question, between letting the Bible make its own point, as you've talked about today, and the preacher teacher making points, and adding scripture to that point? Yeah, well, I kind of made a joke about it earlier. There's a famous professor at Princeton that
made this joke, who was a professor of preaching. And he said, a student made a sermon and all. And the preacher made this famous line, the professor, he said, if the sermon had, if the text had had smallpox, the sermon would not have caught it. That was his, that was his famous line at Princeton. And we all lived under that terror, that Macleod or somebody would get up and hear my sermon and say, yes, Earl, if
the text had had smallpox, it would not have caught it from your sermon. No, that's the danger of using a text as a springboard into your own anecdotes and your own. Then in a way, I don't care what you do, you have really used the text, but you are really saying, you should have faith because I have faith. I've got an anecdote now that will show you how brave you can be and how wonderful it could
be if you were that way. And now that's what's gonna be the thing you take out with it, not the text. And I think that's a loss. That's why I guess I'm not, I do think thematic preaching is one of the great dangers of the church today, where pastors basically build their preaching year around themes. Oh, today is love of God theme. This is anti-racism theme. This is a social justice theme. This is Central American
justice. I knew a pastor that gave four sermons on Central American justice, but there was hard to find texts that would always go for it. So he ended up with just political anecdotes and it was not a good thing. And it was very defeating, I think, for him too, as well as his people, because he had had a trip to Central America and that was all that was on his mind. Be careful. Get back into the
text. It may be that that's a valid thing to come up in a study, but let it come up because it illustrates what a text is saying. And I think that's the key. Thank you, Earl. I just wanna finally say what respect I, and I think I speak for many leaders, pastors, laity, what respect I have for you and your discipline on the exposition of the word. It encouraged me to study the Greek and really I
learned the English language studying Greek because I wasn't taught too well in high school, but it was through the Greek that I learned English. And you made studying the Greek and reading the Greek not intimidating, but actually, like you said, fun and curious. So thank you for that. Hey, thank you, Rick. Well, Rick, I think you and I have interpreted the response assignment a little bit differently. So I've got a prepared response. Yes, yes. I wonder
if I can set my notes down here and I feel bad having you stand while I talk for 10 minutes. If you get tired, I won't be insulted if you sit here, but let me, my name's Eric Jacobson and I have been privileged to be under Earl's preaching for many years. I came to love expositional preaching as a college student under Earl's ministry. As I became a pastor, Earl walked right alongside of me and taught me
how to do expositional preaching well and make that a discipline for my life. And it's been a great privilege for me. So I don't need to have the case for expositional preaching made for me. I've been persuaded by way of response. I'm certainly not gonna argue against expositional preaching, but what I thought would be most helpful maybe for this audience is to think through what I've, some of the challenges that I've faced, some of the changes
I've thought through after 20 years of trying to follow in your footsteps in expositional preaching and see what that looks like. And I think for me, the best way to get at that question, you raised it already in your talk today, Earl, is to think about the relationship between expositional preaching and discipleship. Because I think that's the fundamental thing that we're talking about here. And in particular, I wanna think about expositional preaching and discipleship in relation
to two fundamental changes that have taken place in the church in my career as a pastor. One change has been the impact of the church growth movement. And the second change has been the impact of the missional church movement. And those both have offered different challenges to expositional preaching and discipleship. The church growth movement has emphasized convenience and practicality. We need to put the hay down where the sheep can get it. And that particular movement has
sometimes been critical of expositional preaching, not always, but sometimes, saying that it's an obscure practice. People don't want a 12-week Bible, or sermon series on Romans. People don't want word studies. They want a series on how to raise my family. And I think insofar as that represents a critique from the church growth movement, that represents a profound misunderstanding of expositional preaching. I think it may be that there's not enough experience of people hearing good expositional
preaching to come to that conclusion. But Earl, you taught me something very important as a young pastor, and you've just alluded to it. You said you can choose as a young pastor. You've got two directions you might go. One is to be a topical preacher, and the other is to be an expositional preacher. And if you choose topical, you will eventually come down to about 20 sermons that you preach over and over and over again for
your entire career. And I chose path B, and I found that much more interesting to take a text that's not under your control, but it's the word of God, and wrestle with it week by week, fundamentally challenge you to grow as a pastor. And so I think one of the most important things I learned about expositional preaching is expositional preaching is very good for the discipleship of the pastor before it's good for the discipleship of the
congregation. So I think for that reason alone, I've been very grateful for your advice. And I feel like you have set me on a course of adventure as a pastor, where every week I get a text that's not under my control and surprises me as I encounter it week in and week out. So the other movement that I made reference to the missional church movement, that particular movement has really focused on the church being the form
that God's missional heart takes for the world. Very interested in the church being deployed in the community, the people of God in the community. There's a little bit of a de-emphasis on the gathered assembly, and consequently, a de-emphasis on the preached word to some extent. Not a disregard for, but a de-emphasis. They have recast discipleship as apprenticeship. It's not just sit and get, but it must be go and do. One of the taglines
of that movement is, you wouldn't want someone to perform heart surgery on you who've just read a book on heart surgery or heard a good lecture on heart surgery. You want an apprentice. And we need apprentices of Jesus Christ, not just people who have heard a good message. I have to admit, I've been somewhat persuaded by that argument. And that's been a change for me over the last couple of years to think through what that means
in my life. Now the odd thing, and this is something that maybe is worth talking about, is I feel like one of the unique, maybe not unique, but one of the rare gifts that you bring, Earl, to that conversation is somehow you've managed to be able to preach in a way that they sit and get and your people go and do. I think that's amazing. If you look at the fruit of your ministries in Manila, in
Berkeley, in Seattle here, you have done a fantastic job of preaching in such a way that it inspires disciples to go and do. But I'm not sure that's a universal gift. I'm just going to put that out there in the sense that I don't do that as well as you do. And that's been a realization for me. That I think I'm a good expositional preacher. I think I do a fine job at that. But I haven't
felt that the fruit of my expositional preaching has always been discipleship. I've grown increasingly uncomfortable with preaching the word faithfully and sending people out as autonomous individuals to figure out how to apply it in their lives. That's been challenging for me. So I have been somewhat, as I continue to try to do better and learn your tricks, and not tricks, that's a very light way of saying it. I know there's room for growth for sure. I've
only been 20 years into it. And so I will continue to emphasize expositional preaching, but I have, from the missional church movement, have been learning about things like missional communities and other ways that the community, the people of God, can be living this out together in community. So I think it's still important. That said, expositional preaching and teaching continues to be important even within the missional conversation. The missional conversation can go awry if it gets separated
from the text. And I think, and this might be an oversimplification, but I think the emerging church movement is on a dead end insofar as it strays away from the text. And it's just out there in the community, just being at coffee houses and pubs and being the people of God without real disciplined exposition of the text. So I think that we still need expositional texts. And maybe what I'm trying to say here is we need
expositional preaching and we need communal discipleship in order to live it out. So let me end with a couple of questions. I think what I'm saying is expositional preaching is more important now than it ever has been. We need good exposition of the text. The form of the church, I think, is radically shifting right before us. And we have to figure out what does that mean for expositional preaching. From the church growth movement, one question might
be what does expositional preaching look like or can it work in a multi-site simulcast kind of setting? Or is it important that the preacher is live in front of the congregation? I think that's coming out of the church growth movement. For the missional church movement, the question is can expositional preaching be done by someone in a house church movement without seminary training? Can it be decentralized and still retain the integrity of respect for the text?
So those are my closing questions and my thoughts on expositional preaching. Thank you. Wonderful. Man, I agree with what you're saying, everything. And oh, no, I've got my mic. They've got me wired. So yeah, I think, you know, I like with these two movements that have been so prominent in the formation of what is now the reality of the church. The seeker-friendly movement to make the church as friendly as possible. Man, I applaud that. I
think that is so important. And then, of course, the missional presence movement, the faithful presence movement of being the church of Jesus Christ. And it's sort of a little bit of what we have a lot of young life leaders here today. It seems to me that's one that missional presence has been the great gift that Jim Rayburn gave in the young life movement that don't just have a church perched somewhere and trying to reach high school
kids. There needs to be a sense of missional presence of knowing who kids are being alongside of them. And so both these things are. And I just think your warning is a good warning, but it's also it's a promise. If we keep the text, if we keep Bible study in our lives, and I like what you said that maybe the best for a young pastor or a young life leader or someone trying to be involved in
the presence, remember that if you're going to be present, you've got to have a resource that's worth sharing when somebody does ask you, hey, what do you think? And that having something that's worth sharing is going to come from your own expositional study where your exposit just means to see what the text is saying in its own terms and within the larger framework of the gospel of Jesus Christ. What does it mean? And what does it
mean for me? And I think asking those five questions are always going to be anchors. Now, the thing you raised though that I think is really important now, how do we lure or trick, use the word tricks, how do we trick people into exposing themselves to this where they think maybe it's boring or they don't want to do it? Well, I think, in fact, I use the phrase that I built my philosophy was a little bit
around this, that if I could, you didn't use the word trick, if I could trick, if I could get someone to look at the text, if I could get them to do it, sooner or later, I have so much confidence in the inner power of the text, like Eugene Peterson is saying, it takes off. I have so much confidence in that that if I could get them to look at it sooner or later, it would always
point them to the living center. And it's the living center who has the authority. I don't want to make them fascinated with biblical curiosities. And by the way, that's what worried me about the prophetic movement in Protestantism. It became so fascinated with what I would call obscure curiosities of timetables and of things like this, of who is Gog and Magog, which the book of, I wrote a commentary on Revelation, so I take the lean rather than
luxurious interpretive model for Revelation. And it makes Revelation a threatening book instead of a joyous book that is comforting us in the midst of stress. But when we do such analysis of the stress and even develop charts and timetables, in a way we have now, we don't have a resource that's there that is the way Paul describes it, a grace that's a greater grace than judgment. We'd be getting fascinated maybe with judgment then, or fascinated with
timetables. So how do you outwit this? Get people in the text with some other friends. They will then become a kind of a check and balance on you, and they will help keep you on center. Very often by the way they respond to what the text says, you realize that there are lots of ways to respond to this text. But if you can somehow get people to do it, and that maybe requires, it requires a shrewd
approach. Let me give you one example from Manila. I went to Manila having been a pastor of students at University Press. And I built everything really around these small groups. They were in the fraternities and sororities and the dorms. I even visited some of them, but they were all run by college kids. Some of them then went on to do very serious Bible study, but they did Bible study in their dorm, in their fraternity, in their
sorority. And it was so great. And then we had the common meeting once a week. That was great too. We call that on Tuesday night. That was a common time. And we had retreats. They played their role. But there were these small groups. I got to Manila and I was sold on this, but I have a very busy expatriate church with people from all over the world that are there. And how do I get them? You
know what I did? I did a tricky thing. I started a high school group and I got them the only time because the American school started classes at about 7:30 or 8 in the morning because it's tropics. So I got them to come at 6 AM. And they thought that was really tough that these boys and girls came to a Bible study at 6 AM. Do you know it became a legendary thing in
the church? Men would come up to me at cocktail parties and say, what have you got going that my son is there at your church because we were just a few blocks from the American school at 6 AM. And I said, well, we're doing this Bible study. And then I began to branch out and had them studying Karl Barth's dogmatics and outline and then C.S. Lewis's Screwtape Letters. I began to, you can do
exposition of it. I'm an expositor of C.S. Lewis too. Helping Lewis to make his own point. Help Karl Barth make his own point. So I love exposition. I do it with books as well as with the Bible. And I got them doing that. And then these fathers would say to me, what have you got? I said, you know, would you like to be in a group? And I started some men's group with guys that were
so busy and then women's group too. The women were easier to get going because they were willing to meet at 10 in the morning. And the men, I got some early morning men's groups because they saw their kids doing it. I said, hey, I want to, and it's funny. I lured them into it. And then they got, and it got carried away. But you have to have a strategy. And one strategy is take advantage of what
you've got going for you and then build a strategy around it. And I'm not, you know, I'll give you a funny line. I'm not against bribing a person to get exposed to the gospel. I'm against bribing for faith. I don't want to bribe somebody to have faith. Then they become the wrong kind of Christian in a way. But I'm not against bribing them to get exposed. And like, I would be in, I'm in favor of bribing
a teenager to go to opera, but pick the right opera. And then say, we're going to have a wonderful time going to dinner afterward or we'll go to a game afterward. But I want you to see La Boheme because I know if they see La Boheme, they will be swept off their feet. Or if they saw Les Miserables, they're going to be literally taken. And so I'm in favor of that. A mother once came to me
in Seattle and said, I want my son to go to the youth group, but he won't go because he said he doesn't know anybody there. And then she said, I've got an idea. Would you have, and then she mentioned our youth pastor's name. Would you might have him call my son, but don't say that I said anything. I said, well, I can't do that. I refuse to do that because that's deceptive. So then she was sad.
So then I said, but I have an idea. Have you ever thought of bribing him to go to the youth group? Say that you'll give him $20 if he goes twice to the youth group. And then I will alert the youth pastor that when he shows up that they'll really be friendly to him because he says he doesn't know anybody and they'll introduce him around. So it'd be make some friends because we had a lot of
schools all represented in our high school group. And she brightened immeasurably that yes, that works. I'll bribe that $20 if you just go to the youth group twice. That's all. And you know, he got hooked because the group turned out they did have some friends. I'm in favor of that. I'm in favor of figuring out clever ways. Like if you go to a church and nobody is interested in Bible study. Get the youth to a 6
AM meeting and the whole church will know about it because nobody's up at 6 AM for a group. And kids will go for that. Serve donuts and stuff like that, but they'll go for it. And then the key though is to get the text going and trust the text to be relevant to the missional setting like it's relevant to the friendly church setting. Now we have questions from everybody. Yeah. Now we want you to
be able to ask your questions and I'm going to ask you to write them down and have them ready and succinct because we only have so much time. I do think we've learned a secret sauce here today though because I was with Earl in Washington, D.C. one time he offered to show me his great file system of his sermons and Eric, where's your notes? Eric has a yellow sheet of paper. This is Earl's. This is
the secret sauce. It's the yellow. I'm sorry, brother. You've got the white paper right here. This is not going to work. No, no, that's right. So this is the most important thing we may get out of this day is the yellow page. And it also has to be with illegible handwriting because I work with Earl regularly and I can't read a thing he writes. So now what questions do you have? And I'm going to start with
one real quick. And it goes to Eric's question which was about this, the topical expositional. And I'm wondering, Earl, if you think it's inappropriate to merge those two. In other words, what you've done today is taken three texts and you do an expository presentation and you've tied them together around this wonderful theme of the joy of teaching through exposition. Is that inappropriate? Is that a wrong use of exposition preaching to build a series around texts that
do legitimately address the topic that you're speaking on? Oh, by all means, you can go for a topic. And I, being a pastor for a long time, I've had people that have said we want you to come to speak at this meeting and we would like you to speak on justice or we want you to speak on the importance of the importance of discipleship training or something that's happening. But then find a text that is legitimately
in that, then you have to make a decision and make sure that the sermon doesn't... But for instance, could you take 52 Sundays in a year and develop a set of series that you will do topically throughout the year but approach each of them expositionally? It's kind of trying to look for what Eric is describing as this, what the audience is becoming accustomed to, what it is they think they need and what it is that you
and many of us believe is what they actually can most benefit from. Well, he mentioned people are interested in family life and how families can... Well, the Bible has so much to say about family and so much advice and counsel that is so healthy and wonderful. And it is contextual. You can see it in every one of Paul's letters. The first part of his letter is theological and usually it includes his prayers for the people. And
then the second half of every letter is ethical. So you've got so much ethics. If you take the latter part of Romans, Chapter 12 on, it's how can we make it in the Roman world today? How can we make it? And he covers every subject, how to relate to strangers, how to relate to within the body of Christ, how to relate to your family. And I think you can do that and it can be very valid
and it can be expositionally with integrity and yet it's covering great themes. Okay, let's get going with your questions now and just raise your hands and we're taping this today so we need the microphone. Harvey Drake with Emerald City Bible Fellowship here in Seattle. Quick question about, let the text speak. When people aren't as involved in searching the text, what's the value or challenge with, tell me what it means to you, Bible studies? What is the
value of what? Tell me what it means to you, Bible studies. Because we have people sit around in a circle and they say, well, what does the text mean to you? I, yes, I think that is a very important question in every small Bible study group. You know, but I go at it several ways. Start with just the questions of the question. Is there something here that bothers? Is there something here that stirs you up? Rather
than to say, what does it mean to you? I kind of say that to last. What stirs you up here? Is there anything that intrigues you here? Where do you think Paul's going? Those kinds of questions that are mild, in my opinion, but they are open the door in a wonderful way for a small group, and you'll be amazed how sometimes the people with the least initiation into, quote, theological language, will come up with the most
intriguing insights. Okay, next question. But I think I'd go that way. Earl, I've asked you this many times in private, but I thought I'd give you a chance to say it in public, or to what extent must one come to terms with the challenges of critical analysis of the scriptures in order to be an expository preacher? Do you have to be a inerrantist, a literist, or can you even be sympathetic to some of the explanations of
Bishop Spong? Well, you know, that is a huge question, but I do have very definite opinions there. I do believe that the help that Lewis and Dorothy Sayers gave me in what they wrote about scripture was very good. Lewis was at core, was interested in what we call literary criticism. What does the text say in its own setting? And that is what exposition is focused on. What does the text say in its own setting? And then
you have to make some decisions. And remember, when I talked about the historical question in the text and behind the text, one of the historical questions behind the text is when was this text written? I didn't just particularly feature that with you today, but when was it written? And some of the challenges, the technical challenges to text have come over when it was written. And I think that's where you need, you as a teacher need to
do your work so that you're satisfied on when it was written. And then of course you're gonna ask these historical goals. Well, what's the goal of this text? What's it after? But when was it written? Who wrote it? What is, and I think once you settle the main technical questions are when it was written. And thankfully for us, the huge weight, the contemporary weight of scholarship has shoved the dates of the New Testament letters earlier and
earlier and earlier. When Schleiermacher wrote what he wrote at the beginning of the 19th century, many people thought that the texts of the New Testament were written in the 300s and 350 and 400. But that was before manuscript research and manuscript archeology was even thought of. And that's why Albert Schweitzer's book is not helpful, The Quest for the Historical Jesus, because he felt that these Gospel of John accounts were written in 300. That changes everything. That
isn't Jesus speaking. It's a community of people in 300 imagining what Jesus would say. Well, you preach that in a far different way. Now, I'm gonna handle Jesus in John 15. He said it and John has recorded it for us because we now know that these texts, the dates get earlier and earlier and earlier. As I told you, I wrote a commentary in Revelation. And even the most conservative scholars of Revelation always felt that the persecution
being mainly addressed there was the Domitian persecution, 95 AD. That makes John is a very, very old man when he writes the book of Revelation. I don't agree with that. And nor does William Foxwell Albright, the greatest archeologist of our time. He wrote a very important monograph that he says, I see no reason for dating any book, this is Albright, any book in the New Testament after 70 AD. Because the destruction of Jerusalem was
such a huge event. Josephus wrote a whole book on it to have it not even mentioned by John in the book of Revelation. It's obvious that it's narrow that Revelation is referring to. That puts it before 70 AD, not 95. Then you interpret it differently. Now, those decisions you do have to do research on yourself and become satisfied and that's why you have to read what scholars have written. And unfortunately, a lot of foolish stuff
was written until the kind of scholarly work has shoved the dates earlier. Now, that doesn't handle all the questions of a guy like Spong or like the Jesus Seminar that decided to vote on what John passages were valid and weren't so that they would give you an approved list and they voted on that. I don't want to go with that. I believe that the texts as they stand in canon need to be taught as part of
canon. That means the early church decided these texts were valid and they're valid. That means I treat John as the author of the book of John. I don't have a Johann community in the second century which now hardly any scholar can hold because it's ironic but the oldest manuscripts we found will be like P46 is before the first century. It's the end of the first century. It's not in the 300s and the church fathers, of course
do all the quoting and they write in the 200s. So no, the dates move back and that in a way is where I would go with the technical questions. Earl, you know, Aristotle said to be persuasive you have to have logic and you have to have integrity and passion. Could you work on the passion a little bit? I'm not sure it's really coming through. Any other questions and by the way, do either of you gentlemen have
any comments on either of these questions? The kind of Bible study, well, what do you think about the text? What do you think about the text? And so forth or this most recent question. One thing I'd like to say back to the words we've been using trick or bribe. I think just maybe the word we should think about is like an appetizer or enhancing because I don't, once you read the Bible you don't have to trick
anybody. I mean, the Bible speaks for itself as you've been teaching and I think our challenge in this culture is because we do want everything topical and we do want everything thematic and quick. When it comes to the Bible, as you have said, I don't feel so much comfortable tricking somebody into it but I so believe that it speaks for itself that if you preach it, no matter what age group or what culture, they're going to
respond to it. I don't think we have to trick anybody. All right, Eric, you got any comments? I guess I'll bring it up again. I don't know if anyone else is interested in this but it seems like it's going two directions. We're getting a smaller church, house church and we're getting larger multi-site. What do you think about someone gathering for worship and seeing a screen, good exposition but it's mediated through a screen. I'd love to
hear your thoughts on that. Yeah, I don't have strong opinions except I really feel that in the church setting itself, I don't want to go through electronic screen. I never use PowerPoint and I use the whiteboard. It bothers some people but I'd rather do that even though no one can read what I write but I would rather do that than have it go through the media when I'm in that living center but people who are watching
in, this is being filmed for us today because we wanted this outstanding videography crew to capture this and capture your questions and capture everything in a live setting and I think that does have great validity. Yes and I think we have to be realistic about that too that in a large setting, it does make things possible. All right, we got another question over here. Errol, point number four where you talked about how the words were heard
by the listeners or the readers. Paul was just a superior communicator and would use the words that the people to whom he was addressing themselves used and was able to evoke a feeling there was emotional as well as intellectual communication. I was wondering if Paul were to write to the church in Seattle, would he use the words beast or beast mode to which contemporary critics might think it without knowing the context, think it were turkey and
turkey with ice cream. You used the words trexo, run and be honored. For example, did Thessalonica have an Olympic athletic tradition in which they heard those words which gave them a special significance? Wow, the word run that he says to the Thessalonians. Well, it is interesting isn't that Thessalonica is in Macedonia and it is exactly where the Olympics were held would be just a few miles south and they would be certainly aware of running. And I
think it is wonderful that he uses the word run and he does use slang expressions. In Philippians, he uses a garbage word for my righteousness was like garbage. And so the RSV translates it off, it translates it refuse. But it's a very crude word that he uses and he decides to throw that into Philippians. It's only used there, nowhere else in the New Testament. It means off scouring or waste. And it's interesting Tolkien picks that up
with Gandalf when he comes to King Theoden, Wormtongue says, what has this storm picker, what does this storm picker come to tell? Which is again a crude word that Tolkien picks up because he knows that Paul used it. So again, that's using a crude word but he doesn't do it very often. He usually uses just ordinary words but certainly run would bring to their mind. I love that. Another question. Yeah, Earl, just getting to that question
of what did it mean to those people then. Are we running into a problem in contemporary society where it's gonna sense that a number of people maybe in an audience, I don't care what those people thought. They weren't human. That they were ancient. Their world is not being taught how they felt what they thought seems to be arrogantly dismissed as though we progressed beyond that. Can you address how you re-energize their world? Well, yeah, that
is a very interesting question. It's the large question that David McCullough is going at when he talks about when you lose the sense of history, then you lose the ability then to really communicate at a deeper level even now. That loss of history. So in a way, don't give into that. When you can show that Paul in writing to the Galatians knows that the Galatians have been infected with a kind of legalism that has now swept
in that unless this Greek man is circumcised like the little Jewish boy on the eighth day of his life, then he can't really fulfill the righteousness of God. So when Paul, now you might say that circumcision issue, it's not an issue today. Well, be careful. There are so many similarities of demands that a religious group will make or one Christian will make of another Christian that if you're really gonna be a Christian, you have to do
this. So in a way, with a little help, you can take the Galatian text and Paul can make it very contemporary to us. Though its specific issue was settled in the Council of Jerusalem, but not really finally because people are still struggling with legalism. But now, isn't it interesting that Paul picks that up in 2 Corinthians in the text I read? He said, if there's a glory in judgment and of the old judgments, but there's a
greater glory in justification. There's a greater glory in grace. So that that's why Paul will use this in, he'll say, if you're going to eat meat, remember there was a big problem, should you eat meat offered to idols? And Jews would say, absolutely not because you shouldn't eat meat anyway, unless it's kosher. So, but Paul will say, no, he finally says it this way in Romans. He says, no, to the meat eaters, meat eat meat to
the glory of God. To the vegetarians, eat vegetables to the glory of God. And now don't bother each other. See, he puts it to a higher level, but those, we're not maybe struggling with that issue today. But the way he does it is universally, that's why I said that contemporary question bridges. What would be bothersome in the first century, but then what would be bothersome now? And watch how Paul kind of navigates that. Rick or Eric,
anything you guys want to add on either of those last questions? Yeah, be sure these questions are to you guys too. Okay, Marty. So my question is, we're focusing on the text, but to what degree do we allow the voice of the Father, the Son, the Spirit? Let the church hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches and the sheep learning to hear the shepherd's voice. So to what degree do we hear the original biblical
authors and to what degree in our preaching are we really acclimatizing our people to learn to hear the voice of God, Father, Son, Spirit? Yeah, well, I think what you're getting at is that the serious attention to Bible study is putting you in a frame of mind where you want to hear God's word, but in the large sense too. You want to hear the Holy Spirit comfort you and assure you. And that's a huge thing in
Paul. I think, for instance, Paul handles all spiritual gifts this way. He handles the whole ministry of the Holy Spirit this way. The whole of it comes to this. Here's how Calvin put it. The Holy Spirit is the bond by which Christ binds us to himself. So that when you, in Bible study, get attached to Jesus Christ and he wins your respect and you put your faith in him, you don't have to worry about anything else.
It's the Holy Spirit who's giving you that confidence to put your weight down on Jesus Christ. And he assures you. And he'll assure each of us in all kinds of different ways. And I think a faithful Bible study gets you ready for that. And then also makes you less judgmental of others who are having a different way of assurance than what you experience. And there's where Paul is a great help. The key is, are you assured?
Are you assured of Jesus Christ? See, has the word sped on and won your respect? And if that's happened, don't ask for anything more. And be grateful. He has done it. And that's what I think Bible study has that kind of clarifying effect. All right, either of you have any final comments before we take our break. I'm gonna address that. So I've thought a little bit about how the word of God functions in the preaching of
the word. And sort of a trinitarian understanding of that. One thing I'll say maybe by way of dismissal is I'm wary of those that will say I didn't prepare this week. I'm just gonna let the Holy Spirit help me speak to the congregation. I think that's a cop out in a sense because God speaks primarily through his word. But that said, so I believe in, and you've taught me well, I get my sermon done by Thursday
at noon. So I'm not cutting corners and then I let it percolate. I need to come back to it Saturday night or it's cold by Sunday morning. So I come back, I take the whole day off, come back to it Saturday night, look at it, go through it again. I found one of the great discoveries for me as a preacher is it's really fun to preach for a living congregation because you go to these texts on
behalf of these people. You don't go just with your own questions. You come with their questions. That's why I don't like the simulcast. I feel like there's a severance between the preacher and the congregation. That said, once all that preparation is done and the preaching moment comes, and I do think it is an event that happens, that's unique when we worship and we preach the word, sometimes what I preach is slightly different from what my manuscript
said. And sometimes in that I see these eyes and I see they didn't get that and I try to rephrase it or I come up with an analogy on the spot. And sometimes I forget something or I leave something out that was supposed to be there. And sometimes I will, I don't know if I can justify this theologically, I'll call that the editorial, the editing of the Holy Spirit. I was not meant to say that this
morning. I thought Saturday night this was gonna happen and Sunday, so I don't use that as an excuse, but I do try to be attentive to the way God is actively leading in that preaching moment. And it's a very, I think a very sacred time. And I feel one of the great joys of being a preacher is it's more exciting to preach a text on behalf of a whole community, more than just individual Bible study for
me. And I sense that when I hear you preach too, I'll tell you. Some final thoughts, Earl. I'm sorry to differ on this point. I do use a PowerPoint on Sundays, but my sermon is done on Tuesday, not Thursday. Tuesday, oh wow. On white paper. On white paper, that's all right. And I've come to find, using still the expositional approach, you can do it in an effective way on a PowerPoint if you make your emphasis on
what the Bible says by what it means. And so it has worked for me, and I'm sure many others that don't wanna tell you that they use PowerPoint, but there's a way to make it work, especially with the culture now, because I had to acclimate to this, because I'm this kind of way, the handwritten way, but my people want to be able to write it down and see it. And in our church, they even take pictures
with their smartphones of the slides. So it's just something I do. All right, now I wanna be really faithful now. One of the reasons I don't use PowerPoint is I'm not good at it. And my son-in-law, Eric, uses PowerPoint, and I've watched, he even has pictures. And now I would probably like yours. So in a way, I still don't like it to be mediated between, with the equipment, but it's partly that I can't do
it. So that may be a fundamental reason. Well, it's been a wonderful morning. We're all gonna be praying for Earl's problem with pride in PowerPoint, and we're all gonna work on learning how to bribe our congregations. We've learned so much already this morning. But we're gonna take a break now. We got a lot of food for thought. There is some food over here. If you arrived late, you do have a table number, and there's plenty of
materials and spaces at the tables. So let's take a break. We'll be back here at about 10:45 and get started with more. Thank you very much.