Commitment #1: Preach God’s Word

Transcript

JR 5
06/12/2022
Commitment #1: Preach God's Word
2 Timothy 4:2
Jesse Randolph


This really is a momentous day, it's a big day. I'm certainly feeling the weight of it, I'm sure there are many of you who are aware of the weight of it because what we all recognize is that you have all been used to hearing the same voice, the voice of Gil Rugh for many years, for many decades, and in many cases for many generations. Since September of 1969, that was just two months, by the way, after our country put a man on the moon; that was just one month after Woodstock, not that any of you were there; back when gas prices were in the neighborhood of 34 cents a gallon and back when Joe Namath was on the verge of taking the New York Jets on an improbable run to become champions in Super Bowl IV. Going all the way back to those events you have listened to Gil faithfully explain and expound the Scriptures week over week, year over year, decade over decade. Gil's preaching ministry spanned the presidencies of Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden. His longevity is incredible and his faithfulness is to be commended. In fact if there is a place to applaud, this would be the time.

Now over the course of these past many years and decades undoubtedly many of you have gone through various changes and transitions in your life. For some of you maybe that meant a health challenge, a cancer diagnosis or chemo, or a serious car accident; for some of you that meant a family related challenge, the loss of a sibling or a parent or a brother or sister way too soon; the loss of a spouse to death or divorce; the unique griefs associated with the departure of a wayward child. For some of you that meant going through a job loss or a job change or some other period of economic uncertainty. Of course many of you were born during Gil's ministry here, and better yet many of you were born again during that time, for which we say, Praise the Lord. But since September of 1969 whatever was going on in the world, whatever was going on in your lives, whatever was going on out there, no matter how high a high you were riding or how low a valley you were walking through, you knew that you could always come here to 1000 South 84th Street, Lincoln, Nebraska, and know that Bibles would be open, the Word of God would be proclaimed, and the truths of Scripture would be unveiled, unfurled to serve as that source of hope and encouragement and truth and clarity to get you through another day, to get you through another week, to get you through another year, to get you through another time of subzero temperatures, and to get you through another season, especially recently, of Nebraska football.

Now I've had lots of time to think about this next moment in this sermon, this moment where I would transition from commenting on what the Lord has been so faithful to do through the ministry of our brother Gil over all these years to now laying out my commitments to you as I take responsibility for this pulpit, in this church, in this place, with this history. I thought of all the creative and catchy things I could say, but ultimately where I landed was the conclusion that the best thing I can do in this important moment is simply to pledge to you that so long as I am up here, however many years the Lord gives me behind this sacred desk, I am going to do my very best through a prayed-up week of study and submission to the Holy Spirit to faithfully proclaim the riches of God's Word. That's it, that's the transition, that's the passing of the baton. Gil preached the Word, I intend to preach the Word. Next man up.

Now over my next four sermons this morning and this evening and then next Sunday morning and next Sunday evening, I'm going to lay out for you four commitments I will be making to you as your new senior pastor. This evening we're going to look at my commitment to being a pastor who pastors God's people, next Sunday morning we're going to look at my commitment to being a pastor who proclaims God's Gospel, and then next Sunday evening we'll look at my commitment to being a pastor who protects God's flock. But everything I do as your new senior pastor ultimately comes down to what I'm going to preach on this morning. My first commitment to you, my primary commitment to you, my chief commitment to you is that I will preach God's Word.

Turn with me in your Bibles if you would to 2 Timothy 4, 2 Timothy 4. No doubt this is a familiar section of Scripture to most of you, in fact Dr. Bargas so helpfully and faithfully charged me through this passage last Sunday. This is familiar to many of us, if not most of us, but there is also no doubt in my mind that this is the best place for me to formally begin my preaching ministry here at Indian Hills. Now we know that 2 Timothy is the last letter that Paul wrote, the last inspired letter that Paul wrote. And we also know that chapter 4 is the last chapter of the last letter that Paul wrote, so these are kind of like Paul's famous last words, you could say. Paul wrote this letter somewhere around 66 or 67 A.D., he wrote this letter from a dark, dank dungeon, a prison cell in Rome. And think about that—darkness and dankness, a dungeon was his reward for proclaiming that the light of the world had come into the world. Twist of irony to that. And as Paul is writing what we know here as 2 Timothy 4, he is nearing the end. The flames of persecution are licking nearer and nearer, he is getting ever closer to meeting the executioner's blade, he knows he is about to die. And Paul, as the name of this letter indicates, is writing to Timothy, this young pastor, Paul's child in the faith who is serving the Lord in Ephesus.

Now earlier in this letter, in the earlier chapters of the letter Paul has been imploring Timothy to live resolved in the faith, to live resolved for the faith. In 2 Timothy 1:8 Paul tells Timothy “Join with me in suffering for the Gospel according to the power of God.” In 2 Timothy 1:14 Paul tells Timothy, “Guard, through the Holy Spirit who dwells in us, the treasure which has been entrusted to you.” He tells Timothy in 2 Timothy 3:14 to “continue in the things that you have learned and become convinced of.” And then when we get to the final chapter of this letter, 2 Timothy 4, we see Paul's priority structure—his eternity mindedness, his resolve not to live for present day realities but rather future realities—come into sharp focus, come into full color. We see this in 2 Timothy 4:1 where Paul says, “I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom.” We see this a little bit later in chapter 4 verse 8, this future mindedness. Verse 8, “In the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing.” We see this heavenly mindedness, this eternity mindedness also in verse 18 of chapter 4, “The Lord will rescue me,” Paul says, “from every evil deed, and will bring me safely to His heavenly kingdom. To Him be the glory forever and ever. Amen.”

So with the end of his earthly pilgrimage approaching and with eternity in the future kingdom of Christ coming more sharply into focus in Paul's mind, Paul charges Timothy with these familiar words. Read with me, if you would, 2 Timothy 4, we're going to go verses 1-5 as we start our time together. 2 Timothy 4:1, “I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His
appearing and His kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths. But you, be sober in all things, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.”

There is so much here in the five verses that I have just read. Really as a unit these verses give a comprehensive A to Z lesson on the subject of pastoral ministry. In fact in just those five verses, we read right through them, but we see nine imperative statements. Preach the Word, verse 2. Be ready, reprove, rebuke, exhort—there are five of them all in verse 2. And then four in verse 5—be sober, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. Nine imperatives, five verses, packing quite the punch. But each one of those imperatival statements ultimately flows out of the central imperative in this section, the hub of the wheel, as it were, which is where Paul tells Timothy in 2 Timothy 4:2 to “preach the Word,” ‘keryxon ton logon,’ preach the Word. Each of the other imperatives in this section of 2 Timothy 4 ultimately points back to that very command to “preach the Word.”

So this morning we're going to lock in on those three key words from Paul to Timothy in verse 2 to “preach the Word.” Paul instructed Timothy here to preach the Word, and then Paul's apostolic protege in the faith, that charge to him now echoes down through the corridors of church history to all future ministers of the Gospel, to all future shepherds of God's flock, to all future pastors of God's people. Paul's charge to Timothy there in Ephesus applied certainly to Timothy, it also applied to Gil here in Lincoln, and it applies to yours truly as I now stand before you. So my commitment again to you here this morning, the commitment I must give you before I make any other commitments to you is that I will be a pastor by God's help and with God's grace who preaches the Word. So this is not this morning even a one-verse sermon, this is a three-word sermon—preach the Word. We're going to spend all of our time this morning unpacking the meaning and the significance of each of those three words as we plumb the depths of my responsibility to you as I walk up here each and every Sunday on a week over week basis to preach the Word.

I'm actually going to go in reverse order this morning as I flesh out the meaning of these three words, preach the word. You'll see the method to my madness later, Lord willing. We're going to start with the word, ‘Word.’ What I have been called to do as recognized by the elders of this church is to preach the Word. Am I up here to preach my reflections and how my week has been going? Am I up here to minister my opinions to you on how you might live a more prosperous and joyful life? Am I up here to be a political pundit or a personable pontificator? No, no, no. I am here, I have been called by this church, by God, through the prayers and the wisdom and the discernment of the elders of this church to preach the Word. Now the word here, logon in Greek, refers to the Scriptures. We have to remember that Paul at this time wasn't writing in chapters and verses as he wrote what the Holy Spirit gave him and what we now know as the Bible. He wasn't writing in chapters and verses; chapters and verses came many, many centuries after this.

So what we need to do is trace Paul's logic just back a few verses into 2 Timothy 3 where we see his immediately preceding thoughts, what precedes chapter 4. In fact if we look up at 2 Timothy 3:16 we see the Word referred to as Scripture, “All Scripture is inspired by God.” If we go up even one more verse to verse 15 we see the Word referred to as the sacred writings. Paul reminds Timothy “that from childhood you have known the sacred writings.” See to Paul in this setting these words are interchangeable. The sacred writings are the Scripture and the Word refers to both the sacred writings and the Scripture, both the Old Testament scriptures and the New Testament scriptures. You may remember that at this point there were in fact already New Testament writings that were being referred to as Scripture by some of the New Testament authors. They were already considered deemed on par with preexisting Old Testament revelation. For instance in 2 Peter 3:14-16, Peter refers to Paul's writings as Scripture. So when we see the word ‘Word’ here (this is going to be confusing) when Paul refers to the Word here, he is referring to the entire inscripturated written revelation of God, whether that written revelation had already been given at the time that Paul wrote these letters and these words to Timothy or if that written revelation was later to come. For instance in the writings of John as he was exiled on Patmos and received his vision from the ascended Lord Jesus in the book that we now know as the book of Revelation. The point is that the Bible that you now hold in your hands, or for some of you who have it on your screens, what the word ‘Word’ speaks of here in 2 Timothy 4:2 is not just any word, it's the Word of God.

Now for some of you what I am about to explain is something that you have known for quite some time. You are mature in the faith, you've been in church, you've heard 2 Timothy sermons before and you know the drill. But there might be some of you here who are newer this morning who might need that explanation of why we as Christians are so confident that what we hold in our hands is in fact the Word of God. So I'm going to spend some time this morning unpacking why we hold the Bible with the regard that we do, why the Bible gets center stage in our worship here at church, not just here at church but in our lives as the Word of God, this Word that I am now responsible for preaching. First of all we have to consider what the Bible itself says about its origins in God, its source being God. In fact if you would flip over to 1 Thessalonians 2:13, which says, “For this reason we also constantly thank God that when you received the Word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the Word of God.” Friends, no matter how many National Geographic or Time magazine covers you see on shelves at grocery stores around Easter or Christmas, no matter how vociferously Dan Brown tried to deny the fact in “The Da Vinci Code,” no matter how many amateur theologians exist on YouTube or social media who try to deny it, the Bible is not the creation of man, the Bible is not the product of man. 1 Thessalonians 2:13 says it is “not the word of men.” If the Bible were simply the word of men, maybe we would be justified in treating it merely as a series of opinions or suggestions or fables or myths. We could treat the Bible, if that were the case, as “Aesop's Fables” or “King Arthur's Tales” or “Harry Potter.” But that's not what the Bible teaches; the Bible teaches us plainly and clearly that it is God's Word. “You accepted it not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the Word of God.” When the Bible speaks, God speaks. As one commentator has said, “If you want to hear God speak, read the Bible; if you want to hear God speak audibly, read your Bible out loud.”

Here is a second reason why we uphold the Bible as we do. It's the process by which God gave us His Word. That is yet further evidence that this book truly is from God. If you would, turn with me to 2 Peter 1 to see some evidence, scriptural evidence, of this affirming evidence of the process by which we received the Word of God from God. 2 Peter 1:20, Peter here says under the direction of the Holy Spirit, “But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit, spoke from God.” There are 66 books in the Bible, representing 40 different authors, spanning 3 different continents, speaking 3 different languages—Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic. And the writings that comprise the canon of Scripture--as men were moved by the Holy Spirit, as Peter says here--were penned over the span of some 1500 years. The human authors of Scripture included not just scholastics and theologians. No, the human authors of Scripture included shepherds, a military general, fishermen, prophets, kings, a priest. Not only does the Bible span multiple centuries, written by multiple Spirit-directed men, representing many different trades and vocations. But the Bible also spans and represents several different literary genres including letters and laws and history and poetry and wisdom and prophecy.

And despite being pieced together from all these different people and all these different ages and all these different languages and all these different parts of the world, the Bible essentially tells one story. It tells the story of reality, it tells the story of how we got here, it tells the story of who put us here, it tells the story and explains how things were and were supposed to be in a pre-fall world. It explains the fall and the curse of sin, which in turn explains our world and why it is the way it is today. It explains our sin nature as humans and why that sin nature, that sin problem, separates us from our Creator. It explains the solution that God has provided to reconcile sinners like us to Himself, the gospel of grace which is mediated through God the Son, Jesus Christ. In fact the Scriptures say in 2 Timothy 3:15 that the Scriptures give us “the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.” So assuming we have put our faith in Christ, the Bible also gives us the principles that God wants us to live by, what we are to pursue, what we are to avoid in all areas of our lives as we live under the banner of the lordship of Jesus Christ. The Bible tells God's people how to pursue holiness, how to pursue obedience to God, how to identify false teaching, how to live in relationships with other believers, how to share the Gospel with nonbelievers, how to relate to our parents and our children and our spouse, how to relate to the government, to employers and to employees, how to function in the church, how to be wise financial stewards, how to be ready for the rapture of the church, the one day return of our Savior and King and the inauguration, the ushering in of His earthly millennial reign and eventually the eternal state in the new heavens and the new earth.

Think about this, God wasn't required to do any of it, God wasn't required to create the world. He would be no less loving had He chosen not to create the world. God wasn't required to create us. Again, He would be no less loving if He chose not to create us. But He did. Then He not only did that, but He communicated to His people, He communicated audibly to the prophets of old—Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and so on. He then communicated to the world through His Son, that's Hebrews 1:1-2, “God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world.” And now in our day having communicated through His Son, having communicated through His apostles and with the death of the last apostle, John, having closed the canon of Scripture, He now communicates to us most clearly through His Word.

All of this being so, knowing that there is this good and sovereign God who communicates to us in our generation most directly and clearly through His Word, knowing that God's Word not only highlights who we once were but now who we are in Christ and what we can expect and anticipate in terms of things yet to come, what else would we want to hear each and every Sunday as some man gets up here to unpack this book? What else would we want to hear but from God Himself as a preacher comes to preach?

So we've looked at the self-attestation of Scripture, meaning what God Himself has said about Scripture. We've looked at the process by which Scripture was given to us by God, that's 2 Peter 1. Next we need to consider the fact that Scripture, because it is sourced in God, because its origin is God, necessarily is without error. That's 2 Timothy 3. You can flip over back to 2 Timothy 3:16-17, these verses sort of back into where we're going to be for the rest of our time today. 2 Timothy 3: 16-17, “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.” Now the word ‘inspired’ here does not describe some sort of passive or reactive process, the way that we usually think of the term. Like, I was inspired by that artist's rendering of the sunset, or I was inspired by the example of my friend who read more books this year than he read last year, or that movie was inspired by true events. That's not the word ‘inspired’ here. No, the word inspired here in Greek is ‘theopneustos’ which literally means ‘God-breathed.’ God-breathed. The Scriptures in a true sense have been breathed out by God. Every book, every chapter, every verse, every word, every punctuation mark, every letter, every jot, every tittle has been breathed out by God, meaning it was given to us by God. And because Scripture has been breathed out by a perfectly holy, perfectly righteous, perfectly truthful “God who cannot lie,” Titus 1:2, it contains absolute truth. There are no errors in this book, makes no mistake. It is inerrant. There are no flaws in this book. It is perfect. Psalm 19:7 says, “The Law of the Lord is perfect.” Your history book is flawed, I guarantee it; your science book undoubtedly tells you things that are inconsistent with Scripture; the internet is plastered with all sorts of fake news. Not the Bible, the Bible doesn't contain fake news. The Bible contains good news and it presents that good news, and everything else it speaks to, perfectly.

So when you go through various low points and challenges and trials in your life as you have in the past many years with Gil manning the pulpit here, what is it that you need most? Is it your own ideas? Is it the pundits on Fox News? Is it Dear Abby or Dr. Phil? Is it a, whatever that feeling is, that digital hit we get when we've been craving to be on our phones when we haven't been on them for 15 or 20 minutes? That's not what we need. No, what we need is God's Word. God's Word cuts and carves and convicts. Hebrews 4:12 says, “The Word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” The Word instructs us and disciplines us and guides us in righteousness; the Word grows us and develops us and matures us as we grow in Christ; the Word corrects our hearts and straightens our paths; the Word equips us; the Word soothes our anxious and restless hearts when we can find no rest or peace out there in the world; the Word is adequate for us, it is sufficient, it lights our path, it charts our course all the way home to glory.

Is this church going to grow back to the size that it was in the days of yesteryear? The days of orange pews and blue carpet? I heard about those. Will people be packing out this parking lot again, fighting for seats and parking spaces? Will we need to develop a real quick church planting strategy because we are bursting at the seams like it is 1979 all over again? I don't know, but what I do know is that growth for growth's sake is not the metric of faithfulness. Faithfulness is measured by a commitment to God and His Word and faithfully proclaiming those truths each and every week. The Bible is God's Word, the Bible is enough, the Bible works, so I'm going to preach it.

So we've looked so far at one word from 2 Timothy 4, the word ‘Word.’ Now we're going to look at the word ‘the.’ Can you tell I was a lawyer in a previous life? Paul tells Timothy to preach the Word. Note that Paul doesn't tell Timothy to pull up a stool and just give a word, just kind of process with people. This isn't open-mic night in Ephesus, this isn't testimony-sharing time, this isn't opinion-sharing time. No, Paul implores Timothy to preach the Word. Note carefully now, God's Word is the Word, the Word. Now to many, what I just said would be deemed fighting words. There might be some who object to that concept. It sounds too exclusive, it sounds too narrow-minded to our proudly open-minded culture, it sounds possibly even arrogant. And that's because our culture doesn't like the word ‘the’ anymore. They don't like the word ‘the,’ because ‘the’ is a definite term, it necessarily whittles down the range of options that are available. Our culture doesn't like definite terms, our culture doesn't like being told that there are fewer and fewer and fewer options all the way down to one option. Just go to the grocery for an example of this. Think about 20-25 years ago, were there that many flavors of chips or soda, forgive me, pop, sitting on the shelves 25 years ago? No.

Well, we especially don't like the idea of narrowing down or whittling or making it a singular truth. We don't like the word ‘the’ when it is linked to the concept of truth. Forget chips, we don't like the word ‘the’ when it applies to truth because if there is a singular truth, the reality is we're going to have to bend our wills and our preferences to that truth and live in light of that truth. See, truth rightly speaking is objective. Always has been, always will be. In fact this past week I looked up some older definitions of that word truth, just to see how previous generations defined the term. Here are a few of them. “A body of real things, events or facts. Here is another one, “the state of being the case.” A third one, “the property of being in accord with fact or reality.” Those are good definitions because they bring out the objective nature of truth. Or consider this statement by the old British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill. He says, “The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end there it is.” Truth is not dependent, truth is not contingent, truth is not conditional, truth simply is. Like Churchill said, “There it is.” But I get it, there has always been that element of society and humanity that questions the idea of there being a singular objective truth. This is not an exclusively 21st century phenomenon. You can go back to the Enlightenment, to the post-Enlightenment, all those philosophers and scholars like Immanuel Kant and Georg Hegel and Soren Kierkegaard and they were routinely challenging the possibility and even the existence of a singular objective truth. You can go back even further, many more centuries to Pontius Pilate, right? Who as he encountered our Lord Jesus Christ immediately before His crucifixion, he asked the God-Man mockingly, “Quid est veritas?” “What is truth?”

Nowadays the very idea of truth has become even more controversial, it has become subjective. Truth is viewed as possessive, as though it belongs to you and it belongs to me or to exist in the eye of the beholder. That's why guys like Deepak Chopra will say things like “I'm here to live my truth.” Or one of my favorite punching bags, Oprah Winfrey, she says things like, “What I know for sure is that you feel real joy in direct proportion to how connected you are to living your truth.” What?! That's complete nonsense. See, truth doesn't change between one person and another person; truth doesn't change between this culture and that culture; truth doesn't change over the centuries. Truth is objective, truth is static, truth is singular, truth transcends you or me, truth transcends today's date, June 12, 2022, truth transcends Indian Hills Community Church. Truth is found ultimately in a Person, the God-Man, Jesus Christ. What does John 14:6 say? He says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by (through) Me.” And that same Person, the God-Man, the truth has declared that the book that we hold in our hands, Scripture, God's holy Word, is truth, John 17:17. And the truth of God's Word doesn't change.

Now that is in stark contrast to the world in which we live. The world is a very turbulent place, the world and the people in it and the places in it are ever changing. Just watch the news. Right? Political upheaval, racial issues, gender issues, health issues. All of it in our day has been stirred up into this confusing amalgamated mess, especially over the last couple of years. And yet sadly in the midst of all this constant change and upheaval that we see all around us, we are seeing more and more so-called preachers apologizing for the truth or distancing themselves from the truth or living actively in disobedience to this truth. Now there are the Joel Osteens of the world that give the who-am-I-to-say language when pressed with the question: will people of other faiths one day face the wrath of God in hell. They are the Francis Chans of the world who are now sidling up to Roman Catholics as though they are brothers and sisters in the Lord. They are the Andy Stanleys of the world who are telling us that we should unhitch the Old Testament from the New because what do we want to do with that anymore. They are the Rick Warrens of the world who are now ordaining women. It goes on and on. Friends, God's Word is truth, God's Word is fixed. Psalm 119:89 says, “Forever, O Lord, Your word is fixed (settled) in the heavens.” And God's Word doesn't bend, it doesn't break, it doesn't change in the face of cultural or societal opposition.

Not only does God's Word not change, God's Word does not compete. God's Word is exclusive. The Bible does not compete with the Koran which was penned multiple centuries after the canon of Scripture was already closed. The Koran is laden with errors and inconsistencies, and it tells multiple, fanciful tales of a grossly immoral man, Muhammed, who inspired a false man-made religion which ever since has been diametrically opposed to the true Gospel of grace. The Bible doesn't compete with the Book of Mormon which derives from a faith that was founded in the 1800s in the lies of a proven swindler, Joseph Smith, which derives supposedly from golden plates or tablets that Smith said he found in upstate New York but magically they disappeared so we have no way to verify that. The Bible doesn't compete with the New World translation, the holy book of the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Watchtower Society, a translation which is provably at odds with the original Greek and Hebrew manuscripts, a translation which was provably done by unqualified and untrained men in a translation which was clearly a man-made effort to fit the Scriptures with that group's aberrant man-made theology. I could go on and on. The point, though, is that these other religious writings, though they do contain words, they are false words. They are harmful words, they are harmful words that if embraced will send a sinner straight to hell. But the Bible, and the Bible alone is God's Word; the Bible, and the Bible alone is the Word.

And tying it all the way back to the main point of our text, 2 Timothy 4:2, and to this message--here at Indian Hills so long as I am behind this pulpit, and just like my predecessor, Lord willing, I will not be preaching politics and popular culture. I will not be preaching ecumenicism and economics. I will not be delivering for you homilies or sermonettes. I'm not going to send you out of here with lighthearted, feel-good, ear-tickling messages. I'm not going to give you a word as in, hey, the Lord gave me a word this week. No, I'm going to give you the Word, I will be preaching the Word, the Scripture, the timeless, inerrant, perfect, unchanging Word of God. Clear enough? All right, let's move on.

Got two words in, one more to go. We've looked at the word ‘Word,’ we've looked at the word ‘the,’ now let's look at the action verb here, the third word, ‘preach.’ What am I called to do with the Word? Called to preach it. That word, ‘kerusson,’ has a very specific derivation in meaning and context. It doesn't mean to whisper, doesn't mean to mutter, it doesn't mean to mumble, it doesn't mean to process or just kind of share my feelings with you, it doesn't mean to talk. It means “to lift up one's voice,” it means “to announce,” it means “to proclaim.” It could even mean “to cry out.” To Timothy this word would have had a very specific reference for him. It would have brought to mind immediately that the imperial herald, that spokesman for the emperor, whose job was to make those public pronouncements in the public square in a very formal and authoritative manner, pronouncements that all within earshot were required to listen to and pronouncements which carried the weight of the emperor's crown, that imperial herald, that messenger, didn't get to select his message, he didn't get to choose his own adventure. No, he was given a specific message to proclaim and he was tasked and charged with proclaiming that very message. And if that messenger, that herald thought that he was just having a kind of oddball-kind of day and he was going to get creative or self-reflective or entertaining with the message that he had been given to give, well, he faced a perilous end because in these days if this herald or this messenger tried to tone down or water down or change the message that he had been commissioned to announce, he could be executed. The imperial messenger had no business messing around with the message he had been commissioned to proclaim.

And so it is with the preacher of God's Word. The preacher doesn't get to choose his message, the preacher doesn't get to make the message all about himself, the preacher doesn't get to come up here and share about how his week went, the preacher doesn't get to exegete the culture, the preacher doesn't get to lace his messages with references to movies or sports in some sort of way to sort of make the Bible relevant for today. The preacher doesn't get to be the center of every story or illustration, the preacher doesn't get to be the court jester or the class clown. No, the preacher has been called to be a dignitary and an ambassador, speaking on behalf of God as a communicator of divine truth. Here's another thing to note, though, and I think it's an important one—the preacher is not called to be a college professor. The worship center is not a lecture hall, the preacher is not there to dryly dump data on people or to merely present a body of facts. No, as Martin Lloyd-Jones once said famously, “Preaching is theology coming through a man who is on fire.” The preacher is there to herald, the preacher is there to proclaim, and if needed, to shout the truth of God's Word.

I'm going to start landing the plane a bit on this message as I'm going to lay out for you a few essential ingredients of a faithful preaching ministry. There will be what I hope will be the marks of my own preaching ministry here at Indian Hills and I'm laying these out for you not because I've arrived. Far from it. I'm laying these out for you because I am asking for prayer, that through your prayers these would mark the kind of man I am for the long haul.

#1 is piety. I do alliterate so I've used the word piety. What I really mean is holiness. As a man called to the ministry, as a man called to preach, I am a man who has been called to and a man who is committed to holy living. If I am not devoted to the cultivation of personal holiness and growing in my walk with the Lord, in growing in my relationship with God, in growing in my relationship with my wife, in growing in my relationship with each of my children, in growing in my relationship with each of the elders of this church and the leaders of this church and the body of believers, then I have nothing to say. You can tell me to pack my own van this time and move back to the Golden State. No, as a preacher I have to be, I must be, doggedly devoted to the pursuit of personal holiness before I have anything to say to any of you up here. That's what Paul said to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:21, he says, “Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself from these things, he will be a vessel for honor, sanctified, useful to the Master, prepared for every good work.” He offered a similar sentiment in 1 Corinthians 9:27. Paul there says, “I discipline my body and make it my slave, so that, after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified.” In both of these passages Paul is highlighting how essential it is that the preacher of God's Word be committed to the pursuit of personal holiness.

One man who got this concept was the so-called prince of preachers, Charles Spurgeon. He said, “We have all heard of the story of the man who preached so well and lived so badly that when he was in the pulpit everybody said he ought never to come out again. And when he was out of it, they all declared he ought never to enter it again. We do not trust those persons who have two faces, nor will men believe in those whose verbal and practical testimonies are contradictory. True ministers are always ministers.” Spurgeon was right. Another one who got it right was Robert Murray M'Cheyne who famously said, “The greatest need of my people is my personal holiness.” So again, just pray for me. There is a certain sized target that goes on the back of the man who gets up every week and proclaims God's Word. So I ask that you pray for me, pray for holiness and growth in the Lord. So that's piety or holiness.

The next ingredient of a faithful preaching ministry is preparation. I've had a lot of people ask if I play golf. The answer is no. It's not that I don't enjoy a good walk spoiled, it's just that I'm not any good. I'm just not any good and it costs too much money and it makes me angry and it ruins my witness. But what it really comes down to for me is time. I need to lead my family, I need to study the Scriptures, I need to prepare for you two sermons every week, and I need to otherwise shepherd the flock of God that He has allotted to my and the care of the elders here. I bring that up not at all to dog on those of you who play golf. This is not an anti-golf message, I'm not against golf. Instead I bring this up to showcase my own seriousness about preparing diligently in the study, to make sure I am preparing a full meal for you both in the morning and in the evening services. That starts with prayer, praying over the text, praying through the text, praying for clarity of thought as I unpack the single meaning of the text, praying for clarity of expression as I get ready to preach the text. Then it moves to exegesis which is grounded in a commitment to sound principles of biblical interpretation, what we call hermeneutics, a literal, grammatical, historical hermeneutic. That exegetical process for me involves reading the text over and over, picking out of the text certain observations from the original languages and then drilling down to find the original author's intent, what he intended to convey to his original audience, and what is the eternal truth that we can take home for us today. It's only after I have done that work, by the way, that I actually get to this process of the sermon crafting process, where I start to write out what I would like to say from that text, and the sermon editing process, and what I am doing right now, the sermon delivery process. With the Lord's help I'll be doing this each of my functioning years, Lord willing, for many years to come. Praying, studying, preparing, delivering. I know the running joke is pastors only work one day a week. My response always to that is, not the called ones.

The next ingredient of a faithful preaching ministry is pressing. So it's piety, it's preparation and it's pressing. If you haven't noticed already, you are going to hear very few sermons from me in which I simply read through the text and provide a few explanatory comments and then send you off to lunch. You will be well taught if I'm doing my job faithfully each and every week; we will go deep into the text; we will dive deep into doctrine and to finer points of theology. Absolutely. That's what I'm giving my life to. But fundamentally I'm not a college lecturer; I'm not a museum curator, sort of pointing out little interesting things as we pass through the hallways; I am not a tour guide. I'm a preacher, I'm a herald, I'm a proclaimer of God's Word. That's how He has wired me and made me and preachers speak not only of Christ, we speak for Christ. We're not mere advocates, building our case. No, we are witnesses saying, thus saith the Lord. That means practically you are going to hear me frequently shift from more of the indicative third person tone, something like what was the author here and being moved by the Holy Spirit communicating to his original audience. We'll do that, absolutely, but you'll hear me shift from time to time to that imperative first person or second person plural tone, as in what are we going to do in light of the truth that God has given us in His Word. Or sometimes I might even take my finger and point at you and say, what are you going to do in light of what God has revealed to us in His timeless and perfect Word. That means there are going to be times where I get in your business, where I meddle a little bit, where I step on some toes. If I'm doing my job right, there are going to be times where you are going to feel pinched with conviction as I exhort you and appeal to you and plead with you. That's all part of the blessed task of preaching, not only a task under which you come under conviction, but I do. Jesus has been beating me up all week in the study.

So my commitment to you, friends, is to preach the Word, my commitment to you is to bring the book week in and week out, in season and out of season, when I have brown hair, when I have gray hair, when I have some hair, when I have no hair. My request of you is, please, that you pray for me, you pray for me as I go through that process of study and preparation and proclamation each week. I can't do it without the power of God working through me, I'm fully aware of that. But my call on you also is that you be people who not only take in God's Word and take down notes and listen attentively and be polite every Sunday as I go on and on and on, I ask that you be a people who do God's Word, who live God's Word, who practice what is being preached from this pulpit. I ask that you be those James 1:22 people who are committed to not only be hearers of the Word and thus deceiving yourselves, but doers of the Word. I implore you to be like Ezra in Ezra 7:10 who had set his heart to study the Law of the Lord, yes, but also to practice it, to be like the author of Psalm 119 who says he treasured God's Word in his heart that he wouldn't sin against Him.

Well, in my first day of seminary many years ago, during orientation with John MacArthur, I'll never forget it, he stood up and read this quote to us from an old pastor on the occasion of a younger pastor taking on a newer ministry post. And I filed it away and I remember thinking to myself, if the Lord ever allows me to preach God's Word, I'm going to use that early on in a sermon like this with a new body that I'm called to lead and shepherd and teach. I thought this quote would really befit the occasion of my starting my ministry from this pulpit here at Indian Hills. It's a longer quote, so bear with me and we're going to close in just a few minutes. Again, older pastor to younger pastor as the younger pastor is being installed. It says, “Fling him into his office, tear the office sign from the door, nail on the sign, 'Study'. Take him off the mailing list. Lock him up with his books and his typewriter and his Bible. Slam him down on his knees before texts and broken hearts and the flick of lives in a superficial flock and before a holy God. Force him to be the one man in our surfeited communities who knows about God. Throw him into the ring to box with God until he learns how short his arms are. Engage him to wrestle with God all the night through and let him come out only when he is bruised and beaten into a blessing.

“Shut his mouth forever spouting remarks and stop his tongue forever tripping lightly over every nonessential. Require him to have something to say before he dares break the silence, and bend his knees in the lonesome valley. Burn his eyes with weary study. Wreck his emotional poise with worry for God, and make him exchange his pious stance for a humble walk with God and man. Make him spend and be spent for the glory of God. Rip out his telephone. Burn up his ecclesiastical success sheets. Put water in his gas tank.

“Give him a Bible and tie him to the pulpit and make him preach the Word of the living God. Test him, quiz him, examine him, humiliate him for his ignorance of things divine. Shame him for his good comprehension of finances, batting averages and political infighting. Laugh at his frustrated effort to play psychiatrist. Form a choir and raise a chant and haunt him with it night and day, 'Sir we would see Jesus.'

“And at long last he dares assay the pulpit, ask him if he has a word from God. If he does not, then dismiss him. Tell him you can read the morning paper and digest the television commentaries and think through the day's superficial problems and manage the community's weary drives and bless the assorted baked potatoes and green beans better than he can.

“Command him not to come back until he has read and reread, written and rewritten, until he can stand up worn and forlorn and say, 'Thus saith the Lord.' Break him across the board of his ill-gotten popularity. Smack him hard with his own prestige. Corner him with questions about God. Cover him with demands for celestial wisdom and give him no escape until he is back against the wall of the Word. And sit down before him and listen to the only word he has left—God's Word.

“Let him be totally ignorant of the down-the-street gossip, but give him a chapter and order him to walk around on it, camp on it, sup with it, and come at last to speak it backward and forward until all he says about it rings with the truth of eternity. And when he is burned out by the flaming Word, when he is consumed at last by the fiery grace blazing through him, and when he is privileged to translate the truth of God to men and finally transferred from earth to heaven, then bury him gently and blow a muted trumpet and lay him down softly. Place a two-edged sword in his coffin and raise the tomb triumphant, for he was a brave soldier of the Word, and ere he died he had become a man of God.”

I get a lot of questions in this role, this new role. What are you going to change? Are you going to do something about this new carpet? What's it like replacing Gil? Are you nervous? I don't know about any of that. I can assure you, I just want to be faithful, I want to live up to my high calling as a pastor, as a preacher, as a husband, as a father. And I want to be buried somewhere here in Lincoln with my Bible in my casket, a brave soldier of the Word, succeeded by the next man and very soon to be forgotten. Martyn Lloyd-Jones said that “the most urgent need in the Christian church today is true preaching; and as it is the greatest and the most urgent need in the Church, it is the greatest need of the world also.” I would agree. Praise the Lord that Indian Hills is a church that is and has been faithfully committed to the preaching of God's Word, line upon line, verse upon verse. Praise God for the faithful pulpit ministry of this church which has fed the flock of God with a full meal from the Word and benefited so many Christians, not only the ones in this room but all over Lincoln now and all over the world. My plan, my aim, is simply to continue on with that legacy, to step into the stream that Gil has been faithfully navigating all these years and to keep Scripture enthroned in its place of prominence on top of this pulpit. My plan is to preach the Word, pray that I would.

Would you pray with me? Our great God and Father, we again thank You for this morning, our time in worship, our time in Your Word. I personally want to thank You for the faithful ministry of Gil and all the leaders for all these decades from behind this pulpit in this building as the Word has been unfurled and unleashed and proclaimed, lives have been transformed, souls have been saved, saints have been sanctified and ready for glory. God, help me by the power of Your Spirit and with Your power through the prayers of Your people and the support of this flock to be a man who similarly preaches the Word in season and out of season, faithfully, either until You call me home or until You come to get Your church. We love You and thank You for this day, we praise You for these truths from 2 Timothy 4, we ask that You would continue to find us faithful when You rapture us and take us home to be with You. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.