A deeply encouraging message on preaching

I have finally a new mentor who isn't already with the Lord.  Alistair Begg is his name.  May God bless his ministry.  For many years, my mentors were men in my own church who cared deeply for preaching the Word.  Now they have all become too preoccupied with building churches to show the same interest in the preaching of the Word or mentoring those who are called to do it.


Much of what Alistair Begg preaches is addressed to preachers. Thanks be to God!  I need this kind of preaching. The last 9 weeks I have not preached at all.  My family no longer wants to worship in our house church, as we have done for the last 8 years, but to attend a local church where they can be with other Christians and grow in a community.  I don't blame them at all.  This is what even the Lord wants for them and me, I am sure.  Why?  Why does God not make my church planting successful?

In the particular message I'm speaking of, "God's Revelation", AB speaks to me and all who preach, answering this very excellent question.  How long I've waited to hear this!  Thank you dear brother Alistair.

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The message begins with a reading of Isaiah 66:1-13, esp. v.2b [RSV]:

But this is the man to whom I will look, he that is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles at my word.

Earl of Rochester, on parenting: "Before I got married I had six theories about raising children. Now I have six children and no theories."   Preaching is similar.

V.1: The earth is my footstool.  "Where is the house you will build for me?"

How we like to compare our church buildings with one another's.
Acts 17:24 - Paul - God doesn't dwell in buildings made by hands.
God doesn't gaze on our buildings, but on his servant, esp. on a particular kind of servant, one with these three qualities, one who is:

• humble
• contrite in spirit
• trembles at my word

Humility: The lowest place for you, God, I am prepared to take.  As the hymn, So Send I You, so rarely sung today,

So Send I you to suffer unrewarded,
To die dear desires, self-will resign.

Contrition:  means contrite in spirit, essentially "crippled", like Mephibosheth.
Weakness rather than strength is esteemed by God.Not external humble appearances, but on the inside.  Some appear humble but aren't.
Has time fashioned in us the idea of the expert, of the powerful, of  "We've Got IT!"

Two dangers in going to preach: 

1. believing no one is interested in what we'll say, 
2. believing everyone is intensely interested in what we'll say.

Both strategies are from the devil and neutralize and paralyze and diminish effectiveness.
Examples of humble preachers:

• Is 6, contrition illustrated by Isaiah: where the spirit sears Isaiah's lips, and he says, "Here am I, send me."  He said it very humbly, "Would I do?  I'm willing."  
• Jeremiah was told, "Do not say, `I am only a youth.'"  Marked by sensitivity, "Trembles at my word".
• Also Ezra in Ezra 9:3,4, 

Then everyone who trembled at the words of the God of Israel assembled to me, because of the transgression of those who had been carried away captive, and I sat astonished until the evening sacrifice.

• John the Baptist:  "I am only a voice of one calling in the desert."

Often the gifts we have are easily the occasions of our sin:  Leadership which becomes autocratic and useless;  Ability with language ->  Self-aggrandizing and critical; Ability to move people -> in the wrong direction.
The prophets are known for words. But Isaiah said, "I am a man of unclean lips"= his greatest usefulness was the potential for his greatest sin (i.e. pride).

Contrite = ack. our INabilities, rather than heralding our great Abilities (imagined or real)
Our culture urges us to boast of our strength and ability.

We feel jealous of those who have "made it", esp. among triumphalists ("Many, millions").  It's tough when you know you're not that good, stuck with people who are convinced they are good because of their success.

People were not impressed with Paul.  "I think he was trembling. We need someone better. Demas has been doing well!"

I was never picked to preach at London Bible College. The mixture of emotions were driving by pure, basic jealousy.  These are destructive emotions.

Sensitivity = Trembles at my word.
Waiting for my future wife's letters, setting them down to anticipate what had been written, waiting before reading.  I trembled at the prospect of reading them!  We become so familiar that we lose sensitivity.  Familiarity, able in it, able to preach from it:  These are not the test.  The test is: Am I sensitized to it.

The way scriptures are read publicly by an individual says a lot about the view of scripture which they hold. They seem to be making it up as they read, carelessly skipping things, as if we believe God had just inspired the ideas but not the words themselves.  A casual, flippant approach isn't trembling sensitivity.

I fail in every one of the three parts of the test.  V2 describes who I aspire to be, but am not, the person I need to be, the person by God's grace I may be.  Not only is this an exam, but an encouragement.

We won't be a footnote in history.  Looking at those who are apparently successful, we feel like we're at the bottom of the pile. We need to remember that God's priority is the humble, contrite, trembling servant. I can attempt it, with God's enabling, and those who pray for us.  We differ in our abilities. A PhD isn't for everyone; but we may and must look to be humble, contrite, trembling (HCT).

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I know God hasn't failed in sending me here to Virginia.  But as for the church I came to plant, I'll have to call that a failure on my part. I only have built in vain. But God has done what He set out to do here...


In this sermon I've found out what it was:  To remove the dross from me, to make me humble, contrite and to make me tremble before His word.  It's not about the ministry or church or even saving lives. God's work is the business of transforming us into His image, restoring us to be His humble and contrite servants, not making us great, but making His Name great.

Lord, thank you for this sermon.  Please help me to forget all that I have done for you, and dwell on daily and continually all that you have done for me.  Lord, I am so tired of being ineffective. But it is my own fault, for hanging on to my pride and self-reliant mentality. Please deliver me from the pride, and make me humble, contrite, trembling at your word.  I am of no use, but here am I, send me, so that it may be seen plainly that YOU use the weak and useless ones to shame the able and proud.

2012 Key Verse Revisited: 2 Timothy 4:2

2 Timothy 4:2 

κήρυξον τὸν λόγον, ἐπίστηθι εὐκαίρως ἀκαίρως, ἔλεγξον, ἐπιτίμησον, παρακάλεσον, ἐν πάσῃ μακροθυμίᾳ καὶ διδαχῇ.

Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine. [NKJV]

Paul’s command to Timothy, amid all the commands, rings predominant.  Here was the Main Thing, that he must focus upon.  “Preach the word.”  It cannot be secondary. 

Yet without prayer, who can preach, for “who is sufficient for these things?” [2Cor 2:16]  Without the love of Christ toward those who are lost, who will listen to the preacher?  We must grow in these as we go, not wait until we old and mature before daring out into the deep water.  Who knows but what, even lacking heart and soul for the lost, God may use our simple obedience to his command.   Could I shed broken-hearted tears night and day for the lost, would that make me sufficient for the work of God?   If, with mustard seed faith, mountains can be moved, perhaps hearts may also be moved by mustard seed love when God’s living Word is proclaimed in it.  

Clearly, it is His Word that gives life, not my prepared sermon or inspired wit. And it is His love that reaches them, not my bowels of mercy. Of course, I will not bother to preach at all if I have no love, and it will have no power.  As Paul stresses elsewhere, without love, I am but a sounding brass or clanging cymbal. No matter what power of persuasion I may have, without love, I am nothing.

The thing that made Timothy so valuable was that he really cared, like Paul, for the welfare of God’s people.   Love such as this is not a gift.  It is the fruit of the Holy Spirit.  In Christian preaching  then, as in being a true Christian at all, we are dependent entirely upon the work of the Holy Spirit, and I think, in desperate need of prayer for this outpouring.

Lord, please pour out your Spirit on this empty, noisy brass vessel.  Fill me till I will not make so much noise, but overflow to others, especially my family, my father and mother, my sons Josh and Matthew, my daughter Sadie, and my precious bride Christine, then to my friends and to the people of UVa and Charlottesville.  Lord, I am despairing of ever preaching at all. After so much time I still show no fruit, no power, no changed lives, no glory, no crown.  Please refresh me in this short sabbatical from preaching, that I may draw closer to You, O Savior, and cling to your words of promise, and receive your Holy Spirit. Lord, take all, but take not your Holy Spirit from me.  Fill me and anoint me to reach this generation for you, O King, O glorious King of Power and Wisdom.  Lord Jesus Christ, King of Kings, take the throne in my life now. Amen.

The Looming (which rhymes with Chooming*) Disaster

Today a dear friend who grew up in Collins, and who keeps me apprised of interesting news from all quarters, sent me this story by a Mississippi journalist who videoed a high-speed collision near Collins, Mississippi.



It is quite unnerving to see two drivers collide, hearing the shock in the words of the ones who recorded it, watching the many who "dodged the bullet", knowing this could happen to me also on a highway in my town, and witnessing the poor victim completely without warning in the jaws of Disaster, then, to top it all, learning (in the story) that the perpetrator doesn't remember the event whatsoever.  The safety belts and air-bags saved the victim, her daughter and the other driver's lives---unless like me you believe that God alone decides who will survive another day.

My friend also sent me an interesting article about our Nation's current Leader, who apparently smoked a whole lot of marijuana in his not so distant youth.  The article cited a blog at United Liberty about a book that details these youthful escapades, whereupon the writer comments,

Normally I would say that this is all water under the bridge, but a comment by our illustrious Choomer-in-Chief this week causes me to wonder if maybe the stress of the job isn’t causing him to resume his old habits ...   Specifically, in a ... press conference Friday, while discussing the economy, he declared that “the private sector is doing just fine.” Those aren’t the words of a sober person.

Taken back-to-back, these two (seemingly unrelated) stories struck me as a scary, though not quite prophetic, picture of the person who imagines he is at the wheel and in control the world and its economy.

David's Desire to Build a Temple

Why was it "in David's heart" to build a temple?  2Chron. 6:8,9:

But the Lord said to my father David, 'Whereas it was in your heart to build a temple for My name, you did well in that it was in your heart. 9 Nevertheless you shall not build the temple, but your son who will come from your body, he shall build the temple for My name.'

What was David's intent, just to build something?   I doubt it.  Was it to build a monument for his name, as the rich and powerful love to do?  Perhaps he had a desire to soothe his conscience from all the personal sins (Uriah) he had committed.  Surely this was the reason God didn't permit David to build it. 1Chron. 28:3 says, 

You shall not build a house for My name, because you have been a man of war and have shed blood.

For this and maybe for other reasons, God did not allow him but his son Solomon to build the Temple.

And Solomon had a great understanding of the meaning of the Temple. He knew it was not the actual dwelling place of God, as he says in 6:38f,

... when they return to you ... and pray toward ... the temple I have built for your name: then hear from heaven Your dwelling place their prayer ...

No one should imagine that the presence of God was connected to the Temple.  Stephen made this point again in Acts 7:48.  Rather, it is in US, His people, that our God would dwell.  Perhaps since David was not so innocent as his son, God knew his selfish ambition would get out of hand if he were to build such a monument, like the builders of Babel.

And so, my question again, is this: Why was it in David's heart to build a house for God? I think the only answer can be that it was his ambition to have a place for God's people to gather, a center for them to meet, a rallying point to come together for worship.  This ambition was, perhaps, personal, national, social and religious at the same time.  Such mixed motives do not work well for the service to God. HE alone must be our ambition, as Paul's when he said, "I count everything else as rubbish, compared with knowing Christ Jesus my Lord." [Phil 3:8]

It has long been in my heart as well to build a place of  worship for the Lord.  What is my motive?  Will God honor it and make it possible?  Indeed, I have left my home in Chicago and come to Virginia to plant churches.  But how can I do this, I who am not a king, not wealthy, not even "leadership material", and so have always been passed over when leaders were needed (until last month, when my boss asked me to manage one person, at the ripe age of 49)?   Jesus never commanded the disciples to build anything, but to "go and make disciples" and to "preach the gospel to all creation".  THAT is how the "temple not made by human hands" is built.  And these "living stones", I believe, are the temple that will endure after this world is replaced when the Lord returns.  Is THIS my ambition, then?  to build HIS temple? or am I still enamored of architecture and the Babel mentality of personal and institutional grandioseness?

May the gracious Lord, who changes hearts, help me to put to death the old man with its selfish desires, and be a new creation in Christ, to have as my one desire to know Jesus and make Him known to all.

Father, you who move hearts to glorify your name, move me not to build houses of wood and stone, but to reach people with your Gospel.  Lord, I know this is what you have called me to.  Help me to get busy with this work and forget about buildings and such matters, leaving these things to others; but giving my heart and soul to the things you have decreed plainly: preaching and making disciples. Lord, my heart is so cluttered and busy.  Please help me focus on your own work. As you have done before, take my heart, own it, and make its desires your own.  IJNA

Jonathan's Faith

The story of Jonathan, attacking the garrison of the Philistines with only his armor-bearer, is encouraging to me today.  He says, to the young man,

"Come, let us go over to the garrison of these uncircumcised; it may be that the Lord will work for us. For nothing restrains the Lord from saving by many or by few."

There are always excuses for not doing the work of God when I lack faith that it is God's work.  Jonathan wasn't certain, either. He said, "IT MAY BE..." meaning there was good reason to believe God would help them, but not certainty.  To go out to battle with the Philistines was taking a serious risk to his life.  What risk is there in going out to talk to people about God?  What risk is there to keep me from the evangelistic mission God sent me to here to do?  The fact that I'm only one man?  It is not hard for the Lord to save by few.  It simply requires faith to give Him the chance.

Today I must go out for evangelism, as my Lord commands, "Go and make disciples of all nations."  It may be that the Lord will work for His kingdom through us.  Lord, grant me the faith of Jonathan.

Reasons Why I Now Use the NKJV

Several people have asked me why I have moved to the New King James Version of the Bible. It's good to have an answer for such questions, especially when moving to a different version of the Bible will put me "out-of-sync" with everyone else in my church, suddenly having a different version to read from. Of course, it would be no worse than what the NIV translators have done to countless churches by their discontinuing of the revered 1984 NIV, replacing it with what is essentially their failed Todays NIV, not as a minor revision, but as one that attempts to keep up with the formidable shifts in current English, which clearly have their roots in the cultural shifts of our age.

My quest for a new version began with the NIV revisions of 2011. I've used the NIV for the last 25 years. These revisions at first seemed purely a matter of cowering to the feminist agenda. So I began to seek answers and ask God's leading.

A couple of years back, my mother-in-law had given me a NKJV study Bible, which I had begun to read. Finding the language very easy to understand, and familiar to the KJV which I had read as a child, I decided to read it through. When the Bible Gateway replaced the 1984 NIV with the 2011 NIV (without announcing the change or making it clear that anything had even changed, or so it appeared to me), I took offense. The word of God isn't something we can trust and update on a whim, like a Microsoft Windows patch. My initial assumption was that somehow a new group had taken over the NIV and were trying update it, like software, such that it would be incumbent upon those who wish to keep up-to-date to upgrade. I suppose this was a harsh judgment, and perhaps it isn't true at all. So I only state here that it was my original thought, not my conclusion. At present, I do not know if Biblica's motives are driven by profits or some more noble ideal. However, it doesn't matter to me any more.

The changes to the NIV are no longer the issue. Over the course of 2011, I did more research and reading and praying and studying, and have come to the conclusion that many modern translations (since about 1950) are tainted with what I will simply term "the spirit of this age", this secular age, this age of faith in the superiority intellectual authority over and above that older faith in the spiritual authority of God's word. Our age is one of authority based on knowledge and skill in academic areas, and this, when used as a prerogative to tamper with the Bible, I regard as arrogance.

The choice, then, is between the ideals and translation principles of the translators of the past as opposed to the ideals and principles of modern translators. A young friend in Chicago recently chided me on giving preference to old things: "You like everything that is OLD" he re-emphasized, as if to underscore his derision of all things not created, composed or written within his lifetime. Perhaps he is right, and I am suspicious of all things new. But I am especially suspicious of those who wish to continually update a Bible translation, as if there were innumerable mistakes in the previous one, or as if our language has so vastly evolved that a mere 25 years has rendered the English of the 1984 NIV obsolete.

So, I have to admit, that yes, I am somewhat in awe of the translators of 400 years ago, who worked without electricity or computers, and yet produced a translation that, even after 400 years, is till beautiful and quite readable, such that the changes made in the NKJV were almost exclusively to remove the thee and thou and -eth and -est forms, and update a few words that are genuinely different in meaning now than then. I am in awe of their translation principles, which show such great reverence for the Bible as the God-breathed Scripture it is.

Rather than try to enumerate these principles, I will simply refer to the book by Leland Ryken, The Word of God in English. The most important of his points is that a word-for-word translation, in principle, is demanded and expected by those who truly regard the Bible as God's word, not man's word, and who believe that it is inspired by God, not only in general in it's thoughts, but its very words. This is the respect paid to any literary work in translation, and should all the more be our demand for an English translation of the Holy Bible.

1. So the first reason is that, as God's word, a translation of the Bible must honor the very words in the original language. The KJV and NKJV do this, as do other word-for-word translations like the English Standard Version, and all translations that predate the 20th Century, including Tyndale's, Luther's (German), Wycliffe's and the Septuagint (Latin) and many others.

2. The texts used for the KJV and NKJV New Testament are consistent with the majority texts moreso than the Alexandrian texts that are preferred by the NIV and other translations, presumably because they are older. So the NKJV doesn't omit verses or relegate them to footnotes with such judgmental remarks as "the oldest and best manuscripts do not have this".

3. Additions in italics. The ESV is another very excellent word-for-word translation. Some have recommended it to me. But it lacks one feature of the KJV and NKJV which I like very much, a feature which I believe shows the deep respect the translators of these versions had toward the Bible: As a word-for-word translation, where a word has to be added to the original to make the English readable, that word is shown in italic font. It is helpful to me to know when the original lacked some word, which the translators felt necessary to add. I often try reading the sentence without that word. Often I wonder what made them insert it. And I am free to omit it when I read or meditate on the verse. But at least I KNOW. With other translations, I don't know. Until I learn Hebrew and Greek, I have to trust the translator to give me a translation, not insert words without letting me know about it.

4. Otherness. When reading ancient writings of any period or place, there is a certain quality known as otherness, whereby the user perceives the distance between his own time and place and that of which he reads. Perhaps it is a word that doesn't have a good counterpart in English, like baptism, or a word that has a lot of meaning that an uninitiated reader will not understand, like propitiation. Word order may be a little awkward at times, or sentences my be long and arduous. That otherness is preserved in word-for-word translations, while paraphrases like the NIV and NLT deliberately make the word of God sound more like it was written by New Yorkers just last year than Jews several thousand years ago.

5. Words over meaning. Most recent translations, it is no secret to anyone, appear to be tainted with the notion that what the Biblical authors meant to say is more important that what they DID say, or at least that their very words aren't as important as their meaning. With this notion that the reader deserves to have something said to him or her as he or she wishes to hear it, not as it was said, drives the choices made by most of the translations I have looked at, even in a few cases, the King James Version. So it is hard to find a really neutral version that uses a harsh word where the original language uses a harsh word, or a mild word where the original uses a mild word. With the stated goal of making the word more "transparent", "readable" or "understandable", current translators feel free to even insert words to clarify the meaning of the text, though the author seems to have left a question, an ambiguity of language, or something unclear. The translator cannot make that call; the reader must. Otherwise, there is the impression that the original writer was not inspired enough, and so needs help from a translator.

6. Culture wars. Last, and least of all, there are the cultural wars that Bible translators seem to think they must participate in by obliging the feminists who will not accept that "man" in the Bible means "man and woman", even if it isn't explicitly written so, and so demand that the Bible be re-written in language that is politically correct. This trend will not stop. Inasmuch as translators have given in to it today, translations in the future that do not will be burned and banned and those who read them publicly pilloried for it. But no one would dare to so correct Shakespeare's preference for "his" over "his or her", and "brother" over "brother and sister". Whatever is right for venerated literature is certainly the minimum standard for Bible translation and publishing.

Consequently, I have no further need to consult ANY of the thought-for-though translations, including the 2011 NIV, NLT, GNB, etc. And while there are several other word-for-word translations that are fairly good (pretty much equivalent actually), they lack the italicized additions as well as the pedigree of the NKJV, and usually are based on the older, but more newly-discovered, Alexandrian NT texts, and so, make the writings of centuries of Christian writers, preachers and theologians, out of touch with us today.

This is a highly personal matter, of course. So I can't say with authority what version is the BEST. I'm sure a more educated and eloquent person than I could make a pitch far superior to mine. (This isn't false humility either; it happens to me all the time.) And I can't say that the NKJV is a perfect translation. But next to the 1984 NIV, which I will always love and read, it has the most to offer, and will not likely be revised again and again, as the NIV has been, for several hundred years.