Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Awesome. All right, we're going to dive right in here. So in the course of our time together, we've been thinking about the pathway to prep. Right, we start. Oh, my word. What has Nick done? He's got us in this voles orange.
[00:00:13] How do I get. Got to get rid of this. Ah, Boom. Okay, see how we do this here? How about this?
[00:00:24] Ah, there we go. So. So we've got a text, right? And we're trying to get to today.
[00:00:32] Or as we'll say from text, we're trying to get to talk today. Or talk.
[00:00:40] And we've said the longest way round is the safest way home. And what do we mean by that? Well, one of the first things we need to do is take our text and ask, what did it mean to the first audience? Right. What did it mean to them then? This is the work, as we said, of exegesis.
[00:00:59] And we thought about things like structure or as Nick taught on last week. Right. Context.
[00:01:10] And which of the four contexts is most important?
[00:01:17] Trick question. Yeah, who said that? Corey Cory's. Right. It is a trick question, right? Because it depends upon your passage, right? Maybe your passage is a very strong inference from what just came before, in which case, literary context is critical. If you don't have a literary context, you're not going to be able to make sense of it. Maybe your whole passage is reflecting on an Old Testament quotation, in which case, biblical context would be really important. Right? It all depends upon the passage. All the contexts are important. Literary, biblical, cultural, historical, all of them. All right? So well done, Corey. That was a trick question. Just want to make sure you guys are awake this morning.
[00:01:55] All right? And then what we're going to do is we need to, of course, we need to do some theological reflection, and we need to take our passage through the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
[00:02:09] And this is what we're going to call seeing Jesus. And this is where this class is going to go slightly out of order, because normally this would be the talk today, but Mike is going to do that talk. Mike is preaching this morning. So Mike's going to do this talk next week. And. And because I'm not here next week, I'm gonna do this last leg of the pathway today. All right, so theological reflection. We wanna go and take our text through the gospel, and then we come to this backside of the rectangle. We've done all of our exegetical, done our theological work. And so how do we put it all together? How do we get to a talk today?
[00:02:48] Well, this is where we're gonna think about persuasion.
[00:02:53] We're going to think about persuasion. That's really the topic for today. Now the old word for persuasion is that word rhetoric, which if you're homeschooled, maybe you are familiar with that word rhetoric.
[00:03:07] It was not a word that I was taught when I was growing up.
[00:03:12] But that word rhetoric really gets at the art of persuasion.
[00:03:16] And I think in our Bible loving, Bible believing, conservative evangelical churches, it's actually this, this step, this leg of persuasion that often gets neglected, it often gets skipped over.
[00:03:35] And when we think about preaching, oftentimes when we think about preaching, we want think about the work of preaching as communicating accurate information.
[00:03:48] And that's what we're about. When we preach, we want to make sure we communicate accurate information.
[00:03:56] And of course in our preaching we do want to do that. In our preaching we must do that. We don't want to speak falsely about God's word.
[00:04:04] And that means in many churches, preaching will look like slowly walking through a text, verse by verse.
[00:04:11] And you give an explanation of each verse of the text and you walk through it. Maybe depending on how long your text is, maybe each verse gets, you know, 30 seconds or two minutes or whatever it might be. And sometimes preaching can feel a little bit just like a running commentary as you work through the text.
[00:04:30] And I understand that because if you've ever preached, one of the things you'll do is you'll do a lot of study and preparation.
[00:04:37] And so if you were having to preach a passage on second Timothy and you've been in two Timothy, you are going to do a lot of work on your text and you're going to do some background work. And so you're going to think like, okay, what was happening in the Church of Ephesus? You're going to read about that, you're going to read about Timothy and get a little more understanding of his relationship with Paul. You'll do that. You want to understand what are these false, who are these false teachers? What are they teaching? You need to know some of that information.
[00:05:04] Maybe along the way you're going to do some careful word studies, like that word vessels in second Timothy two. Or maybe that expression great house. Now Paul's using that in a particular way. How is he using it? What about that expression man of God? We run right over it. How's that used in the Old Testament? Right? So you do some of these word studies and you'll have a Google Doc and it is filled with all of this interesting information, stuff you get from commentaries and all the rest. And then the temptation sometimes when you come to the sermon is you walk in, into the pulpit and you've got that dump truck of information, and you back up that dump truck, right. Beep, beep, beep. And you just load that, unload that dump truck and just dump it out on the body.
[00:05:51] All of that information, is it true information? Yes.
[00:05:55] Is it often good information?
[00:05:57] Yes.
[00:05:58] Will you look pretty smart in the process? Yeah, you probably will.
[00:06:03] But how does that help the people understand what the text is actually about?
[00:06:09] How does it help them know what is important?
[00:06:13] What's illustration?
[00:06:15] What is application?
[00:06:18] What is the emphasis of the text? Right. If you just give them lots of facts and details, you're not often helping them understand the contours, the weight and the balance of the text. And sometimes I get pushed back on my preaching because they're like, Brad, you don't preach verse by verse. And sometimes that's what people identify as expositional preaching. Right. It's just verse by verse preaching. And you don't give equal treatment to every verse.
[00:06:44] Well, what might be a response to that critique? Expositional preaching, you got to go verse by verse, give equal treatment to it all. What might be one response to that critique?
[00:06:56] Any thoughts?
[00:07:00] So I heard, I think it was RC scroll saying that, you know, on your deathbed, if you're asked, if you want one part of scripture, are you going to ask for Leviticus or Romans 8?
[00:07:13] And so there's. There's different times for different passages. Yep. And so you give weight to different things, given that season and that time. Yeah, that's right. And we're going to think a little bit more about that in just a few minutes when we think about audience.
[00:07:26] But yeah, I mean, I think the challenge is just with the premise itself.
[00:07:32] Like, take a parable.
[00:07:34] In a parable, is every verse of equal weight and value?
[00:07:38] It's all inspired. I'm not saying that. Of course it is. No. In a parable, there's a punchline, there's a turn, and that turn is the critical point. If you miss that turn, you miss the whole meaning of the parable. Right. In a plot arc, the climax. Right. That is critical to. To the understanding of the text. So if you spend all your time in the setting and you totally miss the climax, you're going to miss the meaning of the passage. All right, so part of what I want to say is that expositional preaching is not just preaching that gets the text.
[00:08:12] Right.
[00:08:14] We often think about it like that.
[00:08:16] I don't think it's That I think it's getting the text across.
[00:08:22] So do we need to get the text right? Yes, but we're not done then. We also want to get the text across. We want to get the text across. And that is what we're talking about when we talk about persuasion.
[00:08:34] Because if you just take the dump truck approach, are you communicating information? Yes. But I want to suggest to you that preaching is more than merely communicating information.
[00:08:45] Preaching is about the art of persuasion.
[00:08:50] In a sermon, in a message, you are seeking to persuade.
[00:08:58] You're seeking to win your audience over, not just lay out facts and information.
[00:09:05] You're seeking to win them.
[00:09:07] And I have to tell you, I wasn't taught this in seminary.
[00:09:11] So in my preaching class, we didn't really have any lectures on this. How many of you have been to seminary?
[00:09:19] Okay, did any of you guys get this in seminary? Was it you got it? Some. Did you have York?
[00:09:24] Who'd you have?
[00:09:26] Mike Pullman. Okay. All right. I clearly should have taken Mike Pullman for preaching, but. Yeah, but sadly, it's often not focused on a lot.
[00:09:36] So we want to think about persuasion, and we want to think about persuasion. And I think it's important for three reasons. I'm just going to give you three reasons why I think it's worth our time.
[00:09:46] Number one, preaching as persuasion is actually what you find in the Bible.
[00:09:52] So I'm going to suggest to you that preaching as persuasion, right, not just communicating information, but preaching as persuasion is what we find in the Bible.
[00:10:03] So take Paul. So this is where Acts is really helpful, right? What is Acts? Acts is really just a book of sermons, a compilation of sermons that's strewn together by some historical narrative. And so you have a wonderful example of how people preached. And we see that with Paul in Acts 26.
[00:10:22] And we read in verse, starting in verse 24.
[00:10:25] And as he, Paul, was saying these things in his defense, Festus said with a loud voice, paul, you're out of your mind.
[00:10:35] Your great learning is driving you out of your mind.
[00:10:39] But Paul said, I am not out of my mind. Most excellent, Festus. But I am speaking true and rational words.
[00:10:49] For the king knows about these things, and to him I speak boldly. For I am persuaded that none of these things has escaped his notice, for this has not been done in a corner. King Agrippa, do you believe the prophets?
[00:11:05] I know that you believe.
[00:11:06] And Agrippa said to Paul, in a short time, would you persuade me to be a Christian? And Paul said, whether short or long, I would to God that not only you, but also all who hear me this day might become such as I am, except for these chains, like so, right there. Was Paul merely communicating information? No.
[00:11:28] Like Agrippa understood, Paul was seeking to persuade him. He's like, are you trying to persuade me to be a Christian or Paul's like, absolutely, that's exactly what I'm doing. That's what he was doing with this preaching. And Agrippa understood it. Agrippa was taken back by it. Right. But this is what we find in Scripture.
[00:11:44] It's also safe to say that persuasion is what we seek to do all the time. It comes to us naturally. Right? It comes to us naturally. Best basketball player ever, Michael Jordan. Why?
[00:11:59] A lot of rings. Lot of rings. A lot of rings. All right, who wants to say LeBron?
[00:12:04] Oh, come on. Seriously? All right, give me a reason.
[00:12:08] He's all time to be in scoring.
[00:12:10] He had. He played against, like, eight. All NBA 100 players. LeBron played against three.
[00:12:19] LeBron, er. LeBron had Kyrie Irving.
[00:12:23] That was really it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was an NBA LeBron.
[00:12:30] Michael Jordan was still in college. Yep. Getting bounced in the sweet 16. So.
[00:12:35] All right, all right. Okay. What do we got? We got people making arguments. Right. The problem for me is I just watch LeBron flop like a soccer player all the time. So it's just hard. But needless to say, right. I'd probably go with Jordan, but I'm also old. Right. I just, you know, there it is. But point being, we make arguments all the time. We seek to persuade.
[00:12:53] So, you know, who's the best basketball player of all time? What's your favorite flavor of. Right.
[00:12:58] Favorite brand of ice cream?
[00:13:02] Graters. Who said graters? Absolutely graters, bar none. If you've never had strawberry chip, it'll blow your mind.
[00:13:10] Best ice cream ever. I don't want to hear Blue bell. Don't want to hear anything about it. Right. Make arguments. Should your kids get vaccinated? Right. We're not going to talk about that. Arguments.
[00:13:21] Another reason we should care about persuasion, friends, it's because the world itself means to be persuasive.
[00:13:28] Paul writes in Colossians 2. 4. I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments.
[00:13:34] Right. He's saying that the you there is plural to those in Colossae. And Paul understands the world makes not just arguments, but the world makes plausible arguments. And he doesn't want the Christ, these Christians, to be led astray. So, friends, whether or not it is educators, whether or not it is Advertisers, whether or not it is social media influencers, the world is out to persuade you. And we don't have much hope if we're not also seeking to persuade as well.
[00:14:05] Okay, so those are some reasons why we want to think about persuasion. What are we really after in persuasion?
[00:14:13] Okay, so someone's going to have to tell me kind of what this is here.
[00:14:29] Alright, so here's my exceptional drawing.
[00:14:32] And what is this right here? This?
[00:14:36] It's a target. Yep, it's a target.
[00:14:39] And in preaching, that target is your audience, that target is your audience.
[00:14:49] So Chris Shutterfield and I shoot sometimes, not arrows. I wouldn't know what to do with one of those, but just 9 millimeter. And when we shoot, Chris shoots at his target and I shoot at my target. And that's in part because sometimes Chris's target looks, you know, kind of more like that it's one of those, like, human targets. Whereas, you know, I'm using one of those targets. Right?
[00:15:11] You guys know what I'm talking about? Different targets, they have names. I don't know what they are, but we have different targets. But the other reason why Chris shoots at his and I shoot at mine is because Chris will be 10 yards down. Mine's like three yards in front of me. And Chris's like, placings are nice and tight, like, you know, kind of like right here.
[00:15:29] Mine are like all over here. Like a shotgun. Right. So if I'm going to shoot at Chris's target, I'm going to make an utter mess and disaster of it.
[00:15:36] Point being, right? I have a target audience and I'm trying to shoot at my target. I'm not trying to shoot at Chris's. We have different audiences. How many of you ever taught youth in this room? If you've taught youth?
[00:15:48] Yeah. Okay, is teaching the youth.
[00:15:52] Is that audience like every other audience?
[00:15:55] No, no. Everyone's shaking their head. No, no, we know that instinctively. No, it's not like you've got to know your audience. That is the first rule of public speaking, is it not?
[00:16:05] Know your audience.
[00:16:06] So if you're speaking at the University of Arkansas, you probably don't want to open up with a joke about how awful Arkansas football has been, right?
[00:16:14] Not if you want to win over your audience. I did have a friend who was, a number of you were at 3rd Avenue with Greg Gilbert, where he's the pastor. Some of the college folks were there this last week. Greg, I think, was at like, Cedarville or someplace a little while back, and he opened up with like, A joke. And he didn't recognize how the joke would land on his audience. And basically he lost them for the next 45 minutes. And it's a great talk, but he lost him with his opening joke. We don't want to do that. Got to know your audience.
[00:16:39] Okay, so what's this here?
[00:16:45] You guys see that? That right there? What's that? The arrowhead. The arrowhead? Yeah, that's the arrowhead.
[00:16:51] The arrowhead is our argument.
[00:16:56] The arrowhead is our argument. And what is an arrowhead meant to do? What's its sole purpose?
[00:17:06] You're being very patient, guy who hunts with a bow all the time. What does an arrowhead do, friends?
[00:17:14] Pierce. It pierces. Thank you. It pierces.
[00:17:17] And for it to pierce, what does it need to be?
[00:17:21] Sharp. Excellent. Okay, it's gotta be sharp, right? It has to be pointed. And if it's not sharp and pointed, what? It's not going to stick. Right. It's just going to bounce right off.
[00:17:31] And so the argument is what I want to persuade my audience of, and I'd like that to stick.
[00:17:37] Now, what's. What's this middle part here? What do we call this?
[00:17:43] Yeah, the shaft. Yeah, the shaft.
[00:17:46] And the shaft.
[00:17:48] If the shaft looks like this, what's going to happen?
[00:17:53] Or maybe if it looks kind of like that, what happens? That arrow, when you. Poor trajectory. Poor trajectory. Yep. It's all over the place. It's all over the place. If you have a janky bent arrow, it's not going to fly straight. I think we all know that.
[00:18:09] So the shaft really speaks to the arrangement.
[00:18:14] The arrangement of your message. The arrangement of your message. How is your message organized such that it flies straight and true?
[00:18:25] Such that it's clear?
[00:18:28] Is there good logical flow from one point to another? Do you even have clear points?
[00:18:34] That all gets to that question of arrangement. That gets the question of arrangement.
[00:18:41] Obviously, the straighter. The arrangement of the sermon. Right. The straighter the arrow is going to fly. Now, what do we call this back part here? Do we call that fletchings? Yeah.
[00:18:52] Last year, I'm like, they're feathers. And everyone's like, you're an idiot, Brad. No, they're fletchings. They're fletchings. Yeah, that's exactly right. What's the whole point of a fletching? Does it just make the arrow look nice?
[00:19:04] It guides it. Yeah, it guides it helps it fly straight, helps stabilize it. And so think of the fletchings as the adornment.
[00:19:15] The adornment of the sermon. And what do I mean by that? These are your illustrations. These are the word pictures. You may use metaphors, images, in order to help make your point clear.
[00:19:29] Now, the fletchings don't make the arrow any more than your adornment makes the sermon. And if we're not careful, they can get us in trouble.
[00:19:40] So perhaps you've heard sermons where someone's opening illustration was wildly humorous and funny, but you kind of don't remember anything after that because it actually just. It detracted from and distracted from the text and the point.
[00:19:57] So we can use humor well, and we can use it really poorly. Were any of you here for Jim Lindsay's funeral a week ago Friday?
[00:20:07] Yeah, there was his. Jim Lindsay's. There was a cousin of the family that used some humor around Hebrews 12, and he was actually able to do it very effectively. Humor in a funeral service is usually really, really dangerous. But he did it. He is a family member. He could do it in a disarming and helpful way. And he got right into the gospel and he brought people's walls down. It was super effective. Right? It can go both ways.
[00:20:34] But again, those fletchings, that's sort of the adornment.
[00:20:38] And of course, when all these things work together, when you've got a clear target audience, you have a nice, sharp, pointed argument. You've got an arrangement, a good logical flow to your message, and you've got some illustrations and images and word pictures that help make it fly. Right? Well, then you've got great pieces for persuasion. You're putting it all together. And of course, what are you trying to hit? You're trying to hit this right here. You're trying to hit the bullseye. And you can think of the bullseye in some ways as application.
[00:21:12] You can think of it as application because you're trying to press it into the hearts and minds of the listener. And application, don't just think application is do this, right? If application is just do this, then Ephesians 1 to 3 has no application because there's basically, as we noted, I think, a couple weeks ago, it's an imperative, free zone. There's basically zero imperatives in Ephesians 1 to 3, right? So sometimes application is behold this God, kind of what we're going to get this morning in Psalm 47, right? A little less. I mean, there's common. There's commands to praise, but we're praising because we're beholding.
[00:21:53] Okay? So expositional preaching is preaching where the point of the passage is the point of the message applied to the heart of the hearer. Right. So if you want to think about the pathway like this, where the point of the passage becomes the point of the message and it's applied to the hearer today, that's what we're after, is we want to be persuasive.
[00:22:19] Now there's a challenge here, and that is there are a surprising number of wonderful Bible believing evangelical Christians that are somewhat opposed to this whole conversation about persuasion.
[00:22:34] Can anyone guess what some of their opposition might be?
[00:22:41] Too much charisma.
[00:22:44] Yeah. Too much charisma. Yeah. Maybe.
[00:22:46] Maybe people could. Maybe the way in which it's communicated, like the need to persuade is. It's all banked on charisma. It's all banked on the personality of the preacher. Okay, charisma. Yeah. What else? Might be some similar, maybe objections to this kind of thing.
[00:23:08] You could add something that's not there.
[00:23:11] Emotional manipulation. Yeah, that's a big one. And that's a big one in some circles.
[00:23:17] Right. This is the work that the Holy Spirit does.
[00:23:20] Right. The Holy Spirit is supposed to apply and do the work of application, do the work of persuasion. Who are we to try to persuade or perhaps even manipulate people into belief?
[00:23:33] And so wasn't Paul opposed to this? 1 Corinthians 2. When I came to you, brothers, I did not come, I did come proclaiming to you the testimony of God, but not with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And he goes on to say, my speech and my message were not implausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the spirit and the power.
[00:23:59] So, you know, you might say like, ah, Paul seems to be speaking very much against that kind of persuasion.
[00:24:06] But I think we've got to understand what Paul was really communicating there. What he was speaking against the kind of wisdom and communication that was dominant in the Greco Roman world.
[00:24:18] If we really thought Paul preached with implausible words of wisdom, if we really thought Paul preached just sheer gibberish and foolishness, then we can't make sense of what we read earlier in Acts 26, like when we read Romans.
[00:24:34] Is Romans a persuasive argument from the beginning of 1:1 till the very end?
[00:24:44] Yeah, absolutely. Is Galatians, Ephesians, like Paul's writings themselves, they are logically ordered and they are meant to persuade.
[00:24:55] Absolutely. You think of even Acts 17.
[00:24:59] Yeah. Paul was not a prophet for hire. That's true. But that didn't mean that he didn't seek to Be powerful and persuasive. Right. What does he even say? 2nd Corinthians 5:11. Knowing the fear of the Lord, we seek to persuade others. Manipulation to Christians point. No. Persuasion. Yes. We actually do want to be persuasive.
[00:25:19] And persuasion is actually one of the weapons of our own warfare. 2 Corinthians 10.
[00:25:24] Paul writes, though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but have divine power to destroy strongholds and friends. That's the power right there of the preached word.
[00:25:40] So Spurgeon called the pulpit the Thermopylae of Christendom.
[00:25:48] What's Thermopylae?
[00:25:52] Where 300 Spartans, like, held off the Persians for days. Where 300 Spartans held off the Persians for days. Yeah, that's right. Last year, Jonathan Verhoeven went on like a five minute monologue. It was phenomenal about Thermopylae. It was crazy. He had a lot of information about Thermopylae. Yeah. What happened to the Greeks?
[00:26:17] Did those 300 Greeks make it the Spartans?
[00:26:20] No, they didn't make it. Right. That's the great difference though, Right. The pulpit is the Thermopylae of Christendom in the sense that's where a great war is being fought. But the beautiful thing is we know that God's word, accompanied by God's spirit, it accomplishes God's work and it can bring about, right, the salvation of the greatest sinner on earth.
[00:26:40] Paul says we're not waging war according to the flesh, but we do destroy arguments and every lofty opinion.
[00:26:48] Paul understands in his preaching, he's destroying arguments and lofty opinions. Right. He understands the preaching is a kind of war. It's a war for the souls of men. Maybe another.
[00:27:00] Another image that Paul will often use is the image of a courtroom.
[00:27:05] So in a courtroom, one of the things you'll learn if you're ever in law school is you basically have three kinds of jurors.
[00:27:13] Anyone know what they are? The three kinds of jurors? In a courtroom, there are the jurors that are going to be on your side.
[00:27:23] Okay, that's one kind of juror. Like, you can just tell by the interviews, right. When they're doing jury selection. Yeah.
[00:27:30] That person loves the rule of law and they're going to be on the side of the rule of law. Then you might have another kind of juror that you're pretty convinced is not going to be on your side, but you don't have any more challenges, you can't remove any more from the jury pool. Right. So you've got. Yeah. Jurors who are going to be on your side. Jurors who you're pretty confident. Like, I think that guy's an anarchist. I don't think that guy's going to be on my side. Right.
[00:27:53] And then, of course, you have the wild cards. Right. The jurors that you just really don't know exactly where they are.
[00:28:00] Now, if you're a lawyer in a courtroom, who are you trying to persuade?
[00:28:09] Trying to persuade. The wild card.
[00:28:11] Just a wild card.
[00:28:16] You're shaking your head now. The other side. Yeah, you're trying to persuade the other side. But you also know that when you're done making your argument, they're going to go back and deliberate.
[00:28:26] If you didn't shore up the beliefs of the one that were on your side, then they may get persuaded when they go back in that back room by what all the others are saying. No, when you're actually. When you're an attorney and you're arguing in a court of law, you're actually trying to persuade all three. You might at different points have your attention focused on one group, but you're trying to persuade all three. And in a sermon.
[00:28:50] Am I merely trying to persuade the skeptic?
[00:28:55] Hopefully not.
[00:28:57] Am I merely trying to persuade the unbeliever? Hopefully not. I'm actually trying to persuade the believer, the unbeliever, and maybe the skeptic or the seeker.
[00:29:06] And in a sermon, you should have all of those audiences in mind. And you're seeking to persuade all three.
[00:29:13] And in order to do that, we want to pursue clarity.
[00:29:17] And as we think about clarity, Augustine talked about clarity, and he put it like this. He said, teaching your audience is a matter of necessity.
[00:29:31] Pleasing them, we're going to have to explain these terms is a matter of being enjoyable, and moving them is a matter of victory.
[00:29:40] All right, so for Augustine, this kind of clarity included a kind of pyramid. You got to teach.
[00:29:48] So there's teaching, but then he talked about pleasing, and then he talked about moving.
[00:29:58] And that's what you want to be doing in your preaching.
[00:30:03] And of course, what are we teaching? We're teaching God's Word, Right. You can't jump to pleasing and moving if you don't have the foundation of the truth of God's Word underneath you. Right. Otherwise, it is manipulation.
[00:30:16] So there needs to be instruction. There has to be instruction. Otherwise, again, just manipulation and your people's ability to understand what you're communicating in your teaching is going to be critical and you want clarity in your teaching.
[00:30:36] The best compliments I can receive at the back door are when a mother says, the wonderful thing about that message was I understood it and so did my 8 year old.
[00:30:46] Right? We want to be after that. Now, the eight year old may not have gotten everything, but at a base level, both the mom and the 8 year old could understand it.
[00:30:56] The Puritans would call that plain preaching, not boring. That's not the same thing. Plain didn't mean boring to them, it meant clear.
[00:31:04] Simple and clear. But of course, preaching is not just a lecture, it's not just teaching. Right. You're not just presenting a paper, you're trying to please.
[00:31:13] Now again, don't think of two Timothy four, three. Right. Teaching what their itching ears want to hear. Don't think of that kind of pleasing.
[00:31:21] Don't think about man pleasing. No, this is more pleasing in the sense that in our presentation, we want our presentation to be pleasing to the ear, to the mind. And what do I mean? How many of you have ever sat through a sermon and 15 minutes in, you're like, oh my gosh, how long has it been? You think it's been 50 minutes, don't tell me which one of mine. All right, but like, you think it's been 15 minutes, but it's really only been 15.
[00:31:47] And then there are other sermons where it's done and you're like, that was 45 minutes. Like, wow, I thought we were still kind of just getting going. Well, why do you have those differences?
[00:31:59] Well, usually the latter sermon, in that example, the preacher would have varied his tone, maybe used appropriate facial expressions, cadence, humor, relevant illustrations, not mispronounced. You know, famous people like I've done in the past, probably not open up with Lizzo illustrations as I've done a few times. Right. But point being, like you, you communicate in a way that leads to a kind of pleasantness of speech that helps the person enter in, listen and hear.
[00:32:34] And that's what we, that's what we want to be after.
[00:32:38] As Augustine said, in order to sway the listener, it makes all the difference how the preacher, what he has to say.
[00:32:46] And if any of us are married and have ever sought reconciliation with our wife, we know that to be true.
[00:32:53] The words you say in that moment often matter a little bit less than how you say them and the expression on your face, right?
[00:33:01] So it's not just content, but it's manner.
[00:33:04] So we want to teach, we want to please, but we're moving all. It's moving all toward that goal of moving the heart.
[00:33:12] As Augustine said, we not only want to teach in order to instruct them and not only to delight in order to hold them, but also to move in order to conquer and win them.
[00:33:25] Again, that's after conquering and winning the heart.
[00:33:30] Moving people is not optional in our preaching. Right? That's what we're after. We're after change.
[00:33:35] We're after the Lord doing work in people's lives. And is the word by the instrumentality of the spirit the principal thing the Lord uses? Yes. Does he use human means in that work? Absolutely. And the same way people come to faith through a human instrument sharing the gospel. So in preaching, God uses the instrumentality of the preacher to bring about change.
[00:34:02] And that takes practice. The best preachers make it look easy.
[00:34:07] It actually takes a whole lot of practice.
[00:34:10] So sushi may be one of my favorite foods. That and filet like it's right up there. I'm not sure which one. Kind of depends on the day.
[00:34:17] How many of you guys heard the name Yoro Ono?
[00:34:22] Any of you guys even like sushi here?
[00:34:24] Okay. All right. Yuro Ono. So he turns 101 in about a month and a half.
[00:34:31] This guy started the art of sushi and practicing the art of sushi all the way back in 1980, 1933.
[00:34:39] That's when he started.
[00:34:42] And for the last like 40 years, Yuro Ono is at a tiny sushi bar that comprises about 10 stools in the basement of a subway in Tokyo.
[00:34:54] And he is the first sushi chef to ever win Michelin three stars. Just this tiny little 10 stool place in a Tokyo subway station. And people from all over the world will travel for one of those 10 stools. He works seven days a week, often 10 hours a day, and he hones his craft.
[00:35:15] And if you want to work with Yirohno, guess how long you have to work with him before he'll let you make the rice?
[00:35:23] Just the rice.
[00:35:28] A year?
[00:35:30] Yeah, 10. 10 years.
[00:35:33] Right? 10 years. You got to work with that guy before he'll let you just make the rice.
[00:35:39] He doesn't consider himself a master.
[00:35:42] He says, all I want to do is make better sushi. I do the same thing over and over and seek to improve bit by bit. And here he is at 101 years old and he's still doing it.
[00:35:55] And I think about him sometimes when I think about preaching in the sense that we never arrive. We're always honing our craft, always seeking to improve bit by bit.
[00:36:06] And we want the kind of clarity and persuasion that will help our messages sink into the hearts of our hearers. Right. That's where we're after that arrow. Right. That's what we're after.
[00:36:19] And I think perhaps one of the most critical things in this whole conversation about persuasion is this topic of argument. But before we jump there, just any quick questions from you guys on persuasion?
[00:36:35] Any quick comments on the. On the pleasing section? Yeah. Have you had any critique where, like, where it's like, someone would be like, well, you don't. You don't need to be too compelling because, like, the hearer should be mature enough to let the word be compelling enough. Yeah. Does that make sense? I don't think I'm compelling enough to get that critique.
[00:36:59] Honestly, I haven't really gotten it. Yeah, no, I, like, sorry, not you personally, but just. Yeah.
[00:37:05] That concept of like the, like just deliver the truth. Yeah. Let the. Let the hearer be compelled by the word. I think the only time you're really going to get that is if the only time I ever feel that way is when I feel like someone's trying to emotionally manipulate me. Me. But like, when I read a spurgeon sermon and my heart melts, I'm not like, bro, you should just left that to the spirit. Right. It's like, thank you so much for doing that work. You know, so when I listen to really good preaching where I'm just locked in and I'm like, that was phenomenal. Like, unless they're trying to manipulate me in some way that. And I am allergic to that.
[00:37:43] Yeah. I'm not usually worried about being too compelling.
[00:37:47] What's the balance between over intellectual, over simplifying something.
[00:37:54] I've obviously, I've been to churches where both criticism. A criticism will be that criticism for me. I don't want to go because I don't understand anything's been said. Yeah. Another one where it's like, man, I'm not learning anything because it's two simulations.
[00:38:12] Yeah. I think it depends on your audience. It depends on your text. If you're teaching junior high, you're going to want to take that into account. And you're probably not going to want to get into conversations about supralapsarianism and infra. Lapsarianism. Right.
[00:38:25] If you're in Romans and you're in Romans 9 and thinking about the sovereignty of God and salvation, and you're thinking about topics of election and reprobation, like, you're going to have to get into it and it may Feel heady. But, hey, how else are you going to understand your Bible? The Bible's got some heady stuff in it. And so I think a lot of it also just depends on your vocabulary. If you use loaded language and assume everyone understands it, then that's going to be a big turnoff. If you can use language people understand, even if there's a word like compatibilism that everyone's like, I don't usually use that word. But you explain it. These two things are compatible with one another. They may seem to be at odds, but they're actually compatible. You can explain in a way that's clear.
[00:39:11] It was who Richard Baxter used to say he would regularly put sentences in his sermons that would fly clear over the heads of his hearers just to keep them humble.
[00:39:24] I don't think that's probably the best idea. I mean, you could do it, but I probably wouldn't encourage you to do it.
[00:39:31] Okay, so just think about argument. Last few minutes here. I'm going to keep this really brief.
[00:39:36] Did I tell you guys the story of my first sermon I ever preached? I thought I. Yeah, I thought I did. Maybe the first or second week.
[00:39:42] I'm a pastoral assistant, never been to seminary, done investment work.
[00:39:47] And Mark, the senior pastor, gives me John 11. It's like the famous Lazarus text, right? And the whole chapter, though not just a few. The whole chapter. And of course, I don't know what I'm doing. I just. I've watched him preach, and he's like, here, this is your Sunday. Like, get after it.
[00:40:03] And I gave him my manuscript on Friday evening, and he brought me in Saturday morning. And he's like, okay, Brad, like, I've read it.
[00:40:12] What's your sermon about?
[00:40:15] And I was like.
[00:40:16] And I kind of stumbled through a few sentences. And he's like, no, like, in a sentence, what is your sermon about?
[00:40:22] And I just stared at him for a minute, trying to think, how am I going to articulate this? And he said, that's the whole problem with your sermon.
[00:40:30] What was he getting at? It had no clear argument.
[00:40:33] This thing there was like. This was like a block.
[00:40:37] There was like. There's no sharp point.
[00:40:40] It wasn't penetrating. I had lots of information and lots of description.
[00:40:46] I wasn't really making an argument that sought to persuade.
[00:40:51] And in making our argument, that's really what we want to be after. We want to persuade with our arguments.
[00:41:00] And the critical thing is that politicians do this all the time, right? Lawyers do this all the time. The difference often is that lawyers Often before the Supreme Court are making arguments and sometimes they're just making them up.
[00:41:16] Right. Our transgender rights in the Constitution, they make an argument. Well, I would argue there's nothing about transgender rights in the Constitution itself, not in the words.
[00:41:26] You have to make an argument and read them in there. Right. We're not doing that. We're not reading things into the text that aren't there. We're actually reading out from the text.
[00:41:33] So our job as a preacher is not to make up arguments.
[00:41:37] Our job as the preacher is to discover the argument that the author is making and that's what we have to do. We're not making them up, we're not creating them, we're taking them up. We're taking up the argument of the author and we're presenting it.
[00:41:54] So the author has made an argument. Our job is to know it and then to take it up and represent it to our people.
[00:42:03] And to do that. We want brevity in our arguments.
[00:42:09] We want to say no more and no less than what we have to say. So we want brevity.
[00:42:15] Dabney, 19th century theologian, said, the most important thing therefore is that you know when to stop and that you be sure to stop when you are done.
[00:42:28] So like a lot of preachers buzz the tower, you know, like, or they have like three intros or they have three conclusions and they're, you know, they're like the pilot buzzing the tower. It's like you just going to land the plane or are you going to keep buzzing the tower? And sometimes people crash land the plane. It's like what just happened to the rest of the message. It's like we were flying and then boom, next thing you know, we're down on the ground.
[00:42:47] So we want to keep our arguments tight.
[00:42:50] We also want them to be clear.
[00:42:55] I think an argument should be something a 10 year old and an 80 year old would be able to understand.
[00:43:01] You want it to be clear and you want it to be plausible or authentic. In other words, you want your presentation of your argument to be consistent with your own personality.
[00:43:12] If I got up there and started speaking like I was a Shakespearean actor, I hope most of you would be scratching your head like, what in the world is Brad doing?
[00:43:20] Like, Brad, preach consistent with who you are, not with weird affectation. It's not a performance.
[00:43:28] And so make your argument and you've heard in most of the sermons. I try to make an argument in less than.
[00:43:39] Right. It's going to be sort of less than 15 words.
[00:43:42] I really aim for like 12.
[00:43:45] Because it's hard to remember something that's very long.
[00:43:47] And so when you're making an argument, I'll just close with this. This is what I'm after in preaching, Mike. We get to see if this is what you do this morning. That's always the fun thing about being the preacher this morning.
[00:43:58] And I'm trying to make an argument. I've got an intro that's trying to grab interest.
[00:44:01] Who am I trying to talk to in a sermon?
[00:44:04] The believer, the unbeliever? The skeptic. I'm trying to get them all interested. I could skip the intro and just presume interest, but I'd rather not do that. I'd rather give people a reason to listen to me for the next 45 minutes. So I've got an intro, and then I read my text. And then I'm like, this is the argument of the text. This is what I'm going to try to convince you of. And then I got 0.1. And I got 0.2 or whatever. Got 0.3. However many points. Usually 0.1 is a little longer than the rest. Yeah, you listen to me.
[00:44:31] And then we get down to the conclusion, and I'm trying to circle back to that argument, and I'm trying to have the whole weight and force of the sermon hit on the hearer. At the end, it all comes to a point, Right? That's the arrowhead, right? Pressing in.
[00:44:49] Is that clear? I did that quickly.
[00:44:52] Any comments, questions?
[00:44:57] What. What role does the preacher himself take in persuasion? So, like, we're talking about argument, but somebody fires that arrow, right? Yeah. So, like, what's. Like, how can he not be persuasive? But also, how can he improve his persuasiveness to his own, like, person?
[00:45:18] How can he not be. And how can he improve.
[00:45:20] How can he, like, not be persuasive to his audience? Because of, like. Because these are pastors, right? Yeah. Yeah, I think that's like. Seems to be, like, a key component probably in that arrow. And maybe there's another talk on that.
[00:45:36] Yeah, I think. I'm not totally sure if all of the question. I think what I recognize is some of us are going to be. Most of us here are not going to be preaching in a pulpit on Sunday morning.
[00:45:46] So when we're teaching, maybe we're teaching an equipping class, maybe we're teaching a Bible study, Maybe we're teaching a youth event. We're teaching a college thing. Like, we could be teaching a number of things. I just. I want to suggest to you that this basic way of thinking about communicating as, but particularly preaching, communicating God's word, it's not just information transfer.
[00:46:10] It is communication with the goal of persuasion.
[00:46:17] And so in that sense, I think you can muddy your talk up with lots of discrete facts that don't clearly flow together well.
[00:46:30] That will create confusion in your teaching. There are things you can do in your own presentation of teaching which we're not going to talk a lot about in this time. You can speak really quickly. You can speak in a monotone voice. You can do all kinds of things you want to avoid.
[00:46:43] And inexperienced, nervous guys tend to do that. They tend to race through their stuff.
[00:46:50] There are some ways in which you can do that which will detract. It's amazing how much just a pause does in gathering attention.
[00:46:59] So, yeah, I need to stop. I don't know what time it is. I'm sure that's 9:50. Yeah, I'm way over.
[00:47:05] So that's it for persuasion.
[00:47:08] Next week, guys, we're going. This is the one. We went out of order a little bit. We've just been talking about this backside.
[00:47:15] You're going to think with Mike about theological reflection. How do you see Jesus rightly in a text?
