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The Biblical Imperative for Specialised Evangelistic Preaching By Peter Masters
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At this moment I would like to talk about the necessity of persuasive gospel preaching.
It isn't enough to announce the facts of the gospel.
People need to be persuaded of the truth of the gospel.
Now we've prepared the ground for this by showing that it is part of God's work of salvation
that the sinner is consciously convinced of his need, of his sin, of the need of salvation
at the elements of the gospel.
He needs to be personally, consciously convinced and that is done very largely by preaching.
Also of course, by preaching in whatever form, whether by witness personally, whether by
reading of the scriptures or reading of a book which is making evangelistic statements.
People must be intelligently convinced.
It's a fact that in the past most of the great names never doubted this for a moment and
you get much provocative, imploring, appealing preaching.
One grand New Testament word is derived is to entreat, very strong persuasive word laden
pregnant with expostulation.
Richard Baxter said that when the sermon is finished then you start the wrestling and
he did exactly that.
He would preach a gospel sermon and then when he'd done with the hour and the glass was
turning for the next lap, then he would begin with something like his 50 reasons why sinners
should receive a savior and he would begin to wrestle with the individual.
Lest anyone should find that daunting, I don't want to waste time, but Baxter never had 50
reasons of course.
Like all the Puritans, he had about 10, 12 and they came around again and again in different
disguise or overlapped massively.
But anyway, he was very fond of that numeral 50 and used it much and I don't think that
we should imitate the Puritans for length.
Never forget the Puritans had a captive audience.
Once again I remind you the Puritans had people in church first of all by force of law and
then by unbreakable social convention and they could preach for as long as they liked,
how they liked, they didn't have to worry about whether people would find their preaching
attractive or not, not much, no doubt was attractive.
So it doesn't make a lot of sense to imitate the Puritans.
The Puritans didn't have our problem, they never had to attempt to get people into church,
they were delivered a captive audience.
So turn to the Puritans for many things, never turn to them for a methodology, never turn
to them for any instruction on how to get people into church, you're wasting your time,
it wasn't their problem.
Also it's good not to imitate the Puritans for other reasons, well that is to say not
in all respects because there were other differences between their age and our age.
The great problem, and I'm well off the track now but I'll come to the end of this digression
number one soon, the great problem of the Puritans is that they had to attack and combat
presumption in a religious age and a church-going age where people learn more theology than
they learned anything else, there was massive presumption, vast numbers of the people assume
themselves to be converted.
I mentioned how Bishop Ryle spends more time in his tracks telling you you're not converted
than he spends telling you how to be converted because that presumption lingered on right
into the Victorian age.
But it was at its peak in the Puritan age when many, many people presumed themselves
to be converted because of what they knew and the great burden of the Puritans was
to tell them they were not.
So if you should make the grave mistake of buying Matthew Mead's The Almost Christian
and let people have that, that will so flatten them and destroy them in its powerful attacks
against presumption that you will almost produce a lifelong assurance problem.
You give away Matthew Mead, you'll be counseling that person every likelihood for a long time
to come.
You see, the Puritans had a different problem.
You open the Puritans and this is a wild generalization.
There are Puritans like Thomas Watson who are a lesson in everything they do right out
of their time almost, even wrote as if they were writing 30 years ago and so there are
other Puritans, but nevertheless, the generality of Puritans cannot teach you how to preach
the gospel.
They did everything in a cumbersome way.
You know the story of George Howe?
Oh, what a lengthy preacher he was.
You know how they had the hourglass on the front of the pulpit like an egg timer outsized
and when the hour was over, they'd turn it over and go through another hour and the story
goes that George Howe was into his second or third hour, I forget what it was, and he
hadn't finished.
So it ran out and he noticed and he came out with those now famous words, let's have another
glass and turned it over, but there was one man in that service who could do something
about it and that was Oliver Cromwell and he'd had enough and he rose to his feet at
the back of the service, enough, Master Howe, enough, he said.
A great Puritan wouldn't have given way to anyone else, but he did to the Lord Protector
and so the sermon was hastily brought to an end, but you can't behave like that.
So value the Puritans, but take care, you are living in another age, you have problems
they never had.
However, even they believed in persuasion and in the necessity to wrestle.
Now ask yourself when you're preaching the gospel, have you done any wrestling?
Have you remonstrated?
Have you pleaded?
Have you persuaded?
I don't mean just have you battered them down?
Have you shouted your head off?
Incidentally, be careful of shouting in gospel preaching.
Evangelicals love a good shout, worldlings don't like it at all.
Evangelicals think that the power of the Holy Spirit is manifested in shouting.
Two classes of people shout when they're speaking today, trade union leaders and evangelicals.
And they both tend to develop the same pumping pointed finger hand movement too, there's
great similarities.
I can't explain it, they don't go to the same seminars, but there's great similarities.
Remember that in modern times, shouting is the language of hostility.
When do you shout, friends?
I hope you don't, but when do people shout?
Let's go back to the third person.
When do they shout?
They shout when they're angry, when they're upset, when they've lost their temper.
And that's what the non-churchgoer thinks you're doing, this great shout.
Now I know if you don't shout, people will not pump you by the hand afterwards and say
the Spirit was there, because as I say, evangelicals rather fall for it.
In fact, you can preach a sermon with nothing in it, as long as you shout it, nobody will
know.
But in evangelistic work, take great care, because you think you've got to shout, but
people will not be persuaded.
But anyway, the point I was essentially making is you can be persuasive, you can be demonstrative,
you can raise your voice, useful illustration.
Imagine there's a class of 40 unruly boys, and there's a schoolmaster in the front of
them, and he's having to raise his voice and project and shout, or else they wouldn't pay
attention.
But then there's one miscreant, and he sends all the others out, and he's left talking
to one.
Does he continue to shout in the same way?
Of course not.
He would appear to be a madman in the estimation of that boy if he still addressed the back
of the classroom when he was speaking to one.
In the world, there is a natural difference.
You speak to one person in one way, a thousand people in another way.
But don't address 30 or 50 as though you're addressing 40,000 in the Times of George Whitefield
on the Kennington Common.
It's absurd.
You can hardly hope your word to be taken seriously.
It's an act.
It's an evangelical affectation.
So be demonstrative, and if there's...
We have microphones and loudspeakers now, because that doesn't mean you can mutter.
I realize that, because the person 100 feet away doesn't think you're communicating with
him, unless you are a little bit larger than life.
You've got to give the impression, truthful impression, I hope, that you mean to communicate
with him.
But this is the age of amplifiers.
This is the age when people are used to going to movies, and they're used to just a quiet
whisper booming around the place where they're watching the film, greatly amplified.
They're used to soaps.
They're used to kitchen sink.
They're used to ordinary natural...
Why, if you were to go to some sort of a play performed by people who you used to operating
60 years ago, you'd probably think it all rather absurd, projecting like fury across
the stalls in a most unnatural manner.
Now, I'm not into play-going or theater-going or cinema-going, but we've all had the experience
of seeing a very old film performed by actors who didn't really know about the age of microphones,
and everything is done in an enormously exaggerated way, and it seems comical.
But what do you think the unsaved?
Think of the preacher when he bellows as though he's living in the 17th century, and
there's no assistance at all.
So do be careful, and try and be a little more natural.
I can see some friends disagree, but just think about it anyway, because it is an affectation.
Persuasion is so important to remonstrate and plead and persuade.
Now, I'm going to rush through a few scriptures to hasten on to the next point.
The point I shall be making is this, twofold.
First of all, you must have persuasion and expostulation reasoning in your preaching.
Not apologetic reasoning, but biblical reasoning.
Why will you die, O house of Israel?
There must be reasoning in your preaching and pleading, and it must be both sympathetic
and earnest and persuasive.
But here's a last nail in the coffin of the point of view which says we should not be
making an offer of the gospel, and we must not be doing anything that might smack of
manipulation, and might even seem remotely to trespass on the work of the Spirit.
We don't believe we're doing that.
So I'm going to point you to a shortcut.
You can reason endlessly about whether or not there ought to be a gospel offer.
Here's a shortcut through the whole argument.
What did the apostles do?
Did they or did they not reason and persuade and offer?
Well, let's see what they did.
We'll turn to a few texts that all contain similar words.
Acts 17, verse 17, speaking of Paul, therefore disputed he in the synagogue with the Jews
and with the devout persons and in the market daily with them that met with him.
And the Greek indicates arguments.
He presented arguments almost in the manner of a lawyer.
He was an advocate.
He reasoned with them and argued with them.
It doesn't mean to say they said something and he said something.
He was doing all the talking, no doubt, though in some cases he would have been engaging
in discussion.
But mainly he was doing the talking.
What it means is that even in his speech he would bring up their point of view.
He would answer it with his point of view.
He would seek to undermine their position and reason for the superiority of the gospel
over what they believed and so on.
He argued with them, interacted with them, pleaded his case.
Not enough just to say, men are sinners, Christ is a savior, they need a savior, this, that.
You're dealing with individuals.
You need this savior.
If you reject him, this is what will happen to you.
Don't do that.
This is what he will do for you using the arguments of the scripture.
There is to be a presentation of arguments.
Then just look at Acts 18 and verse 13.
Again, these are in Bible order.
Look at what they charged Paul with.
This fellow persuadeth men to worship God contrary to the law.
And the Greek term translated persuadeth means he repeatedly convinced.
Doesn't mean he preached one sermon, then another, then another.
In the course of any message, his message was a series of convincing arguments or persuasions.
You see the character of the apostolic teaching.
It wasn't just theoretical, it was interactive as they persuaded and wrestled with the outlook
and the intentions of the people.
This is an insight into apostolic preaching and offer of the gospel.
And glance down to verse 28 of that chapter.
Look at this.
This is Apollos.
For he mightily convinced the Jews and that publicly, mightily convinced.
The Greek word translated mightily means well stretched, which isn't of course to do with
the length of the sermon.
It simply means that he used very elaborate and well proven arguments to persuade them
of their spiritual need and of the fact that Christ was the savior.
And convinced means in this case proved utterly.
So in an intricate way with developed simple but developed arguments, he utterly proved
his case.
And we could go on there in chapter 19 and verse 8.
These are not incidental texts.
Look at this one.
Paul, he went into the synagogue and spake boldly for the space of three months, disputing
and persuading.
Both words.
See the character of the preaching, interactive, wrestling, persuading, reasoning.
Not just a bland presentation of something, but always applied with much pleading in it.
This is the scriptural way of dealing with men and women.
And then in Acts 20 and verse 31, you get a quite different term used.
Therefore watch and remember that by the space of three years, I cease not to warn, which
refers to the admonition or cautioning of the mind.
And in Acts 24 and verse 25, here's another great text.
I give you so many so that you'll appreciate that I'm not just plucking this out of some
single rather individual texts.
This is the common language for describing their preaching.
So it's Acts 24, 25.
And as Paul reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, Felix trembled.
Oh, there it is.
He reasoned.
That's not human reasoning.
It's biblical reasoning, but he wrestled with him.
And the man was naturally convicted, not necessarily spiritually.
And then in chapter 28 and verse 23, and here we find it yet again.
When they had appointed him a day, Paul is incorrigible to the end of his life.
There came many into his lodging, the leading Jews from Rome, to whom he expounded and testified
the kingdom of God, persuading them concerning Jesus.
Always the way.
Preaching attempts to persuade.
And if you want one or two other texts beside them, we couldn't do better than 2 Corinthians
chapter 5.
How can we get around this if we're not interested in being persuaders?
2 Corinthians 5, 11, knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men.
What words they are.
So it's warm, and it's persuasive, as well as warning.
As Paul speaks, persuading people, he knows they can understand much of what he's saying.
He also knows that they must be regenerated by the spirit to receive it and delight in
it, but he believes they can understand it.
Therefore he can wrestle with them and reason, believing that regeneration will intelligently
cause them to be intelligently persuaded.
Let's check that out in Romans chapter 1.
I've referred to it quite a good deal, therefore you may like me to turn to this.
Romans chapter 1 and verse 16.
For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation
to everyone that believeth, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, the
just shall live by faith.
But then he tells us more, and he says in verse 19, because that which, he's now talking
about those who hold down the truth in unrighteousness.
He says, he's going to say there without excuse, verse 19, because that which may be known
of God is manifest in them, for God hath showed it unto them.
For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood
by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without
excuse.
Now, I'm not going to give time to developing this, but the apostle Paul says, all members
of the human race are without excuse if they reject the one God, the creator of all things.
And they know that they are in a state of sin before him.
And believing this, we talk about touching the raw nerve.
Believing this, we know that they've covered it up.
They're holding down the truth.
They're shutting it out of their minds.
They put layer upon layer of self-justification and false ideas, atheism, everything you can
think of to conceal the truth.
But the preacher hasn't got to do much to stir up the surface and cause the conscience
to smart.
And people are aware they have this answering chord within them.
This message is true.
When you witness, when you preach, there are people there who know that this is the truth.
They may not tell you.
They may not show it.
They may not give you a hint, but you are more powerful than you think.
They may not savingly understand it, but they will know that this is true.
And this is what they're accountable for.
So friends, we believe that.
Man is not so dead that he can't grasp.
Your ministry may be a ministry of judgment to them.
One day they may be held account to account for the things that they heard and understood.
Happily and hopefully your ministry will be owned by God and it will be effective in regenerate
souls and they will be convinced and convicted and will run to Jesus Christ.
But always remember there is some measure even of natural understanding and you are
to persuade and you are to plead, whether for judgment or whether for salvation.
There is this pleading all the time.
So I wanted to emphasize these things in a few moments before we proceed now to hermeneutics.
Just one last point I'll make and it is this.
Some people say, well, yes, I agree with everything you've said.
I've had this many times.
I haven't got a question like this this afternoon so far, but people will say this.
I agree with all you've said, the gospel must be preached, but not in church.
Evangelism is for outside the church.
So this is another get out, you know.
It's entirely something which takes place outside the church, in the open air, special
occasions, in the marketplace daily and so on.
Well, our answer to that is, of course it is true, fine.
It happens outside the church as well as inside the church.
But it is quite unbiblical to come to a situation where it is exclusively outside the church.
No, in the New Testament, evangelism is carried on in the context of the gathered church as
well as outside.
Both are true.
It must be carried on regularly within the context of the gathered church.
The lecture hall of Tyrannus is an example.
You see, the Apostle Paul says in those three great blockbuster texts that we are to be
followers of him.
Remember, as Jesus Christ is set for our moral example, the Apostle Paul is set to be our
methodological example in all things.
What he did, we are bound to do too.
Hope you believe that.
Everybody used to believe that once upon a time.
You believe a basic hermeneutical rule, I trust, that the Apostle Paul never made a
mistake recorded in Scripture.
Do you believe that?
I'm sure he made mistakes, but the Holy Spirit saw to it that no mistake of the Apostle Paul's
was ever recorded in the pages of Scripture.
Why?
Because we are told to be imitators of him in every way, and the Bible never contradicts
itself.
And we would never be commanded to imitate everything Paul said and everything he did
if wrong things are recorded there.
So it is a basic piece of informing theology on the Scripture that Paul never made a mistake.
Digression number six.
Wasn't Barnabas right and Paul wrong?
Impossible, because Paul was never wrong according to the record of Scripture.
That's your informing theology.
You interpret Scripture by Scripture.
Paul can never be wrong.
Other reasons also, you know he wasn't wrong, by the way, because I see you're more interested
in this than what I was talking about before.
It is a shame that there is a kind of inner desire in many of the writers to see Paul
making a mistake.
I don't know why it is, perhaps you can account for that, but some people are really very
anxious that Paul should be wrong sometimes.
However, he couldn't have been wrong because he was only applying the Word of God that
he was given.
Let him first be proved.
And poor John Mark, though we have sympathy for him, we might have failed just as he did.
We're not going to be smug, but poor John Mark had done something disastrous.
Of course he couldn't go on the next missionary journey.
Paul was right, he had to be stood down.
He had to recover himself.
Years later, Paul was happy to accept him.
He was a different man.
He'd learned better, but he had to be stood down by command of Scripture.
And you notice, of course, that the Church stood behind Paul and Silas, not Barnabas
and John Mark.
So as far as the Church was concerned, it was Paul who was in the right.
And you realize also, it's a small piece of evidence, Barnabas loses his privileges and
never again turns up in apostolic ministry, whereas Paul, of course, continued to be most
fruitful.
So there's a lot of reasons.
But the informing, somebody else was telling me once that he'd preached to prove to his
people that Paul was wrong in the matter of Agabus.
And those who prophesied in the Spirit, it says, told him he shouldn't go to Jerusalem.
But Paul was the only one of that little crowd who was applying any logic, because he had
an advantage, because God had told him quite separately that he must go to Jerusalem and
suffer.
But he had an advantage.
He listened carefully to what Agabus and the others said.
And Paul reasoned in this way.
The others reasoned from their hearts, not their heads.
God best them.
They wanted to preserve him.
But Paul was the only one who used his head.
And he said in effect to them, don't you see?
If the Spirit says, I must go to Jerusalem and suffer, I must go to Jerusalem and suffer.
He said it.
It must happen.
What are you doing?
Saying, the Spirit says you must go to Jerusalem and suffer, so don't go.
That would make the Spirit wrong.
It was only the apostle who was applying any logic to the matter.
And people are still prepared to preach today Paul was wrong then too.
And agree with.
But anyway, Paul is always right, according to the record of scripture, because he is
set to be our methodological example.
So what he did, we do.
We will do it in exactly the same way.
Now, friends, I don't want to bend your minds, but I am doing a switch now into another gear,
going almost from first into overdrive directly or the other way around, because we have to
do a little hermeneutics.
And I hope you are very interested in biblical interpretation.
But it's most important that we head into this.
So if you move around for just two minutes, and then we get right into the next half hour,
Bible interpretation.
Now, the next subject area that I'm dealing with is that of Bible interpretation.
I'm going to try to deal with this fairly briefly.
I'm not going to be able to do justice to it.
It's the most important, obviously, and a wonderful subject.
But because it does bear upon evangelistic preaching, we have to address it to some extent.
First of all, I have to give a negative warning.
Old battles repeat themselves.
Satan, by now, is not particularly original.
We are not ignorant of his devices, at least we should not be.
And perhaps the most serious attack that Satan is making on sound churches at the moment
is in the area of Bible interpretation.
He has produced among the churches in the last 20 to 30 years something which he last
visited upon us in the 1870s and the 1880s.
The old German rationalism, which took away the spirituality, the supernatural nature
of the Bible, is back again.
Only this time, it's not being taught by liberals, it's being taught by leading evangelicals,
which makes it infinitely more dangerous.
In most seminaries, evangelical seminaries around the world, most of them, it's very
sad because this new, or not the new hermeneutic, but the new evangelical hermeneutic, as it's
called, is being taught.
It's a shame, it's a tragedy, because even many sound places have taken this method of
biblical interpretation on board and they don't realize what it is and where it's come
from.
Now I have to mention it this afternoon because it destroys all possibility of serious use
of the Bible as an evangelistic sourcebook.
So it does touch on this subject.
I think some evangelicals are drawn to this new method of interpretation that I'll mention
the main features of in a moment.
They're drawn to it because they think it is a safeguard against irresponsible use of
scripture.
After all, if you are free to see types, typical teaching in the Old Testament and figures
and illustrations of salvation, it may be that your imagination will run away with you
and you will elaborate on these things in a totally unjustifiable manner and you'll
get to the point where you can make anything stand for anything you want it to stand for.
And some preachers do that.
Some godly men, it's true, who mean well, who are faithful men in their way, so freewheel
in the scriptures that they could almost get anything anywhere.
And scripture, of course, ceases to have meaning and authority.
And we all know about the tradition of Rome and then the medieval interpreters and then
many down the centuries of evangelical interpreters who will go along with the idea that something
should be rung out of, all the details should be rung out of all the miracles and parables
so that when you're talking about the Good Samaritan, you even do something with the
two coins and everything has a fanciful application.
Well, there are those who want to guard against that.
And they think that this new evangelical hermeneutic is a good way of guarding against that.
But actually, it's a straitjacket.
It doesn't merely prevent the preacher for taking a swing at things he shouldn't be dealing
with, but it keeps his arms and legs and trunk absolutely chained up.
And he can't do anything with the scripture at all because it no longer is the divine
source book of arguments and doctrines.
So I speak of this very quickly.
Some of the main personalities that you know of in the evangelical world promoting this
and one of the most popular books is a simple little book by a man named Henry Wirkler.
And that is in most of the seminaries today.
It's not one of the leading books because all he does by his own statement is distill
what others have said and present a workable little presentation.
But a number of times you'll see Wirkler's book on hermeneutics in very sound seminaries.
They've bought it.
One of the great promoters of this new evangelical hermeneutic, I'll get on with telling you
what it's about in a second, one of the greatest promoters is Walter Kaiser if you've seen
any of his work.
Actually Walter Kaiser has done us a great service because he promotes this dreadful
method of interpretation and he's also done us the kindness of writing a number of inexpensive
brief commentaries on Bible books in which he employs his own method of interpretation
so that we can see what wonderful results it brings.
And when you read his commentaries, they're dry as dust and they haven't got an ounce
of pastoral application in them and they just don't seem to get anything.
They just give you history, geography, technical detail, word senses and that's it.
And that's just about all.
And if a clever man like Walter Kaiser who obviously has a good mind and is a very clever
communicator and a great hebraist, if he can't get anything out of the Bible by his methods,
surely we can't.
It's a dud method and it's killing, it's destructive.
Now there are seven major errors it makes and they will take us to the end of the afternoon.
So I'm only going to give you very briefly a couple so that you can be warned.
And I'm now having to extract just the kernel of this.
But you know, from the reformation, one of the first rules of interpretation has been
the grammatical historical principle.
Now the grammatical historical approach to interpretation means this, that the first
chance you give to the text is the grammatical text set in its historical context.
The grammatical historical approach begins, and this is an ultra simplification, I don't
think you'll mind, but it begins saying, what is the plain sense?
What did the human author mean?
Let's suppose that the main meaning is the obvious one and we'll go straight to the words
that the human author intended to be understood in his own day.
What would the passage mean taken that way?
So very truncated, that's the grammatical historical approach.
It is of course more elaborate than that, but that's what it amounts to.
And I don't think anybody would actually disagree with my simplifying to that extent.
Now that was the first rule of interpretation, but the thing I want to stress, it was by
no means the only rule.
Having given the first crack of the whip to the plain sense, you had a lot more to do
because you believed this was a supernatural book.
This is authored by the Holy Spirit and there is a message in that event.
It may be an historical event that's recorded.
It may be that the children of Israel went somewhere or did something.
Yes, but having looked at the plain narrative of the historical event that literally took
place, what's the message?
Not what is the application.
What is the message that God intended?
You see the old writers, Dr. Gill says something like this and A. W. Pink takes him up in more
modern language, the Jews of old were the unwitting actors on a great stage.
God superintending all their affairs so that in the things he did to them and through them,
there are spiritual lessons for the church of God in the New Testament age.
That's a spiritual view of the Bible.
And the first rule of interpretation, look for the plain sense, but then by various means
and rules, what is the message?
What is God saying?
Why has God recorded this event, not simply to extend our knowledge of Israelite history
and geography and so on, but what is the point?
What is the purpose?
Now if I put it like that, you will immediately detect the difference when I tell you the
new rule.
The new definition of the grammatical historical approach by the new evangelicals, you'll see
how this humanizes the Bible, reduces it to a mere uninspired book, though the people
teaching this believe it's the word of God, they don't treat it like the word of God.
The new rule is this, listen carefully, you'll spot this straight away.
The sole task of the interpreter, notice not just the first rule anymore, the sole task,
the only task of the interpreter is to discover the meaning intended by the original human
author and intended to be grasped by his contemporaries.
If that's the sole rule, the scripture is a human book, there's nothing in it.
This was around in the days of the great Lord Bacon, he immediately said, if that is the
sole task of the interpreter, the book is not inspired.
You could see there's no spiritual message, there's no scope for God to work, this is
a nonsense.
They just about allow the possibility of prophecy, by the way, and things like that in this.
But this is what they say, the sole task of the interpreter is what the original human
author meant to say and to be understood by his generation.
Prophecy is a reluctant exception.
So there's no spiritual underlying sense, there's no spiritual purpose.
After all, when the children of Israel crossed the Red Sea, that is not a foreshadowing
of redemption.
It doesn't have a lesson in it about deliverance from bondage, spiritual bondage by the power
of God.
And all that, you see, the Bible is emptied of its spiritual message, its spiritual content.
For those of you who want it in more technical terms, there is no sensus plena in the Bible,
there is no fuller sense to be explored or to be searched out.
Certainly there are no evangelistic arguments.
You can't use the journeyings of the children of Israel as great pre-figureings or lessons
or pictures, images of salvation and the plight of man and the blessing and the power of God's
redemption.
You can't do that anymore.
So the evangelistic potential of the Bible has evaporated overnight.
So you can see that if preachers are learning this kind of thing, where are they going to
get the gospel from?
In the Old Testament.
What are they going to do?
Of course, it's going to be completely shut off from them.
You must turn to these two scriptures because I am now doing the difficult thing of trying
to torpedo this whole thing with a couple of scriptures instead of a couple of afternoons.
So these scriptures are important.
It's Acts chapter 26 and verse 22.
It's Paul, of course, speaking to Agrippa and Festus.
Verse 22, having therefore obtained help of God, I continue unto this day witnessing both
the small and great, saying none other things than those which the prophets and Moses did
say should come, now listen to this, that Christ should suffer and that he should be
the first that should rise from the dead and should show light unto the people and
to the Gentiles.
And as he thus spake for himself, Festus said with a loud voice, Paul, thou art beside thyself,
much learning doth make thee mad.
Festus said a very intelligent thing there.
Festus knew the scriptures.
Festus knew the ways of the Jews.
Festus had read Moses many times and he couldn't for the life of him think where Paul would
find anything about the suffering of Christ and that he should be the first that should
rise from the dead and show light to the Gentiles.
He knew perfectly well that didn't literally occur in the Pentateuch.
Oh, he wasn't just exclaiming something like an ignorant worldling would.
Festus was saying, Paul, you don't get any of that in the Pentateuch.
You've gone mad.
You're speaking nonsense.
Well, I ask you, you know the five books of Moses.
Where does it mention a word about the suffering of Christ?
You go home and think about it.
Where is there one single literal reference to the death of Christ, let alone that he
should not only rise from the dead but be the first that should rise from the dead?
And where does it say that he'll bring in the calling of the Gentiles?
None of that is in the Pentateuch.
None of it at all.
Well, where do you find it?
If there's no deeper sense, you can't find it.
It isn't there.
You could, Dean Bergen exclaims this to the German rationalists of his day.
He says, what passages are there in the works of Moses?
You show me, he says to them, in his delightful way of writing, you cannot do it unless you
see Christ in the betrayal of Joseph and in the Paschal Lamb and in the laws of the offerings
and in the ark of Noah and so on.
You can't do it and you can't.
If those things are not recorded in those types and shadows and images, you can't find
Christ anywhere in the Pentateuch and that's torpedo enough for the new evangelical method
of interpretation.
Just to put cream on the cake, you must go to Acts 28 and verse 23.
Are you going to use the Old Testament and the Pentateuch as a source of evangelistic
reasoning?
Well, remember the apostle is our great example.
28 verse 23, and when they had appointed him a day, there came many to him into his lodging,
to whom he expounded and testified the kingdom of God, persuading them concerning Jesus,
both out of the law of Moses and out of the prophets from morning till evening.
Paul could preach so much on Christ in the Pentateuch and the prophets that it took him
all day and you couldn't preach for five minutes if you listened to the modern method that
our preachers are being taught as to how to interpret the Bible.
There are many other things that we could say about this, but one more torpedo and I
must rush on and it's in 1 Corinthians chapter 9 and this is a delightful way of dealing
with all this.
What's our sole task?
To try to discover the literal sense that the original human author intended to be understood
in his day.
Well, listen to Paul.
He doesn't have much time for that.
1 Corinthians chapter 9 verse 7, who goeth the warfare any time at his own charges?
Who planteth a vineyard and eateth not of the fruit thereof?
Or who feedeth a flock and eateth not of the milk of the flock?
You know his reasoning.
It is that the ministers of God, the messengers of Calvary, must be supported in their work.
But then he says in verse 8, say I these things as a man, or saith not the law, the same also.
Hold on, Paul.
The law talks about the support of ministers, well it does actually.
It talks about the support of priests, but he's not going to use any of those passages.
Look what he's going to bring in, wheel in for this.
For it is written in the law of Moses, thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that
treadeth out the corn.
And listen to this, it's explosive.
Doth God take care for oxen?
Do you really think God only meant that to be limited to the oxen?
The plain, literal, human sense meant by the original author, almost sarcasm.
Do you think God was only concerned about oxen?
Says Luther robustly, no, for oxen cannot read.
He has a way of putting things, doesn't he?
And that's the whole truth.
No, says the apostle Paul, so how are we to understand the law?
Those case laws, those lesser laws of Israel, when God told them about how to treat their
oxen, he had a higher principle in view.
The way God was evidently working was this.
He was saying, when you read my law, remember that it has its highest spiritual application,
sometimes expressed in the lowest, simplest way.
In other words, this is how you're supposed to think.
This is what the law meant.
This is how you're supposed to think.
If I mustn't muzzle the mouth of the ox when he treads out the corn, how much more must
I not deprive my servant, my human servant?
And if I'm not to deprive and ill-treat my human servant, how much more I must provide
for those who minister holy things?
If this law is true at the lowest level, well, how much more is it true at the spiritual
level?
You know the ancient law, I'm a little bit off track, but the ancient law that said if
you owned a house with a flat roof, which they all had, then you must put a balustrade
or a balcony or a battlement in the authorized version around the roof of the house.
And if you didn't and anybody fell off, you would not be without guilt.
Remember that law?
Do you think God was only interested in people falling off flat roofs?
Of course he was, but no.
What God was saying is you as a father have got to make sure that your children are protected
spiritually and your household.
And you as a pastor have got to make sure that you are sufficiently separate from false
teaching and godlessness that none of your people can fall off the fine broad roof of
the gospel and be dashed down into liberalism and unbelief.
The law of battlements has a spiritual application.
And when God pronounces that you mustn't use different fibers to make a garment from,
do you really think he's concerned that people shouldn't suffer shrinkage in their clothing
in ancient times and crumpling and rumbling?
No, it's spiritual.
What God is saying is you must not be part of the ecumenical movement.
Like and unlike must not attempt to be linked in the work of Jesus Christ.
Surely, isn't it obvious?
We look for the spiritual message behind the commandment, behind the case law.
And this is how we apply and interpret the Bible.
We have to be sane and careful, not fanciful and foolish.
But all I have time to do on this subject is to warn you that there is a new method
of interpretation which comes from German rationalism.
It is promoted by leading new evangelicals who are making great names for themselves.
It's humanistic.
It is poisonous.
And preachers who are taught that way will never know how to use the scripture in its
fullness and in its scope.
I'm only sorry to kind of insult your intelligence by giving you so little of the reasoning of
this.
I'll just drop a hint because of the lack of time.
We believe, on the other hand, or there's just one point that they hold to which I must
deal with because it's so relevant.
They say when you approach the Bible, you must come without any presuppositions or expectations.
The new evangelical method of interpretation labors this point.
You must treat the Bible entirely objectively and coldly, scientifically, and you must not
bring to it any presuppositions or expectations.
Now, in a way, I can see what they're getting at.
Probably at the back of this is the notion that if I look at a scripture passage presupposing
of point of view, I shall simply read it into the passage and the passage will never speak
to me.
Yes, that's a real problem to be aware of.
But it's no cause to make a law of interpretation because it just happens that the only way
you can interpret the Bible is with your mind crammed full of the presuppositions and
expectations which the Bible tells you to have.
If I were talking about hermeneutics, about interpretation, I would refer at this point
to the three great texts, Romans 15, 4, 1 Corinthians, chapter 6, and so on, and 10,
and I would refer also to 2 Timothy 3, 16, where you have three verses which tell us
that the Old Testament is recorded for our benefit in order to give us the following
lessons.
And you work between the three verses and you get an enormous checklist of the things
you're supposed to be looking for.
You're supposed to look at every passage and say, does it have comfort and consolation
here?
Does it have scriptural promises here?
Does it have doctrines here?
Does it have correction here?
Does it have duties here?
And if you don't look at the text with these expectations and possibilities, you won't
see a thing.
It's impossible.
It's like a doctor.
If he hasn't got printed on the back of his mind a great store of information about what
symptoms mean and what they point to, and if he isn't able to spot them and recognize
them, he can't tell you anything much about a patient.
In a way, that's presuppositions and expectations.
He's trained to have a vast number of them embedded there in his mind, and that's how
you approach the scripture.
To clear away all expectations is to expect nothing from the scripture.
You expect nothing, you get nothing.
But nowhere is this more true than with evangelism.
If you have not got an evangelistic checklist, the kind of things you're looking for in a
passage, are they there?
Is there grace there?
Is there any information about the fall of man?
Is there any information about redemption, the plan of salvation?
Is there any information about the heavenly hereafter?
Is there any warning?
Is there any testimony?
I could perhaps give you a more coherent checklist later on.
But if you haven't got a grid or a checklist to bring to the passage, you won't see what's
there.
You'll miss the point.
People say to me, oh, I've read Spurgeon on miracles and parables, but he gets so much
out of it.
I couldn't do all that.
But you can if you've got a checklist.
You can see the reasonings.
Is there an argument?
Is there a persuasion?
Is there a warning?
You'll spot them all if you're working from presuppositions and expectations.
Your problem will be realizing when you're spotting things that aren't there, not spotting
things that are there.
That's where you'll have to be careful, not the other way around.
You'll find your sensibility to evangelistic arguments comes massively awake.
And you'll be greatly blessed by these things.
So I had to deal with this particular theme.
I wish I had more time, but I haven't.
I'd like to go into the analogy of faith a little and how other passages inform and how
context and all that kind of thing.
But I'll close this present session with just two simple rules of interpretation, which
are very important to evangelism.
One is that miracles and parables all contain grace.
They may contain other things too, but every miracle, every parable contains grace.
That is a salvation principle or warning or message, every one of them.
We're told that of the parables in Matthew 13, verses 10 to 16.
You can delve into that privately, where the purpose and content of parables comes out
in those verses.
As far as miracles are concerned, John chapter 20, verses 30 to 31 tells us that miracles
are in order that we may believe.
Not in the limited sense that they show the deity and power of Christ, but they have an
object lesson.
In other words, the healing of a blind man has lessons on the healing of the spiritually
blind and so on and so on.
There is a spiritual application, grace in every parable.
Now for the first time, I'll quote Calvin.
I won't quote him, I'll just describe, cite him.
Calvin points this out, grace in all the parables.
He didn't always keep to it.
Quite often he says there's no grace in this parable, contrary to his own principle.
For instance, and this is a shame, of the parable of the Good Samaritan, Calvin reduces
it to a moral lesson and many commentators follow him.
Even a commentator I greatly admire, Dr. William Hendrickson, I argued with him personally
on this in the 1970s, but no, he wouldn't have it.
No, it was a moral lesson only in the parable of the Good Samaritan.
Most of the great preaching worth is had it as grace, not just a moral lesson.
I ask you, do you think somebody would really ask a leading question of the Lord Jesus Christ,
what shall I do in effect and be given a moral answer, a works answer?
There has to be grace in that parable.
And I go with Dr. Gill, who in old-fashioned language, which I'll modernize, says that
it's a delayed action parable in that the people who heard this most provocative parable
in the course of time, as Christ turned out to be the Good Samaritan himself and went
to Calvary and was rejected and despised like any Samaritan by the Jews, he realized that
he was speaking of himself and he is the Good Samaritan.
Yes, there's clearly grace.
Grace in every parable, that's most important.
Search for the gracious message.
Maybe I'll have a chance to give you some ideas later.
But the other hermeneutical rule, which is good for evangelism, is this.
Israel stands for two things, one or the other and sometimes both.
I'll tell you first what Israel never stands for.
Israel never stands for my nation.
See, I'm not an adherent of the British Israel point of view, the lost tribe and all that.
Israel never stands for my nation.
Doesn't stand for UK, doesn't stand for Australia.
That would be quite wrong.
To preach a nationalistic sermon from a Jewish text is actually a mistake.
You I regret to tell you down here are not God's privileged people and blessed and specially
blessed nation, neither are we.
So that's how you shouldn't use it.
But I'll tell you how you should use it.
Israel either stands for the church, the church of Jesus Christ, or it stands for the world
and by extension for any worldly.
So if you're addressing Australia in general terms in its worldliness and unbelief, yes,
you can apply an Israel passage to it.
But don't ever extend that to saying, oh, it's a special nation, special in the mind
of God, specially privileged.
That would be a wrong use of the text.
Israel is always a picture either of the church of Jesus Christ or of mankind.
You see, it applies to both.
The church is God's special people, but then mankind is God's special race too.
We're not animals, we're not beasts.
We have a rational faculty and a moral consciousness and we have a spirit within us and we've been
greatly privileged as human beings.
So Israel represents the human race.
Now you have to choose and sometimes you can, like Matthew Henry, dear old Matthew Henry,
he always applies it both ways.
He always has his cake and eats it, you know, but that's his privilege because he's a father
in the faith.
But sometimes you have to choose.
For instance, Isaiah 5, the blistering attack upon the nation there hardly means that is
a suitable passage for showing that this is the church, the ransom of, I mean, I hope
your church isn't full of drunkards and all the rest of it.
That language is a bit strong.
So there I would choose to see there a salvation passage and Israel, my pleasant plant is the
world, you see.
And then you apply all the reasonings to that.
But there's just a little rule of hermeneutics that Israel is going to provide you with a
picture either of the church or the world and that's important for evangelism.
At this point I'm going to hand over to the chairman and we resume after the break.