When people evaluate churches, they might evaluate them on the basis of many things, but there's only one that really sets the tone. The single most important reason to choose a church is the nature and character of its preaching and teaching. Here's an interesting exercise. Do an internet search for churches in your area. What do they emphasize? What do they communicate about their purpose? These days, it's things like building relationships, addressing emotional needs, having a contemporary style, or even simply having fun. Those things will likely rank high in how churches advertise themselves. But as good as those things might sound, have they found too high a place? What is the role of the church? What is the role of a pastor? Bottom line, what does the Bible say a pastor should commit himself to? The title of John MacArthur's current study gives more than a little hint. Join him now on Grace To You as he continues this series that he's titled, Why Is Preaching Worth Fighting For? There are five reasons why the Lord has designed that the center and heart of the ministry of the church is preaching and preaching the Word, the Word of God, the revealed Scripture. Reason number one is because of dangerous times...dangerous times. Look at chapter 3 verse 1, but realize this, he says, that in the last days...in the last Difficult times will come. He says, preach the Word because of the dangerous times, the dangerous seasons. It is a time of all times to preach the Word. Here we are, getting further down the line, accumulating more and more danger and at the same time a diminishing of the proclamation of the truth to meet that danger rather than an escalation of it. We ought to be doing exactly the opposite of what we are doing. Instead of setting preaching aside, we ought to be increasing the preaching and the preachers because of the increase in the dangers. Serious dangers exist today in the church. And everything I've mentioned to you is in the church, threatening the church. And that's why we have to preach the Word, because the Word answers all of these things. The Word sorts it all out, whether it's sacramentalism, or rationalism, whether it's some form of liberalism, or experientialism, or mysticism, or subjectivism, or pragmatism, or whatever it is, the Word of God gives the truth that comes to bear against all of that. There's a second reason why Paul tells us we have to preach. Not only because we live in dangerous times which can only be addressed by divine truth proclaimed. We are to preach because of godly examples...of godly examples, because we have been given a pattern to follow. Look at verse 10. Paul says to Timothy, you followed my teaching, conduct, purpose. You followed my faith, patience, love, perseverance, persecutions and sufferings, such as happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra. what persecutions I endured and out of them all the Lord delivered me and indeed all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted." Then down to verse 14, you, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them. Paul says, you must preach because that's the pattern that's been set for you. You have followed Me in My ministerial duty, that is My teaching and My conduct. You saw...you heard My teaching. You watched My ministry unfold. You saw how I conducted Myself as God's servant, as an Apostle. You not only followed My ministry, but you followed My personal life, verse 10. You saw My purpose, that is My motive, what drove Me, what compelled Me. You saw my faith. You saw me in all of the issues of ministry, trusting God. You saw the strength and direction of my faith. You saw my endurance. You saw my love. In other words, the Lord brought you beside Me to follow My pattern, a pattern of ministry, how I taught and how I conducted My ministry, a pattern of personal quality, the motives of My heart, My faith in God, My endurance, My love for Him and love for people. And then He says, you even had the opportunity because Timothy, of course, followed Paul, spent years with him, you even had the opportunity to see me in difficult experiences, to learn, he says in verse 10, of my perseverance. Then in verse 11, to learn of my persecutions and my sufferings, such as happened to me, for example, at Antioch, Iconium and Lystra, all the way there to being stoned and left for dead on a dump. You saw the persecutions. You saw that I endured them. You saw that the Lord delivered me out of them all." In other words, God gave you a model to follow. God gave you a model of ministry. You saw the truth of verse 12, that all who live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. Timothy, you were exposed to a godly example. And with the divine intention that this was the pattern for you to follow. Paul was a strong champion for truth and Timothy was to follow him. And so in verse 14 he says, you, however, continue in the things you've learned. Continue in the things you've become convinced of, knowing from whom you learned them. And he's talking about himself. God didn't put me in your life. for any other reason than to teach you the truth and set a pattern for ministry. I mean, I look at myself as a preacher, simply in a long line of preachers, prophets of the Old Testament. And John the Baptist is the last of the Old Testament prophets. And He's a preacher and He's preaching repentance in the kingdom. The Messiah comes and the Lord preaches. And then He takes His twelve and He ordains them to preach. And then comes Paul and Paul is a preacher. And then Paul trains Timothy to be a preacher and so it goes. And men of God, as I said, all the way along through all of redemptive history have been ordained by God to follow in that line. I don't really want to take the responsibility to change the plan. Just give me the baton and I'll run the same race." Paul is saying to Timothy, you must preach the Word because that's what we do and that's what we've trained you to do and that's the model that has been established for you. You've seen it. You've experienced it both in terms of ministry, character, heart, quality, and suffering and enduring difficulty. You saw what we were, what we are. We're not entertainers. We are preachers and we live and die for the truth. So we preach in the church because of the dangerous seasons that can only be confronted by the truth proclaimed that threatened the life of the church and the honor of the Lord of the church. We preach because of godly examples who have passed on this baton to us. I look back to a father, a grandfather, a great-grandfather, a great-great-grandfather, five generations passing on the preaching responsibility. My professors, my teachers in seminary, ministers and pastors and Bible teachers who influenced my life, I'm just one in a long line. I just want to keep being faithful to the same pattern that God established. That's why we preach, because our godly examples have established that pattern. If there's anybody that I would choose above all to be like, it would be the Apostle Paul. You probably know that. I really don't want to change anything. I just want to try to do as closely to what he did as I can possibly do. There's a third reason why we preach. We preach because of the dangerous times. We preach because we're in a line of godly examples. We preach, thirdly, because of the power of the Word. We preach because of the power of the Word, verse 15, and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. We preach and we preach because we know the sacred writings. What are the sacred writings? Right here, the books of Scripture. And they are able to give the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. We preach because the Word is powerful to save. That's why we preach. We preach the Word because the Word saves. In 1 Peter chapter 1 verse 23, you have been born again, not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is through the living and abiding Word of God. And verse 25, and this is the Word which was preached to you. We preach because the Word saves. The Word makes alive. The Word quickens. The Word transforms. Psalm 19, the law of the Lord converts the soul. That's why we preach the power of the Word. Then in verse 16 he adds, all Scripture, we preach all Scripture because it's all inspired by God, it's all profitable. We preach the whole counsel of God because it's all inspired and it's all profitable. People sometimes say to me, you go so slowly through the Scripture. The truth is, I probably don't go slowly enough. If it's all inspired, I really don't want to skip anything. If it's all profitable, I don't want to go over anything. It's all profitable for teaching. What's that? Doctrine. For giving people truth that is, listen, precise and accurate. The Bible is not just a blur that you can sort of fill in any way you want. The Bible is clear and precise. And you are to study to show yourself approved to workmen needing not to be ashamed because you rightly divide it. It needs to be handled with great precision so that you can give people teaching or doctrine, sound truth." Then he adds, reproof. It has the power not only to give people truth, but it has the power to expose error. It reproves. It exposes error. It uncovers the lie. And then he adds in verse 16, for correction. That literally means to restore someone to an upright position. It has the power to correct, to put something back in place, to put something broken set and back functioning. And then he adds training, the positive side of correction. You pick up the broken pieces, reassemble and train for usefulness. Now when you think about the work of the Word, when you think about what the Word does, it saves, it provides truth, it exposes error, it restores and it trains. You begin to understand its power. that the man of God may be adequate. I don't think that's a very good translation because when we think of adequate, we think of something that's marginally acceptable. Well, it's adequate. That's not what this means. It means that the man of God may be complete. equipped for every good work." Why do we preach the Word, folks? Because the Word makes the man of God complete, equipped for every good work. That's the sufficiency of Scripture. We preach then because of the dangerous seasons. We preach because of the godly examples before us. And we preach because of the power of Scripture. We preach the Word because the Word changes lives. God is ordained, as we saw this morning, by the foolishness of preaching to save those who believe. And we were begotten again, as we read in 1 Peter 1, by the Word which was preached to us. I believe in personal counseling. I believe in personal discipleship. I believe in small group Bible studies, but I think the greatest power and the proclamation of truth in the church is preaching and teaching through gifted men who know the Scriptures. Fourthly, we preach, in case we're not motivated enough yet, chapter 4. We preach because not only of the dangerous times, the godly examples and the power of Scripture, but we preach because of the command of God. Chapter 4 verse 1, I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus who is to judge the living and the dead and by His appearing and His kingdom preach the Word. Now that is heavy language, folks. I charge you, not because of some earthly ordination. not because of some ecclesiastical expectation, not because of some seminary training. I charge you...the word charge means command and Paul is speaking under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit like an Old Testament prophet, the very Word of God...I command you from God to preach because your whole life and ministry is carried on in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus and they will judge you. That's why Paul said, woe is unto me if I...what?...preach not. Woe is unto me if I preach not. God is watching. Christ is watching. Christ Jesus who is to judge the living and the dead. And that's going to happen in the glory of His appearing when He establishes His kingdom. There is coming a reckoning time. First Corinthians chapter 4, Paul said, it's not of concern to me what you think. Remember that in verses 1 to 5? And he said, it's of small consideration what men think about me. He said, I don't even judge myself because when I know nothing against myself, I'm not necessarily justified. I'm not a very good judge of myself, either. I tend to be biased in my own favor. But, he said, the Lord will judge me in the day that the secrets of the heart are disclosed. That's the final verdict. Then we'll find out how much wood, hay, stubble, how much gold, silver, precious stones. Hebrews 13, 17 says, submit to those who are over you in the Lord, for they must give an account. James said, stop being so many teachers, for theirs is a greater condemnation. Those of us who preach and teach the Word of God stand before God with an immense responsibility. And obviously we realize, as James said, that a man who never offends with his mouth is a perfect man. And since none of us are perfect, we have a great liability to that kind of offense. We must give an account to God and we will give an account to God for the character of our ministries and our preaching. And so again, I have to confess to you that it frankly matters little to me what human opinion is. It matters little to me and should continue to matter little to me what I might prefer to do, and it matters an awful lot to me what God has demanded that I do. I really could never do anything other than what I do, preaching the Word of God, because I'm a man under command and I have to give an account, and an account will come in the day when I come before the Lord. And then we will receive, says Paul in 2 Corinthians 5, according to what we have done, whether it's good or useless. And in the day that I give an account to the Lord, I want to honor the Lord. That's why we preach. Preach the Word, Timothy, because of dangerous times, godly examples, the power of the Scripture, and your accountability to God. He says, preach the Word because of the tendency to deception, because of the tendency to drift. Verses 3 and 4, the time will come, and he doesn't mean it's, you know, sometime in the nebulous eons ahead. He really means, again, it's kairos, it's seasons again. And he's right back to kind of where he started. He says, you need to do this because there are going to be those times when they will not endure sound doctrine. They will have had it, they will have heard it, you will have preached it, and they won't like it. And so, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires. They'll go looking for somebody who says what they want to hear. They'll crave the teachers who suit their tastes. They'll crave the teachers who make them feel good. In truth, we'll have a hard time getting a hearing. You know, it will happen in a lot of cases. It sometimes happens in a little church where there's some prominent individual in the church who starts a fight and the preacher gets up and preaches to that issue and brings the Word of God to bear upon that fight. and loses his job because they don't want to hear the truth. It happens sometimes in a church where a prominent person who maybe gave a lot of money is involved in some serious sin and the preacher addresses the sin and loses his job because they don't want to hear the truth. And maybe there's a meeting and he's told to cool it if he wants a paycheck. It can happen in a lot of ways, those times when there's a tendency to deception. It can happen when people don't want to come under the conviction of the Word of God and they want the preacher to back off because they really don't want to hear that. It comes when...I've had this happen to me through the years, I suppose more often when I was young and people would come to me and say, I brought a friend to church and boy, did you ever offend that person. And I always feel badly about that and I always want to ask, well, was it me that offended them or was it something I said out of the Word of God? Was it some offhanded comment or something insensitive or unkind that I said? Or was it something out of the Word of God? I have been told on a number of occasions, look, I'm bringing a friend on a certain Sunday. Watch what you say, MacArthur. I hope I do, you know. I don't know what all of those seasons are that come and go in the life of a church that people don't want to hear the truth. And then there are those times when somebody might come to a pastor and say, you know, there's a church down the road and they're just packed out, they've just got people pouring in there. You know, they're doing a lot of wild stuff and having a big time and all you do is get up and preach the Word and, you know, we really would like a little more action and a little more variety and some interesting stuff and, you know, the dancing bears and whatever. And they don't want to hear the Word because they're getting influenced...they're getting influenced because some neighbor is saying, well my church is bigger than your church and we're really growing and what are you people doing over there, you know? There are a lot of seasons. That's what he means when he says time will come, kairos, epochs, eras, periods. And they just won't...they don't want to hear it. They just want to hear what they want to hear. In verse 4, they'll turn away their ears from the truth, turn aside to myths. Pretty good reasons to preach the Word, right? Stay faithful. Stay on track, Timothy. Verse 5, keep your priorities straight. That's what be sober means. It doesn't mean don't get drunk. It means keep your priorities right. And when suffering comes, endure it. Keep reaching out to the lost. Do the work of an evangelist. Fulfill your ministry. You know what it is. It's to preach the Word. Just keep doing it. And remember me. When you get to the end, don't expect too much. I'm ready to be poured out as a drink offering. The time of my departure has come. Here was the greatest. The greatest of all. And he was about to be executed. But he could say in verse 7, I fought the good fight, I finished the course, I kept the faith. And then he could say in the next verse, I'm going up there to get my crown. And it's a crown available to all who love His appearing. Well, I think you get the message here. Preach the Word. because of dangerous times, godly examples, the power of the Scripture, accountability to God, and the tendency of people to drift. They'll drift. Sad to say, even when you're preaching the Word, hard to imagine what they'll do if you don't. Constantly be faithful to call them back. For all these reasons, great function in the church is to preach. to preach God's Word. That's what we do. That's Grace to You with John MacArthur, president of the Masters University and Seminary. Today he showed you the primary role preaching should play in every church. Why is preaching worth fighting for? That's the title of John's current study. Well, John, this notion of preaching God's Word because it's the only thing that has the power to save souls, that really is the foundation for this broadcast and the Grace to You Ministries. Thankfully, we're not alone in that commitment. There are some extraordinary people who also believe that God's Word changes lives, and every day we work alongside them. Talk a little bit about our ministry partners. Yeah, first, just kind of coming off of that for a minute, Christian radio in recent years has tended to go toward talk radio because that's kind of the popular thing in the secular world, and so you have people talking about Christianity, talking about biblical issues, and, you know, there's a place for that. But Christian radio still features the preaching of the Word of God. And I believe it is because it is a biblical mandate to preach the Word in season and out of season. That means when it's in vogue, when it's not in vogue, when it's popular, when it's not popular. Realizing, of course, that people have itching ears. They want to have their ears tickled. That's always going to be the case. There's always going to be a resentment to strong, sound biblical teaching among some. This is God's ordained way for the proclamation of the gospel around the world. And so I'm so grateful that there are Christian radio stations who have not abandoned the preaching of the Word of God, who see it as the primary means by which God has ordained the spread of His gospel. Those stations are critical partners with Grace to You. We are thankful for that. And it isn't just the commitment of the radio stations to this. It is the demand of the people of God. They have learned to listen. They have learned to love the truth. They have learned to want to desire great preaching because it is such a powerful spiritual experience. Great preaching is a spiritual experience. Darrell Bock We talked yesterday about how preaching – there are a lot of people saying preaching is out of vogue. The truth is, there's a great appetite out there for good preaching. R. People who say that are out of touch with divine reality. And I know there are critics who say, you know, we ought to stop doing this expository preaching and, you know, we've got to come up with different methods and all of that. They're feeding an audience at its lowest possible level. If you're preaching the Word of God, you've ascended to the high ground, and you're feeding the people who have the deepest longing and the greatest appetite for the knowledge of God that is given through faithful exposition of His Word. It's the high ground. And we're so grateful for partnership radio stations who understand this. I would encourage you who listen to Grace To You to send an email or give a phone call to the station that you hear this program on. It would really encourage them. And when you contact this station, know that we'd also love to hear from you. If these daily Bible teaching programs have helped you understand God's Word, or equipped you to share the gospel, or even led to your salvation, let us know, won't you? Get in touch today. Your feedback is truly an encouragement to this ministry. Email your story to letters at gty.org or send a letter to Grace To You, Box 4000, Panorama City, California, 91412. That email address again, letters at gty.org and our mailing address, Box 4000, Panorama City, California, 91412. And as a compliment to John's current study, I'd encourage you to get his book, Ashamed of the Gospel. This is a book that addresses questions like, what is the purpose of a local church? And what role should marketing play to attract new attendees? And is it wrong to let the interests of unbelievers set the agenda for your church service? The title again, Ashamed of the Gospel. Get a copy when you call 800-55-GRACE or go to gty.org. Now, for John MacArthur and the Grace to You staff, this is Phil Johnson. Keep in mind, you can watch Grace to You television Sundays on DirecTV channel 378. Then listen again tomorrow as John considers vital questions you need to ask yourself whenever you study scripture. It's part of a lesson he calls How to Study the Bible. Be back Thursday for another half hour of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time on Grace to You.