I'm excited about semester two. We're going to be doing a homiletics number two, and we've got another really good book that we're going to be reading through, Lord willing, and doing some theory, but there won't be as much theory. We're going to focus more on the practical outlining of Scripture, so that'll be good. How are you both going with your reading assignment? the preacher and his preaching, because at the end of, excuse me, at the end of term, so your exam week, you'll need to have your readings complete. So there's on page 173 through to page 188. You have all those review questions from the preacher and his preaching. How are you going with those? There's a chapter 33 that goes to 38. So that should only be two weeks of that left and it'll be done. Excellent. Excellent. How about you, Emmanuel? Are you getting through the preacher and his preaching? I'm very much behind because of the issues with the laptop, but I'm very hopeful that by the end of 2019, I should be able to finish. Okay, so I'm going to ask you on the final exam, it will contribute to your final exam grade if you've completed your required readings. So that will be the preacher and his preaching and anointed expository preaching, which you're submitting your quotes for that on a weekly basis. So we want to concentrate the next, like I say, next week, we'll try and get through the remainder of the notes, but then we're going to try and wrap up. on things, so you can use what spare time there is available to try and wrap up the rest of these things. Okay, so back to our notes now, please. Okay, so we're on page 141. We're looking at the way to ensure good speaking. And we've looked at correct pronunciation, that's important. Pronouncing your words nice and clearly. Then we need also proper enunciation. Enunciation refers to the clarity with which words are spoken. With an open mouth, words should be spoken with crispness. So we don't want to slur or blend words together. We want to be pronouncing them clearly. And that was the problem I mentioned before that I've identified with myself, a tendency to maybe hurry a phrase together where the words are almost blending or a bit mumbled. So, nice and clear. Three, proper articulation. This refers to the way words are put together to form sentences. So, good grammar is important. That's where English comes in. The Authorised King James Version from which we preach is the epitome of English prose. Now, that doesn't mean we're going to get up and speak in these endows, but we want to speak properly and using good grammar. Four, vocal variety. This should be something that comes fairly naturally as you develop in your preaching ministry, but we do need to avoid the monotone problem. A monotone preacher is a boring menace who will soon put his audience into mind-numbing stupor. Now, every preacher is different. Some preachers are loud, loud, loud, and sometimes if it's loud all the way, that can have the effect of switching people off as well, if the preacher yells for a whole hour. So what we want to do is have some variety. It's similar to singing in a choir. I'm sorry to use another music illustration, but when you look at a piece of music, you'll notice that there are certain dynamics built into that piece of music, so you might have soft, moderately loud, loud, moderately soft. So when a choir is learning a piece, if they're learning it well, we'll learn some of those dynamics. So there'll be certain variety within the song. So there's certain points that are going to come out with more force. Other times it's going to be backed off and more soft and meditative. So it's a little bit similar with preaching. Depending on the content you're preaching, depending, sorry, on the subject you're preaching, uh... they might be you did that they need to be some of those it's inflows in the message we slow down a bit might be teach you know you can explain a word many have built up to a challenge we have a hammer uh... some of you speak a little bit faster or slow down now it's not something that you necessarily going to be consciously thinking about what you preach but good preaching is going to contain uh... some vocal variety It's just monotone where you're speaking at the same tone of voice and the same level the whole time. If I spoke to you like this for the whole lecture, and so we need to be good preachers, and a monotone preacher is a boring menace who will soon put his audience into mind-numbing stupor. Speech must be modulated and expressive, meaning that it needs to be very, you'd think, it would really have, can you see what I'm saying? That would be intensely boring. So generally, you're not going to be that way. some color, some life, working up to, this is what I like about, I think, good preaching, like I say, it's not necessarily all yelling. You might be, look, and like I say, God uses individuals. Some preachers speak more quietly, and the Spirit of God uses them. They speak in a, sometimes they'll drop their voice right down, and the whole place, you could cut the air with this, you know, how still it feels, and the Lord can use that. Other preachers are more naturally loud, so it's not about forcing something or trying to be a clone of another preacher. But whatever your personality is, there still needs to be some variety in the way you speak, so it's not just that boring monotone sound. So it needs to be varied in the pitch, rate, volume and force. Variety maintains interest. Five, pitch. Pitch relates to the movement of one's voice up and down the musical scale. So rather than speaking on, like I said before, sort of that monotone one level, there's some variation. It is difficult to listen to a high-pitched preacher for any length of time. Now, again, there's differences between preachers. Some preachers have a naturally deep voice. Some have more of a high voice, and that's fine. It's not about trying to force something into your preaching that's not there. but you still don't have to speak at a high-pitched level. You're gonna be more high-pitched if your voice is sort of tight and strained. It tends to mean that you speak on that high-pitched level too much. So trusting the Lord to help you overcome your nerves as you're preaching will help with some of these dynamics. So that's why it says relaxing's important because adrenaline increases pitch. Do either of you get an adrenaline rush before you preach? Absolutely. How about you Emmanuel, do you get pumps of adrenaline when you're getting ready to preach? Yes. Adrenaline is that, you know, it makes your heart pound. It's the sort of thing where in danger it helps you to to run if you need to, to get away from danger. I'm a very adrenalized person. My adrenaline just flogs the daylights out of me. Not just preaching, it doesn't take much to get my adrenaline pump going. Leading up to a message, you're going to feel a measure of that. Usually you'll find, once you get into the message and the Lord's helping you, some of those nerves just calm down a bit. breathing properly from the abdomen is going to help that as well. So, like I say, it's not like you're going to be thinking while you're preaching, how's my pitch? Am I using proper variety? Most of those things will come naturally with development and as you relax more, as you get more experience. But at the same time, if you're aware, if you have that background knowledge, you can sometimes self-identify things. So it's good to, without becoming self-focused, it's good to review your preaching, because we want to do our very, very best we can for the Lord. And if we can hone our skills a bit, maybe listen to a message, and I remember some of my earlier messages, I would preach very fast, just and almost not without a pause in between. And this is where the critique sheets were helpful in class. One of my fellow students said, sort of great message, but give us time to breathe and take in the conviction. Because it was just machine gun the whole time. I went and preached at a church in Sydney, and it was an Arabic church, Lebanese church, so some of the older folk had headsets on for translation. And one of the older Lebanese men came up to me afterwards, he said, you are like machine gun. So fast! When I first came here to Northside, Mr Twiggy Senior came up to me afterwards and said older people find it harder to hear sometimes and he said you may be the pastor in his Scottish voice but you have got to slow down! Now that was partly Nerves, adrenaline. I was fresh here, new pastor, it's nerve-wracking. The more nerves you have, the more your speed tends to go. When you preached your first message a few weeks ago, Paul, your speed for the first five minutes was like, I'll fly away, all glory. But that's fine. Whereas the last message you preached, the rate was much better. But that's fine. I mean, we laugh about those things, but it happens to all of us. And my wife was good on that. Particularly in the start of my messages, I used to be very, very fast, so she would even sometimes signal to me from the congregation, slow down. All right, so how do we get on to all of that? Yes, so dealing with the nerves is important. So if you do go to the pulpit supercharged with adrenaline, you have to consciously make an effort and think in your mind, slow down, slow down, slow down, and force yourself to slow down a bit. The introduction is kind of like, I've used the illustration before, it's getting the plane off the ground. and then getting it landed. Both those steps are difficult for the preacher. Getting the message up into the air, okay, you can get a few rough bumps on the way up, and getting it down without crashing is important too. Or winding it down to the conclusion. Six, rate. So the rate refers to our fast one talks, we've just touched on that. They suggest the most effective preaching rate falls between 140 to 180 words per minute. So if you're reading 1 Corinthians chapter 13, which contains 270 words, it should take you one and a half to two minutes to read it out loud. It is important not to speak too slowly, where the audience may lose attention or be easily distracted. Also not too fast, where listeners can't keep up. So if it's too fast, and you've got to remember, Lord willing, we come into the pulpit full of study. We've studied for 10 hours or whatever for the message. And if you let that just flow out in great, like a torrential rain, then people can just feel overwhelmed. It's like, oh, too much, I can't keep up. And they feel exasperated. So don't be afraid of a pause. And this is a typical problem when you're a young preacher. You feel like, because of the nerves, you feel, when there's a pause, when you sort of pause to look at your notes or something. You feel more inclined to try and fill it with something, with ums and ahs and things like that because you're nervous. Don't be afraid to pause. So you preach through a particular point and then you pause, look back at your notes. It might be for three or four seconds. then you continue. And that gives people, it's kind of like a chance for people to take a breath. In the audience, they're not sitting there thinking, oh no, he's lost it. If you're standing there for a minute with nothing to say, then we might start to be concerned, but don't be afraid just to pause, look at your notes, look back at the text. Those pauses throughout the message actually help, help the people. It's just all one big, You know, there's just no let up and it's just go, go, go the whole way through. It can have the effect of people feeling a bit overwhelmed or it can cause them to switch off. So again, under point six there, the note there is variety in the rate of speaking as needed. So can you see that coming through here? So it's a matter of using variety in our preaching. And like I say, a lot of this will come naturally as you develop as a speaker. because naturally when you're maybe building up to a point of rebuke or something, your speed is probably gonna pick up. Or it might slow down. If you're more of a quieter person, you might actually slow down quietly for that rebuke and just quietly speak to the congregation. Depends a lot on the person. But there's those natural crescendos often in a message where there's that outburst of passion and the Spirit of God fills you with with life to really hammer something, and that's all natural. Seven, volume. This is relative loudness of the voice measured in decibels, so volume, variety, again, so some, if you're, I've heard messages where the preacher pretty well yells the whole message. In a loud voice. And sometimes, that's just who they are, and it can come across with, it can still have life in it, but I have heard I have heard, and I won't mention names, there's one preacher coming to mind quite readily at the moment, preaching where it's just bellowing the whole time. And I've looked around, I remember looking around in the church, this particular congregation, and I thought, you know, some of these people are not even, as much as he's yelling loudly, they're not even listening. They've switched off. because it gets tiring for people to be screamed at. So, I'm not saying that we shouldn't raise our voices. The Lord instructed Jeremiah to lift up his voice like a trumpet and rebuke the sins of Israel. So, absolutely, there is a time to raise your voice in a spiritual manner and declare, thus sayeth the Lord. That's very important. But variety is important with volume too, so some parts will be quieter, some louder, and the message will largely dictate these things. 8. Projection. Projection is more than just volume. It is volume coupled with strong diction, we've talked about that, pronouncing our words nice and clearly and crisply, and an intention to be heard. And someone said, I remember doing a course at college on being an effective teacher, and he talked about how that you really want to aim for the person on the back row, as far as your projection goes. So you want them to, it's like you're speaking to the, right to the back of the audience, not just the front row. that's more it's more than just volume it's it's that intention to be heard you you're projecting the message out to the to the auditorium and uh... those the back row baptists that definitely need that sometimes people are up the back because they've got young children things like that i've got no problem with that but sometimes people who are more sluggish spiritually sit up the back not always someone said the other day i thought it was an interesting thought He said, from our church here, he said, if you're a single or young adult, why would you sit up the back? You should be down towards the front. Bibles out, keen, enthusiastic, ready to hear the word, and leave the back rows for families that need to have a wrestling match with their kids. So projection, sound systems take care of this need, all right? And nevertheless, a preacher, page 142, should have a good set of lungs and be capable of projecting his voice well without having to shout or scream. So the harsh scream sound is gonna come from the throat if you're not breathing properly. But if you're speaking from the diaphragm, getting those proper breaths of air and projecting your voice with volume as the Lord leads, then that's a good thing. Number five now, Roman numeral five, his challenge. His challenge and challenges for the preacher. We've looked at a few things, haven't we? We've looked at the preacher's qualification, his character, his care, looking after appearance, appetite, anatomy, communication, producing our speech correctly, vocal quality, Now his challenge, some challenges for the preacher. The notes read, preaching is a royal labor. I like that. Preaching is a royal labor. Though other employment has value, nothing, and I'll underline this introductory statement here. Though other employment has value, nothing can rise to the stature of being an ambassador for Christ. Do you believe that? It is the highest calling a man can receive in this life to be a preacher of the Word of God. And as someone well put it, if God calls you to preach, why would you stoop to be a king? If God calls you to be a pastor, preacher, why would you stoop to be a king? There is no high calling. To be a spokesman for the Lord, to be a herald of the truth, to see eternal things accomplished through the proclamation of the Word of God is a privilege that should never ever be underrated or undervalued. A. The burden of preaching. But this is a challenge to the preacher. It's something that weighs upon the preacher. Preaching really taxes the whole man. Spirit, soul, body. Spiritual resources, mental resources, emotional resources, physical resources. If you're preaching properly, it really does drain the energy of the whole man. And so this is a burden we have to consider, the burden of preaching. Point A. While the preparation and delivery of sermons is a physical and mental work, it is far beyond that. It's not merely intellectual. and physical, it is a spiritual work that carries with it an enormous responsibility in two ways. Number one, the preacher is speaking on behalf of Almighty God. Think about that. God has called you to be His under-shepherd, to speak His word. You're speaking on His behalf. Now, you're not there to give direct revelation, like the Charismatics suggest. I've got a revelation today. I had a dream. No. You're there to take God's revelation and deliver it to the people. It's a tremendous responsibility because people will naturally follow, sheep naturally follow a shepherd. And we have to think about that. If we intentionally preach error, because of an unwillingness in our hearts to submit to the truth, or we manipulate it with the Scriptures to make it suit our own lifestyle, if we twist the Scriptures, that has serious ramifications as far as the judgment seat of Christ is concerned, because people are going to follow our lead. So it's a sobering thing to be a preacher of the Word of God, or even to make mistakes in ignorance is a sobering thought. And that's where we should always be prepared if we've made a mistake, admit it. If in the process of time you realise you preached something that wasn't accurate, admit it. Say, look, I've made a mistake on this. I've misunderstood the verse or whatever. Now, that shouldn't be a regular occurrence, but we need to be aware that we're there to represent the Lord and to preach His words, so we've got to be so mindful of that. That's where I have very little time for the whole sloppy approach to ministry, the laid-back, relaxed approach. Now, as a person, you may be more a relaxed individual in your make-up, your personality, and there's nothing wrong with that. But there is a problem if you're passive and relaxed in relation to the Word of God, and there's a lack of diligence. So, laziness in the ministry, not preparing for messages properly, being slack in the place of prayer, These are all things that dishonour the Lord ultimately and convey to people a wrong impression of the ministry God has given us. We're on the King's business, therefore we should conduct ourselves accordingly. The way we manage our schedules, the way we study, the way we pray, the way we preach, the way we lead God's people should all bring honour to the Lord and honour to the office. You need to remember in the ministry, if you're pastoring a church, it's not all about you. It's about the office God has ordained, the office of the pastor for the local church. You need to think about, okay, what sort of, how am I upholding the office that God has ordained for this church in a God-honouring and glorifying manner. Because you are not indispensable, and you need to think not just about your ministry that you're going to have in that church, but the man that will come after you. You don't know what the future holds. You might think, I'm here for the next 50 years. Well, you don't know that. What if God in 10 years' time says, you need to go over here and start another church? and you leave the next man to come in to a sloppy mess, that's not right. You need to uphold the pastoral office in a God-honouring way so that the people have a high regard for it as well. OK, so the preacher is speaking on behalf of Almighty God. He's been entrusted with the gospel. First Thessalonians 2.4. But as we were allowed of God to be put in trust with the gospel, even so we speak not as pleasing men, but God, which trieth our hearts. We go to First Timothy chapter one. 1 Timothy chapter 1 and verse 11 says, according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which was what? Committed to my trust. Now, for Paul, there was a very specific commitment of the gospel to him in that much of the New Testament revelation was given through Paul. But we can see the principle as it extends to us, that we have been, what Paul was entrusted with has been handed down to us. We are custodians of divine truth. And each believer is that. All believers are to earnestly contend for the faith. But for those of us who are called to be the guardians of God's sheep, to be under shepherds, we have a very special responsibility. We have been entrusted with the word of God, the doctrines of the word of God, the gospel, and it is our job to maintain that faithfully. Two, the preacher is exercising an eternal influence upon men. That's a sobering thought, isn't it? His words are, to one degree or another, impacting the lives of men. I mentioned that before. The influence we have upon other people is immense. And it's not just confined to our pulpit ministry. The way we conduct our lives outside of the pulpit probably influences the people more than what we say from the pulpit. So we understand, we're not perfect men, we understand that, but the people of God should be able to look to our lives and see a measure of Christian maturity, measure of victory in our walk with the Lord, an example of the believers as Paul exhorted Timothy in Word, Conversation, Charity, Faith, Purity and so on. These considerations magnify the onus upon each preacher to live, labour and love as a man of God and a disciple of Jesus Christ." So we're conducting ourselves as the King's men. The Bible declares, powerful verse here, Isaiah 52, 11, and be ye clean that bear the vessels of the Lord. Who's he speaking to there? We're speaking to the priests who had the solemn responsibility of bearing the vessels of God within the tabernacle, within the temple. And you see the principle there of being clean. Be ye clean that bear the vessels of the Lord. This is a principle that God has demanded from the Old Testament through the New Testament. That men of God be pure men. Be clean, be clean. So an unholy man, a man who is defeated in his life, a man who is Soaking his life in Hollywood, movies, television, video games. He's going to be a very weak instrument. And it was Robert Murray McShane who was writing to a fellow preacher. And I wish I had the quote. I wonder if I could find it actually. he talks about uh... calling it holiness ministry you know i don't i don't have the actual quite sort of the back of the book you thought Anyway, he talks about a holy minister being an awful weapon in the hand of God and the importance of holiness in the ministry. And this is so important, be ye clean that bear the vessels of the Lord. And it's a real problem we have today with TV watching pastors, movie attending pastors, even video gaming pastors. I won't mention names, but I know of one preacher who loves his video games and plays things like Call of Duty. These are violent games. It's despicable. It's disgusting. It brings dishonour and reproach upon the ministry. Now I'm not talking about the appropriate use of DVD resources or even a carefully selected maybe Christian film or something that's fairly wholesome. Or wholesome I should say. But we should err on the side of being very careful with these things. So I would encourage you as a man of God to resolve in your heart not to have a TV in your home. If you need the screen, that's fine, but don't have the television connected. Keep that out of your home. Make sure you have adequate protection on your smartphone, accountability with your wife. There are programs available with reporting mechanisms that can report to your wife via email and things like that on what you've visited. We use Covenant Eyes. My wife gets an email every week, a weekly email, which will tell her all the websites I've been on. And that's not, it's not, by God's grace, it's not because I have a problem or have had an online pornography problem in the past, but I'm not so foolish as to trust myself. And it maintains accountability. And it's good. It strengthens your marriage because you can discuss these things. Very odd occasion, it might flag something questionable. For example, I did a Google search the other day looking for a particular study. There's nothing wrong with the search, but it was going to bring up some nasty things, obviously. So thankfully, this program blocked it. That was then flagged on the report. Now, there was no issue, but it meant that we had a discussion. My wife said, what's this? And I explained, well, I searched for this and I blocked it because such and so. So, be clean that bear the vessels of the Lord. Purity, holiness in the ministry, walking with the Lord is so, so important. God deliver us today from worldly preachers. and unholy men. It's such a problem. So like I said, that principle of God demanding holiness in the lives of his people generally, not just the preacher. But if God demands it from the people in general, how much more those of us who are called to be leaders of the sheep. So whether it's in the Old Testament priesthood or the New Testament pastorate, we know there's a distinction between those. We don't have a New Testament priesthood as far as the local church is concerned. But the principle of God requiring holiness in the lives of his ministers is seen right through from the beginning to the end. So for the New Testament pastor, he's to be blameless. That speaks of a purity of life, doesn't it? 2 Timothy 2, 21 to 22, the verse is cited in the notes for us there. If a man therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel under honour. Sanctified and meet for the Master's use, and prepared unto every good work, flee also, youthful lust, but follow righteousness. There it is, follow righteousness. Faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart. So we're to flee, youthful lusts, sinful things, but we are to then follow. The word follow there is a very strong word. It's the Greek word dioko, which means to hunt or to pursue, like a hunter would pursue its prey. We are to be in passionate pursuit of these things, righteousness, faith, charity, peace, spiritual qualities, spiritual realities. These should be the focus of the man of God. So I can't emphasize that enough. It's so important that you don't just come out of this class with the mechanics of sermon preparation and delivery without understanding the heart behind what truly is a man of God. We need to walk and minister with a very real sense of the gravity of our calling, the eternal nature of our calling, what we are involved with, handling the Word of God, the eternal truth of God's Word, influencing lives. The ministry is no place for those who are flippant, foolish, worldly. So the challenge, burden of preaching, but that is that's something that is a challenge to the preacher. It's something that weighs upon him if he's doing his job. B, the demands on the preacher. There are some demands that are a challenge for us. One, he needs to believe what he preaches. That's important. With deep conviction and enthusiasm, the preacher should proclaim, this is what I believe because I have found it to be true. So, preaching with conviction. If we don't really believe what we're preaching, or seeking to put into practice what we're preaching, it means our preaching will be devoid of spiritual power. Two, he should teach and preach God's word with confidence. We need to have We need to have hearts that are filled with faith that the Word of God will do the job. It doesn't matter how difficult the age is in which we are living. I understand we face the challenge today of the mass media, of immorality and perversion like we've just about never seen before, the hardness of hearts, atheism, all of these massive challenges, but we need to have a strong faith and confidence in the Word of God. God has promised His Word will not return unto Him void. So when we have faith that God's Word is going to do something in lives, that will come through our preaching. And as one evangelist wisely said once, he said, when you get up and preach the Word of God, always remember something has happened. Whenever you preach the Word of God in truth, just know something has happened. Why? Because God has promised His Word won't return void. So we need to have faith that God is doing things through our preaching, even if we don't always see it immediately. And there may be things that we're never aware of that God is doing in people's lives through those messages. Three, he should study and prepare faithfully. There's no place for laziness in this area. If he doesn't have definite study hours and runs here and there all week, he will not have anything to say that is worth listening to. So it requires a lot of discipline. because there's many, many things that are going to be vying for your attention, and many of those actually do need to be addressed. There's administrative things to take care of. There's the pastoral aspect of visitation and praying with people or counselling. There's family responsibilities, work responsibilities even, if you're not full-time or you have to support yourself. And so it takes discipline to set aside definite hours for diligent study. And I recommend that when you do have those times, you've got to zone out time for study. And it's proven that the brain functions best in a linear fashion, meaning that you focus on one task for a set period of time, complete that task, and then go to the next task. Because of modern technology, we tend to multitask so-called, but it's been proven that multitasking actually equals less efficiency. So if you're trying to study and you're, if you're trying to, if you study for five minutes and then pick up the phone, and then you study for another three minutes and then read a text message, and then study for another five minutes and check your email, you're actually not using your brain in an efficient way. So you've got to zone your time. If you've got, if you've got emails and text message things to take care of, Block out half an hour and take care of them all in one set period of time. And then dedicate your time to studying. So I would normally, if I'm studying, I'll try and put my phone on do not disturb or something so that I'm not constantly being distracted by notifications. Very important to do that because the phone, while it's a good tool today, it's also a terrible menace because it follows the preacher into the study. and it can fragment your time, and your mind's constantly being distracted by, you know, laugh out loud, smiley face, or whatever, and you're not getting to the Word of God. So you'll find that when you study, it takes a certain amount of time for your mind to sort of get into gear. So if you can block out a couple of hours, two, three hours even, and just focus on the message, you'll find as you get through that time, it'll be much more efficient and beneficial. So, study four. Number four, he should depend on the Holy Spirit. This is very important. The best of preachers are no more than instruments. God, the Holy Spirit, provides the spirit of conviction. Importantly, he not only guides and directs in the delivery of the sermon, but opens the ears and hearts of the hearers to receive the message. And I've said this before, when all the preparation's done, all the study's done, all the praying's done, we need to step into the pulpit with a sense of dependence upon the Holy Spirit to fill us, to give us the unction we need, that's the power, and the utterance we need, that's the words and the expression of the word. and trusting that He will not only guide and direct us for the delivery of the sermon, but that He will be working as we preach in the hearts and the minds of the people. It's so important that we take time to pray for that, leading up to a message. Don't just pray for yourself, for the Spirit of God's help for you, but pray that the Spirit of God will have liberty, that the Word of God, ministered by the Spirit of God, will have liberty and free course throughout the congregation, that the Lord will take that message that is preached and drive it home to each individual heart, each individual context, each individual need. Five, he should evidence the love of God. We've talked about that. We don't want to appear to be angry or bearing a grudge of some sort. We need to speak the truth in love with a broken, passionate heart. So there's love for the people of God. There's a passion for them, a desire to see them helped. And we come to the preaching humble because we know ourselves that we are no better than anyone else and therefore we're not coming from a height of arrogance. 6. He should have an objective in mind every time he preaches. The man of God needs to enter the pulpit burdened with a message he must deliver because of the objective he has in mind. It says, some men aim at nothing and as a result hit nothing. As someone said, if you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time. If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time. So our message needs to be focused. We need to have a clear burden, a clear message from the Lord to deliver. Important note here, most men when they preach don't really expect that anybody will be converted or saved and as a result usually no one is. So there's a real faith element to preaching. Believing, going to the pulpit with confidence that God is going to do something through that message. The Spirit of God is laid upon your heart, you believe it's the message for the hour, you sought to deal with any known sin, you come to the pulpit You come to the pulpit, cleansed, ready, purged vessel, and prayed up, prepared up, and then there should be faith and confidence that God is going to do something. Preaching the gospel, have faith. Trust that the Lord can use that message to see someone saved. I remember hearing Jaleswood Smith, the message of his, and he was a real soul winner in Toronto, Canada. He was a preacher there, not independent Baptist, but very conservative, very similar to us in theology. And he saw a lot of people saved through his preaching. And he had a preacher friend who came and preached for him. And he confided in him afterwards, he said, you know, look, I just don't see people saved in my preaching, through my preaching like you do. And it wasn't because there was anything wrong with his message, he was a godly man, he preached powerful messages. And Jaleswood Smith said to him, when you preach, do you believe that God is going to actually save someone? Do you have faith that God is going to work? Do you have an expectancy that someone... is going to be saved through that message?" And he said, no, not really. And he said, well, I think that's the difference between the two of us. He said, when I preach the gospel, I have an expectation, I honestly believe that God can use that message to see someone saved. And I'm expecting it, I'm looking for it, I'm praying for it. So it is important that we have that faith in the Lord, that his word can do the job. 7. He is to exalt Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Very important. We're not in the pulpit to convince people how great a preacher we are. We're not there to provide a display of human wisdom. We are there to exalt the One who gave His all for us, Jesus Christ. It's so hard. It's a constant challenge to get yourself out of the picture in preaching. How am I going to come across? Will I sound good? What will they think of me? Will it be a flop? There's so many, so many questions and things that tend to dominate our minds when you stop, stand back and analyse something and you think, hang on, where's the focus of all of this? I'm not saying that we shouldn't give, like the whole course we've been drumming the fact that we need to give a consideration to properly preparing messages, to our outline, to even how we deliver the message and even reviewing those things with a view to improve because we want to be a help to the people of God. But you understand the difference between that and becoming self-obsessed with whether people think you're a good preacher or not. We really want people to go away from the message with a greater view of God, a greater view of Christ, a greater understanding of truth. The truth of God's Word is the focus. And so, sure, God uses the vessel and there's nothing wrong with an appropriate appreciation of the preacher. Thank you, pastor, for the message. There's nothing wrong with that. That's a blessing. But a good spirit-filled preaching is not going to, in a carnal way, exalt the preacher where people think, oh, you're just such an amazing preacher and you this and you that. It's not about that. It's about the truth. It's about the Son of God. I love this quote here by James Denny. Underline it or highlight it. It says, no man can bear witness to Christ and to himself at the same time. That's very good. No man can bear witness to Christ and to himself at the same time. So self needs to be kept out of it, and the Saviour needs to fill our messages. So that was what was so powerful about Spurgeon's preaching. It was full of Christ, full of Christ, and it didn't matter where he was preaching, he always seemed to find, or often he would find a way to get back to the cross. Let me read for you 1 Corinthians 2, 1-5, it says, And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom. but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God." And that's what we want. We don't want people's faith to rest in our wisdom, or people's faith to be in us as the preacher. Because what happens, like I say, you're not indispensable. When you're removed, when the Lord moves you on, or if the Lord takes you home to himself, whatever be the case, you want the people of God to have a walk with God that's going to sustain them whether you're there or not. And you want them to go on with their walk with the Lord. So you want their faith to stand up in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. didn't use excellency of speech or of wisdom as far as human philosophy was concerned, but he declared in plain language, Christ and him crucified. And that's important because sometimes if we rely on the wisdom of men, we can end up distracting people from Christ. There's an interesting illustration of this Back in the day, before they had photography, they would often do portraits of kings. I forget the name of the particular king, but this particular king of England was having his portrait painted. The painter painted the king, but he did all this very flowery stuff around the king in the painting. I don't know if it was some sort of vine or all these sort of flowers and things around the king to sort of make it, to try and I guess make it look good. But when the painting was completed, there was so much, there were so many flowers and other things that were there as a distraction that you actually didn't really notice the king in the picture. All you saw was all this other stuff around the king. And that's a bit of an illustration to help us to understand what Paul's saying here. If we're not careful, if we're relying upon all this ornamentation and all this all the trappings and all of the wisdom of man, then it can actually cause people to lose sight of Christ. Rather than seeing Christ through the message, they get distracted by all this other human philosophy and wisdom. So we need to make sure that we are exalting Christ, making Him clearly seen to the people. Man by the name of Broadus gives four requisites to effective preaching. Piety, which furnishes... Piety, which furnishes... Can you say that for me, please? Furnishes. Furnishes, thank you. Talk about pronunciation. Motive power. Natural gifts, which supplies the means to preach. Knowledge, which gives materials to preach. Skill, which is the mastery of preaching developed by lifelong labour. Point C, page 144, last page of the notes, the viridity of a preacher. A man who preaches often must ever keep himself fresh. This is important. He must not allow himself to become stale or a one-noter. What do we mean by a one-noter? Playing a one-string guitar, okay? Hitting one note on the keyboard. In other words, you just get on that one little thing that you really love and you just keep drumming that all the time. A disciplined approach to preaching will help deal with that problem if you're preaching through sections of the Word of God, books of the Bible, it'll keep your message more balanced. We all have particular topics that are extra special to us, just how it is. Every preacher has his sweet spot. that he really, you know, one particular subject that he's particularly passionate about. And that's not a problem. The Lord can use the individuality in each individual. But by preaching through the Bible in a structured and a disciplined way, it'll keep your message more balanced. But we do have to work at keeping ourselves fresh. Now, you think about it, how often does a preacher get to sit and hear preaching? Very rarely. Most of the time, you're giving out. giving out, giving out, giving out. So if you're not, because of your role, you're not sitting under someone where you're being fed yourself. You have to, being fed, as the rest of the people are, you need to learn to feed yourself. Now, there will be occasions when you have a guest speaker, and that can be a refreshment for the preacher to hear that, but most of the time, the burden of responsibility is on you to do the majority of the preaching, so you need to learn to feed yourself. So listening to other sermons, reading good books, biographies, books on doctrine, current issues, fellowshiping with other preachers, going to a good preaching meeting, good conference where you're going to hear, be exposed to other preachers, other gifts, and just be fed and recharged. That's all important. So you've got to give consideration to that. Paul instructed Timothy, take heed to thyself. and to the doctrine. So you've got to take heed to yourself and to the Word of God, to the doctrine. So make sure you're feeding yourself. Bible college is good because you're getting a lot of exposure to good books and materials, but you want to cultivate a life of study that follows Bible college. with good reading, listening to good sermons. These will all help keep you fresh so that you don't become dry and stale. All right, that's the end of our lecture for today. Next, I was going to say next Sunday. Next Wednesday, you'll do the study questions for that segment of the notes. Then we're going to try and get through our final section of notes on the style. We'll try and get through the rest of the notes next week if we can. Then the following week, you will have the study questions as usual. Then we're going to use the rest of class time to look at your sermon, your final sermon outline, or the passage of Scripture. And then the week after that, sermon outline's due. The week after that, final exam, and so on. All right, let's have a word of prayer. I thank the Lord. Father, we thank you for this day. Thank you, Lord, for the privilege of being able to study these things. Lord, we do desire to be the very best that we can be for you, Lord. Help us to approach the ministry of preaching with that spirit, Lord, to just do our very best, Lord. But when it's all said and done, Father, when we just Lord, when all the study's done, and Father, we've given consideration to all these various things, we are just completely dependent upon you. Lord, we cannot do what only the vine can do. We cannot produce life. We cannot produce fruit in our own lives through our own self-efforts. Lord you are the vine so help us Lord when it comes to the ministry of preaching not to try and do what only you can do but Lord to be willing and available branches abiding in you drawing on your life and your power Lord that then the fruit that you desire that would be produced through our lives and through our ministries. So we look to you now for your blessing. Bless Paul and Emmanuel and others who may view these lectures, Father, that each one of us would be effective servants for Thee. So bless us now we pray, in Jesus' name. Amen.