The single most important reason to choose a church is the nature and character of its preaching and teaching. Where you have strong biblical preaching and teaching, everything else tends toward strength. Where you do not have strong biblical teaching and preaching, everything else is weak and tends toward shallowness. Yeah. Welcome to Grace to You, the Bible teaching ministry of John MacArthur.
I'm your host, Phil Johnson. We live in a society enamored with sound bites, video reels, and endless scrolling through social media. But should that affect the way churches reach their audiences? What is the pastor's most important role in the current culture? John MacArthur begins answering those questions today as we launch a week-long focus on critical issues related to the church, the one institution that God promised to build.
Later this week, you'll hear a compelling message called Why I Love the Church and starting today is a series that answers the question, Why is preaching worth fighting for?
Now, grouping this material together certainly makes sense. There is a clear connection between loving the Church and preaching God's Word. But that connection is often lost on people, and the results are troubling. Here's what John had to say about that Yeah, preaching, and by preaching I mean preaching the word. Preaching the word rightly divided, handling the word of God accurately.
Which comes down to being expository preacher. Expository preaching, we talk about that, people might not understand that word. Expository simply means to explain something, it doesn't mean to expose something, that's a different verb. It means to explain the Word of God.
So the preaching that God honors is the preaching that explains the Word of God. What is the meaning of the Word of God?
So, as a preacher, you're saying, all right, here is the Word of God, this is what it says. And the next thing is, this is what it means, and the next thing is, this is what it implies in your life, and the next thing, this is how it applies to your life. Expository preaching is simply preaching the Bible so that people understand it. And look, that's our passion, unleashing God's truth one verse at a time. I have no ideas that I could offer that are anywhere near the truth that comes from heaven.
My ideas are Are shallow, superficial, and purely human. But when you, as a preacher, handle the word of God. You become the instrument of heaven to communicate divine truth. Preaching is worth fighting for. Sad to say, having to even title something preaching is worth fighting for.
Means that there are a lot of folks who have abandoned preaching. All kinds of things are called preaching that are anything but, might be storytelling, it might be abusing and using scripture. It might be reading into scripture things that aren't in the scripture, manipulating scripture to say whatever the preacher wants it to say. But when we talk about preaching, we're talking about faithfully explaining the meaning of scripture as intended by God when He revealed it originally. And so I think you're going to find this a very important series.
So, stick with us for that series. Then, on Thursday and Friday, I'm going to tell you why I love the church. The church where that preaching reigns supreme. That's right, friend. John's messages this week will help you focus on what's most important if you're a pastor.
And if you're the one sitting in the pew, it will show you how you can best encourage the man who leads your congregation.
So now here's John to begin his study, why is preaching worth fighting for? There's really only one primary reason to choose a church. Only one primary reason to choose a church. And that is the character of its preaching.
Now, 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. Where you have strong biblical preaching and teaching, everything else tends toward strength. Where you do not have strong biblical teaching and preaching, everything else is weak and tends towards shallowness. Preaching sets the tone in the church.
Proclaiming biblical truth is essential. Why? Because man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. Preaching the Word of God, teaching the Word of God, is a critical function in the life of the Church. And of course, we live in a time When preaching is being depreciated and it is being set aside in favor of other.
Forms of communication. But the essential reality For the church, that which basically dictates its strength or weakness. is the character of its preaching and teaching. You show me a church where there is strong biblical preaching and teaching, and I will show you strong people and strong ministry. You show me a church where there is weak Biblical preaching, and I will show you a church with weak people and weak ministry.
That's just how it goes because the word of God is the food that makes believers mature. and strong. And the reality is that people in churches all across our country and all around the world are frankly starving. I hear it all the time, everywhere I go. It comes through the mailbags every day.
People saying, I can't find any place where I can be fed. I'm starving here or there or wherever it might be. Where do I find some food for my soul? Isn't anybody going to teach me the word of God? Cries from people all across the world, really.
People are starving.
Some of them know what they're starving for.
Some of them know they're starving for the knowledge of God which comes through his word, and some of them don't know it. In fact, there are many people in churches who are starving and don't know what for. They really don't know that what they really need Is the clear Word of God. proclaimed and taught. People are starving for the knowledge of God, whether they know it or not.
Some do, some don't. They're starving to know their God deeply. To know him broadly, to understand the world through his view. They're starving for a sound theology that they can live on. Build their life on, be anchored by.
They're starving for divine wisdom. which comes through the knowledge of God. in his revelation. People are starving for the knowledge of God. People live out their beliefs.
We live according to our doctrinal. The standards are doctrinal convictions, and where they're strong, you tend to have a strong life. Where they're weak, you tend to have a weak life. The word is the foundation for everything, and God has ordained that it be preached in his church. And that's what makes his church strong.
In 1 Peter chapter 4 and verse 11, We read this. Whoever speaks, let him speak. As it were. the utterances of God. That's simple enough.
Whoever speaks Let him speak the utterances of God. Let him speak what God has spoken. Let him preach the word. That's what it's saying. Let him tell us about God from God's own revelation.
Whoever speaks Let him speak. The utterances of God. One of my heroes now with the Lord. The great preachers of the church's history was Martin Lloyd-Jones. A Welshman who preached with such great power in London.
And looking at his life, one friend said this. He brought more of the sense of God. than any other man. That's why he being dead yet speaks. That's why His tapes.
continue to circulate. Though he is long gone, that's why his material is continually put into books and read across the face of the earth, because he brings people to God. When he speaks, he speaks. the oracles of God. Back in Isaiah chapter 52, there is a wonderful testimony to the centrality of preaching being the word of God.
In Isaiah 52 and verse 7. Familiar words. Yet very important. How lovely on the mountains are the feet of Him who brings good news. In other words, how wonderful it is when a messenger comes.
Running across the mountains with good news. This messenger who comes brings good news, announces peace, brings good news of happiness. Who announces salvation and says to Zion, Your God reigns. How wonderful it is when a messenger comes and tells us about our sovereign God. We preach God.
God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit revealed through the Word of God. If any man speaks, Let him speak the utterances of God. Not his own opinion. Not somebody else's opinion. Not the collective opinion of any group.
not the contemporary consensus. When you speak You speak. the utterances of God. God has ordained then that people need to know Him and that the way in which they can know Him. Is when they are given His Word, which reveals Him.
And God has chosen the means to be preaching. Let me show you this from Ephesians chapter 4. Ephesians chapter 4.
Well, this is a very, very important portion of Scripture, starting in verse 11 and running down to verse. Important enough for me to read it to you and then I'll make some Brief comments. Ephesians 4.11. And he gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, or hyphenated pastor-teachers. For the equipping of the saints for the work of service or ministry.
To the building up of the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. As a result, we are no longer to be children tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness and deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love... We are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the Head, even Christ. From whom the whole body being fitted and held together by that which every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.
Great passage, profound, far-reaching. Let me give you this the sense of it. You start at the end. The very end. That tells you the objective.
The Lord wants a church that is whole, a whole body that is fitted and held together by that which every joint supplies. In other words, He wants a fully functioning body. Where every factor is functioning appropriately. where everything is happening exactly the way it ought to happen. Further, he describes that as according to the proper working of each individual part.
The Lord wants every individual in his body to be fully functioning so that the body is whole and fully operative. Because at the end of verse 16, this causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love. The Lord wants to show love to the world. God so loved the world that He gave His Son. The Lord wants to demonstrate love to the world.
By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. The Lord wants us to radiate His love to the world, His saving love. In order to do that, we need to be built up and mature. In order to be built up and mature, Every part of the body must be functioning. How's that going to happen?
How's that going to happen? Back to verse 11. And he gave some as apostles. and some as prophets. and some as evangelists, and some as pastor-teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service to the building up of the body of Christ.
How does it happen that the body has built up in love? How does it happen that the body is fully functioning? How does it happen that the church is everything God wants it to be? It happens through the ministry of preachers and teachers, apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastor-teachers. That's how he identifies it.
He gave these to the church for the building up of the body.
So that in verse 13 it all might attain to the unity of the faith. What does that mean?
Sound faith, not the unity of faith subjective, but the unity of faith objective, doctrine. The church needs to be built up in sound doctrine. Notice verse 13. It needs to come to the full knowledge of the Son of God. And that is to say, it needs to think broadly and deeply and highly about the person of Jesus Christ and be enraptured with the fullness of his glory.
There needs to be Christ-centered. as well as having sound doctrine, then it can be a mature man. To the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. It's to be Christ-like. And that is to have the full knowledge of Christ and a full foundation of sound doctrine.
Verse 14 suggests That the church is not to be like a little child that gets tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness and deceitful scheming.
So many churches are infantile and immature, and they are easily distracted and drawn away by error and deception and lies and false teaching. The Lord wants a full church, a whole church, a mature church, a fully functioning church, a church that is like Jesus Christ, a church where there's unity of doctrinal understanding, where there's a complete absorption in the knowledge of the person of the Son of God, where there is Christ-likeness. He wants that church to stand up, mature at its Christ-likeness, and radiate his love to a lost world. And in order to bring the church to that place, it says in verse 11: he gave some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastor-teachers, preachers. Apostles and prophets were preachers.
The apostles were those unique ones called alongside Jesus, the twelve. to whom Jesus gave a commission to go and preach. And of course, it was their preaching that established the foundation of doctrine so that the early church in Acts 2.42 studied the apostles' doctrine. And then, once the church was established, the Lord ordained preachers in the churches called prophets early. And they were those who spoke for God in the local churches.
They were the proclaimers of truth.
Now the apostles and the prophets were the foundation. Ephesians 2.20 says he gave apostles and prophets as the foundation of the church. After the foundation, when the edifice began to go up, The apostles and the prophets were replaced by the evangelists and the teaching pastors. The evangelists do what the apostles did. The apostles were messengers who took the gospel.
Evangelists are those who preach the gospel to the unconverted. They win people to Christ. They plant churches, establish churches, reach lost people, bring them into the church. and pastor teachers. Replaced the prophets who then took the church and nurtured and gave God's word to the church.
But the point that I'm making is that all that God has designed for the fullness of the maturity of his church. To the full stature of Christ's likeness is achieved through the ministry of preaching and teaching by gifted men. That's the life of the church. Turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 1. I know there are people today who would like to substitute a music group or a drama team for the preacher.
I know there are people who would like to take the word of God out of the preacher's mouth and put something more quote-unquote relevant into it. I know there are people who think that the preacher who preaches the word of God is out of touch with where people are, and that the most important thing about communication is finding out exactly where people are and crossing the bridge of where they are. I know there are people like that today, and there were people like that in Paul's day, too. Paul went to Corinth. Corinth was a very sophisticated city.
It wasn't a very old city, about 100 years old, had been rebuilt. By the Romans, about 100 years before Paul got there. It was a fairly new city, it was a crossroads city. On the uh sort of uh on the peninsula between Greece and Macedonia. It was a crossroads of the world there.
It was a dynamic city. It was a wicked, wicked city. In fact, the verb in the Greek, to Corinthianize, means to go to bed with a prostitute. The town was synonymous with prostitution. It was in every sense the worst and best of pagan culture.
Very sophisticated. Had the the the worship of all the reigning deities. had the trafficking of all the current philosophies and theories of life and Time and eternity. It was all there. The Epicureans were there, the Stoics were there.
Everybody was there. It was the crossroads of thought. Paul went into that city.
Now, if you were living in modern times, somebody would want to sit down with him and tell him he needed to study the cultural bridges.
So he could figure out which one to cross to get to those people, and he needed to really be sensitive to how they thought and how they acted and how they responded and what their world was like and what it felt like to be a Corinthian. And certainly, you're not in utter disregard of that. But I want you to notice how Paul approached this very sophisticated city. If there was one thing that they loved in Corinth, it was oratory. They they were utterly enamored.
with fancy talkers. In fact, people used to stand on the shore and put smooth rocks in their mouth and practice speaking to increase their enunciation. Great stories exist about that. Oratory was revered. Complicated Difficult philosophies.
were held in high esteem.
Somebody might have said, Now, Paul, if you're going to go in there, you've got to be sharp, you've got to be smooth, you got to be clever, you got to be glib, you really got to understand where they're at and so forth. But listen to what he says. 1 Corinthians 1.17. Christ didn't send me to baptize. But to preach the gospel.
Not in cleverness. Stop there a minute. He took them on at the very point of their cultural identity. He said, The one thing I will not do. is meet you on the ground of cleverness of speech.
Whether that enamors you or not is immaterial. Christ didn't send me to baptize. Christ sent me to preach the gospel, not in cleverness of speech. Because that could make the cross of Christ void. I could cancel out the reality of my message if I get it garbled up in contemporary jargon.
And he says in verse 18, I know this. The word of the cross is to those who are perishing, what? Foolishness. That's how it is. To people who are perishing, it is foolishness.
It always will be foolishness. But To those who are being saved, it is the power of God. That simple preaching of the gospel. He talks about it in chapter 2. Preaching Jesus Christ and him crucified in weakness, fear, and trembling, not in persuasive words of wisdom.
That simple, trembling, humble preaching of the gospel. Caused people to criticize Paul mercilessly. They said his speech is contemptible. 2 Corinthians 10. They said his presence His presence is Inadequate.
Unimpressive. The man is too simplistic. There's nothing about him that charms us. He lacks oratorical ability. Where is the great wisdom?
Coming out of this man's mouth. Where are the clever diddies? All it is is this simple Cross business. But to those who are perishing, That's foolishness. But to those who are being saved, it's the power of God.
And since God is determining who's being saved, better to stick with the power, right? It is written, verse 19. Quoted out of Isaiah, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the cleverness of the clever I will set aside. You know, God gets great pleasure in ignoring. Man's egotistical cultural thought patterns and just cutting to the core.
with the simplicity of the gospel. And that's because of verse 21. Since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God. God was well pleased through the foolishness. Of preaching, literally in the Greek, through the foolishness of preaching to save those who believe.
The point is simply this, very, very profound point. For centuries, Since The fall. Man has been trying to come to God through human wisdom and never succeeded.
So Since The world, through its wisdom, has never come to know God. God has been pleased to save those who believe through the foolishness of preaching. It's not a question of how sophisticated can you be, or how clever can you be, or how culturally astute can you be, or how relevant can you be. It's a question of how clear can you be. How clear can you be in articulating the gospel?
The good news. It is God's design. through the foolishness of preaching. And I know in the eyes of Many in the world, I'm a fool, and any preacher is a fool. But that's all right.
That gives God all the glory when people hear fools and are powerfully transformed. You see God has so designed And it's because it's his choice to do so. From before the foundation of the world. Certain men and women would come to know him and be a part of his eternal kingdom. Their names were written in the Lamb's Book of Life.
And then God designed. that they would come to faith. Through hearing the message preached. That's the plan. I really don't want to mess with the plan.
My responsibility is to be faithful. as a preacher. To preach the word in season, out of season, when it's popular, when it's not. That's the plan. That God, through the foolishness of preaching, saves those who believe.
That's his purpose. People say um Why do you have such an emphasis in your church on preaching and teaching?
Now you know, right? I remember. A man was asking me about our services some years back, and he said, Tell me about your worship service. He was a pastor, and I said, sure. I said, we sing and pray and.
Um Praise the Lord together as a congregation, and then I preach.
Well, how long is your service? Oh? Long? About an hour in the middle of the year. 30 minutes, now and 45 minutes sometimes.
Well, how much time do you take in that service? 50 minutes or so. And he said this, well. You're really interrupting worship with all that talking. Let me tell you something.
Martin Luther said this. He was right. The highest worship of God. is the preaching of his word. That's right.
You as a congregation. Cannot honor God. More. Than by listening reverently to his word with an obedient heart. You can't honor him more.
You can't worship him more. than by listening to his word with an obedient heart. That's the supreme act of worship. I'm not here to interrupt your worship. I'm here to focus your worship.
on the God who is being revealed in His Word. Preaching. I tell you, it breaks my heart. To see preaching being diminished as it is today. to see preachers being diminished.
I mean, throughout the history of the church, basically, the force, the power of the church were the great men who preached and taught the word of God. Times have changed. And we need to see God raise up some great preachers in the days ahead. But that's what we do as a church. If you wonder why we do what we do here, this is why we do it because this is what the Word of God tells us to do: to open the scripture and to introduce you to the God who's revealed there, right?
in all his fullness.
So I go right back to where I started. The primary purpose for choosing a church is the biblical preaching. That's why you choose a church. Because that's what makes every other area strong. and conforms it all to the Word and to the God of the Word.
And therein lies the power. Uh Something John MacArthur said in today's lesson that I want to highlight. In the eyes of many in the world, any preacher is a fool. And that's all right, because that gives God all the glory when people listen to fools and are powerfully transformed.
Well, friend, insights like that one help answer the question: why is preaching worth fighting for? That's the title of John's current study here on Grace to You. This series might be especially helpful for a young man considering becoming a pastor. And if that's you or someone you know, I encourage you to download the complete study, Why is Preaching Worth Fighting For? when you get in touch today.
You'll find the lessons available free of charge at gty.org. The MP3's and written transcripts, and in fact, all of John MacArthur's sermons, over 3,600 messages, are free to download at gty.org. Take advantage of that free Bible teaching today. Also, let me remind you that when you partner with us in ministry, you help take the gospel to people from all walks of life around the globe. Every day, Grace to You reaches people right where they are, whether that's at work, in the car, at home, or even in prison cells.
To become part of that ministry, you can make a tax-deductible donation online at our website, gty.org, or you can call 80055GRACE. That number, by the way, translates to 800-554-7223. and our website one more time gty.org Now for the entire GraceTU staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Thanks for making this broadcast part of your day. Tomorrow, we're continuing John MacArthur's series called Why is Preaching Worth Fighting For?
With a look at what biblical preaching is and how it can transform you and your church. Be here for another 30 minutes of Unleashing God's Truth one verse at a time on Grace to You.
