chadwickivester

As I typed the “highlights” of Dr. Akin’s outstanding exposition of the 2 John, from the SC Baptist Pastors’ Conference,

this past Monday, I was even more convinced that Dr. Akin is, indeed, part of a small group of leaders that understand

the dire condition of the SBC.  May we all take heed to Brother Akin’s penetrating words.  Akin exegeted the

text with precision. (You will not see that in my highlights because I wanted to stress Akin’s insight on the SBC) Also, the bold emphasis’ are mine.  May we all read, weep, and repent of our so-called “Biblical preaching!”

Chadwick
Highlights from Dr. Akin’s sermon:
“ . . . There is a time to laugh . . . there is a place to smile . . . there is a place for joy . . . but there is also a time when we need to grieve and repent . . . at what IS NOT taking place in our churches and in our pulpits. . .”

“ . . . Truth without love always becomes legalism. . . and love without truth always becomes shallow, syrupy sentimentalism. . .”

“The last six months, I have called Evangelical Megachurch Meltdown . . . you look left, you look right, you look up, you look down . . . and across our convention . . . you have been watching, observing, Megachurch Meltdown! I have a friend . . . a wonderful friend who serves in a megachurch and he rubs elbows al the time with men that we look to in our denomination as successful . . . as those we want to model after. . . and I said . . . I want to know . . . What is the deal right now? What is going on with some of the leaders in our convention? What is going on with some of the high profile men in our convention? And he said, ‘We’ll, it’s very simple. We have developed a Christian rock-star mentality! . . . we think we are entitled to a big salary. . . we think we are entitled to all sorts of perks . . . we think we are entitled to fudge a little bit over the numbers over here. . . we think we’re entitled to do things that the rest of us cannot do . . . because WE THINK WE DESERVE IT!’ Such a mindset may be true of the world . . . BUT IT IS BLASPHEMY IN THE BODY OF CHRIST. And don’t misunderstand me . . . you and I can be just as guilty as that same type of mind-set pastoring a little church . . . or leading a seminary. I can begin to think that I am in a position because I deserve it . . . because I’ve earned it . . . and I have the right to this, that, and the other because of the position that I convince myself that I have attained . . . rather than reminding myself daily I am where I am because a Sovereign God put me there (amens, and ummmms! thunder throughout the sanctuary). The God who put me there can just as easily remove me (Akin snaps his finger) just like that. And, therefore, it reminds me that I don’t have anything that I have . . . except by His grace . . . except by His goodness . . . as a result of His kindness . . . His compassion . . . His mercy . . . and if I will keep that in my mind, I will finish the race well . . .”

“ . . . What you live is what you really believe. . . and everything else is just religious talk. . . .”

“ . . . I don’t care who you are, and I don’t care who is in your church . . . you give me about 15 minutes with you, and you let me ask you some basic questions about what you believe about Jesus, and I guarantee you . . . I will be able to identify and pinpoint about 95% of the rest of your Theology . . . because what you believe about Jesus, it will determine what you believe about everything else . . . Now here’s the problem . . . our folks don’t know what to believe about Jesus. . . Jesus is popular . . . Jesus is cool . . . Jesus is in all the magazines . . . But I like what Mark Driscoll said, and I am not one who quotes him at great length all the time . . . but on this one, he is right . . . He says, ‘What is wrong with Theological liberalism? It is they have conjured up a Jesus that’s a sissy. . . they’ve conjured up a Jesus that we can beat up.’ He said, ‘It’s hard to worship a guy that you can whoop his tail!’ (laughs thunder throughout the sanctuary). On the other hand, we create Jesus a wild man . . . and we buy hook, line, and sinker to a wild heart kind of Theology . . . which is really no Theology . . . and we turn Jesus into some type of outdoor woodsman . . . who sits in a deerstand (treestand) scratching himself (laughs thunder again). . . Now you find either one of those for me in the Word of God . . . No, we make Him into something that He is not. . . because we have not studied the Word as we ought . . . and we don’t really know . . .we can’t really give a clear, consistent, comprehensive understanding of the Person and the Work of Christ. Over the last several weeks, in preparation for this, I did something I normally don’t do . . . I listened watched more and more preaching on television . . . and more and more on the radio . . . and it made me sick! . . . it flat-out nauseated me . . . and some of that which I was watching was BEING DONE BY SOUTHERN BAPTIST! . . . now I learned a lot about some of my friends . . . I learned a lot about their experiences . . . I learned a lot about what they think . . . Do you know one of the reasons why I am committed to expository preaching? . . .it’s because I don’t really give a rip (Danny Akin signature series cliche) what I think . . . I really don’t . . . and I really don’t know that much to impress you or to help you . . . but I do know the One who does (Amens thunder throughout the crowd). . . and He has revealed Himself with crystal-clear clarity . . . in His Word! . . . Now people all the time say to me . . . listen to me . . . this is where I am going to make some of you mad! . . . people say to me all the time, ‘Well, I’m an expository preacher.’ . . .well I can’t tell it by the way you do it! . . . (a holy hush is seen throughout the sanctuary!) . . . You say, ‘Maybe you can help me out then.’ I’m gonna help you out! (laughter throughout the sanctuary!) . . . It’s really very simple, it’s not nearly as complicated as we make it. . . Expository preaching is simply TEXT-DRIVEN preaching. . . that’s what it is! You let the text determine both the substance and the structure of what you say. Now I’m going to ask you a question; I’m going to get in your business. What if your people, in your church, who teach Bible study, handled the Bible in their Bible study, in exactly the same way you handle the Bible when you stand behind the pulpit, Sunday after Sunday! (A great holy hush is experienced!). . . would that be a good thing? Sometimes men say to me, ‘Well Bible study is for Sunday School; I need to do something different in the pulpit.’ If it’s good enough for Sunday School, why isn’t it good enough for the pulpit? (An intense holy hush is evident!). If they need to be taught in Bible Study, what makes you think they don’t need to be taught the Bible from the pulpit? Now again, I have a friend that is an atheist. He involved himself in Southern Baptist life for a number of months and then wrote a book about us. He said, ‘I’m gonna tell you something . . . you guys have the most creative, the most entertaining, the most dynamic . . . I mean . . . your preachers are fun. . . to listen to . . . they don’t say much . . . but they’re fun to listen to. . . You know what? I’d rather you be no fun at all . . . but teach me the Word . . . rather than be an incredible communicator . . . in fact, that’s the new thing now, we don’t want to be called preachers anymore . . .do we? . . . ‘I’m not a preacher, I’m not a pastor, I’m a communicator . . . What the heck does that mean? (Laughter erupts throughout the sanctuary). . . Is that a spiritual gift I missed somewhere in the Bible . . . I . . . I . . .I . . . I can’t find that one. (Laughter again). I’m sorry, I can’t find that one . . . no, God called me to be a Pastor/Theologian . . . and God called me to be a preacher! And I don’t care what generation it is. You know, here’s the thing . . . and while we’re out here, let’s just go ahead and jump into all of it . . . (laughter again throughout the sanctuary). . . “John Piper . . . my friend!. . . I don’t agree with him in every part of Theology . . . but why is John Piper so popular with our teenagers, and our college kids, and our young adults? I tell you why! . . . .Number one, He has a BIG God-glorifying vision . . . He has a big God in his Theology. . . Secondly, he also has a glorious vision of Christ. . . . And thirdly, he teaches Theology . . . he teaches his people to think Theologically. . . so that they can identify with what is going on in verse 7 (the text Akin was exegeting) . . .

“ . . .Too often, our congregations are poorly trained by those of us who preach. Here’s what happens when we feed our congregations a steady diet of moralistic preaching . . . now listen to me . . . stay with me . . . they may learn to be kind . . . forgiving. . . loving . . . a good husband . . . a good wife . . . all these are good things, of course . . . their heart may be warmed . . . and even edified . . . but as long as the Theological foundation is neglected . . . the wolf of heresy lurks even more closely! You say, ‘How?’ Not because the pastor, himself, is heretical . . . he may be fully orthodox . . . faithful to his own Theology . . . YET . . . he assumes Theology . . . in his preaching . . . and, therefore, he neglects to preach to his people the story line and the Theology of the Bible. In the next generation or two, therefore, the congregation may inadvertedly and unknowingly call a more liberal pastor! This new pastor will also preach that people should be good . . .kind and loving . . . he also will emphasis the importance of good marriages and dynamic relationships . . . people in the pew may not even discern the difference . . . since the Theology sounds just like the Theology of the conservative pastor who preceded him . . . AND IN A SENSE, IT WAS . . . FOR THE CONSERVATIVE PASTOR NEVER PROCLAIMED OR PREACHED HIS THEOLOGY! THE CONSERVATIVE PASTOR BELIEVED IN THE INERRANCY OF THE SCRIPTURE . . . BUT NOT IT’S SUFFICIENCY! HE DID NOT PROCLAIM ALL THAT THE SCRIPTURES TEACH . . . TO HIS CONGREGATION . . .

“ . . . And I say to my students again, and again, and again, ‘ What you say is more important than how you say it. But, how you say it has never been more important’. . .Now let me say that again, What you say, the content, the substance, I beg you by the blood atonement of Christ, let it be the faithful teaching, chapter by chapter, verse-by-verse, phrase-by-phrase, word-by-word of the Word of God . . . what you say is more important than how you say it . . . but how you say it has never been more important! . . . Let me follow it up . . . I believe it is a sin to teach and preach the Bible poorly . . . I believe it is a sin! You say, ‘Well, Danny, God didn’t give me an Adrian Rogers voice.’ He didn’t give me one either! . . . ‘Well, He didn’t give me that poetic voice of the Jerry Vines.’ He didn’t give me that either. ‘He didn’t give me that situation where I can study 30 hours a week like John MacArthur.’ I don’t have that either. But I do know this, I can take what God has given me, and give it back to him as an offering , and say, ‘Dear Lord, what I can give you is not much. But what I have I give to you; and Lord, I will take the gifts and abilities you have given me, and I will work my best to teach your world accurately and comprehensively, and truthfully, and to teach it well.’ When I was in Bible College, I preached in preaching class like some of you did . . . Unfortunately, my preaching professor was a man named Paige Patterson, (Snickers are heard) who is extremely derelict in the area of sanctification . . . (Laughter) . . . You can tell him I said that (more laughter) . . . he is also my father in the ministry . . . one of my heroes . . . and, though, he has been taking a lot of hits lately . . . I’m going to tell you something . . . if it were not for Paige Patterson, most of you would not be here in this room today . . . I wouldn’t be here. . . I guarantee it! . . . So I go into his office, he sits down and turns on the TV . . . sitting right by my side, we began to watch me preach on video . . . after about five minutes, he turns the TV off . . . and says, ‘I just can’t take anymore.’ (Much laughter breaks out) . . . and that will bless you . . . I’m 20 years old. . . I mean, I’m just a baby . . . ‘I can’t take anymore of that’ . . . then he turns it (TV) off. . . he looks me in the face and then he says, ‘Let me say several things to you. Number one, you actually handled the text quiet well. . . you have the potential to be a very fine expositor . . . Secondly, your diction is horrendous. . . people in Georgia really can understand what you are saying? Number three, I will not go into the grammatical mistakes that you made. . . my red ink pen ran out.’ (laughter) And then he said, ‘This is the bottom line, Mr. Akin, you will make a fine preacher for painters, and plumbers, and ditch-diggers . . . there’s nothing wrong with being a preacher for painters, plumbers, and ditch-diggers . . and you are going to be for them fine right now, like you are . . . If, however, you wish to make yourself more available for the Lord . . . so that he might even use you to speak to the lawyer, the banker, and the doctor, that he might even be able to use you, not only in the deep south, but even in the northeast, the midwest, or the west coast . . . you’ve got a lot of work to do! ’ . . . And he got up and walked out of his office and left me sitting there. I am so grateful that he loved me enough to throw that gauntlet down at my feet. He challenged me on one hand, ‘Don’t you ever divert from the Word and be a faithful expositor of the Word. And yet you compliment that with a desire to be a good, faithful, and effective communicator’, . . . No preacher, ‘of the Word of God.’ Gentlemen, we don’t have to settle for one or the other. . . we can put both together, and if we will, we will be the faithful Pastor/Theologian that God has called us to be. . . we will train a people who will know what they believe and why they believe it . . . and when the sirens of Maderdy come against them and try to deceive them, we will not have to be standing at their side to make sure that they don’t fall . . . because we will have trained them so well . . . whether we are there or not . . . they will be equipped to discern between that which is right and that which is wrong . . . that which is true and that which is error. ”