Preaching Up A Storm - Tim Brown

[00:00:00] So we soak up the Word of God. A burden is formed in us, a storm is formed in us,

[00:00:08] and then we move inland there to sin forth of our burden. So laden with the Word of God,

[00:00:15] moved by the Spirit of God. We are a storm of holy passion and righteous truth.

[00:00:22] Well, hey, welcome to the Expositors Collective podcast, episode 325. I'm your host, Mike Neglia,

[00:00:30] and the voice of this week's guest is Pastor Tim Brown. And what you're going to hear is one of

[00:00:37] the freshest takes on sermon prep and delivery that I've ever heard. And this is the sort of thing

[00:00:44] that I'm actually obsessed with. I think about sermon prep all the time. I read about it. I

[00:00:50] listen to it. I get to travel the world through Expositors Collective, and we've put on like more

[00:00:56] than a dozen training events about sermon prep. And when I listened to this message online a few

[00:01:04] months ago, it was almost jaw dropping. So I don't want to give away too much because you're

[00:01:10] going to hear it for yourself in a few moments. But I know that this is going to be a fresh

[00:01:15] take on the art and the craft of sermon prep and delivery. Tim Brown's been in ministry since 1972,

[00:01:24] and he's got some great accumulated wisdom to share. If you want to hear more from Tim Brown

[00:01:30] and learn from him, well then you're in luck because he's going to be one of our main session

[00:01:34] speakers at our next training event, which is coming soon to the San Francisco Bay Area

[00:01:42] in the Tri Valley region, a town called Pleasanton. And you'll get a chance to learn from Tim directly

[00:01:48] as he shares from the front. And also he's going to be one of our group leaders and coaches.

[00:01:54] So now there's one more reason for you to come along, bring your team and join us in Pleasanton,

[00:02:00] California May 24th and 25th. Here's an invitation from Pastor Heath Hardesty.

[00:02:08] Hey everyone, Heath Hardesty here, Pastor Valley Community Church in Pleasanton, California.

[00:02:14] I want to invite you to come out on May 24th and 25th to the Expositors Collective Interactive

[00:02:19] Training Event here in the beautiful Bay Area. This will help you grow in your personal study

[00:02:25] and the public proclamation of God's word. This will be a joyful time where we learn

[00:02:30] new skills and we do it in community all for the glory of God. So bring your team,

[00:02:36] come on out. It'll be a powerful time of learning how to preach God's word in a joyful and powerful

[00:02:43] way. We hope to see you then. This is the audio recording of a message given at a Calvary

[00:02:51] Chapel pastors conference in Northern California on the 7th of September, 2024. And big thanks to

[00:03:01] Regeneration Church for allowing us to re-broadcast this recording.

[00:03:11] Ascribe to the Lord, O sons of the mighty. Ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.

[00:03:17] Ascribe to the Lord the glory do his name. Worship the Lord in holy array. The voice

[00:03:26] of the Lord is upon the waters. The God of glory thunders. The Lord is over many waters.

[00:03:34] The voice of the Lord is powerful. The voice of the Lord is majestic. The voice of the Lord breaks

[00:03:40] the cedars. Yes, the Lord breaks in pieces the cedars of Lebanon. He makes the Lebanon

[00:03:47] skip like a calf and Syriac like a young wild ox. The voice of the Lord hues out flames of fire.

[00:03:54] The Lord shakes the wilderness. The Lord shakes the wilderness of Qadesh. The voice of the Lord

[00:04:00] makes the deer to calf and he strips the forest bare. And in his temple everything says glory.

[00:04:08] The Lord said, as king at the flood, yes, the Lord sits as king forever. The Lord will give

[00:04:14] strength to his people. The Lord will bless his people with peace. So Father we thank you

[00:04:21] for the reading and the teaching of your word this morning. May we have an ear to hear

[00:04:26] what the Holy Spirit is saying to the church in Jesus' name. Amen, amen. You may be seated.

[00:04:35] Probably like most of you, some weeks I'll do no counseling. I'll conduct no board meeting.

[00:04:42] I'll officiate no weddings or funerals. I'll go on no hospital calls. But there is rarely a week

[00:04:50] that goes by that I won't preach and teach God's word. Preaching and teaching is not

[00:04:57] an occasional function of the past read. And it's vitally important that we develop

[00:05:03] preaching skills. And we need to develop, we need to cultivate a manner of presenting

[00:05:09] God's word to God's people in a way that's effective in life giving week after month after

[00:05:15] year after decade. And Psalm 29 helps us with that because what Psalm 29 does it describes a

[00:05:23] weather system that forms and incubates over the Mediterranean and then it moves inland and it

[00:05:30] breaks against the Lebanon coast. And then driven by the winds, it swerves down into the

[00:05:36] vast trench of the Jordan Rift Valley. And then it finally wastes itself down in the Kadesh

[00:05:43] wilderness. That's what Psalm 29 describes literally, this storm there in those geographical

[00:05:50] locations. But my thesis for you this morning is that the dynamics of preaching and teaching

[00:05:56] are analogous to the formation and the venting of a storm. That's what we see here. You'll

[00:06:03] notice seven times it talks about the voice of the Lord, the voice of the Lord, the voice

[00:06:09] of the Lord. Now the voice of the Lord carries many ideas, but actually the first one that we come

[00:06:14] up to in Genesis chapter three is when the Lord says to Adam, because you've listened to the voice

[00:06:23] of your wife. The word voice in the Hebrew carries the idea of words that are spoken.

[00:06:30] In fact God says to Moses in Exodus chapter three at the burning bush,

[00:06:35] you're going to go to the elders of Israel and they're going to hearken to your voice,

[00:06:42] to the words that you speak. And listen, you and I who preach and teach the Word of God,

[00:06:52] we are the voice of the Lord. Because if a storm, if a storm and an impersonal natural force,

[00:07:02] if it can be the voice of God, if it can carry the voice of God, how much more a man

[00:07:08] who's filled with the Holy Spirit filled with the Word. And so you and I are the voice of the

[00:07:15] Lord and God wants to use your voice. God would use the words that you speak

[00:07:22] to accomplish all of the things that are mentioned here in Psalm 29. Now in Psalm 29

[00:07:29] we see a process of evaporation, condensation followed by what? Precipitation. First grade

[00:07:39] science class, right? Now let's go to our next slide there. Yeah, there we go. In evaporation,

[00:07:48] that's where you study for your sermon. You just soak up the Word of God and then it forms

[00:07:57] into a thunder cloud in your soul. It condenses and then when it comes Sunday, boom, you preach

[00:08:05] your sermon. Sunday is the day of precipitation along with Thursday mornings and whenever the Word

[00:08:13] of God is preached there's the giving forth of the storm of the Word of God. So I want to present

[00:08:20] to you from Psalm 29 again the thesis that the dynamics of preaching and teaching are analogous to

[00:08:28] the formation and the venting of a storm. And we're going to see all of these three processes

[00:08:34] embedded here in Psalm 29. Now how do I begin to be the voice of the Lord? How do I begin to be

[00:08:47] the man that can speak the Word of God? That God can thunder himself through. When we're told here in

[00:08:56] verses one and two, we have preparation. The preparation in verses one and two. Ascribe, as

[00:09:03] cribe just means to give. Give to the Lord, O sons of the mighty. Give to the Lord glory and

[00:09:09] strength. Give to the Lord. The glory do his name. Worship the Lord in holy array. Now we're

[00:09:16] told there in verse one ascribe to the Lord, O sons of the mighty. The word mighty is El.

[00:09:23] El is a short form for Elohim. Before God makes his voice known, the sons of El,

[00:09:32] the sons of God are called to worship. And you guys, you know this and I'm speaking, I see the

[00:09:40] mixed crowd out there, but I'm a pastor and I'm, you know, men. We're Calvary. I think that the

[00:09:47] greatest gift from my perspective, the greatest gift that Pastor Chuck left to Calvary Chapel

[00:09:53] is a theological conservatism. If you can't chapter and verse it, we have no interest in

[00:10:00] it. We just have no interest in it. In my New American Standard, the last phrase of verse two,

[00:10:07] it says worship the Lord in holy array. The theological word book of the New Testament,

[00:10:14] of the Old Testament translates it this way. Prostrate yourself before the Lord

[00:10:19] when he appears in holiness. I love that. Prostrate yourself, fall on the ground before God

[00:10:27] when he appears in holiness. And the implication there is God wants to show up.

[00:10:33] He wants to reveal himself to you even before you break open the word, even before you get into

[00:10:40] the hard work of study. God wants to show you how good and how awesome he is. I had to iron a patch

[00:10:50] on the pair of jeans that were fraying a little bit the other day. And it said, before you iron

[00:10:55] this patch on, get the jeans hot with the iron. You don't want to apply this

[00:11:02] patch to cold jeans or room temperature jeans. And so I just kept the iron on there for about a

[00:11:09] minute, moving it back and forth so it wouldn't scorch. And just getting that place

[00:11:15] that was to receive the patch ready. And then that patch just went on. Listen guys,

[00:11:21] all of you who study the Word of God, all of you who prepare to preach and teach and to

[00:11:26] give, your soul. Your soul has to be prepared. You just don't get up and go, I'm going to go

[00:11:33] get a mess. I'm going to go write a sermon. Well you might write a sermon and it'll probably

[00:11:39] not be a very good one because your soul is to be warmed up and heated to receive

[00:11:48] the revelation of God, the Word of God. And that's what's happening in verses one and two.

[00:11:53] There's preparation. There's ministry to God before there's ministry to people. There has to be

[00:12:00] preparation and worship before there's preparation in study. We can make a whole sermon out of verses

[00:12:06] one and two, but we got to go on here. In verses, verse three, we begin to study. It says there,

[00:12:13] the voice of the Lord is over the waters, the God of glory thunders. This begins the process

[00:12:19] of evaporation because the waters are the Word of God. The Lord is over the water. The voice of

[00:12:27] the Lord is over the waters. You are the voice of the Lord. You're going to speak the words

[00:12:32] that he's speaking and where does it begin? It begins over the waters. And even as something

[00:12:40] is transferred from the sea up to the sky, even there's that process of going from liquid to vapor.

[00:12:52] So there's something that transpires here as I study the Word of God. Something here

[00:13:00] is uploaded to the cloud if you would. It's uploaded into my soul. There's a transfer

[00:13:08] of something here to here. And it's the evaporation process. We know that a thunder cloud forms over

[00:13:17] the ocean through the process of evaporation, and that's where the liquid is turned to vapor.

[00:13:23] And even as again, as water is transferred from the ocean and it forms the cloud,

[00:13:29] the revelation of God is transferred from the written Word of God up into your life and into your soul.

[00:13:39] Be much over the waters of God's Word. Be much over the waters of the Word of God.

[00:13:50] And something will begin to form inside of you. This is where we soak up word studies,

[00:13:57] cultural, linguistic, historical and theological information. This is the who, what, when, where,

[00:14:03] why, and how in the Scripture. Who said this? Why did they say it? Where did they say it? When did

[00:14:06] they say it? You know, who did they say it to? How did they receive it? What was the upshot of it?

[00:14:11] All of these inductive questions. And this is where you put all of your inductive tools

[00:14:17] that you learned, you know, in IBS and all of the other things. This is where you put

[00:14:21] all of these tools to work, because these are the tools of the evaporative process.

[00:14:28] You read the commentaries, you do a devotional study, you do your word studies. This is where

[00:14:33] all of that takes place where you read, you study, you meditate and you pray.

[00:14:40] And the work of evaporation is hard, hard work. And so some men, some women,

[00:14:47] to avoid the hard work of evaporation, they're not over the waters of God,

[00:14:54] but they draw from the wells of men. And the Lord's not over the wells.

[00:15:00] The Lord is over the waters. You know how easy it is to dip from another man's well.

[00:15:08] And what happens then is siphoning replaces evaporation. And why do you guys look at me?

[00:15:15] You know exactly what I'm talking about. And copy and paste replaces study and prayer.

[00:15:25] Now, you need to take a cup full now and then. But the Lord is over the waters.

[00:15:33] He's not over the wells. Take a cup full but not a bucket full. Someone has said,

[00:15:38] if you just quote from one man, that's plagiarism. If you quote from many men,

[00:15:43] that's well researched. And so my sermons are well researched. Your sermons are probably

[00:15:49] well researched too. But there's this evaporation process and you all have your own way of doing it.

[00:15:56] You have your go-to commentaries, your go-to lexicons, your go-to linguistic, cultural,

[00:16:03] historical sources whereby you learn the fabric, the background, the context of the text.

[00:16:11] And this is just, you're just, all of this stuff is just being evaporated. It's being lifted into

[00:16:17] your mind and it's being lifted in your soul. It's like this theological, homiletical,

[00:16:23] hermeneutical vapor, you know? And vapor is really just another name for fog. It's up there and

[00:16:30] you go, I'm not sure what to do with this. I got a lot of stuff going on up here and

[00:16:34] something's gonna shake loose sooner or later, I think. But you're just getting it.

[00:16:39] And you're probably making notes on a piece of paper or on your laptop and oh, I think that's

[00:16:44] interesting. I think that's interesting. I'm not sure how that's gonna fit but it's a cool thing or

[00:16:49] a cool saying or a quote or something you heard up here from another sermon.

[00:16:54] You know, the name of this game is bagged barlin' steel, right? And we're always,

[00:16:58] you guys know, we always got your ears out. You always got your antenna up going,

[00:17:03] oh, oh, I can use that. Oh, I can use that. And you've got this catalog of information

[00:17:10] that hopefully is at your fingertips but it's all part of the evaporation process. Now,

[00:17:16] the evaporation process is followed by condensation. I'm moving quickly because of

[00:17:21] my limited time here. The evaporation process is followed by condensation and I believe that

[00:17:27] that is described in verse four. The voice of the Lord is powerful. The voice of the Lord is majestic.

[00:17:36] The storm has not yet broken upon the Lebanon coast. That's in verse five. But right now,

[00:17:44] the storm is just forming over the Mediterranean through this evaporation condensation process.

[00:17:52] Through the evaporation process, the air becomes saturated with vapor until condensation occurs.

[00:18:00] We're told that a vapor of a vapor droplet, it's carried upward by air currents and it grows

[00:18:08] by condensing then with other water droplets. A water droplet is like 10, I mean a water vapor

[00:18:18] droplet is like 10 microns in in diameter. That's 10 millionths of a meter.

[00:18:30] There's no way, you know, to even, if you were to feel one, you wouldn't feel one water vapor.

[00:18:40] It has to condense. It has to join with hook up with all kinds of other

[00:18:45] vapors to become a rain droplet. But this is taking place, all of this vapor is coming up

[00:18:53] and the vapor becomes drops of rain and then the cloud forms as these as these vapors condense

[00:19:02] with one another and as they coalesce with one another. Droplets begin to form

[00:19:10] and they begin to form together and the clouds then become thicker and darker.

[00:19:17] Water spends nine days, nine days from the moment that that 10 micron size

[00:19:26] droplet of vapor is extracted from the ocean by the heat of the sun.

[00:19:32] It spends nine days up in the air coalescing the air.

[00:19:40] Condensing with other vapor droplets to form the drops that become the cloud, that become the rain.

[00:19:49] But as they condense together it becomes the cloud. It spends nine days during this incubation

[00:19:57] process. Now we don't have that luxury guys do we? We don't have nine days to prepare

[00:20:03] for the next message but that's what's happening up in there.

[00:20:07] But you and I because of the saturation with the Word of God, that saturation with the Word of God

[00:20:13] it condenses into a burden of the Holy Spirit. And you know what's up and you know what that's like.

[00:20:23] You get all this stuff. You read your favorite commentaries, your lexicons, your dictionaries,

[00:20:30] your encyclopedias, your background whatever you use. And you're reading it. Oh that's

[00:20:36] interesting. That's interesting. I think that's important. I'm going to make a note of that.

[00:20:41] Or that really helps me understand that phrase, that word. But then something happens

[00:20:49] and it begins to come together. A message is formed in you as you brood over, as you pray over,

[00:20:58] as you study out, as you seek out, as you meditate upon God's Word. You don't study

[00:21:07] and all of a sudden boom there's this huge thunder cloud inside of you. It forms little by little.

[00:21:16] This is why I don't mean to step on anybody's toes. I don't understand. Some guys can do it and

[00:21:23] they get away with it. They've got away with their whole lives and they have churches 20

[00:21:27] times bigger than mine so it's not, this isn't a defect. But some guys wait until Saturday morning

[00:21:33] to start their Sunday morning sermon. I could never ever, ever do that because this evaporation,

[00:21:41] condensation process of the revelation of God, it takes so long in me. Now with some of you,

[00:21:48] like you're like microwave pastors and they just come together so fast and it's good.

[00:21:54] It's good. This is not a criticism by any means but it's just an amazing kind of thing to me that

[00:22:00] that process can be speeded up because that is not my experience at all. I have to brood over,

[00:22:08] think upon, pray through weight for these things to collide and come together in my soul. But

[00:22:16] a message is formed in you as you brood over and pray through the Word of God that you're

[00:22:21] meditating on in the section that you're to preach from. And in this condensation process,

[00:22:28] something powerful and something majestic begins to form in your soul. And you know what it's like.

[00:22:39] I've been in some form of ministry since January of 1973, a youth pastor, assistant pastor,

[00:22:48] or a senior pastor. That's over 50 years now and I've been at this thing a long, long time.

[00:22:56] But I'll be preparing for Sunday and reading through my passage and reading and praying and

[00:23:03] thinking and you know after a while I'm going, I think I got nothing.

[00:23:10] Almost every week on this is just isn't pastor hyperbole. We're good at that but this isn't

[00:23:17] that. Almost every week I despair. I go, oh man, I'm just not getting anything from this.

[00:23:29] And then all of a sudden, wow! Oh, wow, yeah. And these droplets begin to condense together

[00:23:42] and then oh, oh, oh, yeah that, that, that. And writing and typing out and my wife says,

[00:23:49] what's wrong with you? Don't bother me. I'm condensating. Something's coming together.

[00:23:57] The cloud is coming together. Something majestic, something powerful is beginning to form inside

[00:24:04] of my soul. You know what I mean? And I can, I can feel just in my soul. This isn't even,

[00:24:12] we're not to the coast yet. The thunder and the lightning. I used to go to the Jack Hayford

[00:24:18] conferences back in the 80s at church on the way and Jack had John MacArthur there once

[00:24:26] and John was talking and he said someone would ask me, don't you just love to preach?

[00:24:32] He goes, well yeah, I love preaching. But even better than preaching is when I'm in my office

[00:24:41] and this word begins to form. You guys know what I'm talking about? That it comes together

[00:24:48] and you're just so excited at God and you're just so blessed that God is revealing these things

[00:24:55] to you. That's the condensation process when all of this stuff, it becomes, it begins to come

[00:25:03] together and you begin either in your mind or on your paper, begin to write your sermon and,

[00:25:08] oh, this is going to fit here and that's going to fit there and you try to find some kind of a

[00:25:11] logical, you know, intelligent flow to the thing. But that's the condensation process

[00:25:18] right there. Ideas are connecting. A life-giving word is forming. And again,

[00:25:23] you know what it's like and this message is powerful. The word powerful means the capacity to

[00:25:28] act, a potency to produce, the ability to cope. This is going to bless the people. It's going to

[00:25:34] give them some tools to live life through. It's going to give them the ability to act in their

[00:25:39] situation. It's going to bless them. It's going to help them. It's also a message in verse 4

[00:25:44] we're told it's a majestic. The word is majestic means what's beautiful

[00:25:49] and what instills awe. And as this, this, this thunder cloud of, of sermon forms in your soul,

[00:25:58] it's thundering and it's lightning and it's powerful and it's majestic within you.

[00:26:05] And we're always told, hey listen, if you're not excited about your message,

[00:26:11] they're not going to be excited out there. You, you, you have to be moved by it.

[00:26:17] It has to have the power to move you. It has to have the majesty to instill awe in you.

[00:26:24] This is why we go back to verses 1 and 2 for worship. You know,

[00:26:28] give, ascribe to the Lord, give to the Lord glory and honor and strength and power.

[00:26:32] Warm up your soul before the Lord. And so something powerful, something majestic begins

[00:26:39] to form in you. It touches you. And again, it has to be powerful and majestic in you

[00:26:45] because if you're not moved, it's not going to move anybody else.

[00:26:49] Well in verses 5 through 9 we come to precipitation. Precipitation is the, the sermon

[00:26:56] that's preached. It's the message that's brought to whatever context that you're speaking into.

[00:27:03] So we soak up the word of God. A burden is formed in us. A storm is formed in us.

[00:27:12] And then we move inland there to send forth of our burden. So laden with the word of God,

[00:27:18] moved by the spirit of God. We are a storm of holy passion and righteous truth.

[00:27:26] So again, the premise is, is that the dynamics of preaching and teaching are analogous to the

[00:27:30] formation and the venting of a storm. And we've seen the evaporation process,

[00:27:36] the condensation process, and now precipitation. Well there's different types

[00:27:43] of precipitation. The first type that I can mention is mist and drizzle.

[00:27:53] Why are you laughing?

[00:27:57] And it can feel like a fog. You know the phrase, you know if there's a

[00:28:00] mist in the pulpit there'll be a fog in the pew. And mist and drizzle is minimal precipitation

[00:28:07] because there's been minimal evaporation and minimal condensation, which means there's been

[00:28:12] minimal preparation. There's been, there's not enough time spent before the Lord.

[00:28:19] There's not enough time spent in the word of God. You wait till the last minute.

[00:28:23] Again I could never break open the word of God on Saturday morning and hope to have a message.

[00:28:30] I could have information. I could, I could have a sermon but I couldn't have a storm of truth and

[00:28:38] passion. That doesn't form in me in one day. What a mist, mist is an aborted cloud is what that is.

[00:28:48] It just never made it off the ground. And I wonder, have you ever misted and drizzled on your

[00:28:53] people? We'll ask your people. It's like don't be the preacher who says, you know this week I

[00:29:02] didn't have enough time to prepare and then he takes 45 minutes to prove it. You know, don't,

[00:29:07] don't be the, don't be that guy. Other, other forms of precipitation are snow and sleet

[00:29:16] and hail. And this isn't a refreshing shower but it's a cold soaking. And through this kind

[00:29:21] of preacher God seems impersonal, distant and foreboding. Snow and sleet and hail is the word of

[00:29:27] God coming through a cold personality because that personality has not had enough encounter

[00:29:34] with, with the character, the nature, the person of God. Which takes us back to verses one and two.

[00:29:40] Ascribe to the Lord, O sons of the El, ascribe gift to the Lord glory and might

[00:29:45] bow before him when he appears in holiness before you. Here's a soul that knows

[00:29:51] God and, and bowes at the feet of God. But if here's a preacher who doesn't take that time and worship,

[00:30:01] who really doesn't know God personally. The word of God through him is like snow and sleet

[00:30:07] and hail. God seems impersonal, distant and foreboding. Again it's a personality that has

[00:30:12] not had enough, a thorough encounter enough with the word of God. Hail is condensation

[00:30:19] gone crazy. Let's go to our next slide here. That woman just sat through one of your summons.

[00:30:27] She's an actual victim of a hail storm, her and her baby there. And when do you hail on the people?

[00:30:36] You're not giving enough, you're not serving enough, you're not praying enough,

[00:30:40] you're not inviting enough people to church, you're not evangelizing enough.

[00:30:44] So go to Calvary Fremont on October 7th and learn how to evangelize.

[00:30:48] You know, all of the, we can just beat the people up. And you've sat through summons like that,

[00:30:55] I've sat through summons like that. Hopefully I've not given summons like that. Now the people I serve

[00:31:03] might beg to differ with that, but we all know pastors and, and, and sermons that are more of a

[00:31:11] hail storm than a refreshing soaking of the Lord. So mist, drizzle, snow, sleet and hail,

[00:31:18] they are all turned into refreshing showers through worship. And again, the man of God,

[00:31:25] the woman of God has to have that fresh encounter daily with the person of God

[00:31:32] that keeps your soul humble before the Lord, that the word of God might come through a humble

[00:31:39] vessel. Well, this thunder storm has formed and then it begins to break upon the Lebanon coast,

[00:31:50] verse five, the voice of the Lord breaks the cedars, the Lord breaks the in pieces,

[00:31:55] the cedars of Lebanon, he makes a Syrian, Lebanon, skip like a calf and Syrion like a young

[00:32:03] wild ox. A thunder storm has various characteristics. First of all, the first characteristic of a

[00:32:08] thunder storm is thunder. When the air is crossed by a spark of lightning, it becomes

[00:32:13] superheated and it rolls into thunder. And I believe there should be thunder

[00:32:19] in our preaching. I believe at times God calls us to give out thunderous warnings.

[00:32:25] Now in the Bay Area thunder is like this real distant growling of a lion if you would.

[00:32:34] It's kind of rolling thing. You can tell that it's thunder, but it's quite

[00:32:44] indistinct. I was at the top of Hell's Canyon once in Idaho. And the thunder there

[00:32:50] was like a gunshot, a literal gunshot in my ear. When I hear thunder in the Bay Area,

[00:32:59] it gets no rise from me. But I tell you, at the top of Hell's Canyon, I feared that thing made

[00:33:10] me shake. That thing made me quake. I made sure I got into my car or something. I just,

[00:33:15] I knew that that storm was out to wipe me out. I think there needs to be thunderous warnings

[00:33:20] in our preaching. But all thunder, all stern warning makes for legalism. And we begin to be

[00:33:28] defined by what we avoid. Now it's interesting that each

[00:33:33] peel of thunder, it's accompanied by a flash of lightning. And I do believe that if you warn,

[00:33:41] you need to give the reason why. There has to be light. There has to be understanding.

[00:33:48] There has to be some kind of light turned on in the part of your ears. Another characteristic

[00:33:53] of thunderstorm is lightning. Now with lightning, there's a momentary glimpse of far horizons. And

[00:34:00] your faith is stretched. Your desires are stirred. The preacher gives you deep insight

[00:34:06] and wisdom. And with lightning, I can see what I didn't know was there.

[00:34:13] And so, you know, last night Pastor Don was preaching about

[00:34:19] desiring and yearning for the, seeing the glory of God. God, I want to see your glory.

[00:34:24] And maybe some of you have never had that orientation before. And in his preaching,

[00:34:29] and by the anointing of the Holy Spirit, you saw something you'd never seen before.

[00:34:34] You saw a far horizon. You go, man, I want that. I see that. I desire that.

[00:34:41] And that's what lightning does. Excuse me, the lightning of revelation in a message.

[00:34:47] You see things you've never seen before. And not just kind of an intellectual thing. Your desire

[00:34:55] is stirred. And you go, I want that for my life. I've never really thought of it that way or

[00:35:04] or considered it like that. But that's a value I want to download into my life.

[00:35:12] Now you didn't possess it right away, even as you can't possess far horizons right away.

[00:35:18] But it's something that's tucked away in your spirit and something you begin to desire.

[00:35:23] But all lightning makes for mysticism and emotionalism.

[00:35:28] One of the dangers of lightning is you can be blinded by the lightning and not enlightened by it.

[00:35:37] All thunder and lightning, it makes for a dazzled people, but it makes for a

[00:35:41] parched earth. So there has to be rain. Another characteristic of a thunderstorm is torrential

[00:35:46] rain where it told that persistent moderate rain can drop five inches and 24 hours.

[00:35:52] But a thunderstorm can do that in 20 minutes. Just think what you can do with 40 minutes in your

[00:35:59] sermon. A thunderstorm, this torrential rain. But I found that torrential instruction alone,

[00:36:11] it leads to intellectualism. Some clouds dump water without the display of thunder and

[00:36:17] lightning. And to me that's just boring. Have you ever sat through a sermon? It's just an info dump.

[00:36:24] It's just this Greek word means that, that Hebrew word means that and there's this

[00:36:29] interesting Hebrew culture behind this and this happened historically and theologically this means

[00:36:35] that and this is what it means theologically, sociologically, eschatologically, pneumatologically,

[00:36:39] ecclesiastologically or whatever and you're going what? And it's just boring. There's no thunder,

[00:36:48] there's no lightning. I want thunder, I want lightning and I want torrential rain.

[00:36:54] I think that all has to be in there in our messages. Again some sermons are just info

[00:37:01] dumps. Let there be thunder. Let there be lightning. Let there be rain. Probably most of

[00:37:08] you are familiar with the name Martin Lloyd Jones, a very stern English preacher. A man with some very

[00:37:16] exacting standards when it came to the art of preaching. But he said this, let's get him up there.

[00:37:26] He said this, all forgive a preacher almost anything if he leaves me with a sense of God.

[00:37:34] Isn't that awesome? And again stern demanding, but I'll forgive him almost anything.

[00:37:46] You know I'll hear a lot of sermons. I was with my friend a number of years ago in

[00:37:50] Washington on a Sunday we went to his church and he said what did you think of the sermon?

[00:37:56] I said well the guy didn't didn't preach the text.

[00:37:59] He read the text and he taught on something else. My friend got mad at me because I was

[00:38:06] criticizing the preacher. I said now what he said was right, but it wasn't the passage.

[00:38:13] And I think so often I hear messages, I hear the right thing from the wrong passage.

[00:38:19] You know he reads the word and then he teaches, he teaches something else.

[00:38:25] But if he leaves me with a sense of God that's okay. He's preaching the truth, he's preaching

[00:38:31] the word not just the word that he read but he's preaching the word. But if he can leave

[00:38:36] me with a sense of God man I'll forgive him. Pastors do that with thunder, with lightning,

[00:38:43] with the torrential reign of God's word. I need to get going here. Some of the results

[00:38:46] of the thunderstorms are given us here in the rest of the passage. In verse five we see the

[00:38:53] breaking power of preaching. The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars, yes the Lord breaks the

[00:38:59] cedars of Lebanon. The spirit through your preaching is going to lay low the proud and the lofty.

[00:39:06] In one of the Hebrew forms of this verb it means the smashing of idols. Through your preaching

[00:39:12] you're going to bring men and women face to face with their sin. You might not even be aware

[00:39:16] of it but you're bringing them face to face with their sin and you're breaking the back of that sin.

[00:39:25] I had a woman come to me one time after preaching, I didn't preach anything about marriage,

[00:39:29] relationships, divorce, nothing when it came to that and she said because of what you said today

[00:39:35] I'm not going to divorce my husband tomorrow. Wow praise the Lord and I was talking about

[00:39:42] speaking in tongues or something I don't know or tithing or something I don't know what it was

[00:39:47] but God just flowed to her need and that word broke the back of her sin. And you know what it's like

[00:39:54] to sit in preaching and to have God deal with your heart and you leave the place a different man,

[00:40:00] a different woman who's repented of this sin or that son because the Lord has broken the cedars

[00:40:06] in your own heart. Verse six he makes the Lebanon skip like a calf and Syria unlike a young

[00:40:11] wild ox this is the renewing power of preaching. Huge mountains, the Lebanon range, Syrion, Syrion

[00:40:19] is just the Phoenician name for Mount Hermon up there in the northeast of the country.

[00:40:25] They skip like young animals. The joy of your youth is removed. The word of God,

[00:40:30] the voice of God moves the heavy weights and you might think that there's some men,

[00:40:35] some women in your church they'll never change. They're just like professional spiritual jerks,

[00:40:42] you know kind of and they know everything and nothing penetrates them. God makes the mountain

[00:40:49] ranges. He makes Mount Hermon skip like a calf and the heavy weights, the heavy weights are moved

[00:40:56] by the word of the Lord. The word of God through the man of God renews people's passions

[00:41:03] for living on for God. The greatest compliment I've ever received in my ministry, a guy came to

[00:41:10] me after church one Sunday and he said when I leave Calvary Fremont I want to live for Jesus

[00:41:20] Christ. I thought wow. He didn't say Tim you're a better preacher than Sam, he didn't say that.

[00:41:29] The greatest compliment when I leave your ministry, I want to live for Jesus. I was thinking what could

[00:41:40] be better than that because he was moved. He was moved like Syriac and like Lebanon and he skipped

[00:41:50] like a calf out of that place to live for God. In verse 7 we see the revelatory power

[00:41:56] of preaching. The voice of the Lord hues out flames of fire. Again we have spiritual insight

[00:42:03] that fosters vision and strong desire and the Lord does that through preaching probably for a lot

[00:42:09] of us. The Lord did that again last night just as we saw horizons of the glory of God.

[00:42:15] In verse 8 through 9a we see the generative power of preaching. The voice of the Lord

[00:42:23] makes the deer to cav. The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness. The Lord shakes the wilderness

[00:42:32] of Kadesh. The voice of the Lord makes the deer to cav. Now this is the generative power of preaching.

[00:42:38] The Kadesh wilderness is dry and barren but the storm transforms it by shaking it. The word

[00:42:46] shaking means to rith in labor. It is translated by the new American standard in the book of Joe

[00:42:56] to bring forth. The voice of the Lord brings forth the wilderness. It streams in the desert.

[00:43:05] It is this dry place that is made green by the water of God, by the storm that is breaking

[00:43:10] through your ministry, through your sermon. It is fruitfulness in the desert. Also it makes the deer

[00:43:16] to cav. The deer here is pregnant and the storm sends her into childbirth. I think if I was pregnant

[00:43:25] which I guess now as a man I could be, if I was pregnant at the top of hell's canyon

[00:43:29] I would have given birth right there in Idaho. It is an amazing thing. It was just so powerful.

[00:43:35] But the whole point is this, is that the storm it shakes something loose. It shakes something loose.

[00:43:42] And as you preach the word of God ministry is birthed in the people who listen to you. Seeds

[00:43:50] are planted, they're watered and even things are brought to birth. Even as people listen to you.

[00:43:59] There's this thing inside of them says I'm going to give myself to that ministry.

[00:44:03] I'm going to volunteer for that ministry. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that.

[00:44:07] Or I'm going to go home and serve my husband better, going to go home and serve my wife better.

[00:44:12] Things, people that are pregnant with the things of God.

[00:44:19] Your word shakes it loose. The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness. The storm

[00:44:25] shakes loose what the Spirit is doing in people when it comes to life in ministry. In verse 9b

[00:44:32] we have the searching power of the voice of God, the searching power of preaching

[00:44:38] the voice of the Lord strips the forest bear. And in his temple everything says glory. The

[00:44:46] forests are the wild untamed places and they're brought into God's searching gaze. There's no

[00:44:52] hiding among the trees. Moses was stripped of excuses in Exodus 3 and 4. Job, in the first two

[00:45:04] chapters he was stripped of everything, right? Wealth, health, family. He was stripped of

[00:45:11] everything except his self-righteousness. And he hangs on to that dearly through the rest of

[00:45:20] the book. He even charges God with fault. I'm right, God is wrong. There are some real

[00:45:31] heights of faith in there but most of it is Job clinging to his self-righteousness.

[00:45:37] And then finally in chapter 42, in what to me is one of the most powerful encounters between

[00:45:43] God and man in the Bible. Job is finally stripped of his self-righteousness. He goes,

[00:45:53] I lay my hands upon my mouth. Who am I? I've heard of you by the hearing of the ear

[00:46:01] but now my eye sees you and I lay everything down. And finally he's stripped

[00:46:09] of his self-righteousness. Your preaching does that in the lives and the hearts of people. We see

[00:46:15] the searching power of the Word of God. We're told there in Hebrews 4, 12. Let's just go ahead and get

[00:46:23] the next sign up there. For the Word of God is living, active, sharper than any two-edged sword,

[00:46:28] piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit of both joints and marrow and able to

[00:46:33] judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from his sight

[00:46:39] but all things are open and stripped, laid bare to the eyes of him with whom we have to do.

[00:46:46] So we have all of these results of preaching. I'm going to keep you here for 90 more seconds.

[00:46:54] In verses 10 through 11 we see the aftermath. The Lord sat as king at the flood. Yes,

[00:47:00] the Lord sends his king forever. The Lord will give strength to his people. The Lord will bless

[00:47:04] his people with peace. This is the aftermath. This is what people leaving your church should look like.

[00:47:13] Just the flood and they're saying to one another, now that was a good sermon. They're just washed

[00:47:19] out and they go into their week through that. And so may Europe teaching be a flood that

[00:47:26] the Lord presides over as the king and caught up in the current of God's love and purpose.

[00:47:31] May they be swept into their week by the flood of your ministry. And may God use your ministry

[00:47:37] to strengthen and to bless the people. And so we see in Psalm 29 here, we see preparation

[00:47:43] and worship beginning and study maturing through meditation delivered in passion

[00:47:48] and the aftermath in abundance, the evaporation condensation and the precipitation process.

[00:47:55] So may God use you in these things. And so I entitled this sermon, the preparation and

[00:48:02] delivery of sermons. I could have also entitled it preaching up a storm. Amen. Amen. Father in Jesus

[00:48:09] name, use us God. Use us Lord. In this kind of a word to bring this powerful word in this day,

[00:48:21] God, that your people might be built up that they might be blessed. They might,

[00:48:25] they might be sent forth skipping like heavyweights Lord and sent out Lord with having things birthed

[00:48:31] in them through the word of God stripped bare of their self-righteousness. Their sin being broken

[00:48:37] through the word of God that's preached. We love you Lord Jesus. And in your name we pray. Amen.

[00:48:43] Okay. Amen. Well, wasn't that good? I hope that that helps you to preach up a storm the next time

[00:48:51] that you're handling God's word. Hope to see you on May 24th and 25th in Pleasanton, California.

[00:48:58] Also make sure that you're following us on whatever podcast platform that you're using,

[00:49:03] because next week there's going to be a follow-up interview that I did with Tim,

[00:49:09] unpacking some of the concepts and principles of Psalm 29 and then how it applies even more directly

[00:49:15] to you. So I hope that this episode and our training event in Pleasanton helps you to grow

[00:49:22] in your personal study and public proclamation of God's word. This podcast is a part of CGN

[00:49:28] Media, a podcast network that points to Christ. We are supported by listeners like you.

[00:49:33] To help us create more great shows, visit cgnmedia.org slash support.