Teaching: Presentation of the message

And I certainly appreciate each one coming out again this evening. Now last night I mentioned that we didn't quite finish the part three on the outline. And what I decided to do tonight is to start with part four and we'll look at presentation of the message, Principles to Effective Preaching.

And as we have time, possibly at the end of the meeting, we'll go back and look at what was on the sheet before that, which is actually page eight on your outline on practical application and then guidance from the word of God. It's written out in fairly full form there, so if I don't get to it to make any comments on it, at least there is something there to let you know some of what I was thinking about. Let's turn to Romans chapter 12 for just a couple of phrases.

Romans chapter 12, now I took this up with you about two years ago, and so of course you remember it all. The chapter starts with the appeal to present ourselves to God as a living sacrifice, to yield ourselves to him, to let our whole life be a worship, a devotion to him. When we come down to verse three, we begin to look at the use of spiritual gifts.

So I'm just gonna read verse three and then pick up a couple of things in verse six. For I say through the grace given to me, to every man or to each one that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, according as God has dealt to every man against to each one a measure of faith. So it's interesting that you have faith mentioned in this verse.

Number six, having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion of faith or ministry, let us wait on our ministering, or he that teacheth on teaching, or he that exhorteth on exhortation, he that giveth, let him do it with simplicity, he that ruleth with diligence, he that showeth mercy with cheerfulness. Now you can see that there's a wide variety of spiritual gifts that are mentioned to us here, and this is not an exhaustive list, there are other details given in other passages, but I just want to notice with you this idea, the measure of faith, and then gifts according to the grace given to us. And the way this links together in my mind is the grace bestowed, here is not the grace in salvation, we share that in common.

Each one of us received God's grace for salvation. We share equally in salvation. When it comes to spiritual service, it's individual.

God sovereignly bestows an ability, an enabling upon each one individually as it pleases him, so that we might serve him according to the gifts that he has bestowed. And so there's the grace given. And then from what we had in verse three, there's the concern that we are to have is to think soberly, realistically, about what kind of gift and abilities has been conferred upon us, and to seek to be occupied in fulfilling it for the glory of God and the blessing of others.

And so it says not to think more highly than he ought to think, not to think we can do everything, just like in our bodies, each part of the body has a particular function and the hand could be used for a foot, but you try walking on your hands for a mile and you'll realize why God designed the leg and the foot, and so on. And you can actually do some things with your toes that you could do with your fingers, but again, there's quite a difference. And so the measure of faith here, and this is why the first point I have on my outline in relation to principles to effective preaching is confidence in God, confidence in God.

Faith, trust in God personally, but in relation to our spiritual gift, confidence in what God has conferred upon us, confidence in God bestowing upon us a gift and an ability. And so if we are going to serve God, we have to have confidence that God is with us in it, that he is supporting us, that he is carrying us along, that we are doing it for him with his help. And the second aspect that I emphasized there, confidence in God and the value of the truth that you are presenting.

We must have a high confidence in the word of God. And if we are presenting a particular subject, a particular truth, it has to become precious to us. It has to mean something to us.

And someone has used the expression that we need to be preserved from trafficking in unfelt truths. Just teaching things sort of, you know, this is what we believe and, you know, just sort of in a dutiful way. We need to let it become precious to us and to treasure it as God's truth and valuable to be conveyed.

And so that is very important. And in all of this, Christ is the center. If we can't find it connected to Christ, we need to really think it through again and appreciate every principle as it relates to the glory of Christ and his benefit.

Now, the next principle that I wanted to touch on is compassion. There's the odd time I have watched somebody preach and I recognize that they are skilled in their knowledge of the Bible, their ability to study and to present truth and ideas, but the way they convey it to people leaves me with the uneasy feeling that they don't really love the people that they're speaking to. And I would say this as gently as I can.

If you don't care about the people that you are trying to speak to, it'd be best to keep quiet. We must function in the attitude of his love. Remember what the Lord said to Peter, John 21, three times over, Peter, do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me? Feed my sheep.

We are to love the people of God, first of all, because they are his. They belong to the Lord that we worship and serve. They are precious to him.

And so we must carry that concern for the people of God, a genuine concern for the people you speak to. And again, I don't want to make anyone self-conscious. The last thing I want to do in trying to give you these suggestions or principles is to make you stand up here and feel totally self-conscious as to whether you're doing it right.

I like to watch my audience. In the first place, I want to be sure you're awake. I want to see if what I am trying to convey is getting through to you.

And so it does help when you are attentive and when you even nod once in a while. And there's some indication that this means something to you. But it also enables a dialogue between the speaker and the audience.

I have seen some dear brethren who when they are up here preaching, they never look at the audience. And to me, if that happens, you are losing a very important part of the effectiveness of reaching people, of getting to people. And so by keeping eye contact and the way even our body language, our tone of voice, all of these things conveys our heart.

If you read through 2 Corinthians, you will find, I think I mentioned this partway through one meeting previous, but in 2 Corinthians, Paul is very delicately trying to reach out to the Corinthian assembly. He knows that there has been strained relationships. He has had to speak to them very, very sternly in the first epistle.

And he is longing to be able to draw them to himself. But they can't see him. They can't see his eyes.

They can't hear the tone of his voice. And so when it's a written communication, you have to express it in words, what you feel, your care, your concern, your integrity. And so you read through 2 Corinthians with that in mind, and you will see that he goes to great lengths to assure them of his love, of his desire to encourage them and praise them for anything that he can find valid to honor them for.

And so there is an advantage in face-to-face communication where you can pick up whether this person is coming to you and speaking to you in love, in sincerity, in true concern, and so on. So eye contact, facial expressions, tone of voice, and all of that confirms these things, that you are coming with a message from the presence of God in confidence in God and in care for the people. Now, in thinking about the message that you are going to try to speak, you can call it labeling, put labels, put headings, make a heading for your message, summarize it in a word or a phrase.

And I like when I get up to speak, whether it's in the gospel or ministry, to simply state what I want to present. Tonight, I might say, I'm going to preach to you about forgiveness, or I might start out with a question that will draw you to that subject. And so a heading for your subject and three or four main points, that's not hard and fast rule, but there is a problem if we have 15 points and we try to cover them all, which is kind of what I'm doing tonight.

And that's why I've given you an outline with these points on here in writing so that you can go back over it and refresh your mind and get further benefit from it. Because sure as anything, you'll remember two or three and the rest will be kind of vaguely there. And so that's important and you can have a lot of good thoughts, but until you can kind of crystallize it into a main idea that you draw attention to and focus on, it's difficult for people to follow it.

In the introduction, I wouldn't want to guess how many seconds a speaker has to get the people's attention. I think when it comes to preaching and assembly meetings and so on, we sort of have this idea, we're here to preach, you're here to listen and you're stuck here for an hour whether you want it or not. And so we tend not to think about the necessity or the importance of triggering interest.

I mean, how many times have you sat through a message and you just don't get into it? You don't get drawn into it. It doesn't draw your interest or your concern. And until you become interested, you're not going to learn very much.

And so in our introduction to something, we have to generate. And if you, I mentioned last night, I think it's either the second last page or the last page, the second last page, page 11 on the outline, the seven laws of teaching and learning. That's one of those laws of teaching and so on that you must generate interest for there to be a learning to take place.

Now, I like questions. As I mentioned in the outline of how to study, this was one of the key things that helped me to study effectively was to just write questions on verses, on words, as I'm going down through the passage, write questions. And that helps to sort of draw out the passage.

And so in speaking, asking questions also helps to draw thoughtfulness and so on. So it's very, very, very important. Now, what I'm doing in this first section here are basically principles that are common to all the different forms of teaching.

And so I'm doing that first, and then we'll look at some of the more specific details in relating to the gospel and children's work and Bible readings and ministry. Now, point number five is that there is no perfect style, whether it's in the local assembly or whether you hear preachers come along or go to conferences, there's a wide variation in style of presentation. Don't try to be somebody else.

Although there's a strange thing that happens if you happen to be preaching with somebody for a while, you'll almost inevitably pick up some of their habits. You'll start imitating them whether you want to or not. And so it's something like being married.

You become, the longer you live together, the more you rub off on each other and so on. Well, hopefully we can enhance the usefulness and benefit, even the style of speaking that others have. Someone has said that imitation is the best flattery there is.

The most sincere flattery is just to want to imitate somebody. Anyway, be yourself, be sincere, realize that you are in the audience of God. He's the most important person present.

Try to speak in that consciousness of God. We all have to struggle to remember that we are always serving in his presence. And then basically style is a function of personality and the spiritual gifts that have been bestowed and experience.

You know, some people are excellent storytellers and I don't happen to be one of those. I am usually explaining something. That's how I present, whether it's preaching the gospel.

And I never knew that about my own, if you call it a style or a way of presenting, until after I had been in the work in Kapuskasing for two or three years. And then I came back and I visited my home assembly and I was still relatively young at that time. I might've been about 30 or so.

And there were just some of the other younger Christians there that we were just visiting together after the gospel meeting and talking about the work in Kapuskasing and so on. They were all interested in it. And I don't know how we even got onto this, but one of the other young Christians, a little bit younger than myself, he just made this comment to me.

He says, well, you always taught the gospel. You didn't preach the gospel, you taught the gospel. Well, that was kind of like a glass of water thrown on me.

I'd never thought of that distinction or realized it, but I accept the charge as presented. And so there are those who are more particular evangelists who will preach differently. And I preached with a brother, Murray Pratt, for quite a number of years and our way of presentation complemented each other.

It wasn't exactly the same, but it complemented each other. And we worked together quite well for a good number of years. And so there are natural differences that we have to just recognize and not let ourselves be caught up in that.

One thing I will say, and I'm not sure if I learned this in Kapuskasing because there we were working among people of primarily a French background to whom English was a second language. And then we were preaching to them from the King James Bible, which again was like another language on top of that. And so I learned to speak slowly, to speak with emphasis and so that they could follow me very easily and not have trouble understanding what I was saying.

And I don't know if I deliberately did that or just somehow did it because of that. But I think there's something to recognize. And I know one of the problems we have when we get up here is that we get nervous.

And it never totally goes away, but it does change over the years somewhat. But when you're nervous, sometimes you talk faster. And if you can't think of what to say next, you start filling in with, and you get these habits to fill in.

Now, we happen to have a young brother in our area who had said a fairly significant problem with this. And he's starting to improve a little bit. And one of the things that has helped him is that he has started to write out his messages.

Now, I'm not sure that he doesn't write them out totally, but he writes down points and he has his thoughts more put down in writing so that when he gets this little blank spot, instead of just going around in circles until something else comes through, he stops and looks down at his notes, and then he picks up again. Now, that's better. It's actually very difficult, and I'm sure I don't have to tell an audience, that it's very difficult to listen to someone who never pauses and seems to be trying to fill in the blank, dead space with words without necessarily a meaning or structure.

So dialogue with questions and pauses for emphasis is just some of what I've been talking about. Now, in thinking about the structure of a message, in expositional preaching, if I was preaching to you from Romans 12, as I did the last series that I was here, I had my thoughts and I wrote them down fairly clearly. But when I was preaching, I didn't just read from my notes, but I followed the structure of the verses.

I went verse by verse, gave explanation, and I allowed the passage itself to provide the structure that is there. Now, that is primarily what expositional preaching is. You're going verse by verse down through the passage, giving the sense of the passage.

Topical preaching is what I'm doing now, in a sense, where I'm taking a subject and I'm pulling things from here and there throughout the scriptures or principles found in the scriptures, and I'm pulling it together. And so it's more important in a topical kind of message like this that you have it well-organized, that there's a progression, that's a logical progression, a logical development, and with points that advance the line of thought in a clearly defined way. There's nothing worse than getting up and starting into your subject, and your mind clicks to something, and then you're down here on this part of the subject, and then you're going, and by the time you know it, you're at the bottom of your subject, and there's five points up here that you should have had to try to reverse gear and get back up there and make it make sense without everybody realizing what you've just done.

And so having it outlined is a help to help you stay organized and to help the flow better. Illustrations, I've already made my confession that that's not a strong point with me. There are some preachers that I know who excel in illustrating their material.

Now, I'm just going to make a few comments about preaching the gospel. It's described as a ministry of reconciliation in 2 Corinthians chapter five, a ministry of reconciliation, and there is an essential focus in the gospel, and you've heard this phrase over and over and over again, man's ruin and God's remedy. We can never stray too far from that focus because that's what we want people to come to terms with, the issue of our fallenness and our need of God and what God has given for us.

But one of the challenges, and all of us face this challenge, do you try to get every detail of the gospel into every message? I've heard messages given that way, and it's sometimes as if the preacher is in such a hurry to get all of those facets in that I don't think the audience, unless they already know it all by heart, will be able to follow and get into it and follow it and make sense of it until you're already on to the next and to the next and to the next. And so it is more important to have a particular focus and try to concentrate on one principle, one concept or two concepts, and I know that that's a problem when we're trying to get them to the cross, but there's an importance in focusing on it. Now, we usually have two speakers as we have gospel meetings and so on, and so the first one has one advantage in that they can focus on what they want to focus on, and the second one has to fill in what's left.

I don't worry so much about that, whether I'm speaking first or second. I believe that the Lord can put into the mind of both of those individuals what he wants them to think of and to present, and whether it is complementary to each other, filling in the gaps, or whether it is reinforcing what the other one has said, I leave that up to the Spirit of God to direct what is needed for that meeting. It's nice, and often we don't have this luxury, of knowing you're going to have the same audience for three weeks.

It is nice, if it is possible, in a series of gospel meetings, if your audience is going to be there, to be able to have a progressive development, and maybe that's just my teacher mentality that comes through, and I have really enjoyed, in the last two or three series that I have been in, of taking up Romans 1 to 5, and presenting it, knowing that I have to get them to the cross. I'll try to do that every time I'm speaking, but to talk about God as the creator, about the witness of creation, the issue of our conscience, the issue of the law, the conviction of sin, and all of those things that are presented in an orderly way in Romans 1 to 5. Anyway, we're often, we don't have that luxury. You get a totally different audience of unsaved ones, I'm speaking of, out night by night, and so that's a problem for us.

The essential foundations that we must establish, especially today, God as creator. It used to be that we could presume that people believed in God, and that they recognized God as the creator. We can't assume that anymore.

We have to go back to just what you see in Acts 17, and the way Romans is directed, to an audience that is ignorant of God, and ignorant of his relation to them in the creation. And so there's a tremendous challenge today to lay those foundations, God as the creator, the lawgiver, the judge, and finally the savior. Something we do need to do is to educate ourselves.

Now, what do you mean by that? Well, I'm not talking about theological seminary. I'm talking about studying people. We need to be discerning.

I know you can't always pick up immediately when someone walks through the door, who they are, what their background is, and so on, but it is very valuable to get to know their background, what their spiritual mindset would be. You'll notice in the presentations of the gospel that Paul does particularly. He's the one that is most often given in the record.

He preaches differently to a Jewish audience than he does to a Gentile audience. He finds a point of connection where they, what they know of God, and he picks up on that where they have a common knowledge that they can start from and build from that point, and so that's an important thing that we need to do. More than ever today, we have to explain the gospel.

People don't relate to the terms justification, redemption, and sanctification, and so many gospel terms that we ourselves may be very familiar with, and so we have to explain carefully and make sure they are understood, and this, again, is a basic principle of teaching that we have to explain what is unknown by using what is known and understandable. Now, one little point that I just thought I would add in quickly is that what do you do when there aren't any unsaved in your audience? Well, hopefully you don't have that problem here, but particularly when we were living in Timmins, that work was very, very slow, very difficult, and for many times, you would get up and you're looking at the same people that you broke bread with in the morning. Well, I know some dear brethren who get up and they preach the gospel as fervently and forcefully as if they were trying to win every person that's in the audience.

I just can't do that, and I'm not going to make any judgment upon them for what they do. Maybe they just can't switch gears, but I learned in Timmins to do a quick analysis, and sometimes it was on the way from the chair to the pulpit that I might even switch messages and speak in ministry, or if I was taking up the gospel, I would emphasize something that would be teaching some part of the principles that would be valuable for Christians as well. To me, it follows the rule of 1 Corinthians 14, let all things be done unto edification.

Now, I'm not saying that the gospel doesn't edify Christians in a sense, but speak to the audience according to their need. Now, when it comes to Sunday school work, I see I'm getting behind her the longer I go tonight. Sunday school work, again, what I have written down probably covers most of what I want to think about.

There's a number of verses here. In Mark chapter 10, verse 13 to 16, the Lord Jesus says, suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of God. Every once in a while, I discover that some believers don't even think we should be speaking to the children.

Some don't believe in children's work and they don't believe that it should be focused on at all. And one of the reasons for that is because it isn't specifically given as a meeting in the New Testament. So this is, again, getting back to that concept I mentioned, I think, last night, was that we have to be careful about this idea of the pattern and forbidding anything that is not specifically mentioned as a particular meeting in the New Testament.

I believe that the verses that I have given here give us the responsibility to try to reach children. Matthew 18 and three, when the disciples were wondering about who is the greatest, the Lord Jesus calls a little child and puts him in the middle. I would just love to see that scene where the Lord has got this child right here and all those big men are looking down to see what the lesson is going to be.

And the Lord says, unless you become like this little child, you won't even get into the kingdom of heaven, let alone be the greatest in it. What is he getting at? You know, this is a very precious thing to realize. Children are the closest to the kingdom of anybody in the world.

They have the least handicaps. They have the least stumbling blocks. The childlike trust is the essence of faith.

And anyone who gets saved has to humble themselves to become like a little child. What is there in a little child who believes what he's told and listens to who's telling him? And so we're not talking about childishness, but we're talking about being childlike in faith and in trust and obedience. So again, there's an important necessity of in children's work today, what do they know? Unless they are children of Christian parents and so on.

Sometimes they know absolutely nothing about the Bible. And so there's a necessity of laying all the essential foundational truths of conscience, of law, of good and evil, God as creator and savior and so on. I think especially in working with children, don't overload them.

Impress one main thing upon them or two main points upon them and illustrate it and bring that main point to them. So that they grasp that and can build on it. I've mentioned a couple of helpful resources, particularly the one called The Encourager by Gary Sharp.

Some of you would know him and he's an excellent brother in children's work. And again, I have to confess that I have not labored very much in children's work. I did when I was a young Christian.

We were just teenagers when my brother David and my cousin Murray Pratt, we went around and had children's work in various communities around. But quite frankly, a room full of children would terrify me more than a room full of adults. So Bible readings, there's a reference I have here in Acts 17 verses 11 to 12 of the Bereans.

Of whom it is said that they were more noble than those of Thessalonica. They searched the scriptures daily to see if these things were so. So here you have people who search the scriptures.

They studied the scriptures. And so in our Bible readings, that is what we are focusing on. It's not somebody's oratory.

It's not someone's wonderful way of presenting. It's just the word of God. That's what we are directly focusing on.

And in the emphasis of a stewardship of truth, I've probably already touched on this somewhat before, but those references in 1 Timothy 1 and 3 to 4 and 6 and 20 and 2 Timothy 2, those refer to the importance of the deposit of truth and of keeping the doctrine pure. Of not letting all kinds of teaching from different backgrounds filter in and influence. You know, today we can be thankful for there being so much available teaching.

But you can be listening to some kind of Bible teaching all day, every day basically on the radio and whatever other forms of media. And while that is wonderful in one sense, in another sense it's possible that we could be absorbing a lot of other ideas that may not be scriptural. And so we do need more discernment now again than ever that what we hear, we test it by the scriptures.

And this is one of the primary benefits of the Bible reading format in which the scriptures are being examined verse by verse by verse. We are looking at each passage in its context. And that is what is so critical to being able to arrive at accurate interpretation of the word of God.

As well as the responsibility that every generation has to absorb the truth of God, to hold it faithfully, and then to make sure that it is passed on to the next generation. So week by week, it's unfortunate and it's unfortunately typical almost today in many assemblies that the prayer meeting and Bible reading are the least attended of the assembly meetings. The result is that there is a significant portion of the assembly that is not now being exposed to this consecutive verse by verse study of the scriptures.

And that can only lead to weakness in the hold on the truth, our ability to speak to others and to explain the Bible accurately. So that is certainly a concern almost everywhere today. And of course, diligent personal study is necessary.

Some suggestions for leading the Bible studies. And I personally think that it is a good idea to have someone who is responsible to lead the reading. Doesn't mean they have to dominate the whole reading.

They don't even have to read the passage. They can ask another brother to read the passage. But to just be leading it, to give a little bit of an introduction, not half the Bible reading, but just a brief introduction, drawing, reminding them what was just covered very briefly, summarizing the section that we want to cover.

And then one thing that I might have mentioned this, I think it was maybe personally I mentioned this. In Timmins, we adopted the method for quite a number of years of making up outlines of each chapter. Now the outline itself was not very extensive as far as headings.

It was just basically breaking the chapter down into its paragraphs and putting a heading over it. But the main feature of the outline was questions. And part of the reason for that is that instead of trying to give all the teaching of the chapter in the outline, write questions so that people as they're listening or if they want to study beforehand and try to fill in the answers themselves in their own personal study, that becomes a help to getting into the passage, thinking about it.

And then as we are going down through the passage, those questions are raised and they're answered. And many of the sisters found it very helpful because they would be sitting there and they would be jotting down things as comments would be being made and so on. And then you've got that and at least you've got something that you will remember.

You can go back and you can think about it. And it's just another help to fixing it more firmly in our minds. And I found that that helped to keep the Bible reading focused and not be wandering all over the landscape.

It's even more beneficial in handling subjects more necessary and so on. Now, there is a skill that is rather important that not everybody has and that is to take comments that someone else has tried to express and maybe not really made it clear or someone to be able to just pick up on something they have said and to connect it with the flow of thought and getting it related to the rest of the passage. That's an important skill and that's part of leading the reading really.

But anyway, I'll make a couple of comments about some sour notes and solutions. Repetitious comments. One thing that drags a Bible reading down and sort of deadens it is when three or four or five people all say basically the same thing over and over again.

And everyone's wondering, okay, are you adding to the thoughts or are you just saying the same thing? It's nice to confirm what someone else has said. That's good, that's helpful. But you should try to pick up on what someone else has said and then add something that advances the thought, advances the subject and keeps it moving.

It's very disheartening for the Lord's people and I don't know if we can blame the absence of attendance on some of these problems, but sometimes Christians go home and they say, well, we started at verse here and by the time we were done the Bible reading, we ended about that verse and who knows where we'll start next week. I've been in Bible readings where they weren't even sure which chapter they were in when they started. So at least if you know the verse that you're starting in, that's good.

But it's important to be able to reinforce and connect and keep it moving. And then rambling and unclear comments. Now again, I don't want to be hard on anybody.

We appreciate anyone's interest and input and desire to speak up and say something and the last thing we want to do is just to make people feel stupid or cut them off or ignore them and that kind of thing. There should be an encouraging supportive environment in the Bible reading. I wonder if sometimes we lose the realization that we are actually a team.

This is what makes it different. There are certain sports that are just individual sports. It's the one person, the sprinter or whatever that individual sport may be.

Then there are team sports. And in team sports, you work together. If you start working against each other, it falls apart.

Sometimes we get so caught up in my thought, my opinion and we sense a conflict with someone else's opinion. We need to maintain the idea of trying to work together as a team. If we have to disagree, to try to express it graciously but to try to work together as much as we can to keep that sense of teamwork working together.

We have to try to avoid getting bogged down week after week after week. And some assemblies have lost a lot of interest and attendance in their Bible readings because they just take so long to get through passages. Contention and strife.

I should read with you in 2 Timothy. 2 Timothy 2, this is so extremely important. Verse 22 says, flee also youthful lust but follow righteousness, faith, charity or love, peace with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart.

So here's a sense of fellowship, of partnership, a bond together. Verse 23, but foolish and unlearned questions avoid knowing that they do gender strifes. And the servant of the Lord must not strive but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, skilled to teach, patient, and that literally means patient under evil, patient under provocation, in meekness, instructing.

And for some reason that word instructing really should be the word correcting. It's the sense of correcting here. Correcting those that oppose themselves or set themselves in opposition.

If God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth and that they may recover themselves. Now I read this verse and touched on it briefly in speaking about the goals of the message of seeking restoration. But if there's anywhere where we need to be conscious of this is in Bible reading format where there's freedom for any number of people to speak and the potential is always there for there to be difference of opinion and how you handle that is very, very important for the well-being of the assembly.

I never recognized that so strongly as again when I was in the work in Kapuskasing. There were all these new converts that were basically green in regards to the Bible. They didn't know much about the Bible.

So obviously Murray Pratt and I as we were leading it and we taught in the early days of the work, we taught by Bible readings primarily because that was what we knew. And we wouldn't have dreamed in that context of sitting there and arguing back and forth and leaving the meeting upset with each other and everybody else going home feeling, you know. They trusted in us and it was vital, absolutely vital that we worked together as a team.

If we had that true sense in an older established assembly, we wouldn't let ourselves get into kind of the open debate who cares what anybody thinks attitude and just go at it. And the reason why it got impressed upon my mind so much is because I made a visit back to Charlton where I came from and was in a Bible reading and I happened to get into a little bit of a, you know, disagreement in the Bible reading. And I mean, I was sure of my point and it needed to be set straight.

But after the Bible reading, an older brother took me aside and he mentioned to me, he says, we need to try to be united in front of the young Christians. And you know, that was a rebuke to me in a double sense because I knew that in working with the new converts, but I had lapsed back into this different atmosphere this different mentality in dealing with the Christians that I grew up with and knew so well. And that's one of the problems with familiarity with one another, the line of respect can get lost.

When we lose our respect, we lose the will to be careful and to treat one another with care. We always have to remember that while the truth is vital, it's important, the Lord's people are also precious to God. It would be far better if you know that you are in disagreement with another brother on some point and it could be divisive in the assembly, go and talk together.

Try to, you know, try to get as much harmony as you can, personally, privately, and avoid as much as possible any atmosphere of contention in the assembly. Now, I know that that's, maybe that's a bit idealistic, I don't know, but we really need to avoid it. And this is one of the things that a brother from CAP mentioned to me years later, because unfortunately, they were all saved about the same time.

They were like, when we left the work after about five years there and moved on to another area, it was like leaving a bunch of teenagers home alone. And unfortunately, they did not necessarily respect each other. And so they're developed in their Bible readings, this kind of an atmosphere where one would go at it and the other one would knock that down and it became confrontational.

And this brother who was very much grieved about it, he talked to me and he said, you know, he said, if you and Murray had done this when we were newly saved, we would never have stayed. We would have walked out of there and said, you know, stay away from that place. We don't realize the damage we can do by an attitude of contentiousness.

Now, my time is gone, but I just will make a couple of comments about ministry messages. There's really not much more to add from all the other details that have already been given. There's the emphasis of spiritual gift that I've already touched on, and two simple comments that I have here, that one advantage in teaching in a ministry format is that when it's just one person who is lining up the thoughts and presenting them, it is simpler for people to follow.

And I have sensed for a long time that ministry, teaching in ministry, exhortation in ministry and so on, nourishes the Lord's people, again, in a little different way than Bible reading teaching does. And so I appreciate the fact that in the assembly here, you do have a regular ministry meeting. Where I grew up, we didn't, and Bible readings were what we had all the time.

One preacher who visited among us and had quite a significant effect upon many of us as young Christians, Mr. Daugherty, he actually encouraged, and in our local area, we were blessed to have four assemblies within a half hour, and he encouraged a monthly ministry meeting to foster local assembly gift. And so we would rotate around, and they still do that to this day, which is probably 45, 50 years later, maybe 40 years at least. And so it's been a benefit.

And so I'll have to leave you with these thoughts, and I trust that God will grant some blessing and strength to you. Shall we pray? Our Father, we pray that thou would help us to live in thy fear, to be aware of thee, to be conscious of pleasing thee, and also to live with the recognition that we belong to one another in Christ, that there is a very precious relationship that has been established. And even though at times it seems so difficult to maintain compassionate and warm and respectful relationships among saints, we would acknowledge that it is essential and so we would beseech thee for thy healing hand upon thy people, that thou might restore us to thyself and to one another, that we might enjoy the gatherings of thy people, that they may not be times of tension and conflict, but of joy and peace and grace from thy presence.

And we pray that the ministry of thy word in all its varied ways in which it can be spoken might be central to the building up of thy people. And so we entrust ourselves to thee and to thy grace, to thy precious word, and ask for thy mercy upon us in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, amen. Amen.

Let's sing together 156.