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Voddie Baucham - Preaching to the Affections without Manipulating Them x John Piper, Miguel Núñez · Voddie Baucham Sermons

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: There's an assumption behind this topic about preaching to the affections.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: That's a good idea. Why is that a good idea?
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: I mean, shouldn't you preach to the mind? I mean,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: I think Martin Lloyd-Jones said, if you try to target
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: the affections, you're going to wind up manipulating people.
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: I think that's the issue.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: So is it the mind or the affections? Or how
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: do you do both?
• 0:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it would be great if somebody were
• 0:31
  Speaker 3: to write something about that. That could be helpful for
• 0:35
  Speaker 3: us here. But if you ask, is it the mind
• 0:39
  Speaker 3: or the affections, my answer is yes. Yeah, that we
• 0:42
  Speaker 3: absolutely preach to the mind and preach to the affections.
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: And I think that starts with our own affections because
• 0:53
  Speaker 3: as we encounter the Word of God and the Word
• 0:56
  Speaker 3: of God encounters us, we are affected by the word.
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: And I think that's where it begins.
• 1:05
  Speaker 4: I think once our mind is able to see the
• 1:09
  Speaker 4: greatness and the majesty of God, it would be impossible
• 1:14
  Speaker 4: that our emotions would not be affected.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: God has been called all kinds of things, but I
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: have never heard anyone calling God boring.
• 1:24
  Speaker 3: Boring. Right.
• 1:26
  Speaker 4: I guess my best illustration of that is when I
• 1:29
  Speaker 4: first went to the Grand Canyon.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: I have seen it in pictures. I have heard about it.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: And then I got closer and closer and closer.
• 1:39
  Speaker 5: And once I was at the border of the.
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: Grand Canyon, I was just....
• 1:44
  Speaker 4: I was marveling at the greatness and the colors and
• 1:49
  Speaker 4: how majestic these look. And I was so moved by it.
• 1:53
  Speaker 4: My emotions were now being.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: Being moved, I bent forward.
• 1:59
  Speaker 4: And as I'm looking toward the left and I'm looking
• 2:01
  Speaker 4: toward the right, something came to me that says, this
• 2:06
  Speaker 4: is the creation.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: Imagine what the creator would do.
• 2:11
  Speaker 4: And all that was happening was that I was discovering
• 2:15
  Speaker 4: the world of the Grand Canyon that I never saw before.
• 2:18
  Speaker 4: So as long as preaching will unpack the greatness of God,
• 2:24
  Speaker 4: the emotions will be moved.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: It is impossible to have one thing without the other.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: At least that's the goal.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: And there are people, though, Miguel, who are bored by God.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: They're bored by God.
• 2:40
  Speaker 5: Or by the way God is represented.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: All they know is it's boring, which is why this
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: topic matters. Because Like you implied, I think, if a
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: person is bored by God, he's representing God pretty bad.
• 2:54
  Speaker 5: That's right.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: In other words, his emotions are saying God's boring. God
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: is not boring, which is why we must preach for
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: the affections. My mantra, which you hinted at at the beginning, was,
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: God is most glorified in me when I'm most satisfied
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: in him, which means if that's true and I live
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: for the glory of God, I can't preach and say, oh,
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: it really doesn't matter whether you're satisfied with God. It
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: just matters that you understand him perfectly. Just understand him perfectly.
• 3:26
  Speaker 5: You don't have to be moved.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: You don't have to have any affections for him. That's
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: a God who's half glorified. The truth is known. and
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: it does nothing to their emotions or their heart, if
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: preaching aims for that, it is aiming to dishonor God.
• 3:42
  Speaker 5: It is.
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I say rejoice. Taste
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: and see that the Lord is good. Sing to the
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: Lord a new song. Sing to the Lord all the earth.
• 3:51
  Speaker 5: I mean, it just.
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: The scriptures hit us that way. So certainly, as we
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: preach the scriptures, we ought to be thinking in that way.
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: But at the same time... there is a danger in
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: preaching to the affections in a way that becomes manipulative.
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: And so then when we write our sermons, instead of
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: thinking about what it is that we're to communicate and
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: what it is that this text is really getting at,
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: what we start thinking about is how do people respond
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: and how do I get the greatest emotional impact?
• 4:28
  Speaker 5: And I think that's when we move over into manipulation.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: So what's the difference between working the crowd for that
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: goal that we say we want, only we want to
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: be authentic, and preaching in such a way that you
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: don't give a hoot about that. How do you preach
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: in such a way to awaken authentic God-honoring emotions rather
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: than hype?
• 4:48
  Speaker 4: I think if we preach to the emotions, for the
• 4:51
  Speaker 4: sake of the emotions, just so that we could feel
• 4:54
  Speaker 4: good about ourselves, that's how we're going to end up
• 4:57
  Speaker 4: being manipulative.
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: But I don't think we should do that.
• 5:01
  Speaker 4: We should preach about and as he's being revealed and
• 5:05
  Speaker 4: the mind is able to comprehend who God is, then
• 5:09
  Speaker 4: the emotions will follow. We are commanded to love the
• 5:13
  Speaker 4: Lord thy God with all your mind and all your heart.
• 5:16
  Speaker 4: So our nature, our entire nature should be involved in worship.
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: And our emotions are part of that.
• 5:24
  Speaker 4: So if I'm going to submit my entire nature to
• 5:28
  Speaker 4: God in worship, it's because those emotions have been touched
• 5:32
  Speaker 4: but they need to be touched by a revelation of
• 5:34
  Speaker 4: his truth.
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: Not by a manipulation of the emotions for the sake
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: of the emotions.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: So, it's kind of misleading to say preach to the emotions,
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: because Lloyd-Jones is probably right that you should go after
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: the emotions indirectly, that is, through the mind. The difference
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: between emotionalism and emotion, that's godly, is whether you have
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: awakened it with truth.
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: Isn't it?
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: That's what I'm saying.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: And the difference between intellectualism and true use of the
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: intellect is that intellectualism discounts the emotion. And we just
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: desperately as preachers don't want to go to.
• 6:14
  Speaker 5: Either one of those.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: We don't want emotionalism. We don't want intellectualism. We want both.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: The person who said this in a sentence that I
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: have never forgotten from 35 years ago is Edwards. And
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: he said, I consider it my duty to raise the
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: affections of my hearers as high as I possibly can,
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: which sounds really dangerous, like he's going to work this crowd,
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: as high as I possibly can, provided I raise them
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: with nothing but the truth, and then he said one
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: more thing, and in proportion to the truth. In other words,
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: there's hell truths which shouldn't make people clap or be happy.
• 6:58
  Speaker 5: It should make them weep.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: And there's heaven-type truths That shouldn't make people sad, make
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: them glad. So there's proportionality in the kind of truth,
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: and you're always, with the book, expositing in the hopes
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: that that Grand Canyon affect would happen because you just
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: spread a, you just dug a canyon for them with
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: this text.
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: And I think it's important also, when I think about
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: preaching to the emotions, absolutely right, we don't preach with
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: a view toward manipulating the emotions, but I think there's
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: something to be said for preaching that acknowledges proper emotional response.
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: I think that's one of the things that you do
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: so masterfully is you're in a text and you're preaching
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: a text and there are these moments where you acknowledge
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: our human condition and interaction and response to this great truth.
• 7:57
  Speaker 5: And what it ought to bring about.
• 8:00
  Speaker 3: But doing that, not in the sense of feel like this,
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: act like this, so on and so forth, but addressing
• 8:07
  Speaker 3: the mind with this theological truth, but this theological truth
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: about how we ought to respond to it emotionally. And
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: if we're not responding to it this way, then it's
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: because we're not seeing it the way that.
• 8:20
  Speaker 5: We ought to. And so I think that's very important.
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: We can't run away from that part of addressing emotions
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: in our preaching.
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: Right, right.
• 8:28
  Speaker 4: And if we do faithful expository preaching, as we spoke earlier,
• 8:34
  Speaker 4: then there will be less chances that we will be
• 8:36
  Speaker 4: manipulating the emotions.
• 8:38
  Speaker 5: Exactly.
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: Because we're just trying to present what God revealed about himself.
• 8:43
  Speaker 4: And that's important for this generation that, as somebody said,
• 8:47
  Speaker 4: hears through the eyes, but then thinks through the emotions.
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: And that's not what we want.
• 8:52
  Speaker 4: We want the generation to think through the mind so
• 8:55
  Speaker 4: that the emotions will follow secondarily. Yeah. because of the
• 8:59
  Speaker 4: revelation that the mind is apprehending.
• 9:02
  Speaker 5: So can I open a can of worms?
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: Not a big one because time is up.
• 9:07
  Speaker 5: Okay, okay, they can do what they want. This is
• 9:10
  Speaker 5: just for us. This is just for us.
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: And so now people say to you and they say
• 9:14
  Speaker 3: to me, to brown and black, all that intellectual stuff,
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: the essence of your culture is this emotional preaching and
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: this emotional worship. So now you come with expository preaching
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: toward people's intellect. You're denying your culture. You're denying your heritage.
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: You're denying your ethnicity. You're trying to be John Piper.
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: You're trying to be white. Now, I don't know if
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: you have heard this, but I've heard it on more
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: than one occasion. So there's the can of worms.
• 9:53
  Speaker 4: Well, as you know, Hispanics are, and I'm Hispanic, are
• 9:56
  Speaker 4: very emotional. And that is one of the problems with
• 10:00
  Speaker 4: the Hispanic culture many times, that the emotions are being moved,
• 10:05
  Speaker 4: not necessarily by the truth that is being presented, but
• 10:08
  Speaker 4: rather by the cultural background, upbringing that people may have.
• 10:13
  Speaker 4: And that's when they are easily manipulated. I was in
• 10:16
  Speaker 4: Bolivia once with another preacher who And he did this,
• 10:20
  Speaker 4: this exercise.
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: He said, I'm really sensing the presence of God here.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: Amen.
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: And then the crowd went, amen. And he said, no, no, no, no, no.
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: You don't get it.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: He's really here.
• 10:30
  Speaker 5: He's really here.
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: And then the crowd went louder. Amen. And then he said,
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: you don't get it.
• 10:36
  Speaker 4: God is really here. And people went just crazy. And
• 10:40
  Speaker 4: then he stopped and said, you know what? I'm not
• 10:43
  Speaker 4: sensing anything. You were just manipulated by me.
• 10:48
  Speaker 5: Wow.
• 10:48
  Speaker 4: And I thought that was a great exercise to show
• 10:52
  Speaker 4: he wasn't saying anything about God at that moment. Right.
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: He wasn't really presenting any great picture about God.
• 10:58
  Speaker 4: He was just moving the people according to their culture
• 11:02
  Speaker 4: or bringing them. When you say this, you say amen.
• 11:05
  Speaker 4: And that's what we need to guard against.
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: So we have, I think, some culture need to learn
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: more about the emotions, the right aspects of the emotions.
• 11:13
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 11:14
  Speaker 4: The affections that Jonathan Erza will call it and religious affections.
• 11:17
  Speaker 5: Yes.
• 11:17
  Speaker 4: And then some other cultures like mine is to learn
• 11:20
  Speaker 4: about the exercise of the mind in apprehending the truth.
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: And I think that's where the balance needs to be.
• 11:26
  Speaker 5: I don't know if that answers the question. Absolutely. Beautiful.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: You know what I'd like to be known as?
• 11:31
  Speaker 5: What's that?
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: Best black preacher ever was. Or Latino. I mean, I
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: don't think, I don't think. When you said we're going
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: to try to be like John Piper. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: I want to be the best of both worlds. That's
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: what you guys are, the best of both worlds. Every church,
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: not just culture, every church is going to have its
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: own flavor of responsiveness over time. But the truths we're
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: trying to get at here are not unique to any
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: one culture. We're not saying preach to the emotions if
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: you're in a certain culture. We're saying every human being
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: is wired with a heart. and ahead. We can all
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: learn from each other. And you said something earlier. I'll
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: close with this because I know we're supposed to be done.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: Preaching this stuff to ourselves so that we are moved
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: is going to be the key to whether people are
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: awakened to that truth. Because if I preach like what
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: I'm saying is of modest importance, that's what they're going
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: to think. And that's what they're going to feel. So thanks, brothers,
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: to be together.
• 12:34
  Speaker 5: Thank you.