Latest / Pastor John Piper's answers / How to Lead Teens Deeper into Their Bibles

Transcript

How to Lead Teens Deeper into Their Bibles · Pastor John Piper's answers

• 0:03
  Welcome back on this Monday. Today, we have a wonderful ministry question on
• 0:07
  preaching right in your wheelhouse. Pastor John Young, Pastor writes and to ask
• 0:11
  you this quote illo, Pastor John, thank you for this podcast. I
• 0:14
  listen every time a new episode is released, and I'm thankful for the impact
• 0:19
  that your biblical insights have made on my life. My question for you is
• 0:23
  about expository preaching and its place in student ministry. I am the student pastor
• 0:28
  at my church responsible for six through twelfth grade ministry. Whenever we gather for
• 0:35
  our youth worship time on Wednesday nights, I typically preach through books of the
• 0:40
  Bible in an expositional way. I try my best to apply the text to
• 0:44
  them in ways that they can understand. However, I sometimes question whether I
• 0:47
  should preach expository sermons to the students because I don't believe it's a common practice
• 0:52
  in youth ministries. I love God's Word and want my students to come to
• 0:55
  love God's Word as well. But should I teach to my students in a
• 0:59
  way that is more application focused? I would appreciate your thoughts on this.
• 1:03
  Thank you well. I have endless thoughts about I could just go on and
• 1:10
  on and on. I love preaching. I believe God has appointed preaching to
• 1:15
  be part of the gathered worship of his church on the Lord's Day especially,
• 1:19
  and I think all of it, all the time should be based on and
• 1:25
  saturated with scripture. That's what preaching is. It is a God ordained way
• 1:32
  of saving sinners and sustaining and growing saints. I think it's relevant for old
• 1:38
  people, middle aged people, young people, children. So I'm thrilled that
• 1:46
  our young pastor friend is in a church and leading a youth group where he
• 1:51
  is doing exposition. So here are my originally head in my head, a
• 1:57
  whole lot of thoughts, but I boiled it down three. So here my
• 2:00
  three thoughts I can squeeze into our few minutes together. Number one, As
• 2:07
  you unfold the meaning of particular biblical texts, be sure to stress what I
• 2:15
  call the reality factor. Now you don't need to use that phrase, that's
• 2:21
  my phrase, but here's what I mean. Some years ago it hit me
• 2:25
  when I realized that it is possible to do a great deal of explaining how
• 2:35
  the thought of the text actually flows, and how the words and clauses relate
• 2:43
  to each other. Without actually dealing with the reality of what the words are
• 2:47
  trying to communicate. It just clobbered me that we can do this, We
• 2:53
  can stay at the surface of grammar and not get to reality. For example,
• 3:00
  in Philippians two twelve, it says work out your salvation with fear and
• 3:04
  trembling. Four. God is the one who is at work in you,
• 3:08
  both to will and to work for His good pleasure. Now suppose in your
• 3:13
  exposition you point out to the students that the first clause is an imperative command
• 3:20
  work out your salvation, and the second clause is not a command but an
• 3:24
  indicative, a statement of fact, God is at work in you to will
• 3:29
  and to work. And then you draw attention to the connection between those two
• 3:34
  clauses with the word four, and you point out that the second clause,
• 3:38
  the statement God is working, is the basis or the ground. That's what
• 3:44
  four means or the motive for the first clause, the command work out your
• 3:49
  salvation. And maybe you even go further, and you say this is typical
• 3:52
  in the New Testament, that indicatives ground imperatives, and then you stop end
• 3:59
  of exposition. Well, the problem is stopping there is that we haven't even
• 4:06
  touched the reality behind the clauses and their logical connection until we see how does
• 4:14
  this work in life? Why? Why does it work that I work out
• 4:21
  my salvation? Because Christ is at work in me? Or God does it
• 4:27
  work in me? There's a vast difference between words and clauses on the one
• 4:33
  hand, and the realities they reveal on the other hand. And here you
• 4:41
  can see this is this is just blows people away. When I pointed out,
• 4:46
  at least some people who have particular ideas about preaching, how artificial it
• 4:53
  is in the distinction between exposition and application. Let me say that again,
• 4:59
  how artificial it is to distinguish between exposition and application, because we're not really
• 5:06
  doing exposition of the reality behind the words until we are dealing with real life
• 5:16
  and telling how it works. What will it be like this afternoon? So
• 5:20
  the question is at ten o'clock tonight, after these students are at home having
• 5:28
  heard this exposition, and they're at home now in their bedroom with their computer
• 5:33
  or with their family in the den, what will it look like for these
• 5:39
  students to work out their salvation? What is that reality like? What will
• 5:46
  it feel like for them to experience the reality of God working in them?
• 5:53
  Do they have any sense at all what that what's talking about? What's the
• 5:57
  reality? How does it feel? How does it work? And how will
• 6:01
  they make the connection between those experiences of God working in them and they're working.
• 6:06
  We really don't know what this text means until we can explain not just
• 6:14
  the words, clauses, logic, grammar, but the realities tonight at ten
• 6:20
  o'clock in the bedroom, in the kitchen, how it works in people's lives.
• 6:29
  That requires a huge effort on the part of the preacher, because he's
• 6:34
  now working at two levels, the level of words and grammar and logic.
• 6:41
  We call that the text and the effort to explain how the parts of the
• 6:46
  text fit together. And on the other level, what realities is this author
• 6:54
  with these words and this grammar, in this logic, What realities is he
• 6:58
  trying to communicate to my mind and my heart and my hands. Language and
• 7:05
  reality the two levels, and both are absolutely crucial. You can't do a
• 7:11
  shortcut around the grammar, around the logic, around the words. But if
• 7:15
  you stop there, you haven't done the kind of exposition needs to be done.
• 7:19
  It is real headwork, it is real heart work, But the payoff
• 7:26
  for the students will be huge. So that's my first suggestion. Deal with
• 7:33
  the reality factor as well as the text factor. Your students will love it
• 7:41
  because it will touch their lives, their reality. Number two, in your
• 7:47
  exposition through texts, take doctrinal depth tours. Not doctrinal detours, but doctrinal
• 8:00
  depth tours. Now I just made that up. I have never in the
• 8:03
  history of the world said that before. This is my new term. And
• 8:07
  here's what I mean. What I mean is that preaching that moves through texts
• 8:13
  without doctrinal depth tours. They're like detours, but they're depth tours because you're
• 8:20
  not going away from where you should go. That's what a detour is.
• 8:22
  You go away and you wish you hadn't didn't have to go. But a
• 8:26
  depth tour you want to go on this road. So this will build doctrinally
• 8:31
  strong people. And without it, I just don't know how you can build
• 8:35
  doctrinally strong youth group. Doctrinally strong people. What I mean by that is
• 8:41
  people youth group who have a clear, deeply rooted understanding of really important biblical
• 8:50
  doctrines. Now, you can't do everything as a as a youth pastor you're
• 8:56
  working in tandem with other groups and worship service and sermons and lessens and classes
• 9:03
  in your church, and maybe even in the home and in the school.
• 9:05
  But I mean doctrines like God's sovereignty, God's holiness, God's grace, God's
• 9:13
  justice, the deity and humanity of Christ, the deity and personhood of the
• 9:18
  Holy Spirit, the nature of sin both is action and disease of the heart,
• 9:24
  the nature of redemption and propitiation and regeneration, calling, faith, justification,
• 9:31
  sanctification, walking by the spirit, perseverance of the saints, the nature
• 9:37
  the Church, what happens when you die, the second Coming, eternal life,
• 9:43
  new heavens, and new Earth. If a young person studies texts of
• 9:48
  scripture without ever taking doctrinal depth tours, he's like a person who lines up
• 9:54
  all the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle but never puts them together the beauty of
• 10:00
  the picture that they make. But in fact, you can be pretty proud
• 10:05
  of putting those pieces in line. You could look, my pieces are all
• 10:09
  lined up. They might even recite the entire first chapter of Ephesians by heart,
• 10:15
  and never have paused to do a detour into the doctrine of election.
• 10:20
  But it's the totality of the big picture that holds person, isn't it.
• 10:28
  It's the picture that holds takes hold of a sixteen year old and keeps them
• 10:33
  for sixty years, holds them for a lifetime. Who God is, what
• 10:39
  He's doing? How did Christ save sinners? How does the Christian life work?
• 10:45
  Where's it all heading? Now? There are different ways to do this.
• 10:50
  You can do an expository series of messages through text and then do a
• 10:58
  doctrinal series separately. I'm not at all opposed to topical messages like that,
• 11:03
  like we're gonna do five weeks kids on election and predestination, and we're gonna
• 11:09
  do five weeks on sin and what it is kind of disease you have in
• 11:13
  your heart and so on. I'm not all opposed to those kinds of things,
• 11:18
  because they're all expository, meaning, if I'm gonna explain anything, it's
• 11:24
  gonna be exposition of the scripture is where my explanations come from. Or you
• 11:30
  can take these doctrinal depth tours that I'm suggesting within the time of exposition,
• 11:37
  So fifteen minutes, say, of your thirty minute message might be devoted to
• 11:43
  painting the big doctrinal reality behind one word in your text, like justification.
• 11:50
  It's not either or you can mix it up in various ways. I think
• 11:56
  students love to see how reality actually fits together, really fits together, and
• 12:03
  they love to see how texts actually work. So some combination of exposition of
• 12:09
  texts where they get their nose in the grammar, and efforts to build their
• 12:16
  doctrinal knowledge. Both of these are crucial. And then last thing I would
• 12:20
  say number three is if your students hear good preaching on Sunday morning, I
• 12:30
  would probably not try to turn the Wednesday evening teaching time into another sermon.
• 12:39
  I would create a more interactive, socratic method of teaching. Probably now you
• 12:46
  know your situation better than I do, but this is what I would do.
• 12:48
  If I were the youth minister and I had a good pastor who's doing
• 12:52
  real preaching on Sunday, I would probably not try to do the same thing
• 12:58
  on Wednesday, but train these students how to look at the text, look
• 13:05
  at the book, and how to ask really good thought questions, because questions
• 13:11
  are the key to understanding. Lots of times people hear me say a participatory
• 13:16
  or interactive and they think, oh, I've been in those counter groups.
• 13:18
  Everybody shares their ignorance all what I mean? I mean I teach like this
• 13:24
  Generally, I stay in control. I'm asking the questions right, and if
• 13:30
  students ask stupid questions, then you, delicately and wisely you guide them towards
• 13:33
  good questions. You don't let everybody just share their ignorance. You know where
• 13:39
  you want to take them, and you take them there by training them to
• 13:43
  get there themselves. You're modeling how to pose really good questions about what you
• 13:50
  see in the text, and getting them to look and think and speak,
• 13:54
  and then correcting them so that they get better and better at reading their Bibles.
• 14:01
  It is possible to do very serious exposition and doctrinal teaching this way.
• 14:09
  You can do this socratically, and the key is really good questions, provocative
• 14:16
  questions. I mean, I've been in so many groups where they say who
• 14:18
  said this? And the students are looking at each other and saying, that's
• 14:22
  the stupidest question. It says Peter said this. Why is he asking me
• 14:26
  that it's such a stupid question? Who said this? Where are we in
• 14:30
  the text? Those are not the kind of questions that get anybody excited.
• 14:33
  About anything. They have to be thought questions, hard thinking questions, questions
• 14:39
  that really have to pay off in textual understanding and real life experience. So
• 14:46
  those are my three suggestions for handling the Word with your youth group. Deal
• 14:52
  with the reality factor, take doctrinal depth tours and ask provocative thought questions.
• 15:01
  And of course a whole nother episode. Soak it all in earnest prayer because
• 15:07
  if God doesn't show up, then everything is in vain. Yeah, amen,
• 15:13
  sobering. God must act for anything we do to bear eternally lasting fruit,
• 15:18
  thank you, Pastor John. And for churches that don't preach exegetically on
• 15:22
  Sunday mornings, if that's a concern, see an old episode that we have
• 15:26
  recorded titled is the forty Minute Sermon Passe? Is the forty minute Sermon Passe
• 15:33
  that was ABJA one eighteen on why discussions and the Socratic method are out of
• 15:37
  place in the Sunday morning preaching context. Sermons are not just about learning the
• 15:43
  first aim of preaching, he says in this episode, the first aim of
• 15:46
  preaching is not education, but encounter with the living God. Excellent episode to
• 15:54
  check out on the purpose of preaching. ABJA one eighteen in the archive right
• 15:58
  now at askpastor John dot com. Thanks for joining us today. I am
• 16:02
  your host, Tony Ranky, and we will see you back here on Thursday.
• 16:06
  Thanks for listening.