All right, so we're going to start. This is a session entitled The Pastor and Preaching, Making a Case for Text-Driven Trinitarian Doxological Preaching. And just to introduce myself, I think I had the opportunity to spend some time with some of you last hour. If you were in the session that I taught in room three last hour, would you just raise your hand? Just some of you. OK, so about a little over half of you were in there. So as part of our session at 4 o'clock here, I'm going to review for about three minutes what we covered in an hour last time. But it's good to be with you. I enjoy talking about preaching. I love reading about it. And as I told the class last hour, I probably most enjoy buying books about preaching. So I secure any book I can find on preaching, got several shelves on it, and try to read through those as much as I can. And so they've allowed me to come and to speak on the pastor in preaching and kind of present to you a model. If you were in our session last hour, you might not know that behind the discussion that we went through were 20 pages of speaking notes. And I only covered maybe about eight of them. So in this session, my notes are six pages. So it's going to be relaxed. and enjoyable for us as we go through some things together. So let me start with a word of prayer, and then we'll get right into things. Father, I thank You for the privilege of being here together. We pray for grace and strength in this hour as we try to maintain focus and learn from You and Your Word. I pray that You would guide us and direct us, and I pray that that what I would say would be accurate and true. And Lord, we thank you for this time together and just greatly, greatly value the interaction with other brothers. And just pray that you'd encourage each one here and strengthen us as ministers of the gospel of Christ. Help us to do what we've been told even this morning through preaching and this afternoon. Help us to do this by the power of your spirit and to stay faithful to you. Help us to keep a close watch on not only the doctrine, the teaching, but also on our own selves. And we will give you the glory for this in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, so I just want to review a little bit of last hour and what I tried to accomplish there. Last hour, my goal was to overview contemporary models of preaching and try to expose different pastors to different models that they perhaps have interacted with, some of the models more than others. So what we did is we looked at what's been written in the area of preaching largely in the last 25 to 30 years about different ways to make much of a member of the Trinity. We started with different Christological views. We moved to different theological views relating to the Father in preaching. And then we went to pneumatological. And unfortunately, I really didn't do much with that, which is your typical Baptist thing, a way of dealing with the Spirit. But I would say we should expect the Spirit to be involved in our preaching. And without Him, we would not be able to accomplish anything. There'd be no conversions of any soul without the work of the Spirit. So, we took some time in discussing each one of those different types of preaching, first Christological, and I said that I'm aware of at least five variants of Christological preaching, or preaching that is intended to emphasize the Spirit. One is a Christ-centered approach to preaching. We walked through different proponents of it. We defined what Christ-centered preaching is. It's preaching that puts Jesus at the heart of every sermon. Christ-centered proponents would say that your sermon must contain Jesus in your sermonic points and proposition, that every sermon must be Christ-centered or it's not Christian. And we went through different voices for that today. We talked about kind of an alternative view and a response to that called Christotelic. Christotelic doesn't mean a lot to us in English unless you know Greek, right? And you know telos is translated typically how? End, Christ as the end. Okay, so some scholars, like Daniel Bloch, and in others, I think it was Tremper Longeman, and others would say that, no, not every sermon has to have Christ as the center of the shamanic points and proposition, but you can get to Jesus in any sermon through legitimate means. So Christotelic interpreters would say, they're leery about forcing Jesus into the exegesis of every text. All right? Some of you are like, it's 4 o'clock. I didn't know I signed up for this. It's going to get a little bit easier. It's going to get a little bit easier. We're reviewing last hour, just a bit. But they would say, well, if you force Jesus everywhere, what if he's not actually in the passage I'm preaching? Well, there are some that would say, well, Jesus is in every word, or every verse, or every whatever. But then there are others, you know, Christotelogius says, well, no, when we're talking about the meaning of the original text, we can describe that, but then in the sermon we can get to Jesus, kind of like Spurgeon's old, I get my text and I make a beeline to the cross. Like, there are ways you can get to Jesus in preaching. And so Christotelic is kind of emphasizing that. There's other forms of Christ-centered preach, or Christological preaching that we talked about last hour. But then I kind of raise the objection that maybe emphasizing one member of the Trinity above another member of the Trinity could be a bit of a, you know, a tough tough thing. I even said, you know, even saying some of this out loud makes me nervous because I don't want to be the guy that's branded as the, well, he's not about Christ in preaching guy. Like, I don't want to be that guy. But I would suggest, well, what about exalting the Father? Are there biblical texts that I might use to exalt the Father in preaching? Yeah, think of Jesus' preaching in the Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew 5 through 7, you know who Jesus makes much out of? The Father. As a matter of fact, the word pater is used 17 times in the Sermon on the Mount. Pater means father. He makes much out of Jesus. So is it legitimate to be a preacher like Jesus? I hope so. I hope so. It's like a way you could respond to this. When they're criticizing you, you're like, I want to preach like Jesus did. If you preach like Jesus did, you will make much out of the Father. And so then we talked a little bit about that. And there are proponents of a theocentric view of preaching. There are some that you had probably been exposed to. One is Kenneth Langley. He's a professor at Ted's. Wrote in a book called Four Views of Preaching, or Hermeneutics and Homiletics. great book. And he wrote The Theocentric View. And he's like, he's pushing back. He's like, if we exalt Christ so much, then we might not exalt the Father. And, you know, the Father is our Redeemer as well. And, you know, we want to make much out of Him as well. So they're evangelicals kind of interacting back and forth on these things. And then there's someone like John Piper who is a proponent of a big God theology, big God preaching. He gets it from Jonathan Edwards. He gets it from the Bible, actually, maybe. But he writes a book called The Supremacy of What in Preaching? The Supremacy of Who in Preaching? God in Preaching. So you have some other evangelicals exalting Now, in that writing, there sometimes is confusion about are they talking only about the Father or are they talking about the Trinity? You know, when you use God, you may be talking about the Godhead or God the Father. And so there is some lack of clarity sometimes, at least as I'm reading it, to know which they're talking about. We'll be talking about the different theocentric views of preaching, and then we really didn't do much with pneumatological preaching, but there are evangelicals who would argue for the fact that when we talk about preaching, the spirit, the spirit's role is often neglected. And a lot of this gets down to your views of the Trinity and how they work and relate to one another, your views of text and John's gospel and the role of the spirit and what he's doing. But should we expect the spirit to be active in preaching? Yes, hopefully so, right? And then in what ways? And is the Spirit ever the object of our preaching? If the text tells me so. So we explored some of those last hour. So what I want to do this hour is I want to make a case for a way forward. And by the way, this is, I said last hour, this is an article I'm trying to finish. It's 35 pages right now. And I would like to someday publish it. So I would really enjoy your interaction and how it strikes you. So what I want to suggest is a way forward in this. And it's going to start with us reviewing one other contemporary model for preaching. And it is the text-driven model of preaching. So we're going to do, if you were in the class last hour, you know the method. proponents, definition, description, strengths, and weaknesses. We're going to look at all of that, and if you have notes, it's only two pages front and back, I'll follow that. So, first of all, some proponents. You say, well, where did you come up with the term text-driven? Right here, okay. Text-driven preaching. God's word at the heart of every sermon. This is a book that is edited by Danny Aiken from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, David Allen, and Ned Matthews. Now, the authors who are proponents of text-driven preaching in this book are predominantly Southern Baptist. This is a B&H, a Brodman and Holdman publication. And this text-driven language is coming mainly out of Southern Baptist influence and proponents. Authors who hold varieties of views concerning preaching all contribute to this volume. Collectively, however, they feel that exegesis is an important part of the preaching process. These authors argue for expositional preaching while some of them holding other models as well near their hearts. So, like, there are some of these guys who write in here who'd be Christ-centered or gospel-centered in their view, but they would also be text-driven, at least according to their view. Authors in this book include Paige Patterson, David Allen, David Allen Black from Southeastern, James Hamilton or Jim Hamilton from Southern Seminary, Herschel York, Danny Akin. You can see kind of a who's who of New Testament and pastoral theology guys out of Southern Baptist seminaries, predominantly. Another proponent would be these two authors, Robbie Gallaty and Stephen Smith. This book is called Preaching for the Rest of Us, subtitle Essentials for Text-Driven Preaching. All right, same language, text-driven preaching. Galati's a senior pastor at Long Hollow Baptist Church in Tennessee. He's the president of Replicate Ministry, and I know him best. I've actually heard him speak a few times. I remember hearing him give testimony to the fact that David Platt was instrumental in his conversion and discipleship. And if you've ever heard Robbie Galati speak, you would not forget him. He's built like a Mack truck. He's a strong guy, strong guy, and God saved him miraculously. I think out of drug abuse or drug addiction, he's a great, great, great man and so thankful for his ministry. But he is a co-author of this book, Preaching for the Rest of Us. The other author is Stephen W. Smith. Stephen Smith, not only co-authored this book, he also wrote this book, which is one of my favorite books on preaching. It's a newer book, it's called Recapturing the Voice of God, and I love the subtitle, Shaping Sermons Like Scripture. shaping sermons like Scripture. So text-driven isn't in the title of this or the subtitle, but the point of the book would be to emphasize that the shape and form of the sermonic text you're preaching should control the shape and form of your sermon. So I love this book, Recapturing the Voice of God, Shaping Sermons Like Scripture, basically arguing that the more we can understand about the way the text is put together syntactically, and how things are related to each other, and what is modifying what, and what the primary point is, the better chance we have at actually emphasizing in our sermon the point of the author. Shaping sermons like scripture. Stephen Smith is senior pastor of Emanuel Baptist Church. He was a professor of preaching for years at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, so again, one of the six Southern Baptist seminaries. Also a proponent of this is Abraham Kiravilla. He wrote this book. If I ever wrote a book on preaching, I wish I could have had this title. Preaching the Text, or sorry, Privilege the Text. See, I blew it. Privilege the Text. He would be text-centered in his approach. Of course, he also has some interesting views on preaching Christ. But he's a professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, professor of preaching. He had been at Dallas for 14 years as a professor of preaching there. And then I'll just add one other resource if you're interested in reading about this. Preaching by the book, developing and delivering text-driven sermons. R. Scott Pace is the author. Pace is at Southeastern as well, Associate Director for the Center of Preaching, served as Hughes Chair and Professor of Christian Ministry at Oklahoma Baptist University before that. So these are some of the voices that would say, OK, our fundamental commitment as preaching is to be text-driven, text-driven. Well, what is text-driven preaching? Text-driven preaching, as we're defining it, is preaching that follows and emphasizes the contours of the biblical passage. Text-driven preaching is preaching that follows and emphasizes the contours of a biblical passage. Now, text-driven preaching normally demonstrates several characteristics. Matter of fact, I would hope that if I asked you Now that we live in a day and an age when expository preaching is really pushed in seminaries and in churches, I would hope if I asked you, what are you trying to accomplish when you preach, that you would say something like, I'm just trying to open up this biblical passage for the people. That's a text-driven emphasis. Well, let me describe it. Text-driven preaching. First, the outlines of text-driven sermons follow the contours of a biblical passage. R. Scott Pace, in one of the books I cited there, he writes, the form of the passage should serve as the blueprint for our sermon construction. He says, in other words, the structure of the sermon should mirror the literary structure of the passage. Imagine that. Gality and Smith say it this way, they said, ideally, a text-driven sermon's shape is based on the substance, structure, and spirit of the text. Later, they write this. They said, for the rest of our lives, how to structure a sermon will always be a secondary question. The primary question is always, how is the text structured? I mean, wouldn't it be nice if every biblical passage came with a sermon outline connected to it? And it's actually kind of a trick question because they do, right? You just have to find it. And that's the point of text-driven preaching. All you have to do is find it. For the rest of our lives, the primary question is, how is the text structured And then that informs the sermonic outline. Imagine that. What is the aim of the author informs what is the aim of the sermon or the preacher. That's text-driven preaching. Second description. The aim of text-driven sermons coheres to the original author's aim. Now, there's a good bit of controversy in preaching and reading all these books about preaching about once I find the author's aim, is that my proposition? Or do I change that or modify that some way in preaching? And I would say, I don't care as much. I would hope that you find the author's aim. My personal perspective is the author's aim involved his original readers. OK, so as I'm capturing the author's name, I do something like this. I say the author, and I name who it is if I know who the author is. David wants his audience, and I name who the audience is, Israel. OK, but Israel at which time period? Restored Israel, or whatever it is with the biblical author. To do what? Author wants audience. To do what? That's the aim of the biblical author, hopefully built on the structure, the grammar of the passage. Then when I develop a sermon, I would say, who is the person delivering the sermon? It's you. So I want my audience, who's my audience? The Colonial Baptist Church. The Colonial Baptist Church. To do what? And I model it off of, OK, but the difference in audience and in the form of the communication sometimes will affect a little bit about the goal, right? Because just because God wanted Israel to do something in a certain time period in a certain way doesn't mean that I would expect new covenant believers would be impacted in the same exact way. So anyway, that's descending into something. OK. Yeah. Yeah, please, please. So the idea of then what you just said for number two, it doesn't seem that often our culture feels the weight of like a chiastic structure. So is it consistent with one if you make your final point the center of the x, so to speak, instead of thinking well because Paul said you know whoever Isaiah says this and this is this sequentially I just walk are we capturing text driven to actually rearrange the order of the points to reflect the the weight of the way the author was communicating? What do you think? Am I making sense of what I'm asking? You could either explain what chiasm is, or if you feel like that's descending into an area where they're just not ready or it's going to be distracting from the main point. I'd say a text-driven preacher, once he understands the biblical text and the point the author is making, might rearrange it for the audience that he's addressing. if he feels like it would appropriately... Okay, so it's not out of line with what they're... I'm saying I think you would have freedom to do that, because you have a different purpose than the biblical author had. But you need to understand the text, so you do it appropriately. Does your entire sermon have to be structured around the structure of the text? So, I mean, I've heard one of the ways it's done is you have, you do then, always now is a structure you can structure a sermon. You can do that. I'm not going to do that, but it's, you know, I think it can be done in appropriate ways that are honoring to the original intent and purpose and meaning of the passage. I've just chosen years ago that I'm going to labor to discover the outline and argument of the biblical author and his aim and put that on the people. Help them see that and make my points within that structure. That doesn't mean I won't, you know, I think it's, you know, sometimes you only preach on a small portion of a passage or you preach on multiple texts together. It doesn't mean I won't. I'm not always going to tell them everything I know about the biblical text and how it all fits. But I determined that I suspect that God would honor preaching that follows the message and contour of Scripture. And so that's typically how I do it. Well, that would be the first point, if that was that brief. We're getting a little bit into the art of preaching versus the science of it. OK. I was just wondering if that would be compatible with this model, or do you need to, your entire sermonic outline needs to be driven from the text? That's what I do. But that's a personal decision. I would just ask you, why don't you try this model for about the next 30 years? And then once you figure that all out, try something new. I was a really strong proponent of text-driven preaching. But anyway, we'll need to move along. You can dismiss anything you don't necessarily agree with, because I don't have a chapter and verse that says you need to be a text-driven preacher. Other than stuff like preach the word, you know, stuff like that. Okay, so different descriptions. Third, the presentation of text-driven sermons is sensitive to the genre and tone of the text being preached. This is when it's done well. For instance, text-driven preaching might preach narratives in an inductive way to encourage hearers to follow along and discover the development in the story. Epistles might be preached in deductive ways, arguing from the basis of a proposition based on the text and then explaining it, proving it for the people. There's a good bit of, if you haven't been reading on preaching, there's a good bit that's being written now on how the biblical genre that you're looking at, whether it's like a narrative or an epistle or poetry, should inform the way you shape and deliver the sermon. And while that can be a little overcooked, I also think there's some value to that. So I'd encourage you to read on this. There's a series called the Preaching Biblical Literature series. They're black books. They're coming out. It's a bit broader. They're coming out of mainstream evangelicalism. But it's like how to preach the Psalms, how to preach narrative, how to preach Proverbs. And it will kind of push us, many of us who were taught to preach in one way. Introduction, introduce the subject, state your proposition at the end of the introduction, Preach your three points at the end of each Roman numeral. Say your proposition again. If you're getting tired of it, restate it in a different way and just kind of argue and preach that way. And we do every text the same way. But true text-driven preaching might consider the genre that this is and might shape a sermon in light of that. And I'd encourage you to read some of those books that I talk about it that way. Text-driven preaching would note when authors intend something as a lament or praise. It might deliver it in appropriate ways. If you're preaching on a lament, you probably shouldn't be excessively joyful as you're preaching it. But you're allowing the text to shape substance, even the tone of the sermon a bit. So it's all part of being text-driven. A fourth description, text-driven sermons require the preacher's fundamental commitment to a text-driven life and ministry. They require you to be fundamentally committed to a text-driven life and ministry. In other words, text-driven sermons are not produced by accident. I love this. If for another reason you came to get this quote, this is from Gallaty and Smith. They say this. They say, the preacher, a text-driven preacher, commits to stay in the chair until the word is clear. And as a result, the word changes him. At that point, the pastor's leading the church from the study from his willingness to stay in the seat until he knows what the text means. It's really good. Yeah. Right? And so, text-driven sermons are difficult, challenging, they require your fundamental commitment to a text-driven life, study, and ministry. Sadly, every Sunday, churches suffer from preachers who fail to truly grasp the argument of the biblical text. Such failures miss strategic opportunities to see God change lives through the power of the Word of God. I love the, I might refer to this in my sermon tomorrow, I'm still thinking about it, so if I say something about it, just act surprised, shocked. I love the testimony that Gordon Fee's daughter gave concerning him. Fee recently went home to be with the Lord. And one day she was walking through the She was walking through their parents' house, and she could hear her father. She looked into his study, could not find him, didn't think he was there, but then she heard him. He was underneath the desk in his study. praying, more light, God, more light, more light. See that fundamental commitment to understand and know the text so that you can give that to others. And once God helps you understand the text, isn't it exciting? You can't help. I'm not a type A personality. I'm like type C maybe or D. But once I figure out like a biblical passage, I'm telling everyone and anyone. My wife and my kids know that when I come out of the study with that look in my eye, that they're going to get the whole sermon. Right? It's because the power lies inherently in Scripture. Okay? It's not in some outline I can contrive or some point I can make. Okay, so those are some descriptions of it. Strengths. Text-driven preaching has many strengths. Before I, matter of fact, before you even see that, what are some strengths? Make sure you're awake. Brian. are being, you're hearing from God rather than your own ideas. You're listening to what He has to say, submitting to His Word first and foremost. Other strengths? It protects you from inappropriate repetition. Hmm, yeah. Imagine that, the whole counsel of God being exposed passage by passage. So there's variety in preaching. Were you in the last session? Yes, we talked a little bit about the other models can become, it was one author said, you start to develop a some sort of sense of fatigue, inevitable fatigue in a sermon, because it's always going to go to the same place and end the same way. Yeah? If you confidently know it, it teaches your people how to read the Bible. That's an amazing strength. Yeah. So if you're showing them how you're interpreting in the sermon, and your sermon is following the contours of the biblical passage, it's teaching Bible interpretation. It seems like you would have to lower the premium on eloquence. It does. Root disciples in the text. Right. Yep. I'm confident you have the Lord's emphasis and not your particular lens that you talked about, like this lens that you brought of your own making, the weight of your background or something like that. You're bringing the Lord's emphasis in the passage, and that's what's very imminent in the text. Yeah. Very good. I think you've stolen all my strengths. Any others? Yeah, Ryan? I was thinking about this when I was preaching through Ephesians 6. I don't know that ever would have emphasized spiritual warfare and demonic powers, but because this is not something I'm interested in. And you don't sense as much in your culture here. Unfortunately, I don't. I should more, but that's partly my point, is that rather than the things I'm interested in, by being committed to expository, text-driven preaching, sequentially through books, you have to give thought to things that you're not thinking about. Yeah. Very good. Okay, we'll go quickly because I think many of you are in agreement on this first one. Text-driven sermons fill the preacher with seriousness and confidence. I love what Peter said about preaching. He says, whoever speaks as one who speaks the oracles of God, So I think the oracles of God are not just the content, but the attitude. This passage speaks of the attitude we have about speaking in the church. Text-driven preaching demonstrates the preacher's belief in the ability of God's unfailing Word. Famous words of Isaiah speak of the power of God's Word to accomplish its purposes. Be good for you to reflect on this afternoon, Isaiah 55, 10, and 11. Text-driven preachers do not just sprinkle sermons with scripture. They build the entire presentation on it. And finally, it frees preachers from the pressure to manufacture sermons built on personal charisma or slick presentations. All right, so I'm not having to craft some new and greater thing every week. And I think, David, you were Kind of getting close to that point. It lowers the expectation on the presentation. It puts it more on the sermon. Weaknesses. Proponents of text-driven preaching occasionally produce sermons that are more like running commentaries than sermons intended to build the church. But I would argue that when it's more like a running commentary, it might be that you didn't do all the work in exegesis that you should have, and you didn't consider what is the point the author's making. You're just giving all the fruits of all the word studies you did throughout the text, or everything the commentaries opened up that you thought was cool, but you're not thinking about how is the text organized and what argument is the author making. So this would be an example of text-driven preaching done poorly. when it's just like a running commentary on a book of the Bible or passage. Text-driven preaching, proponents might put undue emphasis on subsidiary points made by the book author. This is, again, you doing exegesis poorly. So you do exegesis, especially like in epistles, and you're looking at the grammar and the syntax to see how it unfolds so that you can find out what is the main argument. and which parts of this passage are just modifying or telling you something about the main argument in some way or another. Right? So this would be another example of text-driven poorly and then sometimes moralizing Old Testament texts. Okay, so text-driven preaching if done poorly, say you're in an Old Testament passage and you're going through it and You're arguing from like the life of David or whoever the person is, and you're making direct application to New Covenant believers without mentioning the differences between the original audience and your people that you're preaching to. So that would be like a problem with some text-driven preaching, if done poorly. All right, having surveyed the different views, I think you've seen that I'm a huge proponent of text-driven preaching. Can I give you another negative? Yes. A lot of times, people in the congregation, they listen to the Bible on radio and so on. And you preach the text very similar to some biblical guy who really did a good job. And they're almost bored because, I've heard this all before. OK. I'm serious. Yeah. I don't know how to fix that. I don't think there is a fix for it. Well, one, Scripture should not be boring even if we heard it before. I guess I would emphasize prayer and asking God through the Spirit to work to use these truths to change lives, and then you still stick to the stuff At the beginning, I didn't give you the blanks in case you were wondering. You probably filled it in with something. Text-driven preaching, I would fill in the shape, substance, and form of preaching. The shape, substance, and form of preaching. The text drives the shape, the substance, and the form of the sermon. When someone asks me, what are you trying to preach when you stand up in the pulpit to preach at Colonial Baptist Church on a Sunday, I say I'm trying to preach the Word, the Word of God. I think that Paul's challenges to Timothy and Titus most closely mirror what I'm trying to do with the congregation at Colonial when I stand to preach. Again, there might be an opportunity where I am with unbelievers, and I decide to preach the gospel, and I think that's entirely appropriate. And there are times when I'm preaching to believers when I preach the gospel. But my fundamental commitment on Sunday mornings is to preach the word, to be rightly handling the word of truth, as 2 Timothy 2.15 says. And so church proclamation today involves expounding on scripture, exegeting out its meaning and significance of biblical passages and doctrine, do as Paul told Timothy, to teach, reprove, correct, and train with the Scripture. And so, in my opinion, no contemporary method of preaching does that as clearly as text-driven expository preaching. Now, you can flip over to the second page. I do want to make a point for attaching two other words to the description of preaching. that I would encourage you to be involved in. The next word I would use would be trinitarian. Okay, so text-driven, trinitarian. Here I'm describing more the content or the substance of the sermon. And this is just kind of a logical argument. The Father, Son, and Spirit form the substance or content of the sermon, since the Bible is a book of divine revelation." That is, what the Bible is, what Scripture is, it's God revealing himself to us in a book. And so, my preaching should make much out of the Godhead, Father, Son, and Spirit, as those texts reveal things about them. Now, there are some newer books. just being written that are emphasizing Trinitarian preaching. So I'll give you a few examples. I don't have slides for them, but I just read one last week. It's called Preaching a God-Centered Vision by Michael Reeves. Just came out a few months ago, Preaching a God-Centered Vision by Michael Reeves. And then one I just got in the mail but was not able to bring with me. It's called Proclaiming the Triune God. The doctrine of the Trinity in the life of the church. And so I think that what's happening is there are scholars kind of objecting to a focus on only one member of the Godhead, and are suggesting that we should be exalting the Trinity appropriately in biblical text, as text would describe and talk about them. Other books you could read on the Trinity? How about this one right here? You just got this one, right? You could read that and study what the scriptures say about the Trinity, and then start thinking about how you might honor Father, Son, and Spirit in your preaching. Yes? This shouldn't be difficult if the text clearly identifies one or all of them. Right. When it does, show excitement, show emphasis? Is that what you're saying when you're preaching? claiming, well this is right in the exegesis of the passage, this is right in the text itself, or I'm now showing you how it fits in Scripture. So there are other ways to do it, but it is easy when the text actually talks about Father, Son, or Spirit directly, and then we can we can easily make much out of that. So regarding the big question of whether preaching should focus on the Father, Son, or Spirit, the answer is yes. Preaching is about God, Father, Son, and Spirit. In Matthew 28, Jesus calls his followers to make disciples by going, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Spirit, and teaching them all that Jesus had said. Undoubtedly, Jesus and the disciples made much out of the Father, Son, and Spirit. and teaching all that Jesus said as they went and made disciples. I liked how John Goldengay said this. He said, my key question concerns who is central in the scriptures. Dr. DeRusci speaks of Christ being central. Actually, God is central. Focusing on the second person risks obscuring the way God as Father, Son, and Spirit appear in the scriptures. It's a subtle critique of DeRusci. by someone who would not even, you know, he's not dispensational, golden gay, prolific author. He's saying, you know, just be careful. Like, you need to emphasize all three, Father, Son, and Spirit. Emphasizing only a Christological or a theological or a pneumatological view, in my opinion, then, is too narrow. You don't have to choose. They're not mutually exclusive. The best approach to the content of preaching is preaching that's Trinitarian. Just asking yourself, whose book is this? Whose holy word is this? And the answer is, it's God's. So it's going to be about him. He will reveal himself to us. And so my Trinitarian suggestion for preaching is broader than Christological, theological, or pneumatological views by themselves. Instead of a determination to enter into a sermon moment or into a text thinking, there's one member of the Godhead, and only one member I'm going to exalt, this allows us to exalt multiple members. Some sermons might be Christ-centered. Some might be Christotelic. Others might be theocentric or theotelic, if that's even a movement yet. So others might be pneumatological in some way or another. Further, there might be times when multiple members of the Godhead, or the Godhead by itself, the three in one, is exalted in a sermon. And I think one of the keys would be to, as you said, brother, follow the cues in the biblical text. Like, what's the text emphasizing? Which member of the Godhead do I see most clearly being emphasized here? All right, I'm going to skip just one little thing there, and we'll move to our last point, doxological preaching. And then we'll leave any room for questions or thoughts you have. This, I would say, so I believe in preaching that's text-driven, that's Trinitarian, and doxological. When you add doxological, you're talking about the goal of preaching. The goal of preaching. So preaching is not only about God, it is for God. It's not only about God, it's for God. And hopefully I don't have to go into all the different places in Scripture that tell us that creation is for the glory of God. You're familiar with these texts. You know, there are multiple texts in Scripture that says God is for the glory of God. Right? Psalm 23, for instance, He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for His namesake. So God's leading me for the sake of His own name. God is for God. So if God is for God, and Jesus is for God, and all creation is for God, what is preaching for? For God. His glory. You were taught this well in your dispensational seminary, if you will. The doxological purpose. And so consequently, preaching is not only about God, it's for God. I'll skip that. If the chief end of God is his own glory and the chief end of preaching is God's glory, preaching exists for doxology, right? Hopefully all of these make sense to you. So I would say here preaching must be text-driven, Trinitarian, doxological in its goal.