Hi, I'm Chuck Pike. I live in the Boston area, and I love to teach the Bible. I love to study the Bible. And so I'm just thrilled about the opportunity to reach out to a new generation of prospective Bible teachers who are interested in expository teaching. And I want to focus in this series on expository teaching, and I'll talk about how I do it. And I realize that everybody's going to vary from person to person, how you do it. Please don't feel that you need to do it the way that I do.
I think of the story of 1 Samuel 17 about Saul's armor. When David goes out to fight and Saul puts his armor on him and David is clunking around and realizes this isn't going to work. I need to I need to use things that make sense to me. So I would encourage, I want to share things with you and have you at least consider what I'm saying and then feel free to use what's helpful and discard what's not.
I want to start off with a little bit about my own teaching experience, how I got involved in Bible teaching several decades ago. Early on in my teaching career, I focused heavily on the Old Testament. As a young Christian, I was amazed and thrilled at the power and the usefulness of the Old Testament stories. It really helped my faith, helped my understanding of God. And so I decided early on in my 20s that I was going to devote myself to studying the Old Testament and teaching it to Christians.
And one of the reasons I wanted to do that was because since most teachers are focusing on the New Testament, that leaves the other three quarters of the Bible. I thought I could be more helpful to the church to focus on a part of the Scriptures that were largely neglected by most other people. But don't just think I just teach the Old Testament. I focus on the Old Testament teaching a lot, but I also focus a lot on connections between the New Testament and the Old Testament.
In the last few years, I've been teaching a lot of New Testament, doing New Testament expository teaching, drawing on my experience teaching the Old Testament. So I've taught quite a bit in North America and Europe and the Middle East. My background, probably like many of my listeners here, I have no formal theological training. It's really a matter of passion and love for the Bible and being self-taught and learning from as many resources as I can that are out there. So I have no seminary degree.
My training is as a civil engineer, and so in my day job, I'd be doing civil environmental engineering. But my passion, my night job, was to teach the Word of God. So I've taught in New Testament, 1 Corinthians, Gospel of John, 1 John Romans, and Old Testament, I've taught through most every Old Testament book, one time or another, especially historical parts, several times. Several times the Law of Moses.
And something that's a little different the way that I teach versus many of the other teachers that I know is several years ago I read the book The Real Heretics written by David Bercot and that piqued my interest in the early church. So I started reading the Ante-Nicene Fathers and some of the early church writings and I was already teaching the Bible quite a bit but there were some wonderful insights that the early Christians had that I started weaving those into the classes that I teach.
And I realized after a while that that was unusual. Most people don't do that. So I want to talk about how you can take advantage of the early Christian insights. Early Christians are not inspired writers like the New Testament writers are. However, they have some wonderful insights and I've benefited a lot and I want to show you how you can do that by using the resources, just how you can do that and show you how I do that as well.
Another interest in the early Christians was I want to, as it says in Jude verse 3, contend for the faith once for all entrusted to the saints. I want the original faith. I don't just want to pass on what somebody gave me or whatever fellowship I'm in. I want to find out what did the Christians believe in the beginning.
So those who were close to the time of the apostles, who Greek was their native language, they read and they understand it as their own native language, not as somebody who's trying to learn a foreign language. And living closer to the time, I thought that would be a tremendous benefit to get back to restoring the original faith. A scripture that really inspires and motivates me as a teacher that helps me to set my mind right is in Ezra in chapter seven verses 9 and 10.
It says, " On the first day of the first month, he," referring to Ezra, began his journey from Babylon. Now on the first day of the fifth month, he came to Jerusalem according to the good hand of his God upon him. For Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord and to do it and to teach statutes and ordinances in Israel. That's Ezra chapter 7 verses 9 and 10. That's from New King James Version.
So it says that God's blessing hand was upon Ezra, a great Bible teacher, because he devoted himself to three things. Studying the law of the Lord first, obeying it second, and then teaching it to others third. And this is the simple outline of a teacher's life, is study the Word of God, do what it says, and then teach it to others. I'm also reminded always when teaching in James chapter 3 in verse 1. Let's turn there. I don't want to scare anybody off quite yet, but let's include some good, healthy warnings.
James chapter 3 in verse 1, " My brethren, let not many of you become teachers knowing that we shall receive a stricter judgment." So with that kind of a warning, why would anyone want to be a teacher? You think this is the day of judgment is going to be tough enough. For teachers, it's going to be a stricter judgment.
So whatever that entails, if that means a worse punishment or if that means a higher standard that we're measured by, we should approach Bible teaching with a sense that this is a very sober thing we're entering. The biggest danger, I think, for teachers. First thing we need to do is teach accurately the original faith. And then the second thing, which I think is probably particularly in view here, is the danger of hypocrisy. If we're living one way and teaching another way, we are religious hypocrites.
Jesus blasted the religious teachers who were hypocrites harder than he blasted the tax collectors and the prostitutes. In Matthew chapter 23, he was lambasting the teachers who were hypocrites is that they were teaching the right things, but they weren't living it out. So they were going to be doomed and condemned for that. If someone wants to be a teacher and they come to me and say, " Chuck, I'd like to be a teacher," often the first question that I ask them is not something that they expect.
I'll ask I was leading a teaching group in a large church in Boston for many years, and there was a young, very talented, articulate college student. And I'd heard him speak in church. He's a very, very, very, very good speaker. Understood the Scriptures really well loved the Bible.
And he wanted to join our group and one of the leaders of the church has said, " Hey, you really need to join Chuck's group and get more involved in the teaching ministry." So I said, " Before you join the group, I have a question for you. How is it going with your purity in your own personal life?" And he didn't expect that question. He thought he was joining a teaching group. And he was very open and honest with me and he just disgorged all this horrible stuff that he was in.
He was enslaved to internet pornography. And I said, " Wow, I appreciate your openness, I appreciate your honesty, but you have no business teaching other people right now. You need to get your own life in order. You've got a plank to get out of your own eye before you think about teaching anybody else." Those who are teaching the Bible, it doesn't mean it's not that we're not going to be flawless. We're not going to be perfect in that sense. But we need to be people who are walking in the light.
We can't be living a double life. We can't look good on the outside and be rotten to the core on the inside. This is a spiritual battle that we're involved in. And so first thing is our hearts need to be right with the Lord. And with men, this is a common problem. The internet pornography is so accessible. It's so easy. It's so devastating that we really need to do this. I'm not looking down on anybody.
Years and years ago I was involved in some of that I was enslaved to that sort of thing before I became Christian. So I'm not looking down at anybody thinking I'm better than anybody else. But I would encourage you, if you want to be a teacher, take a good hard look at this aspect of your life. And if you need to repent of this, find a trusted brother that you can be open with and talk about this, about repenting the sin, have somebody hold you accountable for this.
So there's a danger of people who are involved in secret sin who are teaching, of being hypocrites, which is a horrible thing. There's another danger as well is that a lot of times if somebody is involved in a secret sin that they're not dealing with in life, when they're teaching the Bible, they will avoid talking about that sin.
I was in a large church where I'm aware that the men in the church are being attacked by with temptation for lust, either internet pornography or people are seeing on the street or whatever all the time. This is in Boston, big city. And so I listened to the sermons week after week, and there was hardly any mention about this thing which I consider to be a huge, a huge challenge that's facing all the men in the church.
And so one of the times I got together with the preacher and I asked him, " Why aren't you ever talking about this problem? I think it's a big danger in the church." And then I asked him another question. I said, " How's it going in your life?" And he started backpedaling a little bit and, you know, " Well, it could be going better. Well, thank goodness for the grace of God." Things like that.
And I said, " Well, when was the last time that somebody who's training you I wasn't very close to the brother and I didn't want to insert myself in there, but when was the last time that somebody who you're working together with, somebody who's training with you or training who's training you asked you about this area of your life?" And he said, " Well, nobody ever asked me about this." But that's what I noticed is that not just in areas of sexual purity, but in any area of life.
If it's greed or materialism or deceit, in any area of life, if you have this secret sin in your heart, there's going to be a tendency to avoid addressing it in terms of teaching and preaching. So I think this is the first thing, to me, anybody wants to teach the Bible. You don't want to be a hypocrite, and you don't want to be avoiding the tough areas. You've got to deal with your own life and your own heart first, no matter what the sin is. If it's gossip, it could be drunkenness.
And this is going to have a devastating effect on the church. People's sins are not going to be addressed. It's going to produce a weak church. So I would say repent quickly. Repent first and preach honestly. Don't pretend like you've been a master of some area of your life if you just repented of it a month ago or a week ago. Just be honest and you know don't try to make yourself out to be a long time overcomer of sin. Be relatable.
If it's a chronic problem in your past, you know, people can understand that and relate to you. But you want to be transparent, I believe. Transparent, honest when you're teaching the Bible. So sometimes people make a distinction between preaching and teaching. They say, " Well, Chuck, are you a teacher or a preacher?" No, no, you're just a teacher. You're not a preacher. And there's also there's a stereotype that people have when they think of Bible teacher.
A lot of people think, " Oh, the Bible teachers, they're the scholarly nerd-like types. They like to sit in their studies and pour over the Greek resources and read lots of books. And that's the picture that some people have in their mind of the teacher. They're the nerds. They're the unrelatable people. They're the academic types. That's not the way I see it in scripture. In Ephesians 6, it says we are in a war zone. This is an unseen war that's raging around us with the forces of evil.
We have a very powerful and crafty enemy, Satan and the angels with him who are out to destroy us and wreck the church. And the Bible, Ephesians 6:17, it says, " Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God." Somebody who's a Bible teacher should be an expert at wielding the sword against the enemies of God. The sword of the Spirit is our offensive weapon.
So that's how I see it, that the teachers, the Bible teachers are not the nerds in the church, they're not the academics and scholars. They're the street fighters. They're the ones that are out there with the sword going after the enemy and are teaching others how to use the sword more effectively as well. The Great Commission is go make disciples of all nations.
In Matthew 28, 19-20 says, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe all things I have commanded you. Now, there's a huge difference between teaching people everything Jesus commanded and teaching them to observe or obey everything Jesus has commanded. Okay, that makes all the difference in the world. I believe good, effective biblical teaching is a two-step process. The first step is to show people from the Scriptures what God wants them to do.
What Jesus says or what the apostles are teaching is you open up the Bible and you show them from the Scriptures, they can read it themselves, they can see it with their own eyes. This is what God wants me to do. That's step one. Step two is calling people to repent and to follow the new convictions that they have. It's not about me getting them to do what I want.
It's a two-step process, show them from the Scriptures, help them to have their own convictions, and then call them to follow their own convictions and to do whatever it takes to do that. And the people who try to make it a one-step process of my job as a teacher is to get you to do what I want you to do. That just produces a bunch of people who are resent being controlled and manipulated by somebody else.
So it may produce, the church results coming from that kind of preaching may look good for a little while, but it's gonna hit a spectacular crash in the life of the church or a person at some point in time. So it's a two-step process.
Show people from the Word of God, clearly and accurately what the Scriptures say, dismantle any of the excuses that you know people are going to come up with, and then call people to obey what they see themselves, not what you're telling them to do, what they see themselves to convict them. That's teaching and preaching to me. Teaching is what they call is showing people what God says.
Preaching is now saying, " Okay, now you need to do something about this." So preaching and teaching to me fits seamlessly together and every teacher should be doing both and sliding back and forth from one or the other. It shouldn't be a hard distinction between the two. An extremely important characteristic I look for in anybody who wants to be a Bible teacher, in addition to purity, which is just that's the first step there is personal love of the Bible.
If you love the Bible and you're devoted to studying it and you see the power in it, this will do more to transform the lives of people that you're teaching than anything specific that you're telling them. In my opinion, if your love and passion for the Bible is infectious, then it's going to affect other people. You know, here we are. We're in Boston. The person who's behind the camera is wearing a mask on. We got the COVID thing going on right now. And there's tremendous fear of spreading infection around.
Well, this is a good infection. We want this infection, an infectious love for the Word of God, that you have it burning in your heart and you're transmitting that to other people. One of the great examples to me is James Harding. He's a Restoration Movement preacher about a hundred years ago.
And at his funeral, at the eulogy, they said one of the people eulogizing him said, " This man got more people to reading the Bible through every year than anybody that I've ever run into, is that wherever he went, he was getting people excited about the Bible and reading the Bible every day and reading through the whole Bible. And it's because he had such a love for the Bible himself. And that's my hope is that in my own life is that my love of the Bible will inspire others to take a look as well.
I think of the Bible, somebody who's a Bible teacher, not as a scholar, but I think of him being more like a miner. So the inspiring miner to me is somebody who emerges from the mine all dirty and dusty and they've got their hard hat on. They've got their little light on there. And they say, " How'd it go today in the mine?" And he pulls out out of his pocket and he says, " Well, here's the gold. Here's the silver.
Here are the emeralds and rubies that I found today while I was down in the mine." That is what's going to inspire others to want to put the hard hat on and go down and do the mining themselves. When they see the treasures that you recently pulled out of the mine yourself and that's what I that's what gets me going is just realizing that the mine is full of wonderful gems that are ready to be dug out. I want to talk for just a few minutes about why expository preaching.
This is a series specifically on expository preaching and I'm going to give you a parable to explain this. This is a parable that I invented, so if you don't like it, you can blame me. This is the parable of the white bread. So originally, when I first, when I was going to college, I was living in a co-op where we all made bread for the whole group, about 50 people or so. And we not only baked the bread, but we also took the wheat berries and we had a hand mill and we ground up the grain.
So I learned how to cook by cooking real baking, real whole grain bread with a whole grain in it. And I learned a little bit about that that real whole grain bread is brown, it's not white, and it's got a strong taste to it, and it's really dense and flavorful. Not everybody likes the flavor, but I do. And that's how everybody used to eat. They'd grind up the wheat, and they would have all the different parts of the wheat berry contained in the flour, and it would have little brown specks throughout it.
Years ago in Europe, people learned how to improve on that process. And let's put improve in quote marks here, by refining the flour. So what they did is they would take the flour after they ground it up and they would separate out a kernel of wheat has a bran that has a rough shell around it, has a little germ on the inside of it. They learned that they took the bran out, they took the shell off, they took the germ out, and they just left the white part of the wheat.
Okay, now there were a number of advantages from doing this. One is the flour would last a lot longer without spoiling. So you could put it on the shelf and it wouldn't go bad. You didn't have to refrigerate it. That's one advantage. You know The rats weren't as interested in eating it either. Also, white flour is a lot fluffier and lighter, so it would rise higher. It was great for making pastries and cakes and croissants and things like that.
Some people had a more delicate taste that didn't have that nutty taste that whole wheat flour does. And so some people like the taste better and it was prettier. It was white. It was all white. But there were some disadvantages too with using this refined flour that some of the ingredients were taken out of. One thing that surprised people is that people started getting sicknesses that were uncommon before.
The lack of the fiber in the flour caused problems with digestion and also as they were separating out the bran and the germ from the flour, they were milling out some important B vitamins and minerals and nutrients that they didn't even realize that we need in our diet for our health. There were things that God put in the wheat berry that we needed for our health that people weren't even aware of.
And what happened when these natural things were omitted, when they were taken out all kinds of disease and health problems started popping up. So what did people do after that? They said, " All right, we'll take the white flour and we'll fortify it. We'll put some chemicals, we'll pump some vitamins back in to replace some of the stuff that we took out." The spiritual applications here, I think this is the way preaching is a lot of churches.
In many churches, what the preacher will do is before giving the Sunday sermon, he'll ask himself the question, " What is it that people in the congregation need?" And he'll think, depending on what the church is, he'll think maybe what they need is some teaching on evangelism, or maybe people are discouraged and they need to have their spirits lifted up, or maybe they need to give more money. The preacher will have some ideas of what he thinks people need.
And he'll pick a scripture here and pick a scripture there and put together a lesson and some entertaining stories and present that as the lesson. What happens when you have a steady diet of topical preaching where subjects are picked based on what the preacher thinks the needs of people are, preacher doesn't know what the people really need anymore than the millers of the flour knew what the people really needed. We need it all.
Paul said in Romans chapter 15, Paul, after he quotes from one of the Psalms, I think it was Psalm 69, he says, " For whatever things were written before were written for our learning. That through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures we might have hope. Think about what Paul's saying. Paul's saying all the things in the Old Testament that were written in the past which most Christians think is not necessary, Paul says they're all written for us. They're written for our learning.
And when Paul is speaking, Paul is writing to Timothy in 2 Timothy chapter 3 verses 15 to 17, he tells Timothy, " From childhood, you've known the Holy Scriptures which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus." All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, reproof, corrections, and instruction, righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.
So Timothy, the scriptures he knew from infancy, he had a Jewish mother, so obviously he's talking about the Old Testament Scriptures. You know, the New Testament really wasn't most of it wasn't available at that time, if any of it. And so he's saying, " The Holy Scriptures are able to make you wise for salvation.
They're all inspired by God and they're all profitable for all of these things." Doctrine, reproof, correction, instruction, righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. So we need it all. We need all the Scriptures. It's just like the grain. We can't say, " Well, this is the only part. You just need the Gospels or you just need the Psalms and Romans." We need it all. We don't know what we need.
If we effectively mill out and throw away certain parts of the Scriptures individually and as a church will suffer. I encourage Christians to read through the entire Bible and to read through the Bible if they can every year. And it will have many benefits and it will give you a good solid foundation in your spiritual life. If I just force myself, if I just taught topical preaching only, if I ask myself, " What do I think the church needs?
What do I think the group needs?" There are so many topics I would never, ever in a hundred years, think to touch on. Expository teaching forces me to go places in the text and to go places spiritually I would never think to go on my own. And so many times wonderful blessings come out because doing expository teaching forces me to teach on things that we really need that I didn't realize how much we needed. So some churches are very good about focusing on expository teaching. Some focus mainly on topical preaching.
Some people think that, you know, why is it that some churches avoid expository teaching? Well, some people think topical preaching is more interesting because you can just focus on the special things that you think are interesting rather than taking everything just as it comes. Some people think that with topical preaching you can focus on the most important things and avoid the things that are hard to understand or less important.
Many preachers, many of the reasons that churches lack expository teaching honestly is because a lot of preachers don't know how to do it. If you said, you know, if you force somebody to do expository teaching through the Book of Numbers or the Book of Genesis, a lot of preachers would struggle mightily. I know I remember one preacher who had been preaching for years and years. He preached many different places, but all he knew how to do was three-point topical preaching.
And then we said, " All right, now we're going to be doing expository preaching going through a book." And he just couldn't do it. I mean, if you tortured him, if you tied him down, he couldn't do it. He was just not capable of doing it because he never was taught how to do it and he didn't know how to do it. So my desire is to make it easier to do expository teaching by giving some examples here.
So yeah, we need all the scriptures and expository teaching and teachings through the whole Bible will be a tremendous blessing to the church. I'd like to talk for a few minutes here about my own attitude about what would I say to a young, aspiring teacher who wants to be a good teacher. First thing I would say is don't try to be a good teacher. Try to be a great teacher. You need to strive for the best. You need to set your sights high. And I think of the basic principle from the Bible.
It says a student when he is fully trained will be just like his teacher. That can be for good or for bad. If your teacher is a good guy or he's not a good guy, a student was fully trained to be just like his teacher. So if you set your sights on becoming a great teacher yourself, first question is, who is teaching you if you're going to be fully trained? If you want to become, think about it. If you want to become really great at anything, what do you do? I remember there was an Olympic rower once.
I think it was a woman who ascended very rapidly in the sport and they said, " Well, how did you learn so quickly?" And she said, " Well, she watched on the shore before she ever got in the water, she watched an Olympic rowing team of experts and she just watched what they were doing. And by watching people who were really, really good when she got into the boat, she had an example in her mind and it called her higher and she ended up becoming a famous athlete as well.
If you want to become a great carpenter, if you want to become a great silversmith, if you wanted to become the world's best at anything, what would you do? I mean, I tell you what I do. I find whoever is the best that's out there in that field and then try to somehow persuade that person to take me on as a trainee to learn from the best. And the same thing is true for Bible teachers. Now my attitude was I want to learn from the best and I don't want to just limit myself to people who are currently living.
So I'll take anybody, living or dead, whoever the best are, I want to learn from them. I'm reminded Clement of Alexandria and his advice to a young Christian. He said, " Find yourself a mentor. Find somebody who's going to be tough on you if you really want to grow, if you want to do well spiritually." So find the best. If you can find somebody who's living or local, that's great to study under. But if you can't find someone locally, don't let that stop you. You can learn from the living or the dead.
One of the good things about having a dead person training you is they can't say no. They can't refuse you. They can't decline. So you just decide that you're going to learn from them. One of my friends, one of my old friends once had a comment about me. I'm not sure that this was a compliment. Sounds more like an insult.
He was talking to my wife and he said, " You know, Chuck's not a bad guy." I said, " But the only problem is all his best friends have been dead for over a thousand years." So I thought, what does that say about me? I was interested in the early Christians, and I think he thought that that was the case. That's totally not true. Not all my best friends haven't been dead for over a thousand years. Some of them have only been dead for a few hundred years.
So anyway, examples that people who've inspired me and called me higher, I mean, as far as living teachers, David Bercot, he introduced me to the early Christians. He's a great example of a teacher in terms of clarity of his teaching and accuracy and really doing the work to go back to research what he's saying. And I appreciate a very engaging style of preaching.
One of the preachers that I listened to many times as a young Christian, listened to personally, and I'm not gonna mention this person's name, is he had some wonderful strengths. He had a very engaging style of preaching. He used the entire Bible, he used the New Testament, the Old Testament, and he was incredibly bold in terms of addressing sin in people's lives to the point where he had winced and looked at the back door to see if anybody's heading out the door.
But it was strong preaching and believe it or not, instead of repelling people that actually drew people who really wanted to hear that and wanted to change their lives. William Law is another great example, and actually it was David Bercot had recommended William Law. He said he made a comment, I think, in his catalog. He said that outside the Bible, the most convicting thing that he'd ever read was by William Law, a Serious Call to a Devout and holy life. So I thought, well, I guess I better read that.
And it definitely challenges me. So he's very logical, very thorough, and he leaves no excuses. He's a very convicting teacher and preacher. Thomas à Kempis in the Imitation of Christ. Justin Martyr, I started reading through the early Christians. I came to Justin Martyr. I had to slow down because I didn't want to miss anything he was saying. His first and second apologies, dialogue with Trypho, in terms of his how he used the Old Testament.
I've been teaching the Old Testament for years, how he used the Old Testament as evidence to convince unbelievers. I thought, wow, I want to learn how to do that. Eusebius, Eusebius is best known as a church historian, but Eusebius also wrote a work that's not that well-known, Proof of the Gospel, one of the greatest apologetic works, especially book three that I've ever read. Bishop Challoner, the Catholic Church, a book called Think Well on It, which is Meditations on Death, very, very, very sobering.
David Lipscomb, James Harding, Alexander Campbell, some of the greats from the Restoration Movement. But even outside of the religious realm, people who are just incredibly clear thinkers and writers, Henry Hazlitt is an economics writer, wrote the classic book, " Economics in One Lesson." I thought, " This guy is so clear in his explanations that I want to I want to be able to communicate like he does." And I found out that there was a book written a hundred years ago, a book on logic.
He said, " This is how I learned how to reason clearly." So I got a hold of that book, found it, and read it, and I said, " I want to be able to communicate like he does." Clearly. I want to add one closing comment in this segment on teacher training programs.
I was once asked to be part of a teacher training program where they said, " What we're going to do is we're going to prepare lessons and then someone will give the lesson and everybody in the group will critique it." So it's basically peer-to-peer critiquing of the lesson. And so I thought, you know, this is a really good approach to have everybody critiquing everybody else. It's a really good approach if you want to raise up a lot of mediocre to pretty good teachers, okay?
If you want to raise up great teachers, it's not getting critiqued from your peers that's going to make you great. It's studying from and learning from the best of all time. The best you can get your hands on, whether they're living or dead, whether they're close or far away. So once again, I'd encourage you, if you want to be a teacher, try to be the greatest possible teacher that you can just to serve the kingdom of God, not for your own glory or honor, but just this is so important.
It's the most important thing you can be doing is spreading the message of the kingdom and teaching the Word of God. You want to do it the best you possibly can.