Transcription
So Proverbs 25 says, "The purpose in a man's heart is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out." And it strikes me that if you're going to love people, you have to listen to people. There's obvious commands to be listeners, to be slow to speak, quick to listen. But I think pastorally, if you're really going to engage people and really understand what it is they're dealing with, you need to learn to listen, and to listen carefully. The words of someone's mouth are a window into their heart. And so, not only what they say, but how they say it, and how they present their facts—all of these things are ways of understanding a person and what it is they're dealing with. So we need to learn to be listeners.
And in particular, I think we want to learn to listen to those who disagree with us, those who are struggling, those who misunderstand doctrine. We want to listen carefully to what it is they're saying, so that we can appropriately direct them.
I have heard very few criticisms of Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, and the only one I think that has maybe some slight merit is that, being so brilliant and being so capable at assessing problems in people's lives and being so busy, he could be rather quick to bring his diagnosis, his spiritual diagnosis, into the lives of people. And I think we as pastors often face a similar temptation. We listen for a little bit, we think we know what the problem is, and we want to apply some gospel balm to fix it. But it'll serve us well to learn to listen and find out the questions behind the questions and what people are truly dealing with, and then begin to draw out from them what the motivations of the heart are, and then how the gospel might apply to that.