Pastor John recently led a Q&A session with the students of Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia.

Here's a question from one of the students.

Pastor John just want to say that it's an honor to speak to you today and thank you for your lecture earlier.

I'm a product of the new Calvinism movement, but I wanted to ask you more of a Pastor John type of question.

As an MDIS student and with the exceptional training that I'm getting here at WTS,

I struggle when I listen to sermons. I take out that end of red pin and it's not that I'm looking

for any sort of error, but it's like, I don't know, did you faithfully preach that text?

I find that that's a temptation for me. I don't think I'm the only one, but how do I control that?

I'm naturally a Berean, but I think sometimes I'm like a Berean on steroids.

So I just want to see, how can I control this? I don't want to be overly critical,

but I think it's important to some that I'm hearing too.

That's such a good question. I mean, I'm 68 and I tend that way. I mean, I listen that way to sermons.

So I have to preach to myself. Here's my answer for me,

and it is only an answer by grace at any given moment. That is, the answer works at any given moment

because of grace arriving at that moment. So a theoretical answer to your question right now

may have no effect on you whatsoever because grace isn't applying it at that moment.

To get that difference, having answers here and having it work in the moment of being

excessively critical aren't the same thing, but it helps to have answers because the Holy Spirit

then uses right theological thinking. So my answer is,

number one, it is a good thing to be discerning and to test all things and to

whole fast what is good. You cannot not assess preaching. All right? To be indifferent to error

in preaching is to be a bad listener. To be indifferent to sloppiness in preaching is to be a

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