Eden: Thank you so much, Dr. York, for taking time to do this. It really means the world to me and I’m excited to talk to you.
Dr. Hershael York: I am really delighted to do it.
Eden: Well usually I like to get to know whoever I’m talking to by asking them, what are a couple of things that bring you joy?
Dr. Hershael York: Number one: Jesus. Number two: Tanya.
Eden: Nice! Tell us a little about Tanya.
Dr. Hershael York: Okay. Tanya is—oh, you don’t have enough time. Tanya is the best person I know, the best Christian I know. It really was love at first sight from the first date to getting engaged with 13 days.
Eden: Wow! That’s awesome!
Dr. Hershael York: And everybody around us was freaking out. But I was 20; she was 19. I had just gone on staff—in fact, it was my first day on staff—at Ashland Avenue Baptist Church in Lexington (Kentucky). That’s the church where Tanya grew up. And I mean, it was pretty instant and 42 years, two kids, and five grandchildren later, we’re just really grateful that the Lord put us together.
Eden: Wow. That is so precious. And I have so many questions, but that seems like such a wonderful gift from the Lord. What are some things that you guys especially like doing together now?
Dr. Hershael York: Yeah, we love to travel a lot. We go neat places, and we sort of found several happy places that we like to go. We’re leaving Wednesday to Manaus, Brazil. My dad was a missionary there when I was little, and I’ve sort of been going back my whole life. So, we’re going there Wednesday for a couple of weeks. We love the big island of Hawaii. We go to Zihuantanejo in Mexico. Have you ever seen Shawshank Redemption?
Eden: I have not, but I know many people that love it.
Dr. Hershael York: At the very end of Shawshank Redemption, that’s where they go, Zihuantanejo, Mexico. And that’s sort of its claim to fame. But it’s a little fishing village on the Pacific coast. We love that. And we go to Israel every couple of years, and we just enjoy hanging out.
Eden: Yeah. Oh, I love that. And you said first thing you love is Jesus. When did you put your faith in Christ? When did he start to work in your heart?
Dr. Hershael York: Well, when I was five, I really came under conviction of sin (John 16:7-11). I’m talking white-knuckle, I am lost, I am a sinner. My dad was a pastor, so I heard the gospel from my earliest age. But I was under conviction for over a year. And when I was seven, I trusted the Lord. And you know, I’ve never had a serious doubt about what happened that night. I’m 63 and you know, it was real, and I knew it was real then and I’ve never doubted it since that the Lord saved me that night when I was seven years old.
Eden: Wow, that is wonderful. I resonate with that. I was also saved when I was seven years old. I resonate with that coming under conviction because every time I was alone, I would come under this weight of, I’m not right with God. And I know that I would go to hell if I stood before him.
Dr. Hershael York: That was it! I’ll tell you the story. So, the church my dad pastored, a guest preacher was preaching that night, and the lights went out. There was an electrical storm. All the lights went out. Men in the church went out and turned their headlights on to shine into the church. And I’m coming under conviction. The preacher just kept preaching. And I start crying and my mother turns around. I was never a kid that was like scared of the dark. And she sort of was surprised and she said, “it’ll be okay.” And I went, “no, it won’t, it won’t be okay.” And she said, you know, “the lights will come back on” and like, yeah, it’s not about the lights. And that was the night I came under conviction and labored under that incredible anxiety of separation from God for over a year.
When I talk to children, this is always what I look for when they say they love Jesus. Those are wonderful things. I call those steps toward Jesus. But man, when they’re aware of their sin, to me, that’s the marker—that they are sinners and Jesus had to die for their sin.
Eden: What a kindness of the Holy Spirit to keep you under that conviction for so long.
Dr. Hershael York: Absolutely. Yes.
Eden: Well, is there a part of Scripture that is especially precious to you or has become especially precious to you in the current season you’re in?
Dr. Hershael York: So many. I love Second Corinthians. I think it’s Paul’s most artistic letter and, on many levels, also his most raw. His honesty, you know, about “despairing even of life itself. But this was so that we might not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead” (2 Corinthians 1:8-9)? Boy, that’s the thing. We’re not just trusting in a God who helps us in our trouble, but in a God who raises the dead. And, you know, you read the catalog of all that Paul suffered in 2 Corinthians 11. It’s just incredible and yet—his trust in the Lord. So, I’m preaching through Romans right now, but 2 Corinthians really speaks to my heart, probably like no other book.
Eden: Tell me a little bit about your ministry. So, I know that you are a professor at Southern (Seminary), is that correct? And you also pastor your church.
Dr. Hershael York: Yeah. I’m a professor of preaching at Southern Seminary. I’m also the dean of the school of theology and I’m the senior pastor of the Buck Run Baptist Church in Frankfort, Kentucky. So I teach a full load, I’m the dean, and I’m a pastor. And in my spare time, I’m a grandfather.
Eden: Wonderful. Is there an aspect of any of those roles that especially brings you joy?
Dr. Hershael York: I love the classroom, I love students, and I love being a pastor. I love being a grandfather, especially, that’s really a joy. So, yeah, I’ll be honest with you, I’m just an incredibly blessed person. I call myself God’s spoiled child. I just feel like my life is incredible and the Lord knows what a wimp I am. So, he gave me the easiest woman to live with and the easiest church to pastor. I get joy from a lot of things and especially those things.
Eden: That is wonderful. A lot of the people that we assume are coming to our website and looking at our content are not people that grew up in a church environment. We’re hoping to speak mostly to newer believers. And so, as you, I see, have taught a lot on preaching and on pastoral ministry, I was wondering if you could speak to someone who is new to the church and give them some guidelines. So, if they’re going to church and they’re looking for a church and they want to know, what should I look for in a pastor, what’s some advice that you would give them?
Dr. Hershael York: A pastor that loves Jesus and knows and teaches the Bible is a wonderful combination. And that really is what I would look for in a pastor is just to see, first of all, are they committed to the Word of God as the true and inerrant Word of God? That they really do believe it, and they’re going to teach it as it is?
Because frankly, if the Bible is merely a springboard from which we launch into our own opinions, we don’t even need the Bible. But if the Bible is God’s Word, then a faithful pastor is always going to be serving the Word of God. He’s not merely telling you what it says, he’s teaching you how to understand it.
So, I think a really good pastor is doing two things at once. He’s explaining and teaching the Word of God, but he’s modeling the way you read it and understand it, the connections you make so that you’re learning how the Bible reveals Christ and how it teaches us about salvation. So the very first thing we want to look for is that you’re finding a pastor and a church that really do believe and teach the Word of God.
The other thing that I would look for in a pastor is what I would consider genuine humility. You know, a pastor has to be bold, certainly, and stand for truth. But I think God uses broken vessels best. Someone who really has been a recipient of God’s grace is going to help others discover and enjoy God’s grace. And I think a good pastor has a sense of marvel at what God has done. And they’re really preaching from the overflow of their own relationship with Jesus Christ.
And I think you know it when you hear it. I think you know the difference in someone who’s merely reciting facts about the Bible and someone who’s in love with Jesus and is really excited about the Word of God and wants you to have that same kind of relationship with Jesus too.
Eden: That is wonderfully helpful. And I think, like you said, you can tell from how someone talks or what they talk about, what they love. And I think if you hear someone preaching God’s Word and they love Jesus, that love has to come out. Just like your love for Tanya comes out in the first conversation.
Dr. Hershael York: Well, that’s exactly right. I really don’t want anybody to be around me 15 minutes without knowing the two loves of my life. That’s going to come out. It bubbles out.
You know, in Luke 24 on the road to Emmaus, Jesus was opening the Scriptures and showing them these things about himself—why the Messiah had to die and rise again the third day. And after Jesus left them, those disciples looked at each other and they said, “didn’t our hearts burn within us when he was opening up to us the Scriptures?” (Luke 24:32). I really think good preaching does that, that sense of overflow. That, man, when he taught the Word of God, you could tell he loved it. He loved Jesus, and he loved showing the Word of God. There’s just such a joy in it, and I don’t think you can fake that. That’s the real thing bubbling up. And I think that’s what someone needs to look for when they find a church is, show me a pastor who’s in love with Jesus and loves teaching the Word of God.
Eden: Wonderful. That reminds me of my youth pastor, actually. His name is Joe, and I still think he’s one of the best preachers I’ve ever heard. Instead of doing lots of fun things, he was like, you need God’s Word. He would preach to us two times a week, once on Wednesdays when we had youth group, and once on Sundays. I think that was only for a season. But you could just tell that whatever he had studied was just in his bones and he just loved Jesus so much. (You can hear some of Joe’s sermons here!)
Dr. Hershael York: You can tell the difference. Last week I spoke at a Christian camp, 800 students there. I’m just going to be honest with you. I’m not funny. I’m not entertaining. I think I’m nice, but I just gave them the Word. I don’t do jokes. I’m not against them, I just don’t do them well.
But those kids were dialed in. The room was completely silent. You get 800 teenagers silent, listening to the Bible, you know that’s the Word of God at work. You know, the thing about the Word of God is—it is itself performative. It’s not merely informative. We’re not just learning about it, but the Word of God itself is used by God, the Holy Spirit, to enable us to do the things it tells us to do. You know, the Word of God refreshes our soul. The Word of God is a lamp to our feet (Psalm 119:105). And when we hear the Word of God preached, God takes that word and applies it in such a way that he is enabling us to follow Christ, to model him, to live like him, and to do the things that his Word tells us to do. And so, the more we’re in the Word, the more able we are to fulfill what the Word commands us to do.
Eden: Amen. Which also means that as a listener, you know the power of God’s Word. You can feel it. It does something in your heart, and it changes your mind. And so, if you’re listening to solid, biblical, Jesus-centered preaching, you’re going to be impacted by it if you’re listening to the Word.
Well, I think something that I’ve run across recently is just how much we can confuse knowledge about Jesus with true love for Jesus. And so, if someone is kind of new to the church and they think, wow, this person who’s preaching really knows the Bible and they haven’t quite had to discern those things on their own very much, what are some red flags you could give as options for what might be a sign of a preacher that you would want to stay away from?
Dr. Hershael York: Yeah. You know, you can talk a lot about Jesus without really knowing Jesus. I mean, the Bible itself says this in the book of James. James puts it like this, “You believe there’s one God. You do well. The demons also believe and tremble!” (James 2:19). James is warning us that there is a head knowledge, an agreement to the facts of the truth of the Bible without being changed by it. Even the demons know that the Bible is true. And so they could agree.
You could have a very orthodox sermon describing truth about God or the church or even salvation. But it’s a sermon that even the devil can agree with because it’s merely describing the fact of something. I think a red flag is when you hear a sermon that is only about the do’s and the don’ts or the facts. But there’s nothing about a relationship. There’s nothing about genuinely applying the truth so that we are conformed to the image of Jesus Christ (Romans 8:29). So, you know, even though the Bible is full of moral commands, our primary concern is not morality. I mean that is a concern, but it’s not our primary concern. Our primary concern is relationship.
Imagine if my relationship with my wife were simply about not committing adultery. Well, I certainly don’t believe I should commit adultery, but there’s so much more to marriage than simply not committing adultery. There’s love, there’s service, there’s kindness, there’s intimacy. I mean, if I only taught about marriage by saying don’t commit adultery, well, it could still be a very unfulfilling marriage if all I did was keep that one command. Christianity is like that. You can hear preaching that says, do this, don’t do this, don’t do that. It’s almost like you keep a list on your refrigerator door. Here’s all the do’s and the don’ts, and that makes me a Christian. And nothing could be further from the truth.
There are often people who are very moral and good as the world looks at them but there’s still no relationship with Christ. And what we desperately need more than anything is to know him and the power of his resurrection (Philippians 3:10). So you really want to be aware of any kind of a moralism that is divorced from relationship to Jesus Christ, and you really want to listen for someone who is pointing me to know Jesus, to know the power of the gospel in my life, and that our obedience to him is a result of our love for him, not because we’re afraid of what he might do to us, or things won’t go well, but because we love him. That’s the real motive for holiness and for growth.
Eden: Wow. That is very helpful. Thank you for answering that. And I hope that that ends up being very helpful to someone that’s listening.
Dr. Hershael York: I hope so.
Eden: I love at Bibles.net that we’re all about just that. The basis of the Christian faith is not rules. A lot of people think that the Bible is just a moral guidebook. And (really) it’s a book that points us to a person that we deeply love and that has loved us first (1 John 4:19).
Well, we like to ask the people we interview for a book recommendation. We love to give all sorts of media recommendations on our site, but is there a book that has been especially transformative in your life that you would suggest to an open audience?
Dr. Hershael York: Oh, man, I’ve had several. Most of the books that were transformative were books that I got when I was really young. And they really were eye openers to me.
John Stott’s book, The Cross of Christ, was one of the most formative books in my life. Just an incredible explanation of the gospel. Stott had a tremendous impact on me. I read everything he wrote. His book on preaching, Between Two Worlds, was very, very formative in my life as well. But that, The Cross of Christ, I would put that book in anybody’s hands and say, “read this.” This really explains the gospel and gives you a love for Jesus and what he’s done for us. So that would probably be my number one.
Eden: Awesome, great. And any of those from your childhood would you recommend? We think those can be powerful too.
Dr. Hershael York: Well, you know, the ones that got me were ones—I don’t know that the typical person would be grabbed by them the same way I was. I grew up with a very different type of preaching, and the books that grabbed me the most were ones that changed my view of what preaching was: Walt Kaiser’s Toward an Exegetical Theology, D.A. Carson’s Exegetical Fallacies, and Stott’s Between Two Worlds, those really grab me.
J.I. Packer’s Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God was really, really important to me early on. It was sort of a life changing book.
Biographies in general, I will say. I’m just a voracious biography reader. You know, something like Andrew Roberts’s biography, Winston Churchill, I would tell anybody to read that and his book on George III is a tremendous biography. Even when I was a little kid, I read, I think, every biography in my school library. I just devoured them just to get a real hunger for reading and for reading the books about great lives. Taylor Branch’s three books on the civil rights movement, especially Parting the Waters about the civil rights movement in the Martin Luther King years, that was a tremendous benefit to me to read that. The chapter one of that book is about a guy named Vernon Johns, who was an African American Baptist preacher. And it introduced me to a whole genre of preaching that I was not familiar with.
So, I could go on and on about books. You know, books are a window on the world that are truly life changing.
Eden: Yes, yes. Well, those are some great recommendations in terms of The Cross of Christ. And if we have any more academically minded viewers, they might love some of those other ones that you suggested.
Well, Dr. York, thank you so much for your time today. It’s such a blessing to talk to you.
Dr. Hershael York: Thank you, Eden. It’s t such a kindness to get to meet you. And I thank God for what you’re doing and pray the Lord’s blessing on it, that it’ll be an incredible blessing to many people to come to your website.
Eden: Thank you so much for listening to our podcast today. If you enjoyed our conversation, I would encourage you to like or subscribe to our podcast so that you can hear the next conversation. And if something that you heard today spoke to your heart or got you thinking, I would encourage you to not let the day go by without talking to God about what’s on your mind. We believe that he loves you and that he’s pursuing you today about that love.