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Tuesday 21 May 2019

How to Preach

All preachers are different
Every preacher appointed by God preaches differently from every other preacher. Just as the letters of the New Testament bear the stamp of their human authors, so preaching will - and must - bear the stamp of each human preacher. No clones in the pulpit please!

But, after spelling out the differences, there are many things that all preaching should have in common, and here are six.

(1) A prayerful dependence on the Holy Spirit
This is revealed in the preparation, "What do you want me to say?" and the delivery, "Take your words and use them powerfully to change minds, hearts and lives."

(2) A deep understanding of the Scriptures
No preaching can have power unless it comes from an accurate and deep understanding of the Scriptures. How can this happen? First, personal meditation on the text. Second, consulting as many commentaries as you can. (Every commentator themselves has consulted ten others, so by consulting even three commentators you have 30 wise men in your study - teachers whom God has given to the church). Third, second exegesis. Armed with the corrections that reading commentators brings, we study the text again.

(3) A deep understanding of Christian doctrine
This is software running in the background of the preacher's mind and heart. It's the preacher's Android platform. Doctrine is a broad understanding of the teaching of the Scriptures on all sorts of subjects so that a deep understanding of doctrine is the same as a deep understanding of the Scriptures. Which means that as the preacher understands the particular Scripture he is preaching from, a knowledge of the whole Scriptures is already helping him because it is in his mind.

(4) An organised journey
Nothing is more boring than a talk which turns out to be a long and seemingly endless collection of words! The audience need to know and feel where you are going. They need to have a start, an end, and a middle, at least. Whatever structure we use, there must be structure there. Without it, our listeners will think we have drifted off the path into the woods - and lost our way! Will he ever come back they think, and off to sleep they go!

(5) An interesting journey
On the subject of boring, no sermon should be boring. A preacher should raise and lower his voice, a preacher should use pauses and illustrations. None of them affected, all of them natural. This means the preacher is very interested in the world to which he preaches, the people to whom he preaches. He is constantly gathering anecdotes and illustrations storing them away for use at some future date. All good preachers are squirrels.

(6) A Gospel journey
Finally, somewhere in the preaching of God's Word, from wherever in the Scriptures, should emerge the Gospel of Jesus Christ, or at least some part of the Gospel. It is a great mistake to shoehorn in an artificial way every aspect of the Gospel into every sermon. Soon every sermon will sound the same. But since Jesus taught the two on the way to Emmaus that every Scripture in the Old Testament points to Him, we should find no problem discovering grace and mercy and salvation through Jesus Christ everywhere in the Scriptures.

One mark of a true New Testament Church is that preaching happens there. Without preaching the congregation drifts into error, follows the world, lives ungodly lives. They lose the joy of salvation and the hope of eternal life.

If no preaching happens at your place, leave it today - I have no hesitation saying that - and find a preaching church. 


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