The Pastor and His Preaching

THE PASTOR AND PREACHING

Today’s church is in need of preachers that have the desire to preach the whole counsel of God’s word. He must be one that desires to preach expositional through a bible text, living out what he preaches through conviction and repentance, and preach what he believes to be the true word of God with passion and authority. In order that God’s name will be lifted high with praise and glory given to God alone.

The man of God who is a faithful expositor of the text he is preaching will be one who rightly divides the word of truth, but this will be impossible if he does not believe that all of scripture in infallible, inerrant, and sufficient. In other words, he must have a high view of scripture in order to be faithful to preaching the whole counsel of God. But this is not all; he must also believe the scripture is potent, that is, it can penetrate the soul, and is alive. He must believe that the word of God has the power to transform anything (Armstrong, 2001, 83).

Next, the expositor of God’s holy writ must understand that apostolic preaching itself was expositional. In fact, Paul’s charge to Timothy was, “Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching” (1 Tim. 4:13 ESV). This is an example that the early church took part in the public reading of scripture as well as expositing the scripture. This means that any other kind of preaching is an abnormality. Also, anyone who has done any church history at all, and looks at the way the reformers from the past preached, knows that the only form they used was biblical expository preaching (Armstrong, 2001, 84).

Lastly, the preacher who uses the expository method will have the following advantages: (1.) He will preach texts that he would never preach or normally avoid. (2.) He will never have to fret about what to preach on Sunday. (3.) Systematic biblical exposition helps to grow you in theology. (4.) It keeps you subject to the text. (5.) Gives you the confidence to preach with conviction. (6.) Gives you the confidence that when the word is given the Holy Spirit speaks (Armstrong, 2001, 85).

First, as the man of God is preparing to preach the word of God he must consider his character. He must consider the person he is before the flock of God and how he is handling the word of God. His inner life must be affected by the Holy Spirit. In other words, he must be applying the texts of God’s word to his life before he can deliver it faithfully to the hearers and sincerely expects them to respond. Armstrong writes it this way, “Biblical exposition is enhanced when the preacher invites the Holy Spirit to apply the text to his own soul and ethical conduct so that the preacher is sympathetic to and humbly pursues the application of the text to his own life” (Armstrong, 2001, 86).

Second, the preaching of God’s word must come from the expositors soul. The reason is because there is nothing greater or more powerful than when the word of God is preached from a man whose heart is molded and sanctified by the Holy Spirit. Armstrong says, “This is what I believe needs to routinely happen to the preacher as he prepares God’s word, so that the message comes through his whole intellectual and moral being. When this happens he is ready to preach” (Armstrong, 2001, 88).

Last, the man of God must be himself. One of the greatest dangers is trying to be someone you are not. It is fine to have preachers that you have come to trust and enjoy their preaching, but you must refrain from emulating them in the pulpit at all cost. The preacher must realize that God has given him his own personality which he is to use effectively for communicating the truths of God. Moreover, is because people can see through a fake. This is not to say that a preacher can have bad mannerisms that need to be fleshed out. This can be helped by constructive criticism by someone that you trust, but never under any circumstances should you try to thwart your personality to be someone else (Derek Prime and Alistair Begg, 2004, 146).

If there is a missing ingredient in most preachers today it would be Scriptural passion. Most of the passion exemplified in the pulpit is bogus. Most preachers define passion as jumping up and down, flailing their arms, or running around the pulpit. Some think that the louder you preach even to the point of being out of breath and yelping is passion. However, this is not the passion that we should have.

The passion the preacher should have is a passion that is driven from the deep conviction that the truth he is proclaiming is from the throne of God. For instance, note the words of Paul, “because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. You know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake” (1 Thess. 1:5 ESV). Paul was not talking about the conviction of the hearers, but his own. The preacher that does not have this kind of passion is not preaching. Thus, the preacher must preach the word of God with deep conviction, but not trying to go outside the confines of his personality. He must preach the truth as the Holy Spirit has gifted him with the utmost blood earnestness for God’s name to be lifted high and His glory alone (Armstrong, 2001, 90).