Over the last few months, we have been going through this article by Dr. James O. Davis. Last month, we looked at what makes up the substance of a sermon. As we progress along that thought, Dr. Davis takes a closer look at the role of the Holy Spirit in all of this.
The unseen spiritual world is just as resourceful, if not more so, than the seen world of exegetical exactitude in the evangelist’s or pastor’s office. The same Holy Spirit who moved on the apostles and prophets of old desires to illuminate our minds today. John MacArthur writes:
“No clear understanding of Scripture leading to powerful preaching is possible without the Spirit’s work of illumination. … Powerful preaching occurs only when a Spirit-illumined man of God expounds clearly and compelling God’s Spirit-inspired revelation in Scripture to a Spirit-illumined congregation. (102-103)”
When we preach the Gospel, the message is not only verbalized, vocalized and visualized, but it is vitalized. The Holy Spirit turns a manuscript into a message and sermon into a sword. We often underestimate the role and goals of the Holy Spirit and overestimate our skills and gifts in ministry. I have presentations that were exegetically sound but as dead as old, King Tut!
There is a difference between inspiration and illumination. Inspiration is the process by which men “inscripturated” the revelation of God. The Apostle Paul needed inspiration in order to write the revelation of God (things previously unknown). While inspiration was the needed vehicle to reveal eternal truth from God to us in the Bible, illumination is needed today to fully ascertain the correct interpretation and application of a particular periscope. The anointing or illumination of the Holy Spirit teaches the meaning of the Word of God (1 Jn. 2:20, 27). The Word of God comes alive for the minister when illumination becomes a part of the preparation of effective evangelistic sermons.
Lloyd Perry warns the preacher with the following:
“A sermon may be constructed after the best models; it may conform to all the rules of homiletics; the text may be suitable and fruitful; the plan may be faultless; the execution may discover genius and judgment; there may be accurate analysis and strong reasoning, proof and motive, solidarity and beauty, logic and persuasion, argument direct and indirect, perspicuity, purity, correctness, propriety, precision, description, antithesis, metaphor, allegory, comparison; motives from goodness, motives from happiness, motives from self-love, appeals to the sense of the beautiful, the sense of right, to the affections, the passions, the emotions; a sermon may be all this, and yet that very sermon, even though it fell from the lips of a prince of pulpit oratory, were as powerless in the renewal of a soul as in raising the dead, if unaccompanied by the omnipotent energy of the Holy Spirit.”
It is both important and imperative that the preacher not underestimate the role of the Holy Spirit during the preparation and the proclamation of the message. It is interesting to note the main sin in the Old Testament was the rejection of God the Father while the main sin in the New Testament was the rejection of Christ the Son. Is it possible that the main sin of the contemporary Church is the rejection of the Third Person, the Holy Spirit?
In the ministry in general and preaching in particular, the pendulum usually sways from one extreme to the other. On the one side is “escapism, and on the other side is “extremism.” In other words, preachers tend to ignore the role of the Holy Spirit in ministry or tend to go overboard to the point of the manipulation of people. The Holy Spirit is a gift, not a toy! There needs to be biblical balance both in the private area of preparation and the public area of proclamation.
Only the Holy Spirit can transform a manuscript into a message. Only the Holy Spirit can bring together our text, topic, theme, thoughts, and thrust to eternally change lives. There is a difference between the “filling” of the Spirit and the “anointing” of the Spirit. For example, Jesus was filled with the Spirit from conception, but He was anointed by the Spirit before He began His public ministry (Lk. 1:35, 2:52; Ac 10:38). There is a great difference between having the Holy Spirit as a resident and having the Holy Spirit as president!
Join us next month as we further explore what this anointing of the Holy Spirit looks like. What are your experiences with this? What would you say to other pastors on this issue?
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