The Preacher's Preparation

I remember my homiletical mentor, Dr. Stephen Ofer, telling me that, in his opinion, a preacher was as tall in the pulpit as he was long on his knees in prayer. I'll never forget that. And when I was conducting research for my biography on J. Sidlow Baxter, as I traveled around the country interviewing those who knew him, they all said the same thing.

They said, when Dr. Baxter entered the pulpit, it seemed as if he had just left the presence of God. My message today, friends, is entitled, The Preacher's Preparation, and my text can be found in the Book of Acts. You can turn in your Bibles there now, friends.

We will be in chapter 4 and verse 13. I believe this passage of scripture sums up what many of us need today in regard to our preaching. Here now is the word of God, and may the Spirit of the Lord attend the reading of His holy word.

Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marveled, and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus. In other words, it was not the eloquence of their preaching that got these people's attention. It was obvious to all who heard them that they were just plain men, fishermen, without formal education.

But what got their attention was not their homiletically perfect three-point sermons, but the stark fact that you could immediately tell that these men, when they began to preach, had a divine authority about them, for they knew Jesus well. When you saw the title of my message, perhaps you assumed that this was a preaching class on homiletics or on expository preaching. I'm a big believer of expository preaching because it was Stephen Olford who taught me how to preach.

I was among the first graduating class of his school of expository preaching, and I have an earned fellowship with Olford Ministries because of that fruitful time there, sitting under the tutelage of the great expositor, Dr. Olford. But what I learned most from him was not so much in how to prepare a sermon, but in how to prepare the man. Stephen Olford, bless his memory, drilled it into me to take the necessary time to stay in the presence of God in prayer, on my knees, so as to have the anointing of God in the pulpit.

We put too much emphasis today, friends, on sermon preparation, and paid too little attention, too little regard to preparing the messenger. It was not the eloquence of a doctor of divinity that gripped a sixteen-year-old troll Spurgeon and led to his conversion, but an unschooled shoe-cobbler who filled in for the missing pastor because of a snowstorm. And it was the simple message from this simple man, from Isaiah, of look unto the Lord and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth, that this simple preacher told Spurgeon, it is not hard to look, a child can look, look to Jesus and be saved.

And Spurgeon later remarked, his words penetrated my heart as I looked and looked at my blessed Savior. I had been trying to do a number of things, but he pointed me to the one who saved me. And I like the words, friends, of E. M. Bounce, who wisely wrote on preachers and prayer.

Listen to his words, prayer in the preacher's life, in the preacher's study, in the preacher's pulpit must be a conspicuous and an all-impregnating force and an all-coloring ingredient. It must play no secondary part, be no mere coating. To him it is given to be with his Lord all night in prayer, the preacher, to train himself in self-denying prayer, is charged to look to his Master who, rising up a great while before day, he went out and departed into a solitary place and there prayed, the preacher's study ought to be a closet, a bethel, an altar, a vision, and a ladder, that every thought might ascend heavenward ere it went manward, that every part of the sermon might be scented by the air of heaven and made serious because God was in the study.

I agree, friends, with E. M. Bounce, that the preacher's preparation begins in the closet of prayer. Oh, how desperately we need men of prayer today in our pulpits, men who know their God and who stand fearless before men and who can boldly proclaim God's message to man with thus saith the Lord. Let us pray.