What is good preaching? – part 2
Posted by Clinton on November 16, 2008
It has been a while since I have updated this blog. I have no particular reason for the hiatus, other than I stopped blogging. However, I am committing to blogging again, so I need to finish what I started in discussing good preaching. In the last entry, I talked about being led by the Spirit. Preaching without the Spirit is not preaching, it is rhetoric or oration, but not preaching. I believe the Apostle Paul agrees with me here, listen to what he said to the Corinthian church:
1 Corinthians 2:3-5 (NASB95)
“I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling, and my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God.”
Another essential element to good preaching is the Bible, meaning that preaching must be biblical to be good preaching. This would seen obvious, but much of the church’s preaching today is devoid of a primary biblical focus. We hear sermons that are grounded in philosophy, self-help, and pyscology but not Holy Scripture. In themselves all these disciplines can be useful to preaching as tools, but they are never to be the focus of preaching. Scripture must always be the focus of preaching. Why? I believe this is so because the Holy Scriptures are God’s words, and God’s words bring life. I also believe that good preaching must be biblical because the Holy Scripture is the only reliable source of absolute truth.
