The Privilege of Preaching

It’s been an unspeakable privilege to be able to preach from time to time during my internship in England.  I’ve preached over half a dozen sermons now and each of them have brought me to my knees physically and spiritually.  Nothing has ever made me feel less sufficient than the awesome privilege of preaching.  To act as a herald, a messenger, of THE good news is a humbling and weighty task, and the challenge of handling the Word of God rightly is as difficult as it is necessary.

But what has struck me as I’ve prepared to preach more recently is the undeniable privilege that it is to preach.  Good preaching requires a level of study, a depth of meditation, and a reserve of conviction that is unparalleled by any other form of teaching I’ve experienced.  We know that preaching is powerful, but what I’ve come to realize is the power which preaching wields in the heart of the preacher.  More often than not I find myself thinking that if nothing else, I have found myself broken and blessed by the process of preparing, and if God chooses to use that preparation to bless others then so much the better!

I just wanted to post these few thoughts about preaching as my time in England is quickly drawing to a close.  I have a mere 50 days left on this side of the pond, and it’s been a wonderful experience.  There is no doubt in my mind though that England will always have a place in my heart because it was here on this island that I cut my teeth as a preacher.

For those of you who have asked, the last two sermons I’ve preached are now available if you’d like to listen to them.  These are the last sermons I’ll preach for my internship in England.  The first was a sermon I preached on Monday at the Yorkshire Reformed Minister’s Fraternal up in Leeds.  It was on Psalm 85 and was entitled “Will You Not Revive Us Again?”  The second sermon was preached last Sunday evening at Sheffield Presbyterian Church on Mark 10:46-52 and was entitled “Take Heart, He is Calling You”

Some Simple Sermons

I can honestly say that I never fully appreciated Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 2:3 until I started preaching a few months ago.  In that passage Paul says, “And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling”.  As I’ve preached recently I’ve had my fair share of weakness, fear, and much trembling.  To be honest this has been something of a surprise for me.  I’ve been teaching for years now, and whether I’m speaking to 6 or 60 I almost never feel any sort of nervousness.

But preaching, of course, is different from teaching.  In teaching you come from a position of strength, in preaching, from a position of weakness.  In teaching you come to inform, in preaching, to reform.  As one friend said to me recently, “Preaching makes us weak because what we preach first points at ourselves.”  In teaching we can be somewhat detached, and what we say doesn’t always cut us to the quick in the way preaching tends to.  I’ve never felt as weak as when I come to preach.  Yet it’s also in these opportunities that I’m learning how to lean on the Lord in whole new ways.

I’ve recently uploaded some new audio to the Teaching & Preaching page of the blog.  There’s an Overview of Exodus I taught for a midweek meeting, as well as the sermons I recently preached at East Hull Presbyterian Church.  The morning sermon was called “Grace, Godliness, & Glory” from Titus 2:11-14, and the evening message was entitled, “Yet I will Rejoice in the Lord” from Habakkuk 3:17-19.  As Paul says elsewhere, may God’s strength be made perfect in my weakness.