Follow God’s Lead

Everything changes when, standing at the bend in the road, a preacher realizes that the Bible he holds in his hands is the collected sermons of God. That fact that God speaks sets him apart from all other deities.¹³ He proclaims a Triune speech to the world: God the Father speaks (Gen. 1:3); God the Son speaks (John 1:18); God the Spirit speaks (Acts 4:25). As Ramesh Richard has said, "The Bible is what God has made; sermons are what we make with what God has made."¹⁴ In other words, "The Bible is God preaching."¹⁵ This means that a preacher’s sermon is always "the second sermon, the first and last are those of the Holy Spirit, who first gave His Word and quickens it in the hearts of hearers."¹⁶

When preachers awake on the mountain and find themselves bewildered by the changing landscape, we must look again to God. God is the preacher’s hero. God is every generation’s preeminent professor of homiletics.

The Bible Is Our Homiletics Textbook

Consequently, we must revere the Bible as our primary homiletics text book. "To preach biblically means much more than to preach the truth of the Bible accurately. It also means to present that truth the way the biblical writers and speakers presented it."¹⁷ Faithful preaching accounts for both the truth and the style of the biblical text. What results is homiletic attention to both the matter and the manner of biblical communication. "Teachers of Scripture," Charles Spurgeon said, "cannot do better than instruct their fellows after the manner of the Scriptures."18

Preachers learn to determine what the text says (the content), but they also need to learn to identify the form in which the text says it (the instrument). Noticing the instrument that God has used to communicate Himself in a given biblical text does not enslave the preacher to a particular sermon form, but it does model how God preaches.

For example, consider Isaiah 55:1-2:

Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?

With concern for the content or matter of this text, the preacher parses the Hebrew, discovers word meanings, notices grammatical connections, handles cultural issues such as buying wine, and ultimately says what this text means.

But what if preachers learn to say what the text says with the resources the text provides? Then the preacher will notice the manner of the message as well. The manner of Isaiah 55:1-2 surfaces a style of direct and personal address. It offers a compelling invitation and utilizes searching questions, given in exclamation, and offered with the use of metaphorical language. A preacher learns from this text that God is not averse to sometimes preaching with a style that is direct, very personal, searching, exclamatory, invitational, and poetic.