Preaching in High Definition

Similes, comparisons using “like” and “as,” also produce images in the hearer’s memory. To say that “Jezebel’s sneer bore into Ahab’s pride like a dentist’s drill” immediately resonates with people’s experience and brings them to understand Ahab’s response.

Calvin Miller argues that, “Image-driven preaching has very little to do with our way of preaching and more to do with our way of seeing.”⁴ We have to be able to see the biblical situation ourselves before we can find adequate images to project that picture for our people.

As many writers have observed before, Jesus constantly employed metaphors and similes to connect with His audiences. He likened Himself to a door, a good shepherd, the Way, Truth and Life. He compared the Kingdom of God to a net, seed sowed, a small mustard seed, a treasure in a field, a pearl of great price. We would do well to follow His example.

Depend on the Holy Spirit

Learning to see and preach in high definition does not minimize our dependence on the Holy Spirit; it enhances it. The more we understand about the Scriptures, the larger our task looms before us as we enter the pulpit. The best of our eloquence cannot bring the listener fully into contact with the biblical experience. Too, many of our listeners are, as Jim Shaddix put it, HD TVs without the HD receiver/tuners needed to accomplish the HD experience. Shaddix, speaking to the chapel at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, declared that in order to get a high-definition vision of God and His glory, we must look through the person of Jesus Christ.

Similarly, only when we preach in the power and inspiration of the Holy Spirit can we bring the biblical setting into high definition for our hearers. HD preaching is not merely converting the ancient text into images the modern hearer can understand, it relies on the Spirit of the Living God to bring the Bible to life in the preaching experience. Only He can produce the spiritual transformation that is the goal of true preaching.

Guided and empowered by the Spirit of God, preachers can come to the Holy Text with a mind to study, a heart to understand and a voice to proclaim the eternal Message with greater clarity and resolution.

1. Wayne McDill, The 12 Essential Skills for Great Preaching (Nashville: Broadman, 1994), p. 44.

2. Robert Smith, Doctrine that Dances (Nashville: B&H Publishing, 2008), p. 76.

3. Ibid. p. 86.

4. Calvin Miller, Marketplace Preaching (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1995), p. 88.