The Power of the Spirit in Preaching

All truly effective preaching shares one thing in common: it is attended by the power of the Holy Spirit. Today, Sinclair Ferguson focuses on the crucial yet often-neglected ministry of the Spirit through His preached Word.

It’s Friday today on Things Unseen, and all week we’ve been reflecting on the subject of preaching—not in any systematic way, in a kind of random way, but also because preaching is important if our souls are going to be fed and nourished. And so, we’ve thought about preaching for the last few days, and chiefly to encourage us all to pray for those who preach and to pray for ourselves as we receive preaching.

Yesterday, we were reflecting on the way God gifts our preachers differently from each other. That reminds me of some words written by an English merchant who, on a visit to Scotland, heard three of Scotland’s greatest preachers: David Dickson, Robert Blair, and Samuel Rutherford. He wrote that he had sat under the ministry of a well-favored, proper old man with a long beard, “Who showed me all my heart.” That was David Dickson. Then he said he heard a sweet, majestic-looking man, “Who showed me the majesty of God.” That was Robert Blair. And then he heard a little fair man, “Who showed me the loveliness of Christ.” And that was Samuel Rutherford. Three great preachers, but very different men with different burdens from the Lord. And that’s it, isn’t it? The same Spirit but a diversity of operations. And like that merchant, we should rejoice in it.

But with the diversity, there’s a common thread, isn’t there? And it ought to be more than the fact that a preacher’s sermon meets the standards of his preaching professor’s preaching grid. I remember Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones saying that he felt he could forgive almost any failure in a preacher as long as the preaching brought him into the presence of God. Now, what does that? I think the answer is, at least in part, what our forefathers used to call unction.

Now, what’s unction? It’s the work of the Holy Spirit on a preacher as he preaches that has the effect of bringing us before the face of God, right into His presence. Another great Scottish preacher, John Livingston, put it this way. He said: “There is sometimes some what in preaching that cannot be ascribed either to the matter or expression, and cannot be described what it is, or from whence it cometh, but with a sweet violence it pierceth into the heart and affections, and comes immediately from the Lord. But if there be any way to attain to such thing, it is by a heavenly disposition of the speaker.”

I think it’s fairly obvious that unless you’ve experienced this, it’s not really possible to know what Livingston was talking about. And as Livingston, who had experienced this in a very remarkable way, as he knew, it’s not easily defined. And perhaps these are the two reasons that in our own time, there’s been almost a campaign in some quarters to deny or even demean this element of unction in preaching.

I think there’s one reason why that’s a mistake. It’s this: the Lord Jesus needed unction in order to preach. Remember His famous words in His home synagogue in Nazareth, when He was given the scroll of Isaiah to read, and read Isaiah 61:1–2: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,
because He has anointed Me to proclaim good news to the poor and liberty to the captives, recovering of sight to the blind, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” And you’ll remember how He said, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:16–21).

Thomas Goodwin once wrote that God had only one Son, and He made Him a preacher. And if He, the Son of God incarnate, our Lord Jesus Christ, needed the anointing of the Holy Spirit in order to preach with authority—and as John says, He received this Spirit without measure—don’t you think that our preachers today must also need the presence and power of the Holy Spirit and His anointing if their words are going to have an effect greater than ordinary human speech? Isn’t that what enabled Paul to say in 1 Corinthians 2:4–5 that despite his own personal weakness and fear, his preaching was not in plausible words of wisdom to make up for his own inadequacies, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, in order that our faith might rest not in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God?

So, I want to end this week’s podcast with an appeal to you today, once again, to pray about the preaching that we hear, to pray about the preaching we’ll hear this coming Lord’s Day, and to pray for our preachers. I’m sure we don’t do that as often as we should or as much as we need to. So, let’s pray for the coming of the Holy Spirit, lest James’ words be true, as we’ve reflected on before, that we have not because we ask not. So, have a blessed Lord’s Day, and I hope you’ll join us again next week on Things Unseen.