I once heard Carl Trueman say something like, “Many a great thirty-minute sermon turned into a poor fifty-minute sermon.” You surely know what he means. Maybe the sermon had an illustration or two that proved overly detailed. Perhaps the preacher meandered down three or four rhetorical rabbit holes. On the other hand, he may have had just too large a text. Or he could have had far too many unneeded cross-references.

A Maxim to Remember

In one of my preaching lectures at RTS, Dallas, I give students a few “Proverbs for Preaching.” They all seek to encourage future preachers about how it normally goes behind the pulpit and in churches. The one proverb that seems to stick best, probably because I have to repeat it most often, goes like this: the congregation will forgive you for a lot if your sermon is short; they’ll forgive you for little if your sermon is long.

I’ve seen this truth played out so many times that it seems indisputable. When a message goes long (length, of course, is contextual), and you’ll find most church members can only think of one thing: the sermon’s girth. However, if the sermon is shorter, people will remark on various points of use. Even if the sermon is poor, they’ll conclude, “At least it was short!” It’s always better to leave the congregation wanting more than wishing they heard less.

Common Culprits

My earliest pastoral experience happened in a movement that believed hour-long sermons were proof of one’s ability. I watched and listened to countless sixty-minute-or-more messages. Rarely, if ever, did they keep the attention of ordinary Christians. Even if the pastor could preach that long, extraneous content invariably bloated the sermon. What are the common homiletical culprits that expand sermons? Three things come to mind.

• Lengthy illustrations. To illustrate is virtuous, but to over-illustrate can be disastrous. I once had to review the sermons of a preacher who wrote a much-used homiletical textbook. I discovered that his typical sermon was 55% illustrative material, with the other 45% belonging to explanation and application. His pattern is not as unusual as you might expect. Any sermon like this is not a sermon that illustrates a passage but a text attached to illustrations. Such a sermon will always lack power, for the power is found in the Spirit working through the Word.
• Cross-reference commentary. Some strands of homiletics encourage pastors to spread cross-references throughout the sermon to underscore various points of teaching. Sometimes that’s good, but it is rarely necessary. Sermons full of biblical texts that aren’t the actual text at hand create messages that are more systematic-theological in nature than biblical-theological. Use other Scripture to explain any hard-to-understand phrases in the pericope, for sure. But most of your sermon passages will be clear enough. Which leads to the third culprit . . .
• Excessive explanation. Even in non-Christian contexts, the text’s meaning is often obvious. Pastors can easily spend many minutes explaining a passage whose meaning is clear. Scripture is perspicuous, after all.  The true work is often not explaining what the passage means as much as it’s exhorting why the hearer must respond to it. I’m not belittling explanation. I’m only encouraging a sanctified instinct in preaching. The best preachers, on any given point, never say too much nor say too little.

Excise these culprits, and you’ll find a fifty-five-minute sermon shrinking automatically to a thirty-five-minute one (thirty to thirty-five minutes is probably best for most congregations).

More, Not Less

After explaining this to a friend years ago, he replied, “But our churches need more of the truth, not less!” I agreed—and still do. I only believe “more truth” doesn’t necessarily require longer sermons. Our churches don’t need longer sermons, but more sermons. But that’s a topic for a different day.

For now, let us all employ those twin towers of rhetoric—precision and concision—in preaching Christ. Doing that just might generate shorter sermons.

Earlier this week, while on a run with my children, we passed by a house that was clearly burning a friendly wood fire inside. The smell wafted out from the chimney and seasoned the trail before us. The scent immediately summoned memories of Christmases of years gone by spent at my grandparents’ home in Michigan. I have vivid memories of Grandpa Kuntzman regularly throwing a log on the fire, arranging it just right, and then poking and prodding the fire until it was fully aflame.

What our text tells us is that Christ’s church needs preachers who are lit with love for Christ (2 Cor. 5:14). We need heralds aflame with Christ and on fire to implore everyone, “Be reconciled to God.” Now, Dr. Dunson and Reformed Theological Seminary cannot put the fire in the homiletical fireplace—that’s the Spirit’s work. But they can, and must, throw logs on the fire, poking it and stoking it through their prayers, counsel, and instruction. They must do it because training men to preach the Gospel is one of the most essential jobs on earth.

On the chance that you don’t yet agree with that last statement, let’s pull together the two proofs in our passage.

Training men to preach the Gospel is one of the most important jobs on earth because of . . .

The place of God’s voice in preaching. When God’s preacher speaks, God speaks. When Christ is proclaimed through the preacher, none other than Christ is preaching. This is why Paul can say in Ephesians 2:17 that Christ, who never preached physically in Ephesus, nonetheless, “Came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near.” If you’re a Christian, this means you must have a proper view of the preacher. Some of you need to decrease your view of the preacher; you’ve put him on too high a pedestal. He is not a messiah; he is God’s authorized messenger. He is not a savior; he is God’s ordained servant. But, some of you must have the humility of repentance and raise your esteem for preaching. Instead of responding to Christ in the preached word, you’re too busy ripping the pastor apart in your mind. If you understand our text correctly, that means you’re tearing the very word of Christ asunder. Such a truth should cause you to tremble.

The passion required of God’s servant in preaching. “I appeal,” and, “I implore,” Paul says. Such passionate pleading is only needed if the message is that important, and is that eternally significant. And it is.

Let us then have preachers who are on fire for Christ and preach accordingly. The story is told that when William Sangster was interviewing a candidate for the ministry, the nervous young man explained that he was quite shy and not the sort of person ever to set the River Thames on fire. “My dear young brother,” responded Sangster, “I’m not interested to know if you could set the Thames on fire. What I want to know is this: if I picked you up by the scruff of your neck and dropped you into the Thames, would it sizzle?”

Give us preachers, we cry, who are on fire for Christ and preach His word of reconciliation.

— This post is adapted from my recent sermon, “Preaching that Pleads,” on 2 Corinthians 5:20–21.

I once heard about a young preacher who had so much to say one Lord’s Day that he virtually ran up the pulpit stairs with anticipation. He made such a mess of the message that he walked down those same steps with his head bowed and tears in his eyes. He made his way slowly into the vestry. A wise old elder came to him and said, “If you’d gone up the way you came down, you’d have come down the way you’d gone up.”

Sometimes our expectation of power in preaching is our very undoing. Our presumption squelches the passion, and the congregation is no better after leaving.

Last time, we considered a definition of preaching with unction. In this post, I want to think about how we should pursue the Spirit’s blessing on our preaching. We must be sagacious at this point. While I believe the Bible gives us ordinary grounds for the Spirit’s blessing, it gives us no formulaic guarantee of spiritual power. The Spirit moves whenever and however on whomever He pleases. You will go wrong if you treat what I’m about to say as a guarantee.

What I am saying is that unless the following things are present, you have no reason to expect the Spirit to visit your preaching with peculiar power.

4 Things You Must Do If You’re to Preach with Power

You must preach Christ crucified. The Spirit loves to amplify Jesus Christ. He comes to glorify Christ’s name in all nations. When the sermon is in haste to preach Jesus Christ, you can expect that Spirit is eager to attend that service.

Let’s revisit The Upper Room. Jesus says in John 16:13–14, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you.” J. I Packer spoke of the Spirit’s ministry as a spotlight ministry: he delights in putting Christ in the highest light. When preachers follow the apostolic agenda for preaching Christ, they continue a Spirit-approved plan for building the church.

You must preach in dependence. Phillips Brooks said, “Never allow yourself to feel equal to your work. If you ever find that spirit growing on you, be afraid.” The sin of self-sufficiency is to unction as baking soda is to a stove fire. No man can depend on himself and burn with the spirit.

This is the essence of what Paul’s after in 1 Corinthians 2 when he says, “My speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power.” Logical speech and lofty rhetoric were tools in the apostle’s bag of tricks, but he knew they had no place in the preaching of Christ. Such human ability robs Christ of His glory and signals the Spirit is not needed. Such a preacher may blow hard, but he’ll prove to be just that: a blowhard. Piper cries, “How utterly dependent we are on the Holy Spirit in the work of preaching! All genuine preaching is rooted in a feeling of desperation.”

Until you learn the lesson of total dependence on the Spirit, you’ll struggle for familiarity with the Spirit’s movement. If you are genuinely called to the ministry, you will learn the lesson of dependence one way or another. God tends to make his preacher’s through heartbreak and suffering. It’s only when selfish dreams are dashed, refashioned after Christ’s kingdom, and release by the Spirit that a man will truly preach. Elijah had his depression. Jeremiah had the pit. Peter had his denial. And Paul had his thorn. A march through church history uncovers profound sorrow behind and underneath those preachers that God has used.

You must keep in step with the Spirit. Paul told the Thessalonians to not quench the Spirit (1 Thess. 5:19). He exhorted the Ephesians, “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by which you were sealed for the day of redemption” (Eph. 4:30; see also Psa. 78:40; Isa. 63:10). Of course, unrepentant sin is a barrier to spirit-filled preaching. Sincere spirituality means the channel through which the Spirit flows is clean and unimpeded by the rot of impurity. For the Great Apostle, purity was a necessity in pastoral holiness—see 1 Tim. 1:5, 5:22; 2 Tim. 2:20–22.

Return with me to The Upper Room. Jesus says something about the primacy of holiness in ministry. It’s a truth that’s all too often neglect, and probably explains our weak efforts in preaching. In John 14:21, Jesus says, “Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.” Christ delights to visit—manifest Himself—the obedient servants. Unction is not identical to ardent piety, but ardent piety is the air in which unction can live and thrive.

Brothers, let me give you a warning on this point. You cannot relax your watch against Satan’s schemes to get you to fall into sexual sin. No snare entraps more pastors than impurity. Paul warns against this in 1 Thessalonians 4:7–8, “God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness. Therefore whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you.” To disregard the need for purity is to say you don’t need the Spirit in preaching.

You must pray for the Spirit. Jesus said in Luke 11:13, “If you then, being evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!” Too many preachers do not have because they do not ask. Our small prayers for the Spirit reveal our great trust in our own gifts. Too many preachers today spend hours in sermon preparation and only a few minutes in prayer. I understand the need for maintaining a spirit of prayer throughout the entire process of preparation. I don’t understand, however, why so many preachers think multiple, long periods of sustained prayer for the sermon aren’t necessary each week. Spurgeon said, “The best and holiest men have ever made prayer the most important part of pulpit preparation.” Or, in another place, “The fact is, the secret to all ministerial success lies in prevalence at the mercy seat.”

Brothers, the Worm named Satan will tempt you to fill your schedule with counseling, discipling, and sermon preparing, so that there is no time for prayer. Good things can sqaush the greatest thing.

A pastor who doesn’t pray is a pastor who doesn’t believe he needs the Spirit.

I’ll let the Prince have the final word this morning. Spurgeon said, “The gospel is preached in the ears of all; it only comes with power to some. The power that is in the gospel does not lie in the eloquence of the preacher; otherwise men would be converters of souls. Nor does it lie in the preacher’s learning; otherwise it would consist in the wisdom of men. We might preach till our tongues rotted, till we should exhaust our lungs and die, but never a soul would be converted unless there were a mysterious power going with it the Holy Ghost changing the will of man. Oh Sirs! We might as well preach to stone walls as preach to humanity unless the Holy Ghost be with the Word to give it power to convert the soul.”

I remember hearing an interview with Carl Trueman about Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ book Preaching and Preachers.

In it, he said, “Half of the book is brilliant, and half of it is completely bonkers. . . . Lloyd-Jones has these sections where he talks about ‘unction.’ And these things have gripped a variety of people who have read this book. Lloyd-Jones talks about going into the pulpit on some days, and he’s flying. He’s got unction. Other days he goes into the pulpit and the unction just isn’t there. My experience has been that I can go into the pulpit and think that I am flying, and a lot of people think I’ve preached a complete clunker. . . . I’ve become aware that how I respond to the sermon is no guide for how the congregation responds. I have a feeling that Lloyd-Jones is confusing—dare I say it—‘carnal response’ to his sermons with the action of the Holy Spirit.”

I understand what Truman is saying. Preachers are not infallible interpreters of how their sermon goes. In my ministry, it’s common to think I preached an excellent sermon only to discover the majority found it ho-hum. It’s also frequent to believe my sermon was a disaster only to find out it helped an enormous swath of the congregation. Dr. Trueman is right on this point.

But we should not throw out the notion of unction altogether. It’s in the Scriptures. Church history testifies to its reality.

Defining the Indescribable

Part of the problem in discussion unction relates to how we define it. Its nature makes it almost ineffable. As Alexandre Vinet, the French preacher, said, “Unction is felt, and known by experience; it cannot be analyzed. It produces its impression secretly, and without the aid of reflection. It is communicated in simplicity, and received in the same manner by the heart, into which the warmth of the preacher passes. Ordinarily, it produces its effect without awakening our consciousness of its presence, and without our being able to render a reason to ourselves of the impression which it has produced upon us. We feel,—we experience,—we are moved,—we can hardly assign a reason, why.”

To say the experience of spiritual power in preaching is hard to describe is different than saying it’s impossible to describe. There are multiple places in Scripture where we discover what happens when the Spirit falls on a preacher.

5 Marks of Unction

As I read the Bible, there are at least five things that can be true when the Spirit arrives with unusual force in the preaching. Unction doesn’t mean all five happen at once. More often than not, it may be more like a momentary combination of a couple of these points.

Unction enflames the preacher. The Spirit falls on the apostles in Acts 2 and tongues of fire fly over them. On the road to Emmaus, Jesus’ teaching strangely warmed the hearts of the disciples (Luke 24:32). YHWH commissions Jeremiah and says, “Behold, I am making my words in your mouth a fire” (Jer. 5:14). No doubt, this enflaming passion came to mark Jeremiah’s ministry, as he said, “If I say, ‘I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name,’ there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot” (Jer. 20:9).

Unction gives the preacher a sense of unworthiness. God’s spirit is the Spirit of holiness (Rom. 1:4). When the Spirit falls, there is inevitably a sense of one’s unworthiness. The preacher’s disposition is that of Isaiah, who cried, “Woe is me!” (Isa. 6:5). To preach about Christ’s salvation and man’s sin without any pathos, without any sense of an affected heart, is to preach the Good News without the Spirit.

Unction stamps the preacher with the seal of God’s authority. John Owen, in a sermon titled, “The Duty of a Pastor,” said authority is required of God’s preachers. He asks, “What is authority in a preaching ministry? It is a consequent of unction, and not of office. The scribes had an outward call to teach in the church; but they had no unction, no anointing, that could evidence they had the Holy Ghost in his gifts and graces. Christ had no outward call; but he had an unction.” Remember the times when Jesus’ preaching left the crows and religious leaders marveling, for he spoke “as one who had authority” (e.g., Matt. 7:28–29).

Unction provides unprepared-for clarity. Sermon preparation is often little more than working for clarity in exposition and application. But there are times in preaching when unexpected clarity comes. You say something better than you thought you would. An unanticipated logic flies from your lips. That’s the Spirit’s work! Jesus told his disciples that times would come when persecution would require extemporaneous preaching. He comforted them by saying, “When they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities, do not be anxious about how you should defend yourself or what you should say, for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say” (Luke 12:11–12).

Unction brings boldness related to the matters of eternity. Courage in preaching Christ might be the most common facet of unction. Trace out the theme of boldness in Acts 4 and see what this meant for the apostles’ ministry. In Acts 4:13, the religious leaders “saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus.” In 4:29, the believers pray in the face of opposition, “Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness.” The prayer is answered through the Spirit, as Acts 4:31 says, “And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness.” Sinclair Ferguson says,

“The hallmark of the preaching which the Spirit effects is ‘boldness’. . . As in the Old Testament, when the Spirit fills the servant of God he ‘clothes himself’ with that person, and aspects of the Spirit’s authority are illustrated in the courageous declaration of the word of God. This boldness appears to involve exactly what it denotes: there is freedom of speech. We catch occasional glimpses of this in the Acts of the Apostles. What was said of the early New England preacher Thomas Hooker becomes a visible reality: when he preached, those who heard him felt that he could pick up a king and put him in his pocket!”

How Do We Get It

The five points above give shape to how we understand unction. But how do we pursue it? That’s what we’ll think about in Part 2.

The kind leaders at Reformed Theological Seminary—Dallas have asked me to teach Communication 1 this fall. It’s my first run at a practical theology class, and I can’t wait. The homiletical festivities begin tomorrow morning.

The class covers the bare necessities of Christ-exalting preaching. If you’d like a sense of where the course goes, check out the syllabus below.

Here’s a little clip of how we’ll start:

“It is, perhaps, an overbold beginning, but I will venture to say that with its preaching Christianity stands or falls.” So began P.T. Forsyth when he delivered the Lyman Beecher lectures at Yale University in 1907. Trepidation may have constrained Forsyth as he stood in the throes of New England modernity, but we can confidently acquit the Scottish theologian from being “overbold.” He simply read his Bible well.

God’s word tells us the Christian life is, this side of heaven, is lived “by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor. 5:7). In other places, we are told, “Faith comes by hearing” (Rom. 10:17) and “anything that does not proceed from faith is sin” (Rom. 14:23). Because faith is central, we can declare preaching lies at the center.

Preaching is the ordinary means by which God awakens cold, crusty, and callous hearts to breathe in the grace of faith (Ezek. 37:1–10). Preaching is the chariot that carries Christ to sinners’ bosoms and breasts (Col. 1:28). It is the spiritual sword God uses to assault hell’s gates and ruin Satan’s strongholds (Matt. 16:18). The Sun of Righteousness dawns upon the earth in His heralded word to harden clay hearts and melt icy souls (Mal. 4:2). Preaching convicts, illuminates, rebukes, encourages, and enlivens the soul.

We are thus engaged, over this semester, with the greatest of the great things, the deepest of the deeps, and the highest of the heights: preaching Jesus Christ.

At last year’s Shepherds’ Conference, Mark Jones preached from Isaiah 50 on the third Servant Song. It’s a model of Christ-exalting exposition. It also throws several (appropriate) punches at pastors. Case in point: “Woe to that man who knows his theological books, but is ignorant of the word of God.”

The Spirit stirred my mind and convicted my heart through Jones’ preaching. May He do the same to yours.