Ep 16: What Gives Preaching Its Authority?

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Before we ask how to preach, or even why we preach, there's a prior question most preachers never stop to answer: what gives preaching its weight in the first place?

It's not the preacher's gifting. Not his training. Not his platform. The power of preaching to convict, convert, comfort, and call a person to repentance comes from one place — the authority of the Word being preached. And that leads to the thesis of this episode: a message of supreme authority demands supreme clarity. The preacher who muddles the Word hasn't just failed at communication. He's failed at stewardship.

In this episode, Jonathan McClintock builds the case from Scripture itself — the God-breathed Word of 2 Timothy 3, the Spirit-carried prophets of 2 Peter 1, and the most vivid picture of authority in all of Scripture: Jesus in the wilderness, answering every temptation with "it is written."

You'll work through:

• Why "God-breathed" (theopneustos) changes everything about how you handle the text
• What it means that the Living Word relied on the written Word to defeat the enemy
• How the authority of Scripture is actively at work through the Spirit every time it's preached
• The freeing truth that you don't have to manufacture conviction — and the sobering truth that obscurity puts obstacles in front of the Spirit's work
• One question to ask of your main idea before this Sunday

This is part of a series drawn from Course 3 of the Clear Preaching Academy — a full theology of preaching.

The authority was never yours to generate. Your job is to get out of its way — and preach it clearly enough that nothing obscures the breath of God.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

What gives preaching its weight? You see, before we ever ask how to preach or even why we preach, there's a prior question that most preachers never stop to answer. That is, what gives preaching its weight in the first place? Let's look today at the authority behind the message and why the nature of Scripture demands clarity in the pulpit. But before we do that, I just want to tell you real quickly about an easy way to find out what it is in your preaching that might be hindering clarity the most. I've developed a clear preaching self-assessment. It's just 24 questions, might take you around five minutes, and you'll find out what area of clarity, either thought, structure, language, delivery, what area of clarity might be causing you to lose clarity. If you want to take that assessment, just visit clearpreaching.com/slash assessment. So what gives preaching its weight in the first place? You know, some preach because they love communication. They love to teach people what they have learned. Some preach because they have a platform. Some preach because they were trained to, and it's just the job. But none of these explain the real thing about preaching. None of them explain how preaching has the power to change a life or to convict or how preaching has the power to convert or to comfort, to call someone to repentance. That power doesn't come from the preacher's gifting or their training or even their platform. That power comes from the authority of the word being preached. And here's the idea of this entire episode today. A message of supreme authority demands supreme clarity. Because the preacher who muddles the word hasn't just failed at communication, they've failed at stewardship. So let's establish where that authority actually comes from and start with what Scripture says about itself. Scripture tells us that the Word of God, the Word is God breathe. The foundation, this idea is one of the most familiar passages in the entire New Testament. But when we slow down and think about it, the implication for preaching is much bigger than most of us let it be. You see, all scripture, Paul wrote, is given by inspiration of God that's profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction and righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. Now the word translated inspiration is the Greek theopnustos, literally God breathed. That word does a lot of work. Scripture doesn't merely contain God's thoughts. Scripture doesn't merely reflect God's thoughts or even point towards God's thoughts. Scripture is breathed out by God. So think about this. The words themselves carry his authority. Now when we think about that, and then we think about preaching and we follow that implication into the pulpit, when you stand and I stand to preach God's word, we are not offering our best insights about spiritual life. We are handling the very breath of God. That's the weight behind the pulpit. It's not our thoughts, our ideas. No, the weight and the power behind the pulpit is the word of God. The God breathed word. And it's the reason clarity cannot be optional. Peter adds the other half of the picture, how that breath came to be. He wrote this, he said, No prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. See, the prophets and the apostles didn't generate the word. They were carried along. And the Greek there is Pharaoh, the same word used for a ship that is driven by the wind. The words arrive, the words of God arrive through human vessels, but the authority behind them was entirely divine. When we recognize this and understand this, this should change what we bring into the pulpit. This should change how we approach preaching. When we recognize the power and the authority is not in what I can come up with. Now I've got to do my best at preparing and crafting. That's our calling. But understand that all rests on the word. As William Evans put it, he said, God is in the fullest sense responsible for every word. And that's exactly what the Bible claims for itself. Here's the bottom line for the preacher. What Scripture says, God says. That's the message you and I have been entrusted to preach. Now, if you ever doubt how seriously to take this written word, look at how the living word treated it. Three words. It is written. Jesus and the Word in Matthew 4. This is really the heart of what I'm trying to get across today. It's the most vivid illustration of authority in all of Scripture. Jesus being in the wilderness, fasting and being tempted of the devil. No one understood the authority of the word more fully than Jesus himself, the word made flesh. And we get to watch him use it in this narrative of him being in the wilderness. While he's there, Jesus faces three direct temptations from Satan. And here's what's remarkable. You know this, we know this, but think on this today in light of what we're talking about. Each time, Jesus does not argue when he's being tempted. He does not reason with Satan. He doesn't appeal even to his own divine authority. In fact, he possessed that authority. But instead of appealing to, don't you know who I am, don't you understand what I've come to do? He goes straight to the word. Three times Satan presses him, and three times Jesus answers, It is written. Each of these temptations and each of these responses, let's look at them. The first one, turn these stones to bread. Jesus, in a real sense, is tempted to satisfy real hunger and step outside the Father's plan. But what's his answer? Matthew 4 4. Man shall not live by bread alone. It is written. Scripture. The next temptation, jump from the temple. The angels that come, if you're really who you say you are, you won't get hurt. Just prove your deity and bypass the cross. And Jesus says, You shall not put the Lord your God to the test. The third temptation. Skip it all. I'll give you the kingdom, I'll give you the world, I'll hand it all back to you. You can shortcut to reclaim what Adam lost if you'll just fall down and worship me. What did Jesus say? That he stepped back and say, Don't you know who I am? Me, worship you. I know exactly who you are. He didn't reason, he didn't argue, he quoted scripture. You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve. Now let's sit with what just happened for a second. Victory over Satan in the wilderness was not won by raw divine power. It was not won by the full authority that Jesus could have walked in. It was won by the authority of God's written. Each temptation that Satan presented to Jesus was an invitation to step outside the plan, step outside what the Father had ordained, and each time the word was enough. If the word was enough for Jesus, cannot the word be enough for preachers? Why do preachers feel at times I felt the pressure? Why do we feel like the word's not enough? Yes, we got to bring illustration. Yes, we got to make application. That's all part of it. But at times I think preachers feel they have to carry more weight than they really need to. And here's what I can't get past with this. If the living word relied on the written word to defeat the enemy, then the preacher has every reason in the world to handle that same written word with the greatest possible care and the greatest possible clarity. And this authority isn't just historical, it's active right now. Every time the word is preached, the word at work and self-authenticating, the authority of scripture isn't just a doctrine to affirm on a statement of faith. It's a living reality at work in the world through the Spirit. N. T. Wright described that as the authority of God exercised through Scripture. It's not passive, but it's active, it's directional, and it's missional. God is at work through Scripture to energize, to enable and direct the outgoing mission of the church. Now, what N. T. Wright just said reframes what you and I are doing every Sunday. God energizes, enables, and directs the mission of the church through the preaching of Scripture, which means preaching is not a program. Preaching is not just a tradition that we keep, it is the mechanism by which God moves his mission forward in the world. And if that mechanism gets obscured by unclear proclamation, something essential is lost. Of course, and then there's Calvin's word, which is one of the most freeing ideas a preacher can hold. He says scripture is autopiston or self-authenticating. It carries its own guarantee of truthfulness. The Spirit bears witness to its truth as it's proclaimed. The word of God won't return void, Isaiah said. We don't make the word powerful, we just preach it. Now this has two implications. One of them is freeing, and the other one's very sobering. The freeing one is you don't have to manufacture conviction in your listener. I wish I could sometimes. I wish I have you ever preached, and as you're preaching, you're like, I wish I could say this in the way I feel it and the way I want to say it. I've said that so many times. I wish I could say this like I'm really feeling it. But you don't have to manufacture conviction in your listener. That's the Spirit's work, not yours. You're just responsible for the clarity of the proclamation as much as possible, be as clear as possible. That's what we're responsible for, not the outcome of it. Not the altar call, not if somebody prays through or not, not if somebody decides to get baptized or not, not if somebody received the spirit or not. That's not our work. We just got to present the word clearly and trust God with the outcome. When you realize that, understand that, that should take a weight off of our shoulders. That's the freeing implication of this. The sobering implication is this. When you preach with unnecessary obscurity, like rushed pace, which I'm guilty of. Sometimes I will get to talking way too fast. You probably hear it on these podcasts. I have a rushed pace sometimes, and that can obscure the message. Other means of obscurity is fuzzy language, where we're not quite clear what the language we're using, or we use several different words to try and mean the same thing throughout a message, and the message gets lost because we keep changing the vocabulary. Or another area of obscurity, a main idea is buried where no one can find it. It's kind of implied. You know what you're trying to say, but you don't really say it because it's buried. When we do some of these things, we are placing obstacles in front of the Spirit's work. Now, can the Spirit overcome those? Of course. The Spirit can also overcome when we're being stumbling blocks to our brothers and sisters. And yet the apostle warns us about that. We've got to do our best to not place obstacles in front of our hearers. Clarity is not about performance, it's about stewardship. So, what does all this require of us? Let's let's wrap this up today. What this requires of us. Well, we've established three things. First of all, scripture's God breathed. Every word carries his authority. We've established that the living word, Jesus, modeled reliance on the written word. When he treated scripture in the way he did, he treated it as sufficient to overcome temptation, and so must we. And then the third implication is we God's authority is actively at work through spirit authenticated proclamation. The spirit, the word will back itself up. And all three of these point the same director, the same direction that the preacher who stands to declare the word is handling something whose authority far exceeds his own. When you're standing and preaching something, when I'm standing and preaching the word, the authority of it far exceeds anything I can ever do. I am dealing with things in another world when I preach the word of God. Mike Faberez, in a great book, he noted that Jesus gave his band of former fishermen and tax collectors only one tool. And by preaching and the power of the Spirit, they turned the ancient world upside down. The exciting thing is, as preachers, that tool is in your hands. Now, one thing to take away this week, before you preach this Sunday, ask one question of the main idea of your sermon. Is it clear enough to carry the weight of God's authority? Not clever enough, and I know it's wonderful when we can make that turn of phrase and make that sermon idea really clever and really rings in the ears and it and it rhymes or it just sounds good. And that's good. If you can do that, more power to you, do it as much as possible. Work hard at crafting that language, but doesn't have to be clever enough, doesn't have to be impressive enough, just clear enough so that nothing of your own making stands between your people. Now, lastly, before I close this episode today, it comes from some information straight out of one of the courses in the Clear Preaching Academy, which deals with a full theology of preaching that really starts with this idea that the authority comes from the Word. Because really everything we teach about clarity rests on this foundation. We preach clearly because of what we're preaching. And the Academy is there to help you do just that. A community of preachers helping one another carry the weight of the call. Visit ClearPreaching.com to find out more about the Academy. And here's where I'll leave you today. The authority was never yours to generate. It was always his. Your job is just to make the word as it already is. It's already powerful. Your job is to get out of its way and preach it clearly enough that nothing obscures the breath of God. I'm pulling for you, and I'll see you next week.