Preaching is a strange business. It requires you to stand up and speak with authority and pointed passion to people who may well be your intellectual and spiritual betters. But a man who has confidence in the word of God has everything he needs for the task. Here’s how Herman Bavinck put it:

I recently heard Phil Ryken talking about preaching.  He told a group of ministers that as long as he had been faithful, he didn’t spend a lot of time worrying about whether or not it subjectively felt like his sermon had gone well.

He pointed to the Westminster Larger Catechism, question 55:

Q: How does Christ make intercession?

There are a lot of things a church should look for in its next pastor. But as your church considers different pastoral candidates, I want to make sure this is toward the top of your list: a supernatural faith in the power of God’s Word.

AS IMPORTANT ANY OTHER QUALITY

I’m not talking about a man who simply checks the belief box on the “authority” or “sufficiency” or “power” of the Bible.

I tend to underestimate the power of repetition.  Repetition can be a useful rhetorical device in a sermon, I often try to come up with a key phrase that summarizes the point of the sermon and repeat it several times in the course of a message. 

To preach the word, therefore, and not to follow it with constant and fervent prayer for its success, is to disbelieve its use, neglect its end, and to cast away the seed of the gospel at random.

                                                 -- John Owen, Works, Vol 16, page 78

In preparing for a preachers' class tonight, I was reviewing some material from Stott's excellent,"Between Two Worlds"

This is how he begins....