In Touch Ministries

Dr. Charles Stanley: Spirit anointed preaching compromises no truth, avoids no subject, and fears no reaction.

And when men stand in the pulpits and look at deacons or elders and thank, "Well, shall I say this or should I say that?" I want to tell you, the anointing leaves you the moment you begin to compromise what you know is the gospel truth.

God never called you to please anybody but Him.

Announcer: Pastors have many things to do that most people never see. There's no way they could get everything done without a whole lot of help.

Today's edition of In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley, identifies that something extra as the spirit of God, who enables believers to do all things well.

Here's part one of Spirit Anointed Preaching. Let's listen in to Dr. Stanley's message.

Dr. Charles Stanley: Now, if God has called you to preach the Gospel, He has called you to preach the Gospel under the anointing of the Holy Spirit.

If He's called you to preach the Gospel, you must make a priority in your life the preaching of the Gospel.

You see, one of the things that Satan has done to so many of God's good, wonderful preachers is to divide their minds. And to get them off to doing so many other things that many, many of God's preachers, if they're deadly honest with themselves, will have to admit to this error.

It is a satanic deception.

Most, more than likely, most of God's preachers spend most of their time doing other things than the one thing God primarily called them to do, and that's to preach the Gospel.

If you look at an average weekly schedule by which you live, more than likely, many of you would have to admit you spend the least amount of time at the one thing God has called you to do to reach the greatest number of people.

Because you see, sometimes people holler louder than God. And they pull you in this direction, they pull you in that direction, they pull you this way. You must go visit this dear sister, you must go to the hospital, and you must go to this meeting, and you must have time for this and have time for that.

Until finally, because God doesn't shout audibly, He gets the least amount of time in our preparation for prayer and the least amount of time to speak to us about what He wants us to hear for ourselves and then to proclaim to other people.

It is a tragedy. It is a satanic deception.

The only thing I know more important than preaching the Gospel is praying to God.

Everything else should be subservient to that, preaching should only be second. What else if God's called you to be a pastor, He's called you to shepherd a flock.

And the point in the time when you can do the most good in that fellowship, instructing them in the word of God as pastor teachers is the time you open the word of God and lay out to them the principles by which God can live through them and exhibit His power and His love and extend His life through them.

So all of us have the temptation that area. But when I think about spirit anointed preaching, I think about it in this light. If you recall in First Corinthians chapter 15, look there for just a moment.

First Corinthians chapter 15 and you recall what Paul said, he said, "Now I make known to you brethren, the Gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, and which also you stand."

And the word there means to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ, but it means more than that. It means to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ with authority and with power.

Spirit anointed preaching is preaching that has the touch of God upon it.

And when I think about how often times men stand behind pulpits and just talk. And they talk about many things other than God. Can you tell me a greater subject than God? A more profound subject than God? A greater needful subject than God Himself?

And you see spirit anointed preaching knows, listen, spirit anointed preaching compromises no truth, avoids no subject, and fears no reaction.

And when men stand in the pulpits and look at deacons or elders and thank, "Well, shall I say this or should I say that?" I want to tell you, the anointing leaves you the moment you begin to compromise what you know is the gospel truth.

God never called you to please anybody but Him. To do so, my friend, is to step down from what God has called you to do.

Jesus said, "I am anointed to preach the Gospel, the good news of the Lord Jesus Christ."

Now, let's face it. God's not going to anoint but one kind of man.

And that's a man whose life is clean. I didn't say perfect, but it's got to be clean. He's not going to anoint preaching from a man who is rebellious, who is proud, who is egotistical, who is sensual, who is dishonest, who's lost his integrity, and who's full of the world. He's not going to do it.

Neither will you hear spirit anointed preaching come from the lips of a man who doubts the integrity of the word of God.

God is never going to anoint doubt and unbelief, and especially a man who stands before others and begins to talk about all the things in the Bible that possibly are not true.

Friend, the moment you begin to doubt the word, there is no unction in your life. There's not going to be any anointing, and listen, you can dress up in all kind of robes and you can get into all kind of ritual, but there is no substitute for the anointing of the spirit of God in your life. No substitute whatsoever.

And so you and I have to be sure that our life is clean in the eyes of God.

That's why I believe far more important, and the best preparation for preaching the Gospel is laying before Almighty God, asking Him to do something to us before He ever does anything through us.

And you see, we can make an awful mistake of being so concerned about what we're going to preach to someone else, we don't let the message sink deeply into our own hearts and do its own work of conviction.

Now, I want to talk about this matter of spirit anointed preaching and from three perspectives. And the first one is this, and that is our commitment to it. And if you'll turn to First Corinthians chapter two for a moment, and you'll recall what Paul said as he begins this chapter.

He says, "When I came to you, brethren, I didn't come with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God, for I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified."

And I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. And my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power. That is, that your faith should not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God.

Our commitment to spirit anointed preaching involves, first of all, our delivery. Listen to what he says.

He says, "When I came to you, brethren, I didn't come with superiority of speech or of wisdom proclaiming to you the testimony of God." Involves the delivery of the message, the proclamation of the message.

You say, "Well, what do you mean the delivery of the message?"

When you and I look at that verse of scripture and he says, "I didn't come to impress, I didn't come with eloquence of speech." And you know, if you could ask most preachers, well, "What ability would you like?" And many of them would say, "Well, I would like eloquence." Listen to what Paul says.

He says in this passage that spirit anointed preaching does not depend upon its eloquence to proclaim the Gospel.

It does not depend upon its intellect to explain the Gospel, and it doesn't depend upon its human energy to deliver the message of the Gospel.

You see, the one thing God does not want us doing is depending upon ourselves for anything.

The Spirit of God working in the heart of the preacher of the Gospel, He wants to do all the work.

We are to be men who are crucified in Christ Jesus, recognizing that He's the source of our life, recognizing that as those New Testament apostles had nothing within themselves upon which they can depend, the truth is, neither do we.

When we depend upon our education, when we depend upon our eloquence, when we depend upon our experience, the only thing we're doing is undercutting God's work in our life. He wants us to stand in our pulpits as helpless men, but hopeful in the Holy Spirit, depending upon the power of the Holy Spirit to take the precious word of God and penetrate the most hard heart until that person comes to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.

Spirit anointed preaching is preaching that is dependent upon the Holy Spirit.

Now, let me give you an indication of how you can know when you're depending upon yourself.

Somebody asks you to preach somewhere, the first thing comes into your mind, you've got a sermon you've preached before, you do a super job at that, you tuck that in your Bible, you give it little thought until you arrive on the scene.

And my friend, you may impress a lot of people, but I'm going to tell you somebody you haven't impressed.

Because you see, an old warmed-over biscuit may be all right every once in a while, but not very often.

God wants the fire of the Spirit of God burning in the heart of His servant. And listen, friend, when you are hopelessly and helplessly standing before a congregation, and you don't have anything to say but what God says, that's the moment when God has the best control of you and me.

Now, I'm not saying you shouldn't study.

Surely we should study, but I want to tell you, if you depend upon your study, you're going to be a failure.

Now, let's be honest for a moment. How many of you have gotten a subject or text, and I mean, brother, you got excited for a change on Monday morning, and all week long, brother, you hammered away at that passage, you got it down, homiletically, man, you had it just right.

I mean, you were sitting on ready on Sunday morning, you walked into the pulpit, and you opened the Bible, and you let it fly, and when it was all over, you wondered, "What in the world happened to that?"

Because it didn't come out the way you planned it, you see, you had every point, the alliteration, you had everything down just right. The only thing you didn't have is the Holy Spirit.

Listen, all the homiletics in the world, and I believe in homiletics. Don't ever let that get in front of the Holy Spirit.

Don't let that be the thing you depend upon because you see, those Old Testament saints who preached the Gospel, and those New Testament apostles, they never even heard of the word homiletics. 3,000 people, listen, 3,000 people are saved, and old Peter didn't even know what a sermon was.

Nobody ever told him how to get up a sermon. The Spirit of God just poured the truth through him and God began to work in his life.

So first of all, it involves our delivery. Secondly, it involves our message.

Now, listen to what Paul says.

For I determined, verse two, "I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified." Listen, believe it or not, I've heard evangelists preach sermons who never mention the cross. In fact, I've even heard sermons and nobody even mentioned Jesus.

They called it a sermon, I wouldn't have called it that. I would have called it a speech, not a sermon.

Now I want you to think for just a moment because you see, this is another one of Satan's snares, he can blind us to the truth.

The truth is, every time you and I present the Gospel of Jesus Christ, somewhere in that sermon, you have a responsibility, I believe, before God to tell the people who are listening how to receive Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of their sin, and understand what it means to be born again, and how to have their name written in the Lamb's Book of Life.

If that is not your objective, and if you preach week after week after week and you say, "Well, I'm a teacher," let me ask you a question, "What is the motivation of your teaching?" Nowhere in the Bible is it say that I'm just to give out information, I'm just to instruct, I'm to instruct with a purpose in mind.

And you see, the truth is, that there are many, many people sitting in your congregation who are hell-bound.

They're not saved, they never even prayed to be saved. They never even asked the Lord Jesus Christ to come into their life. They never received Christ as their savior. They never repented of their sins. They never believed, they never placed their trust in Christ for salvation. And there they sit in the pews year after year after year just as lost as they can be.

Now, I know that all of us come from different denominations, and I don't think God's hung up on denominations, in fact, I don't even think He created them. And you see, we are all divided over all kind of silly things.

But there's one thing we ought to be able to agree on. That the centrality of the Gospel, the center of every message, the foundation of every sermon is the cross of Jesus Christ.

If you can't agree on that, brother, you ought to get out of the ministry because you don't have a Gospel to preach. No Gospel.

And Paul said, listen, he said, "I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified." When I hear people talking about that stinking old blood, you narrow-minded folks who talk about the blood of Jesus. I want to remind them to listen, it was good enough for Paul. It wasn't just good enough for Paul, it was essential in the eyes of Almighty, sovereign God who is my judge.

And Paul said, "When I came to you Corinthians to preach the Gospel," he said, "I didn't have but one subject, and that subject was the crucifixion, the resurrection of Jesus Christ because upon those two doctrinal truths, all of our hope rests." And I want to ask you, does your sermon week after week mention the cross? Does it mention Jesus Christ? Are you explaining the necessity of the all-sufficient, sacrificial, atoning death of Jesus Christ as the only hope of mankind? I don't care whether you're preaching a funeral or whatever you're doing. Listen, that's the greatest time in the world to preach the Gospel, brother, they're right there before you.

Some folks are listening at the funeral have who haven't listened in 30 years. But they're listening.

Is the Gospel of Jesus Christ, according to your preaching, is the heart of it, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sin?

The third thing I want you to notice here is that it involves not only the message, but it involves something else, it involves the hearers. Listen to what he says in verse three, four and five.

He says, "I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling." He says, "I wasn't depending upon my eloquence, I wasn't depending upon the way I was delivering the message, or my intellect."

He says, "I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling." Now, the time most of us have fear, weakness and trembling is on Saturday night about 11:30 when we don't have anything. Amen. That's when you get real weak, full of fear and a whole lot of trembling.

Listen to what Paul says. Verse four, "And my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but he says in demonstration of the spirit and of power." "That your faith should not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God."

Listen, spirit anointed preaching will protest the dependence of the people upon the preacher. They must never depend upon us. We must focus their attention upon God. The Holy Spirit is the one who is the teacher, not the preacher.

We just happen to be the mouthpiece, He's the one who must do the teaching.

And Paul says, "I came to you in this manner so that your faith wouldn't be in me, but rather," he says, "that your faith should be in the power of Almighty God." Now listen, the only way for that to happen in your congregation is for your people to see the power of God in your life.

You know, folks today, you know what they're looking for? They're just looking for men who've got enough sense to believe God. Who've got enough sense to just trust Him.

You'll build more fellowship, more loyalty, more love by just simply believing God and living that out before your people than all the eloquence in the world.

It is our responsibility to reflect the love of God. It is our responsibility to allow Him to exhibit His power in our life. If we're to be the kind of leaders that God wants us to be, then we must be willing for God to take us in the valley and do whatever is necessary to us in order to make us godly men who can lead people into a godly relationship.

Now, when you think about spirit anointed preaching, let me ask you a question, let's be honest. You see, if we're not honest, we're wasting our time.

How many of you judge your preaching ability or your preaching effectiveness by somebody else?

Let me ask you this. How many of you have decided that you can't do it like so-and-so, or won't ever be as good as this brother over here? And so you've just sort of settled down.

Or let me ask you this. How many of you've been where you are long enough that your folks have sort of acclimated to your kind of preaching, that you can sort of get by with some things that you couldn't get by with if you started somewhere else brand new?

Have you settled for settled-for preaching?

Have you just decided, "Well, you know, I've been out of school long enough, I've been a pastor 10 years, and so I've got enough proven other things, I guess this is the way I'll always preach."

The devil would love to have you think that.

And I want to ask you, my friend, is God maximizing your potential as a preacher of the Gospel?

I mean, does He have all of you?

Is God able to so work in your life that when He wants to send a message to you, He has a clean, spirit anointed, spirit filled, energetic, enthusiastic, Christ-centered, godly vessel through whom to send it?

You see, that's the greatest gift you can give your folks. An available vessel through whom God can speak His truth.

Announcer: You're listening to In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley. God has chosen pastors to convey His truth, so pray for the Lord to help him be a pure, bold leader of your church family.

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