Peniel Preaching

Peniel Preaching by Rodney Autry

Sermons should bear scars of the Savior’s surgery of our soul.  Paul humbly boasted, “I carry the marks of Jesus on my body” (Gal. 6: 17).  As every good New Testament student knows “marks” translates the Greek stigmata.  Most of us will probably never be body marked by wounds received in the service of Christ but at least our sermons can be.

The remarkable Scotsman, Robert Murray McCheyne opined, “The greatest need of my people is my personal holiness.”[i]  Paul instructed Timothy, “Be conscientious about yourself and your teaching; persevere in these things, for by doing this you will save both yourself and your hearers” (1 Tim. 4: 16).  If we take pains to know the message but overlook the messenger in the process we have made a fatal mistake.

The reality remains that one can only impart what he has experienced.  You cannot give away what you do not possess but you must give away what possesses you.  “What I live by I impart,” declared the transformed North African Bishop Augustine.[ii]  Character and communication are forever inextricably linked.  Sermonizing should be the outflow and the overflow of the inflow of what the Holy Spirit has accomplished in our life.

Like ancient Jacob we approach a text thinking our battle is with the men and women – or with a specific man or woman – to be seated before us.  In reality we face a more pressing foe – God Himself Who subdues us by His Word.  God waited patiently for twenty years to break Jacob and He waits with divinely determined mercy to break us.  Let us be done with the nonsense that we are preachers who require no such breaking!  Jacob was a patriarch of the promise and had experienced revelations we will only be exposed to in heaven and yet he needed breaking.  Such breaking is often required to confirm us in the truth we are called to proclaim.

Summing up Jacob’s nighttime struggle and surrender G. Campbell Morgan says:

The story is indeed old, and yet ever new.  There are very few who have not in the course of the life of faith, spent a night of loneliness, in which they have risen through defeat into new power.  The crippling of such occasions are the crowning of men. The limp of Jacob was a life-long disability, but it was the patent of his nobility.[iii]                                                                             

The story is told of a young man preparing to preach his first sermon.  He studied long and hard and arrived at the church swashbuckling style.  At the appointed time he rose with extreme confidence and almost defiantly strode to the pulpit but alas within moments his first sermon began to sound like a lot of other first sermons.  He got his points confused and his tongue tangled and shortly folded up his notes and walked sheepishly back to the front pew.  A wise, old, godly preacher who patiently watched the embarrassing ordeal caught him afterward and said, “If you had gone up to the pulpit the way you came down from the pulpit then you could have came down from the pulpit the way you went up to the pulpit!”

To see Rodney Autry’s original blog post CLICK HERE

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Dr. Rodney Autry is Senior Pastor at Union Baptist Church in Hayes, Virginia. Dr. Autry has served as Senior Pastor of Union Baptist Church since 2010. Previously Dr, Autry served in pastoral positions in Georgia, Oklahoma and Virginia.  Most recently he was Senior Pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Manassas, Virginia from 1996 – 2010. He has developed the 365 Project, a yearlong emphasis to encourage people to read through the Bible supported by sermons on each biblical book, Sunday School overviews and email devotionals to support the 365 consecutive readings of the congregation as they read through the Bible together.   Dr. Autry is the creator, author and facilitator of My STORY: Sharing Christ Today, a new personal witness training process recently implemented at Union.  Active in denominational life, he has served on numerous boards and committees on both the state and national level including the Board of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He recently served as Chair of the Cooperative Program Committee of the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention.  He is a graduate of Shorter College, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary where he was awarded the Doctor of Ministry. 

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[i] Quoted in Steven J. Lawson, The Ten How-to’s of Expository Preaching, The Tie, July 1997, 10.

[ii] Quoted in James S. Stewart, Heralds of God, (London: Hodder and Stoughton, Ltd. 1946; reprint  ed. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1972),  10.

[iii] G. Campbell Morgan, The Analyzed Bible: Genesis (New York: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1911; reprint ed., Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1983),  199.