Welcome to the In Touch podcast with Charles Stanley for Friday, October ninth. What is the most essential quality for effective ministry leadership? Stay with us to discover the difference between a well-delivered message and a sermon that truly transforms lives. Spirit- anointed preaching is preaching that has the touch of God upon it, and when I think about How oftentimes 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 compromises no truth, avoids no subject. And fears no reaction. And when men stand in the pulpits and look at deacons or elders and think, "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. And when the first time you begin to seek to please men, I want to tell you what you do.
You step down from the exalted position of a servant of God who has been anointed by the Holy Spirit to lead that fellowship into a deeper relationship to God. Don't ever step from that exalted position. 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. 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 an 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 the question is: Are you committed to allow God to do whatever is necessary in your life to bring you to become the maximum that God knows you're capable of being?
Well, the second thing you and I might ask is this: You say, "Well, you know, I can agree with all that." But first of all, you might ask, "How will I know what spirit-anointed preaching is?" In the first place, I want you to turn to Acts chapter two for a moment because I want to talk about the characteristics of spirit-anointed preaching.
Now, to ask that question, you might say, "Well, first of all, I have to have a spirit-anointed preacher. Then I have to have a spirit-anointed sermon.
So where am I going to find one of those?" Well, the best place to find ones in the Bible. Listen. It is centered in the Scriptures. You'll notice in verse 17 that Peter begins to quote Joel. It shall be in the last days, God says, that I will pour forth my spirit upon all mankind.
If you move down to verse 25. He says, "For David says of him, 'I was always beholding the Lord in my presence.' If you'll move on over to verse thirty-four, for it was not David who ascended into heaven, but he himself says, 'The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand until I make thine enemies a footstool for thy feet.' Listen." God, I believe, wants us to center the message in the Scriptures. Whether it is an expository sermon, a topical sermon, a textual sermon, it should be loaded with the Scriptures. It should be founded upon the Word of God. Not something you got somewhere else and scratch up a few verses here and there to fit around a beautiful story, a real tearjerker that you've heard somewhere, and and focus that on your people.
That's not preaching the gospel. If you are going to preach the gospel, you've got to proclaim Jesus Christ. He's got to be at the heart of what's going on.
So, first of all, it has to be scripturally centered. That is, you get the message out of God's word. Secondly, I believe it should be custom designed to meet the needs.
Now, listen. These folks said these men are drunk. They've been drinking at this early hour of the morning. And Peter begins his sermon in order to meet a need, to expound the truth of what was happening at Pentecost.
Now listen. Once in a while, I hear somebody say, "Well, you know, folks just won't come, and I'm having a hard time." I want to give you a simple little principle that always works. If you will preach. To meet people's needs, you'll never have to beg for a congregation. People are hurting everywhere.
I mean, they are hurting desperately. They're lonely. They're frustrated. They're trapped. They're in bondage.
They're divorced. Their kids are on drugs. They're living with somebody else. They've got an alcohol problem. They're afraid of the future.
Multitudes of people, up in age, living in little one-room apartments, fearing they'll lose their social security, don't have many friends, don't know what's going to happen to them. Listen, they don't come to church because you and I are good preachers. They come to church oftentimes hoping they'll just hear something that'll meet the desperate need of their heart for the moment. You can get up, my friend, and you can expound sanctification, glorification. You can expound justification, redemption, all the rest.
And I believe in that, and I do that. But I want to tell you, if you don't apply that to where that lady's hurting, you can forget it. She doesn't care about your doctrine. The only thing she cares about is how do I raise these three boys when my husband walked out on me for some other woman? That's what I want to know.
How do I raise these three boys, and how do I trust God for my finances when I'm only making 150 bucks a week? You know why, folks, are not listening? Because we are not meeting their needs. If you will gear your sermon to meet people's hurts, brother, you'll have more people than you'll ever want to preach to. Listen, somebody says, "But my little old church." Listen, you start preaching to people's needs, and it won't be little long.
God will grow it up. You know why? Because people are going to be magnetized to the man who's meeting people's needs. They're hungry. They're thirsty.
They're hurting, and they're hoping that surely somehow you'll say something to meet their needs. But my friends, you can't meet their needs. Number one, till you know what they are, and secondly, you can't meet their needs if you're unwilling to hurt. Is it not true that when you and I are going through the valleys of brokenness, and we are hurting, and we are hurting deeply? And God is able in those moments to teach us things we never learned any other way.
Then, when you stand up to preach, what happens?
Somebody walks down the aisle. And they said, "You pastor, let me tell you what happened to me this week, and almost something similar just happened to you. What happens to your heart? It just goes out, and you emotionally wrap your loving arms around them. When you stand to preach the gospel, you preach with a sweet sensitivity and a deep burden in your heart, and a compassionate, loving desire to see God build those people.
And what do you become? You become an encourager." That's what God intends every pastor to be—an encourager of the people. But you see, how can you do that? How can you do that, my friend, unless you custom design the sermon to meet needs? Listen, do you remember Jesus ever getting off onto some big doctrinal subject without meeting the needs of the people he was talking to?
Never one time, not once. Jesus always spoke to the most immediate need. And friend, if you will preach to the most immediate need of your congregation, they will love you. They will be loyal to you. They will follow you.
You know why? Because you become one of the channels through which God is able to build them up and to make them the people that God wants them to be. I better move on. Third characteristic is constructive in approach. You don't see anything negative in this sermon.
It's all positive. I hear people say, and one of the reasons that I say this because we get letters from all over this country, and oftentimes here's what people say: I go to church and I feel like I've been beaten down every time I leave. Shepherds don't beat sheep; they feed sheep. You know why some of God's men are beaten sheep? If a preacher is an angry man, either angry at God, angry at his immediate circumstances, angry at himself, he's going to express that anger toward his people.
You're going to beat them emotionally. You're going to put them in bondage. I have literally seen people weep who said, "I love my pastor." I want to go to the church. He's an excellent preacher, but I feel so beaten down. I'm in bondage.
I need some encouragement. Be careful that you don't become a beater of sheep because they won't do what you tell them. You start feeding sheep, they'll follow you over the cliff. Right? You feed the sheep.
If you feed them, they'll follow you over the cliff.
Next characteristic I want you to notice is. Correct doctrinally. If you take this passage, Acts chapter two, and you look at all the doctrines that are in this passage of redemption, the resurrection, the lordship of Jesus Christ, all through here is doctrine. There is no error in Peter's sermon. He didn't even have anybody's theological books.
He didn't have any of that. He just preached as the Lord Jesus had taught him, and as the Spirit of God came upon him.
Now listen, the cults today. A full of members out of your church and mine. You know why? Because we preach such light-hearted stuff. The cultists can come along and give them some new idea, and because they're not founded in the doctrines of the Word of God.
They are swayed with all kinds of error, and the next thing you know, they've gone out and joined somebody's little group, and they're off in somebody's little Bible study somewhere. In all kinds of error. Why? We're responsible. We've not indoctrinated them with the truth.
You see, I believe if you and I are doing a good job, and spirited, minded preaching is going to be. Listen, the sermons are going to be based on solid, true biblical doctrine. It doesn't mean you have to preach salvation this week, justification next week, redemption the next week. But listen, you and I should be so full of that that it permeates every sermon that we preach—not the words, but the truth, the affirmations we can make because of our relationship to Him. We don't have to put people in bondage because we know that justification means that God has declared me not guilty.
I am freed and liberated. I don't have to perform to get His approval. I am approved because of my relationship to Christ. Doctrineally sound, spirit-anointed preaching is going to be doctrineally sound. Examine some of your sermons and see how much true doctrine is there.
Next. It needs to be as we said before, Christ centered.
Now I won't dwell on that, except to say I will challenge you to look at your sermons. Go back and look at them. Listen, I'll tell you what I did. When God taught me a new truth about my own life on one occasion, I took my secretary and she and I went through all the sermons that I had preached from the beginning up to that point. Do you know that I threw away?
I literally took the sermons out. Of the file folders and threw them away. When I discovered, I went through every one of them. That so many of those sermons implied that it was works that pleased God, rather than my am pleased. He's pleased with me because of my relationship to His Son.
You can put folks in all kinds of bondage. I just want to challenge you to be sure that your sermon, that the message you proclaim, that Jesus is all through it, from the beginning to the end. Because you see, unless He is, what do you really say? What do you have to offer anybody without Jesus? Do you have any more than any other speaker?
We only have one thing to give, and that's Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
Next characteristic of spiritointed preaching is that it's clear. If you'll take this sermon, here's what you'll discover in studying Acts chapter two: that it is clear, it has direction, it has progression, it has movement, it has excitement. And you see, I believe God is not the author of confusion in sermon preparation or delivery. You see, sometimes we think our people not very smart. You don't think they're smart enough to know when you're chasing rabbits and trying to trying to get onto something that'll get you all hyped up, so you can start off like a dud and end up like a fireball.
You think they don't see that? The intelligent people sitting in your congregation—they know when you're prepared and when you're not prepared. You see, they've heard your line. They know when you're on fire when your fire is all burned out. I'll tell you something.
The more praying people you've got in your church, the more people who can spot you when you're not ready.
Now, the wonderful thing about those kind of folks is they start praying for you. We get under conviction, get right with God. The next characteristic of spirit-led preaching is that it's convincing.
Now, listen to what happened. You know what happens in this passage.
So then, those who had received His word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls. That's pretty convincing, isn't it? They were convinced. Let me ask you this: When you finish a message, are the people who listen to you convinced and persuaded that what you just finished saying is the truth? Do you think that they believe everything you say because you're the pastor?
Well, I don't want to deflate you, but they don't. They don't believe it just because you're the pastor.
Now, sometimes we'd like for them to believe everything we say. Convincing. Are you expounding the word of God in such a fashion that the people who are sitting there with the open Bible and following you verse by verse, when you finish, they can say, "Amen, that's right, brother. Preach on. That's exactly right." Or do they walk away saying, "How did he get that?" Where in the world did that come from?
I never saw that in the Bible. The truth is, it wasn't there. Here's what I want you to see, and I want you to remember this very carefully. Being a pastor is an awesome responsibility because you and I are going to give an account, friend, for the folks we lead right, and the folks we lead wrong. The message ought to be convincing, but it should be convincing to do and to be the right thing.
Now listen. Most preaching is do-oriented, but Jesus' preaching was be-oriented.
Now the only way you see for that to happen is for the emphasis in the preacher's heart to be being and not doing. What are you convincing them to do? Then, likewise, one of the characteristics is conviction. Listen to what happened. When they heard this, they were pierced to the heart.
Said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, "Brethren, what shall we do?" Let me ask you this: When you preach, do you preach to give out information? Do you preach for inspiration, or is your primary purpose preaching?
So that people who are listening will make a decision. Peter preached for a decision. Jesus preached for a decision. Follow me. What is the objective of your sermon?
Now, I'm not saying that every sermon has the same objective. It doesn't. But you see, when you and I finish presenting Jesus Christ, somebody should listen. They should be forced by the nature of the gospel to make a decision of some sort. What is your objective?
Well, Peter had a—he had an objective. It's very clear. They were convicted. They said, "Men and brethren, what shall we do?" Likewise, one last characteristic I want to mention here is it was very compelling. Listen.
He said, "Repent and let each one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit." The promise is for you and your children. For all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God shall call Himself, with many other words, He solemnly testified and kept on exhorting them, saying, "Be saved from this perverse generation." And listen, so convincing, so convicting, so compelling, for them to make a decision, He gave them the opportunity, and three thousand of them were saved. If some of you were to give an invitation, your church probably six or seven people would fall out in a faint. Oh, they'd wonder what in the world happened to you. But let me ask you a question: If this world's going to hell and brother, it's going fast.
If this world is hell bound without Jesus Christ, and if Jesus Christ is the only hope for this world, and you are a God called, God anointed servant of God. And you present the only message that'll keep a man out of hell and get him into heaven, the only message that will equip a man to live in this day victoriously. If that be true, then should you not be preaching? Listen, sermons that are compelling, and convicting, and persuasive. That are calling for a decision in people's relationship to Jesus Christ.
Thank you for listening to part two of Spirit Anointed Preaching. For more inspirational messages like this one, visit our online twenty four seven station. And if you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by in touch dot org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.
