Thankfully preaching is not just you and your listeners. It’s so much bigger than that. Your preparation is critical stewardship before God. Their openness to listen is also a vital stewardship of their opportunity. But there is also the Holy Spirit:
The Spirit of God is at work long before the sermon passes through the air. The work of God in the people of God is constant. Our privilege is to be a tool in that greater work. So long before we stand to preach, the Spirit of God has already been working in peoples’ lives – drawing them to Christ, convicting them of sin, disciplining believers, orchestrating life’s circumstances and so on.
The Holy Spirit is critical in the delivery of the sermon. The older writers referred to the “unction.” Today we might refer to the “anointing.” The fact is that true preaching goes beyond our preparation and ability (both of which require of us good stewardship), to have a contagious vibrancy that can only be credited to the delivery taking place in the power of the Spirit. This is not something that can be stirred up by our own pre-delivery ritual, but can surely be harmed by our character, motives, attitude – by sin.
The work of the Spirit continues after the sermon is finished. Thankfully it is not our responsibility to follow up on every individual in minute detail, convicting, encouraging, filling, urging, etc. When we lay our effort before the throne, God’s work presses on. Praise the Lord.
Biblical Preaching 
Peter:
I don’t know if you are planning on a third installment of the Holy Spirit and your preaching. But food for thought…
I come from a branch of the church (Stone-Campbell movement) that has been (falsely I believe) accused of bibliolatry, because of our historical connection between the Holy Spirit and the Word of God. In its most strict form it would state that the primary way the Holy Spirit speaks to us is through God’s Word, the Bible. (Some would have said in the past that the ONLY way the Holy Spirit speaks is through the Bible. But that extreme has pretty much passed away)
I note that in the first two installments you say nothing about how the Holy Spirit uses the text itself, the Word of God to speak to the hearer. Maybe that is so obvious not to need to be stated. But (perhaps with my historical antennae) it was a noticeable absence.
How does that affect how much text we read, how many other passages we use? Does (and if so how does) the Holy Spirit use scriptures to which we the hearer have been exposed to speak meaning and conviction into the text being examined in today’s sermon>
Any thoughts on the Holy Spirit speaking through the written Word of God? Not picking any arguments, just seemed like a curious omission.
Thanks so much for what you do. I deeply appreciate the thought that goes into your bog entries.
Thanks Cal. I may add a third post at some point, but a couple of quick thoughts. It seems to me that a strong commitment to expository preaching is born out of a conviction that the Bible is unique in its revelatory role. I personally am uncomfortable with a lot of what is attributed to the “voice of the Spirit” in Christian circles today. Yet even with an open and gracious attitude to different understanding of the Spirit’s role regarding guidance, and different vocabulary learned and used by believers, still the objective source of God’s voice is in Scripture. As Augustine said, “when the Bible speaks, God speaks.” As preachers we need to train people to value their Bibles precisely because so much of the spirituality people hear about and think about is built on such shaky ground.
Then, of course, you have the issue of how the Spirit speaks through the Word. A lot of what people describe still seems to be more about circumstances and subjective impressions than genuinely understanding the inspired meaning of the text. The Spirit does speak through the written Word, but He does so in line with the meaning He inspired, rather than some “new and personal” intepretation. As Eugene Peterson put it, “exegesis is an act of love.”
Thanks. It was what you address in your second paragraph that I was specifically thinking of. I don’t know why anyone would preach expositorily without the presumption that God speaks in and through the Word.
But how the Spirit uses the Word intrigues me. However, “the Spirit blows where it will” and it may have to be enough to say that the Spirit uses the word without us understanding how.
Where is the Peterson quote from? It sounds nice, but I don’t get its relevance. An act of love for the Word; for the people; for God? If I see it in context it probably will make more sense.
Thanks again.
He was referring to an act of love for God. I quoted it in reference to seeking the meaning inspired in the text. It’s in “Eat This Book: The Art of Spiritual Reading” from his Spiritual Theology series.