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, so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God.

Young preachers should study this portrait of Paul the preacher. Seasoned preachers, Sunday school teachers, and parents too. Anyone in the role of conveying spiritual truth to others must come to terms with the four truths presented here about teaching God’s truth.

First we must understand the “awe-fulness” of preaching. We cannot help but remember that Isaiah’s commissioning to preach the Word had to be preceded by the experience of God’s presence. Upon being confronted with the three-times holiness of God in the throne room scene, he responded,

“Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips … for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.” (Isa. 6:5)

Paul was fearful of his task. To be sure, there is the natural fear that comes with preaching to a hostile audience, as Paul experienced when being let down the city wall in a basket during his first foray into bold preaching for Christ (Acts 9:23-25). And he had experienced great hardships of rejection for Christ. But he never shrank back in fear of rejection. His weakness, fear, and trembling were most likely from the knowledge of being considered worthy of the ministry of sharing a holy message from a holy God. He was humbled that, as “the foremost” of sinners (1 Tim. 1:15), he was raised up for such an awesome ministry. In old English, the word “awful” comes from the sense of being full of awe or awe-inspiring. Teaching of God’s Word, in that sense, is “awe-ful.”

Second, the form of Paul’s preaching was not studied homiletics, with attention to elocution, diction, rhetoric, and erudite words. Many pulpits today are filled with smooth-sounding conveyors of a message that sounds evangelical and draws big crowds but lacks the power to change lives.

Third, Paul’s preaching was filled with the power of the Spirit; lives were changed. People didn’t “enjoy” his message; they were profoundly convicted by it. He spoke, as Peter wrote, “as one who is speaking the utterances of God” (1 Peter 4:11), not superficially. This is not to say we should not take care in how we package our teaching, but at the core, it is the Holy Spirit’s power that changes people, not the form of the message. Lastly, Paul’s goal in teaching was to direct people’s faith not to him or his oratory, but to the power of God.

Lord, I confess that too much of my teaching has been about me, and not You.