Improving Preaching (5) (2.9.1983) — Nigel Lee

As I said before, an hour of preaching is worth six to eight hours of physical labour. You know, if you preach three or four times a day, and some days when you're on tour, when you're ministering in some countries, they will just want to soak it out of you.

I remember preaching in a meeting once, they didn't get very much, we preached the message, they said we'll have a hymn and now you preach another message. And then they said, now we're going to break bread, and then you preach another message.

And then we had a hymn and then I preached another message. I had to preach four times for lunch, seven times in the day sometimes. They say that the amount of energy expended is six to eight hours of physical labour, as you can see, you get exhausted.

Physical Fitness and Rest for Preachers

You need to be a fit man. You need to keep your body in some sort of training. Now, that doesn't mean you have to be an Olympic athlete, but you need to be able to walk five miles at a brisk pace, or play some sport.

My biggest regret about being on OM, I said yesterday I must be the happiest man, but there are times when I regret being on OM, and it's Saturday afternoons. I used to play hockey for a club in London, and I loved it.

I used to play cricket for a club in the evenings when I was living down in London, and my main regret is that I don't have time to play sport. Now when you've got a travelling ministry, or you're on a team that's got activities, you cannot perhaps join a team.

In some places you can. Mike Hyde last year joined the local rugby club in Ireland, got in amongst the rugby players. Also was fit. At the very least, you can take a regular walk. Spurgeon used to say that the next main need for a preacher after prayer is oxygen.

Now, I was sharing about this with a group of friends. I have a group of prayer partners at home. They meet seven o 'clock every Friday morning, and we're praying over matters in the church and also my own ministry.

And I talk very freely with them. I say things with them that I wouldn't even say perhaps with you. And one of them says, you know, I'll play you a game of squash every week that you're here, if you're willing, as part of his attempt to contribute to my staying healthy.

I've never yet beaten him. He plays two or three times. We've had breathless draws. I've been thrashed out of sight. I've made him break sweat. I've never beaten him. I'm going to this winter. But, you know, we do have a tough life.

And the emotional strain is great. You need to have a body that's kept in some sort of trim. There are dangers, I think. I wake up in the early hours of the morning when I'm in the middle of a campaign.

My sleep gets disrupted when I'm on a mission. I often don't sleep more than three hours at a stretch. Wake up thinking about people. And you need to take rest after times of intensive outlay. God knows our frame, that we are but dust.

Psalm 103, verse 14. He doesn't expect you to be cast iron. Paul Bull, it was, who said, the sins of God's people come mostly through exhaustion. Work out your own way. If you have a sport you can play, if you just want to walk, do something to keep yourself pumping the right amount of oxygen.

We were leaving at the end of the August conference on the Saturday morning, early in the morning, my family and I, we were going away for two weeks of holiday camping in Brittany. We got up, tiptoed up, we had a little bit of breakfast, we're trying to just put the last things in the car, and there was a...

Before anyone was out jogging along, oh hi, he said... He sort of leaned on the edge of the car and prayed us all off to France. I respect that. Keeping himself in some sort of trim. And the final thing before lunch, and we've touched on this before, it's good to be able to take criticism, even to seek it, good friends, people that you trust to say things with your best interest at heart, a wife, fellow studiers of God's word, we all need it, I need it.

You may help me. If there are things that I've done that have been irritating to you, even during the course of these days of sort of practical talk-through and instruction, why don't you let me know?

Please? I won't, you know, drum you out of OM or smash you one in the face, or if I can... If there's some feature of my preaching that you've noticed in the conferences, I'm only giving you this permission for the next 24 hours.

But if you don't want to share anything, please feel free to do it, you know. Because we need to learn from one another and be open to help and criticism. Now time is gone, we're going to have a word of prayer together and then I'll ask for the little group notes to be given in, so that I can look through and see if there's anything that we should touch on in this afternoon's time.

Dennis? Thank you very much for the various questions and bits of feedback that came in. I was surprised at one or two things. I had expected, I think, more overlap. In fact, it was like standing in front of a shotgun being fired.

There were so many different requests. I've written down a number on paper here and I'm going to just respond in this session, first session this afternoon, which is always the most difficult because of the general time of day and sleepiness.

Beginning in Preaching Through Small Opportunities

Respond quickly to some of these questions that you ask. I haven't prepared the answers, all I've done is write down the questions, or at least Peter Conlon wrote some of them down. How does one get started in preaching?

How does one actually begin? How did you? Well, I was asked at college if I would cycle out about eight miles from where I was studying at the University of England and take a service in a small Baptist church in the middle of England.

So I duly did. I cycled eight miles, I preached to 20 people, and I cycled home again. And these poor, dear, long-suffering people had a, every Sunday they had a different student who cycled out, preached, and came home again.

I mean, church life had this major disadvantage and that was how they went on. I think one took bits and pieces of small opportunities. Any of you here who are staying on in for the conference and would like to have opportunities in this area, I would be delighted to give you jobs as discussion group leaders and so on, would help you formulating your thoughts in public.

If people ask you to give your testimony, have you actually sat down and written out your testimony? At any stage, it's a very good discipline in the early years, write it out so that it takes two minutes and you have ruthlessly chopped out every bit of Christian language that wouldn't be understood by a normal person, you know, normal newspaper reader, so that it's simple, clear, to the point, makes one point, and then you shut up.

That's good training, good practice. When people ask you to perhaps say something in the open air, don't plan on speaking for 25 minutes, plan on speaking for about four minutes maximum. Have you ever had to give out announcements at lunchtime or on the team?

Aim to be attention-grabbing, clear, anticipating their questions, to lighten it, perhaps make the announcements an interesting thing and not a switch-off boring thing. That's further practice. Any opportunity you get, and for a little bit of public, organized speaking, take it.

It was in O .M. that I got pushed much more into regular teaching and preaching. With a team in North India, most of them had never lived more than a few miles away from their village. They found themselves on a team.

I was the leader, the driver, the study program chap, everything. So after lunch we would sleep, and then when it was a little bit getting towards cooler, we would have an hour, hour-and-a-half of study every afternoon, which I used to teach, which I used to prepare in the mornings usually.

Valuable opportunity, which may come to you in O .M. Next question. It's to do with your morning reading of the Bible, and the question was raised, very valuable this. Is there a difference between reading devotionally and reading as Bible study?

Devotional Reading and Systematic Bible Study

Yes. Griffith Thomas, a great Theranglican preacher and teacher, used to say, you need two Bibles, two Bibles. I mean, what he meant was, you need to approach the Bible in two different ways. Read for the heart.

Read for that heartwarming, personal word from the shepherd. My sheep know my voice. Something from him, get you going. Doesn't need to take very long. But a preacher also needs the discipline of regular study, book by book, so that you say, look, between now and Christmas, I am going to tackle one book, and I'm going to work at it, read it again and again, 30, 40 times, think about it, try and break it down into some structure, sense its argument, so that by Christmas I could stand up and know how to apply that book.

Every book of the Bible has got a different purpose. It meets a different need. They're not sort of identical. If you had a problem in an OMT, they were all doctrinally sound, they could all sign the basis of belief, they all had some sort of heart for world missions, it's a problem not of false teaching.

The problem is, on this team, they just don't like each other, they can't stand each other on the team. Has God, anywhere in the Bible, given us the answer to that situation? You're into the book that I would want to expound.

Philippians is addressed to a church that hasn't got a doctrinal problem like the Galatian Church. It's a relationship problem. And I would want to expound my way through Philippians to meet that kind of need.

Now that is not the same need as the books before and after. Different situation, different need. And God has written the books in different ways. So you need to do the discipline study as well as the heartwarming devotions.

In the morning perhaps, if you have a busy team life, you have your morning quiet time, it's the word from the shepherd for you, to counsel, to reprove, to encourage, to rebuke, whatever you need. It needn't take three hours, that needn't.

But then at least you should be having a certain block of hours in a week, where you're going to get down to some serious discipline study. Next question. What happens if I'm asked to preach and I feel unable?

When a Preacher Feels Unable to Preach

Generally speaking, I would say then don't. I mean, if you really find the challenge that's put before you absolutely overwhelming, then don't necessarily take it on. However, many, many times before we get up to preach, we feel as if we don't have what it takes.

It's a question that you answer at different stages of your ministry. In the early years, you shouldn't necessarily be pushing to get preaching every time. God will open up the door in good time when you're ready.

God is more concerned about giving you something to say than giving you opportunities to speak, to start with. But in years to come, you may often feel yourself unable, quite panic-stricken. Well, don't, don't worry about that.

Get a hold of yourself, trust God, commit it to him, go and do your best. People have the liberty not to invite you back again to make a mess of it. That question would need a little tying down to the stage in your preaching.

The next one. What happens if you're, while you're speaking, you feel you're not getting through? You're talking, you're saying what you wanted to say, you feel you're not getting through. Well, there are many, many times, I think, in a person's ministry where this happens.

And all you've got to do, so far as I can see, is faithfully give them what God has given you to give. You can't do more than that. It is a fact that people's hunger for the Word of God increases as they get more of the Word of God.

People are at different stages, you'll learn this in evangelism. Imagine a series of stages, you've got a middle line, below the line they are not converted,.

And this is a scale of spiritual progress.

They're going on with God, they're reproducing, they're in touch with the living God, they're doing well as a Christian making progress. Down here, they've never even heard the first thing about the Gospel.

They've heard a lot about the Gospel, they've already undergone conviction, they're not yet in the Kingdom, but they're very close. Here, they've just come into the Kingdom of God, but they've got an awful lot yet more to learn.

Everybody you meet is somewhere between there and there. You may actually move this man in the right direction from wherever they're at in their spiritual progress. You don't always understand what you're saying, but there might be something in what you say or your approach that attracts them and brings them back next time.

What God has given you to say, they will, although it's difficult, help people at this stage. Now Isaiah was told that he was going to preach to people who wouldn't listen. That you'll preach, you'll preach, and they won't pay very much attention, but I want you to go preach.

Jeremiah was told the same and Ezekiel was told the same. Most of the great prophets were told that things were not going to be very easy for them. Sometimes you get people get up and walk out after five minutes, you know.

There's nothing much you can do about it. You can't sort of pursue them down the corridor. And so faithfulness, accept the fact that your reactions may in fact be wrong. In some of the most dead feeling meetings people get converted.

Give them what God gave you to give and you may well be part of the early process of training them to have an appreciation for the things of God. So many of these questions are, I can imagine different situations.

I went and spoke to a youth group meeting in a vicar's house in the middle of England and they were a wild bunch. And I was asked to come and speak on something and it really wasn't very appropriate. And I didn't feel as if I got through.

And frankly if I was invited back there again to speak to the same group, I probably wouldn't go. Because I accept the fact that I'm not very good in certain situations. It used to be the same when I was school teaching.

I would far rather talk to people who were sort of 16 to 18 than 12 to 14. I'm prepared to admit that I'm better at certain kind of things than others. So you might, I mean it depends on the circumstances, your question is a difficult one.

You might want to say, well I won't go and speak there anymore because I don't have anything to say to them. I'm not the right kind of person to talk to them. I really find it hard to give a principled answer to what is such a vague question.

I would usually have a, if I've done it one or two or three times and there haven't been any unconverted people there, shall we say, then I would begin to talk to the elders about this. Now, I mean at the stage I'm at now, I would feel I had the right to say, look there really isn't a lot of point in me coming and, you want me to preach the gospel don't you, and to explain the way of salvation.

But the people that are there have all heard it a thousand times and the last three times I've been there hasn't been anybody there who actually needed to hear the way of salvation explained. I'm willing to come if you're willing to have me speak to the people as they are.

I'm not willing to come to go through the charade of preaching the gospel again. I have been bold enough to say that on occasion. And I might then address the people as I feel them to be. But there are some places where I would now feel I've preached there a number of times, there was very little response, no message, you know.

Maybe my time is better used, especially if you get a lot of invitations to speak and you have to choose between them. I would tend to choose where I felt, after a while, that my own contribution was going to be better used, you know.

Women Preachers and the Authority of Scripture

A question is asked, what about women preachers? What about them? Well, scripture speaks of women prophesying, so long as they have their heads covered. Praying and prophesying. So obviously they were not in all circumstances totally silent.

Paul says that he himself in the churches that he had had a hand in starting did not allow women to have a teaching ministry. They were not to be given that authority. But no one can deny that women like Elizabeth Elliot and Helen Rosbeer, a woman like the Marichal in France, in years gone by, had a powerful men-convicting ministry.

So I am left with one of those difficult situations. In my own local church, if you're interested, we don't have women preach. They pray in the prayer meetings, they share in the house meetings when we have home Bible studies, but we don't put them up behind any pulpit and ask them to preach in the morning service.

And I myself am happy with that situation. I don't really want to go very deeply into that controversy, because it is complicated, but I would be happy to have someone like Helen Rosbeer come and preach at this conference, because I believe she's got a ministry.

I would listen. There are many women ministers around the country. I wouldn't cross the street, really. But maybe I'm prejudiced. But I was asked the same question yesterday, and I gave more or less the same answer, didn't I?

I haven't changed my view since yesterday. Yes? If that's the choice, yes. I personally feel that so many of these questions involving the role and the rights of women that have come up all over the place in the last 15 years, in society and in the church, the root of many of them is the men failing.

Failing in the home, failing in the pulpit, failing to take right leadership in the church, and that if only the men were as Scripture shows them to be, then the women would feel that, they would feel satisfied with a place that was less vocal.

They would feel loved, respected, given due honour, taken into consideration, ministered to, fed, and they'd be happy with their God-given role, which I take to be less vocal. I'm not one of those that say the restrictions on women preaching are merely Paul within his culture, because he goes for the source of his arguments always back to Genesis, and pre-fall Genesis.

And that has normative value for us throughout time. But let's leave that one. How can we deal with nerves? I don't, I don't know. I mean, Billy Graham has just stood up in the Evangelists conference in Amsterdam and spoken of the fact that before he gets up to preach, his hands are all sweaty and he's, you know, he's, even now, and the man has preached to more people than any of us are ever likely to, still he gets nervous.

I go through times of tremendous nervousness. I'm in and out of the toilet before the meeting. Terrible troubles, you see. Other times I feel much more confident. I think practice, committing the situation to God, just emotionally getting a grip of yourself and getting up and getting on with it.

I mean, there's going to come a time in the meeting where the man is going to say, Now, there you go. And whether you're nervous or not, you have to, you have to begin. I don't know. Do you want to say anything Peter?

I have nothing more to say than that. It's just practice and getting a grip.

Managing Nervousness and Communicating Clearly

One thing that I pray about is that somehow the Lord would not allow nervousness to hinder communicating the message or the gospel. And sometimes you find the Lord maybe has answered that in that you don't show so much nervousness on your face that perhaps you're absolutely soaking under the arms of something.

Your nerves, your emotional stress has transferred itself. And I'm quite happy for that because I basically don't want people just to be conscious of some nervous presentation and miss what it is God wants them to hear.

My nerves normally come out in the middle of the night, less in front of the people. I normally look fairly, fairly much as if I know what I'm doing and I'm doing it under control in front of the people.

But it's at night that I panic and wake up and pray and sweat and can't sleep and turn over. I go through agonies in the middle of the night.

Why? I don't know. I was so nervous that I can't, just as I am when I have one sleep. I don't know how I could have thought of that. The first time I ever read scriptures in church was from Psalms where it says the sparrow hath builded her house to swallow her nest.

And I read it and it said the sparrow hath builded her house to swallow her nest. That was at our Sunday school anniversary in Albrock Hall.

We had a chap in church who was asked to read the lesson and he was tremendously nervous about this. And he got the passage in Isaiah 6 about the angels you see. With twain he covered his face, with twain he covered his feet, with twain he covered his flies he put.

And the whole place just fell about laughing. I suppose that doesn't translate into German does it? I'm sorry about that. You'll have to explain it privately afterwards. Dick, you have a question? I'm not sort of conscious of those shades of meaning.

I just feel. I think for all practical purposes there isn't very much difference. Well not before you stand up to preach, when you're sitting down waiting to come on to speak. But I think actually as you pray about this, God does answer prayer.

I have known myself in real uptightness and as I've prayed I have physically felt tension draining out. Not all the time. But there have been times when a very important message. I can remember once at a university I was asked to meet with many of the members of staff, the professors.

These were some of the top people, some of them in their field in the country. And I was asked to speak to them for 20 minutes. To explain what this mission was. And I said a little bit about the mission and then I told them about the resurrection and I told them that they were all under the judgment of God because that was the implication of the resurrection.

That's how Paul preaches it in the University of Athens. God has set a day in which he has appointed the world under judgment and he's appointed a man by whom we may be saved you see. Now I felt nervous before that but when I stood to speak to these men they were as every bit lost and needy as the students I'd been speaking to the night before, the undergraduate.

God had taken it away. Sometimes he doesn't seem to. I don't know. Larry? Yes. Yes. Think about the people's needs. Yes. Yes. There are various imaginative tricks that one goes through. One imagines what the Lord would say to them.

I sometimes have a whole sort of screen running in my mind. Imagining the Lord talking to these people, how would he be? And that gets your mind off yourself too. Someone asked a question about do you practice in front of a mirror?

You know gestures and things. No. I mean some may do. I am prepared to meet every kind of unexpected habit among preachers. But I would think that was ridiculous. I would think it was so false. You are to be there as the man that God created to be yourself.

But then in some preaching classes people have to preach sermons in front of videos and then they have to look at the videos and they get people criticizing their video performance. This goes on in some technical colleges.

Well, what's the difference between that and criticizing yourself in front of the mirror? I don't know. But I wouldn't waste the time of day having a tryout in front of a mirror.

Have we been with the video?

That can destroy people from ever, ever preaching. The most depressing thing for me ever is to listen to myself preaching. I got a few tapes at home. And it's awful. I get discouraged by that. Even messages where people have been converted and God's blessing.

I feel, oh, do I really sound like that? It can be destructive, you know, this video thing. Anyway. How often do you use sermons? You know, when you preach them, you got the notes. You put it away in a little box and get it out later?

Use it again? Or is that wicked? Does God have to give you every message, fresh, new, before you stand and preach? Well, Martin Goldsmith was very interesting this morning, admitting that he preached this same series earlier this summer in South Africa.

Reusing Sermons While Renewing Their Message

I also happen to know, I think that he preached the same thing to the students at Cambridge University last winter. And George Whitfield used to say that he never felt he had really got a sermon to its peak until he had preached it 40 times.

The same summer. And Peter and I were chatting after lunch and he was telling me about Josh McDowell has some particular messages that he brings to students around the world. And there's one message to do with sex, ultimate sex.

It's an evangelistic message that starts out with talking about sex. And he's preached it, well, well over a thousand times. I mean, you said possibly 15 ,000. I thought that couldn't be possible. 1 ,500.

So, don't throw away your notes. I have got some boxes of notes at home and the stuff is filed away. It's useful. But, don't ever just flip the box open, pull out something, go up into the pulpit and preach it.

Every message must be, must have the fire rekindled again. You're going to have to prayer walk it in or think about it in quietness for an hour or two again. Get the thing fresh, maybe change the illustrations.

And actually you will find that if it's a year or two since you last preached on a particular passage or verse or topic, your ideas may well have changed. So you may find that you've actually got to write out the notes all over again because you want your emphasis to change as you get older.

That has happened to me constantly. I very often find that I pull the notes out of a box but I finish up not using them but rewriting the thing because your experience grows. Your ideas change, your insights and scripture change.

New things come into your experience that you can use as illustrations. But don't just think it, stand up and think that last year's fire will still rest upon it. Someone asked a question, do you require Bible college training?

And they quoted the verse from 1 John chapter 2 and verse 27. Which is this verse. As for you, the anointing which you received of him abided in you and you need not let anyone teach you. But as his anointing teacheth you concerning all things and is true and is no lie and even as it is taught you, ye abide in him.

The implication seemed to be that no one needs to teach you anything. You don't need to go to Bible college. You just stand up and with the anointing that's upon you, out it comes. Why did you come to this seminar then?

Or why did John feel it necessary to write his epistle if people didn't need any teaching? We all need teaching and Bible school may well have its value, its place. I myself have never been to one and don't intend ever to go to one.

Bible College, Lay Preaching, and the Dangers of Professionalism

For a number of reasons. None of which need become your reasons. Some of you have been to Bible college or hope to go to Bible college. Well and good if God is leading you there. There are certain dangers you must face.

The danger of professionalism, the danger of elitism, the danger of imagining that only someone that has been to Bible college can stand and preach God's word. The Christian church history is riddled with this.

Professional experts and no one else has the right to say anything. It's built into the Roman Catholic system and in the half-reformed churches. The majority of churches that came out of the Reformation I would believe are only half-reformed.

It remains there too. And so people sit in the pews imagining that only the one man who's gone away and studied for three years in some monastery, sorry for going so fast David, has got the right to say anything.

We need to have modelled before us the layman who can study and preach. Because otherwise people sit in the pew listening to you thinking well only you can study and understand God's word because only you have had the time to go away and the money to spend for three years of Bible study.

But actually it is everyone who is supposed to be studying their Bibles and learning from it. And so I'm happy to stand and preach and if people ask me where I got all this stuff, by reading the Bible.

By spending hours reading the Bible at home on journeys, in trains, as God gave me the time. Because they know they can do that as well. They maybe never are going to get away to Bible college. You can see that I come from a background that has been influenced by the Bible.

Now we have two full-time workers in my own church and I am a full-time worker giving time to the study and preaching. But I know that I need to learn. I don't think 1 John 2 .27 has got anything to do with it.

Learn all you can from others. But don't confine your learning to Bible college. How do you keep to time? There is another question that has been asked. I knew a man who was absolutely brilliant at this.

He would tell you to the minute when he was going to end. If he was going to do a two minute book review, he would end within ten seconds of his appointed time. A chap called Stan Warren. He used to be a civil servant.

Not a trained preacher at all. A man who lives in England. Works now. He is a retired man. Goes around among missionaries. Encouraging them, teaching, preaching. Practice, discipline and the willingness simply to stop when the time comes.

Sermon Length, Attention, and Systematic Exposition

Now I'm not very good at it. I suppose I get a reputation for going on a long time. There were two little lads who met somewhere in Lancashire. A Roman Catholic boy and a Baptist boy. And they were talking about each other's churches and the differences.

And so they agreed to go to each other's churches. And so the Baptist boy went along to the Roman Catholic boy's church. And everything that happened, the processions, the bowing up and down, and the candles and everything.

What's that mean? What's that about? And the Roman Catholic boy explained everything, you see, that was going on. And the Baptist boy was nodding, taking it all in. And then the following Sunday it was the turn for the Catholic boy to come to the Baptist church.

And he started asking questions. And the minister got up in the pulpit. What's this mean? What's going to happen now? And the minister very solemnly took his watch off his wrist, laid it down in front of him on the edge of the pulpit.

And the Catholic boy said, what's that mean? And the Baptist boy said, absolutely nothing at all, I'm afraid. As they all say, the people can only take in through their ears as much as their bottom can bear on the seat, you know.

I am a believer in longer rather than shorter sermons. John Stott, I think quoting someone else, said, Sermonettes make Christianettes. People need to hear the word of God systematically expounded and at length.

But we live in a day of the television age, of the quick advertisement, of everything being instant. And you've got to be good if you're going to be long. And it's awful to be boring. Have you ever been bored by preachers?

I don't know how to keep the time. Other than galloping towards the end and then stopping. God will use his word. Jonathan McCloskey was down in the tent the other day saying that so far as he knows, when he has preached evangelistically, he has never in his lifetime's ministry seen one person converted.

And yet people have been converted through his ministry. Usually when he's been preaching to the believers. And accidentally, I mean, as he would regard it. I mean, God knew what he was doing. It often happens.

You know, we had an evaluation form handed in by someone from the summer conference this year. One of the questions put on the evaluation form, what was the best thing that happened to you this summer?

And this person said, I got converted. They'd gone through the Akron conference in the States. They'd come over to the European conference. They'd listened to the tapes. They'd read the books. And halfway through, I think the July conference, they found the Lord.

They got converted. Well, I don't know what the message was on. Whether it was some instruction on the drivers or something, I don't know. But God is so marvelously sovereign. I deeply dislike the kind of children's story that gives them the nice story and then pops in the pill at the end.

Because it's such a switch off, isn't it? You've got to learn. I don't want to get into children's messages because that's a whole extra skill. And the Child Evangelism Fellowship know a lot about it, although one wouldn't always agree with everything.

One's got to learn to have the point implicit and woven in as you go. Otherwise it finishes up like those old moody science films. Do you remember those? You get the very interesting science bit and then there's Erwin A. Moon with the magic Bible that always gets popped open at the pace he wanted and then he preaches at you.

Educationally, that was old-fashioned. Fifties. Martin Lloyd-Jones used to expound the Word, whatever he felt it was there, you know. Whatever was there, he used to just say it's there. That's what God is saying through this passage.

And the Word will touch believer and unbeliever. Sometimes we can be too false in sort of trying to cut both ways. Preach God's Word, what does it say? And why does it say it? What does it mean? Believe me.

Unless you're in a situation where it is to be a clear evangelistic message, that's what you're there for, to preach on the deity of Christ or the meaning of life. But if you're expounding the Word, be faithful to the Word and beware of these little bits that get tacked on.