Sermon Tone Analysis

Vance Havner preached at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

*WHAT KIND OF PREACHER DO WE NEED?*

In these wild and weird and wicked times the work of the preacher is being rethought and revamped and re-examined.

Some think his main business, according to Ephesians 4:12, is to be the equipper of the laymen for their ministry.

He's being pushed away from the center of the platform to the wings in favor of celebrities, experts, and entertainers.

But the "Old Books' still says, "How shall they hear without a preacher?"

What kind of preacher do we need?

We need the same kind we've always needed.

Nothing important has changed.

Just because we've split the atom and gone to the moon doesn't mean we need a new kind of preacher.

We have a new kind in some quarters, but we don't need him.

There's a lot of cheap preaching going around over the country.

I heard of a preacher some years ago when haircuts were selling for fifty cents who had a barber in the crowd who said, "I'll cut your hair for nothing.

I'll take it out in preaching."

The preacher said, "Well, I'll have you know that I don't preach any fifty-cent sermons!"

And the barber said, "That's all right.

I'll come several times."

I see that the chapel talks are selling for a dime-a-piece out in the library.

My publishers did a paperback for me some time ago, and on the cover they had The Best of Vance Havner--60¢.

What kind of preacher do we need?

We need *anointed preachers*.

In Exodus 30 there were three restrictions about the anointing oil for the priest: ("Upon man's flesh it shall not be poured; whoso compoundeth any like it or whosoever putteth any of it on a stranger shall be cut off from his people.")

I think we Southern Baptists have just about rededicated ourselves to death.

We are running an "Old-Adam Improvement Society," an unsanctified flesh that never has died to sin and risen again to walk in newness of life.

It's running down church aisles to rededicate, and God couldn't use it if it were rededicated a thousand times because ' flesh shall not glory in His presence, and they that are in the flesh cannot please God."

Those two ought to be placarded in every church across the country.

That's why God chose "not many wise, mighty, and noble, that no flesh should glory in His presence."

Not many wise, because they try to get to heaven head-first instead of heart-first.

The only thing I know of that has its head and heart in the same place is cabbage, and you're no cabbage.

Not many mighty, not many presidents of the United States can you think of who you believe were born-again, spirit-filled, New Testament Christians?

Not many noble, glorying in their ancestry.

The trouble with this ancestry business is that it's like potatoes--the best part is usually under the ground.

God does not pour His anointing oil on old Adam.

But this unction, this unguent, this ointment is not sold over any counter.

Simon Magus tried to buy it, but it's not for sale.

It's not compounded in any apothecary, not put together by chemistry.

A preacher may be wrapped in the robes of learning; his study walls may be decked with diplomas, his home filled with travel souvenirs of many lands; he may wear all the trappings of ecclesiastical prestige and pageantry; but he cannot function without unction.

If he tries it, he will spend his time taxiing down the runway and never taking off.

John Wesley demonstrated that a long time ago.

The last time I spoke here at Southwestern was back in the forties--my talks last a long time.

They asked me over at SMU at the same time to talk to the preacher boys over there.

I was at First Church, Dallas for the evangelistic conference, and I had prepared three messages for the Baptists, and, yet, found myself, in spite of everything, preparing a message with a lot of John Wesley in it.

I didn't know I had to go over to SMU until I got here.

There I had my sermon for John Wesley, and I said to them, "John Wesley started out equipped with the most formidable qualifications as a preacher.

No man ever prepared ready to preach.

the Indians without ever being converted himself.''

The preacher we need is* authoritative.

* The other day one of our ministers said that we must get away from authoritarian preaching.

I think we need to get back to it.

we've already gotten away from it.

My Lord told us "having authority and not as the Scribes," and a lot I hear today sounds like the Scribes.

"There was no king in Israel and every man did what was right in his own eye;" when authority goes out, anarchy comes in.

You remember that my Lord met the devil not in His own power, not in His own name, but met him with the word of God--"it is written....it is written....it is written."

If He could defeat the devil with three verses out of Deuteronomy, we ought to be able to defeat him with the whole Bible.

Don't be ashamed of the old-time faith.

There isn't anything newer.

We have a New Testament about a new and living way which we enter by the new birth that makes us new creatures with a new name and with a new song.

We're walking in newness of life, we're living by a new commandment, headed for new heaven and new earth and the new Jerusalem.

And almost the last word in the New Testament is "Behold, I make all things new."

No wonder the gospel is good news--old-time, new-time, anytime, all the time.

God's not running an antique show.

"These things speak and exhort and rebuke with all authority.

Let no man despise thee."

For several years we had a run on that expression "Tell it like it is."

You can't preach it like it is if you don't believe it like it was.

And if you don't believe that my Lord was virgin born and died for our sins and rose bodily from the grave and that the scriptures are God-breathed, then you can't preach it like it is because that's the way it was, and the way it was, it still is.

You can't preach Jesus Christ the same yesterday and today if you don't believe that what He was yesterday, He is now.

(It's almost the unpardonable sin to be dogmatic today.

When I go to a doctor, I want a dogmatic doctor.

I don't want him to say, "Well, it could be this and it could be that.

We'll give you these pills, and if they don't kill you, we'll try these."

I want a dogmatic doctor.

When I get on a plane, I want a dogmatic pilot.

I don't want him to say, "I believe we're going to try something new today."

When I go to church, I don't want to hear an expert in the art of almost saying something.

I don't want to come away feeling like I'd been out to dinner where they didn't serve anything but Cool Whip.

The preacher of today is not apologetic.

He shouldn't be with an inferiority complex in the presence of the new left and the hippies and the jet set.

One of our leading black preachers said the other day, "I don't belong to the right wing or the left wing.

They're both flapping on the same old bird."

If anybody's embarrassed, it ought to be that other crowd; not us.

William Jennings Bryan, in the speech that made him a candidate for the presidency, said, "The humblest citizen of the land when clad in the armor of a righteous cause is stronger than all the hosts of error."

The simplest man can know the answer.

You don't have to belong to Who's Who to know what's what.

We don't have to call in T.V. celebrities and athletic personalities to put the gospel over.

You don't have to hob-nob with Sodom and get chummy with Gomorrah and go to love-ins to find out what the hippies are thinking or read Playboy to know what the world is thinking.

What difference does it make?

My thoughts are not your thoughts.

Some of the avant garde boys ought to wake up.

The devil told me years ago that if I didn't get with it, and if I preached like this I wouldn't have anywhere to preach, that I'd starve to death.

Now, from the way I look, you may think the devil was right, but I haven't.

I'm busier in the Seventies than I ever was in the Fifties.

Some dear fellows are knocking themselves out trying to keep up with the procession.

They ought to get up-to-date.

We don't need something new so much as we need something so old that it would be new if anybody tried it.

They tell us we need a new lingo today; we must change our phraseology.

It used to be a "problem"; now it's a Hang-up."

It used to be a "blessing"; now it's a "meaningful experience."

We must be relevant and communicate and dialogue in the "now"; study the spectrum; seek fulfillment in involvement; get down to the nitty gritty.

What does it matter what you call it?