Mel and his family had been a delightful addition to our church for the year he was studying nearby, before returning to the mission field. A few days before they left, Mel and I had breakfast together. Near the end of our time, Mel got rather serious and said, "I feel the Lord wants me to share something with you. Please understand this isn't because I have seen something bad, but I just think he wants me to tell you this." I listened carefully as he went on.

"Continue to pursue holiness and purity in every area of your life," he said, "Our enemy doesn't care which side of the boat he can make us fall out of. His only concern is to make us fall."

I have a pretty good idea how a preacher falls out of one side of the boat. I know how easily sexual temptations, power plays, and weary frustration can throw us into deep waters. These dangers are true for all pastors, of course, but I began to wonder what dangers are unique to the preacher. What is there about preaching itself that tempts preachers to fall out of the other side of the boat?

What of the non-Balaams?

The greatest preaching impurity is preaching false doctrine. And the second is like unto it: preaching some variety of the gospel from a sin-saturated life. Peter thunders at these modern-day Balaams: "These men are springs without water and mists driven by a storm. Blackest darkness is reserved for them. For they mouth empty, boastful words and, by appealing to the lustful desires of sinful human nature, they entice people who are just escaping from those who live in error." (2 Peter 2:17-18)

I thought of that this morning when I heard on the radio a homosexual priest extolling the "all-inclusive love of God."

But what of us who are not Balaams, we who try to let the Bible preach through us week in and week out, and do our best to keep our noses clean and our hearts oriented to Christ?

Phillips Brooks famously said, "Preaching is truth delivered through personality." Anything true and beautiful passing through my personality is liable to become impure. No doubt about that! My sinful attitudes and my foolish pride can stick to God's word like bacteria on fresh fruit.

But there is also something impure about preaching where truth has not passed through personality. I suppose that every sermon inevitably carries the personality of the preacher, but I'm here to tell you that there are sermons where truth has not passed through this preacher's personality. And such sermons were impure. They may be true, but they're not actually sermons.

Just getting at a text's truth is hard enough. I've been preaching from 1 Samuel, and it is tough going. Hermeneutical issues, exegesis, structural analysis, and finding bridges to our day all make for some hard shoveling. But the harder work is swallowing the Word once I understand it.

I read recently about a scientist named Hilary Koprowski who was at the forefront of the search for a polio vaccine in the 1940s. Animal tests had been successful. David Oshinsky writes: "The next step for Koprowski involved a powerful but unwritten rule of scientific research. Before testing his oral vaccine on other humans, he must try it himself … Late one winter afternoon [in 1948], he and his assistant, Thomas Norton, whipped up a 'polio cocktail' … The two men drank from small glass beakers, tilting their heads to fully drain the liquid. It tasted a lot like cod-liver oil, they agreed. 'Have another?' asked Norton. 'Better not,' Koprowski replied, 'I'm driving.'"

That's the same gutsy step every preacher has to take. We have no right to give other people our well-researched holy vaccine until we've "drained the liquid" ourselves. And sometimes, it does taste like cod-liver oil!

Eugene Peterson puts it this way in Eat This Book: "It is entirely possible to come to the Bible in total sincerity, responding to the intellectual challenge it gives, or for the moral guidance it offers, or for the spiritual uplift it provides, and not in any way have to deal with a personally revealing God who has personal designs on you" (p.30).

This work of drinking and eating the Word we've researched is hard, in part, because praying isn't as easy as swallowing. Kneading Scripture into life isn't as easy as kneading yeast into dough. When I have one eye cocked on the minute hand, and the other on my do list, prayer and contemplation have a way of seeming like lollygagging companions who need to be hurried along because dinner will soon be served.

Truth and data

When I study a text I find Truth mixed up with data. Principles buried in details. Some sermons I've heard don't know the difference. Verb tenses, colorful maps, funny stories, and small print cross references are laying there on the homiletical table along with gold nuggets of truth, as if they were all equally valuable. Prayer, hard questions, imaginative thinking and talking with others all help me to hose the mud off the gold and sort out which details will help people see the nuggets most clearly.

It is just at that point, though, that I'm most tempted to read another commentary rather than pray through what I've found. It is very tempting for me to try to scrounge up another illustration, rather than to taste the Word myself to see what it produces in my life. If I avoid drinking the Word myself often enough, no matter how much time I spend digging up the truth, I am liable to fall out of the other side of the boat.

Eating off another's plate

I've been troubled to read how often preachers are preaching someone else's sermons. I'm not sure it is a sin, but I believe it is spiritually uncouth, like eating off someone else's plate.

The main problem isn't using truth that another preacher has mined. The Hope Diamond is beautiful and priceless no matter who owns it or looks at it. The problem is using truth that has passed through someone else's personality. Instead of being preachers, we become actors. We are taking another person's voice, and putting on another preacher's heart. Preachers impersonating other preachers.

I suppose it is possible for another preacher's sermon to be swallowed and come forth through my personality as a true sermon. There are many times when I've swallowed what I've read or heard, been nourished or vaccinated, and then I preach that truth. I give credit, but it really has become mine. It has become me. But I know, too, how easy it is to find something really good by someone else—very well-said, insightful, or clever—and sprinkle it like salt on my sermon. I figure it will make the meal tastier for my audience, even though I never really swallowed the idea myself.

One preacher's heart from another preacher's mouth is like butter flavoring instead of the real butter.

A pure sermon

A pure sermon isn't just absolutely true. It must be that, of course, as true as Scripture itself and the mind of Christ. But a pure sermon must be spoken from a "trued" heart and mind. Each week when I begin to prepare, there is something in my thinking, will, or emotions that is a little out of plumb, a little cockeyed. As I study, Scripture is like a blue chalk line thwacked onto my life. If I preach the truth before I've nudged and hammered my life to the blue line, I've preached an impure sermon. And if I do it again and again, I will fall out of the other side of the boat.

Lee Eclov recently retired after 40 years of local pastoral ministry and now focuses on ministry among pastors. He writes a weekly devotional for preachers on Preaching Today.