PRESIDENT’S PERSPECTIVE
Matt Proctor has served as president of Ozark Christian College since 2006.
ALL BECAUSE OF A SERMON Matt Proctor
Billy Graham sat at the back of the revival tent. The North Carolina teenager didn’t want to be there, but a neighbor had invited Billy to drive his truck into town for the revival. In 1934, a sixteen-year-old country kid like Billy rarely got a chance to get behind a steering wheel, so he said yes. Billy prepared to tune the preacher out, but as Mordecai Ham preached, something happened. “The evangelist had a way of describing sins and shortcomings,” Graham later remembered, “and demanding, on pain of divine judgment, that you mend your ways. I was so sure he had singled me out that night that I actually ducked behind the wide-brimmed hat of the lady sitting in front of me.” Convicted, young Billy came back the next night and the night after that. Ham preached from Romans 5:8, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” When the choir sang the invitation hymn, Billy walked the aisle to commit his life to Christ, and over the next 70 years, he preached that same gospel to over 2 billion people. All because of a sermon.
The Most Powerful Place on the Planet
The most powerful place on the planet might be a pulpit. Many people would laugh at that sentence. To them, preaching seems ineffective, silly, a joke. I heard the story of a preacher, elder, and deacon who were deer hunting when a huge buck crossed a clearing. The preacher and elder fired simultaneously, so when the buck dropped, they didn’t know which one had shot it. The deacon leaped up to investigate, and after examining the deer, he hollered back, “It’s the preacher’s. He shot this buck.” “How do you know?” asked the elder. “Look here,” replied the deacon. “The bullet went in one ear and right out the other!” For many, that’s preaching—in one ear and out the other.
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TO INSPIRE
Sermons don’t make any real difference, and the most powerful place on the planet is not a pulpit. But the Bible paints a different picture. 1 Corinthians 1:21 says, “It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save those who believe.” Inept as it may seem, preaching is divinely effective. “For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” (Heb 4:12) One preacher engraved on his Bible cover the letters TNT—because God’s Word contains explosive power—and I tell my preaching students that when they open their Bible to speak, there’s no telling what might happen.
Even on Bad Sermon Days
I’m reminded of this most when I’m preaching a bad sermon. Sometimes I’ll preach a sermon I know is not connecting, and I think of my friend in Bible college who spoke at a little church one weekend. He could tell the sermon that morning was a clunker, but church people are nice. So as he shook hands afterward, everyone encouraged him, “Nice job. Nice sermon. Nice job.” Except one lady. She said, “Nice try.” Ha! I have preached my share of “nice try” sermons, and on those days, I just want to get done quickly, go home, and try again next week. But God, in his great celestial sense of humor, often gives me the best response to my worst sermons, and as the invitation song is sung, people are coming down the aisle. Folks are making decisions for Christ. A lady is shaking my hand, saying, “You have no idea how that touched me.” I’m thinking, “You’re right. I have no idea how that touched you.” The fact is, however, I do know. Ineffective as my words may be, God’s Word remains powerful. In Isaiah 55:11, God says, “My word that goes out from my mouth…will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.”
