Who deserves the presence and the empowerment of the third person of the Godhead? We surely can do nothing to merit His blessing. “God doesn’t use people because they are gifted. He uses people (even preachers) because he is gracious… If we do believe (this), then we will pray – we will pray before we speak, and we will pray for others before they speak.”[17] Indeed, we can only ask humbly and earnestly and ask (and even teach) our audience to pray for this unction upon us as we bring God’s Word to them.

How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks (Matt. 12:34)

In the first part, we saw how eloquence can have a place in Biblical preaching only when it takes the role of servant not master. The master is the Bible. Any form of eloquence that will hinder the message is must be done with. Any form of eloquence that will hone the Biblical message can be used for the glory of God and the benefit of God’s people. Now we turn to the important truth that the seat of eloquence is the heart.

Too often when the word “eloquence” is mentioned we think first of the gift, the skill, the art, the tongue, the will and the mental abilities. However, the truth that Jesus binds speech primarily to the heart should inform all our thinking about God glorifying eloquence.

William Perkins penned, “Gracious speech expresses the grace of the heart.”[1] It is not a surprise then that when people heard Jesus, they said “no one ever spoke like this man!” (Jh. 7:46; cf. Lk. 4:22). Jesus was the most eloquent man who ever lived because He owned the purest heart ever existed.

If the main telos of preaching is not merely to deliver information, but to seek the transformation of the hearers, then the preacher’s heart must be first transformed by the content he preaches.[2] In other words, if the goal of preaching is “to bring people face to face with the living God”[3] then the preacher’s heart must experience this encounter first. It is this transformed heart that is filled with the reality of God’s character and God’s messages that best sees and exhibits Him (Matt. 5:8).

The prophet Jeremiah knew something of this truth when he said, “there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it (that is God’s Word) in, and I cannot” (Jer. 20:9). Paul echoes the same truth in saying, “I believed, and so I spoke.” (2 Cor. 4:13). It is only when the heart is filled with living faith and burning zeal for the truth that the mouth will speak with true eloquent. This principle is behind the fact that “beggars are often eloquent”, A. Alexander expressed. For, “The most important point in true eloquence is to be absorbed in the subject so as to think of nothing else. He who understands and feels his subject and lets nature give the expression, possesses the eloquence of which I speak.”[4] In another place he adds, “To have the heart of the preacher duly impressed with the importance of what he delivers, is better than all rules, and will in great measure cover defects, or rather remove them. Nature teaches the proper tunes to those who have strong feelings much more effectually than any rules of rhetoric.”[5] No doubt the two disciples on the road to Emmaus had burning tongues because they had burning hearts (Lk. 24:31-35)!

How then can your heart be kindled with the truth you seek to preach? It must be admitted that this is primarily the gracious work of God’s Spirit. However, when the Spirit works, the preacher will seek “not only to cultivate piety generally,” but to prepare his heart “for every discourse” he is seeking to deliver. Unfortunately, many preachers fail in the due preparation of their own hearts before preaching.[6] One way to prepare one’s heart is by preaching every sermon to one’s own heart first. Without savoring and digesting the truth first, one cannot deliver it with power for others to taste it.[7] The heart (and the preaching) cannot be dull if the glory of God is manifest to it. “A pastor who is not manifestly glad in God does not glorify God… A bored and unenthusiastic tour guide in the Alps contradicts and dishonors the majesty of the mountains.”[8] If the heart is kindled with the majesty of God, the tongue will follow.

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