Preaching with a Tablet

And He said to them, ‘Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature’, Mark 16. 15.

We have reached the final article in our Tablet preaching series.

I hope you have enjoyed reading this series as much as I have enjoyed writing it. More importantly, my prayer is that the series has helped you cultivate new techniques for the proclamation of God’s Good News!

In the first article, I tried to emphasize that preaching with a Tablet is NOT about trying to look cool!

If you are trying to look cool then you should question your motivation for using a Tablet; more importantly, you should question if you should be preaching at all!

Consider these verses:

• ‘Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness’, Jas. 3.1 ESV;
• ‘But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be a disqualified’, 1 Cor. 9. 27 ESV;
• ‘And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God’, 1 Cor. 2. 1-5 ESV.

Preaching should never be about ‘me’– it should never be about dazzling crowds of people, gaining a large following, or even convincing others of my point of view. Rather, preaching must always be about Him and His word. He must receive the glory.

Paul wrote to Timothy ‘preach the word’, 2 Tim. 4. 2. Should we preach anything different? Absolutely not!

DR. HADDON ROBINSON in his book Biblical Preaching wrote: ‘Ministers can proclaim anything in a stained-glass voice at 11:30 on Sunday morning following the singing of hymns. Yet when they fail to preach the Scriptures, they abandon their authority. No longer do they confront their hearers with a word from God. That is why most modern preaching evokes little more than a wide yawn. God is not in it’.¹

As I close this series I would like to encourage you to prioritize your time. While we should become proficient with the tools we use, ultimately preaching is not about the latest and greatest app. We must focus our time and attention on God’s holy word. We must fall to our knees asking God for His leading and blessing.

Finally, we must humble ourselves before God and repent of our sins. ‘The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise’, Ps. 51. 17.