Pastor John, you once said in a message, "Everything I write is to try and find a way to say the obvious in a way that will make people bolt awake and come alive in Jesus." Explain that for us. Obviously this awakening is the work of the Holy Spirit, but what role does creative language play as a means of awakening sinners?

I have been wrestling with that question for years and years. I did a talk, "Is There Christian Eloquence?" I think it was in 2006 or something at one of our national conferences. The recent thing that I did on Herbert is related to that. I'm always thinking as a preacher and a writer, "Does my language make any difference?" Because clearly the Bible teaches, "I planted, Apollos watered, God gave the growth." That is the decisive growth giver, or Ephesians 2.5, "God made us alive when we were dead." Dead men are not impressed by vocabulary.

God raises the dead, and they're not raised by my poetic effort. In 1 Peter 1.23, we are born not of perishable seed, but imperishable through the Word of God. The perishable seed is the Holy Spirit. He does the beginning, and the instrument is the Word of God, which verse 25 says is the gospel, which we preach.

Jesus said in John 3, "The wind blows where it wills." We don't know where it comes from, where it's going. So are all who are born of the Spirit. So the message of the Bible is God raises the dead. God causes people to be born again, and it is not decisively our instrumentality.

So the question is really urgent for me, because should I draw the conclusion? Well, since God can save people through bad grammar, and He can save people through flat demeanor, and He can save people through prosaic speech, and heavily accented English, or German, or whatever language people are hearing the gospel in, and He can do it through faulty exegesis and lopsided presentations, and hypocritical preachers even.

I mean, God can save people just about any way He wants, provided the rudiments of the gospel get through to people. Should I just draw the conclusion? Well, okay, sorah, sorah, don't teach preaching, and don't make any effort to say anything in a creative or impactful way. And here's my best shot now.

Okay, so I keep working on this, trying to find ways to say it and live it that are biblical. I don't think language is a matter of indifference in the matter of bringing people to Christ or sanctifying people in Christ. But the two things I would say is, one, we should avoid efforts to preempt the work of the Holy Spirit by our language.

And that language may be sloppy intentionally, it may be casual intentionally, it may be artsy intentionally, or literary, or refined. Any effort, whether you're talking low culture or high culture, to try to manipulate people by your language, preempt the Holy Spirit, get them saved through your design, we should abominate that, throw that away.

There should be a feel about our praying and our preaching that says, "This man is not presuming that his words save sinners, that God saves sinners and uses his words." Which secondly, then, implies for me this. The Holy Spirit is sent into the world, according to John 14, to glorify Jesus Christ.

So the Holy Spirit is going to open the eyes of the blind in order for them to see Jesus, which means my words should be portraying the Jesus that the Holy Spirit wants people to see when he raises them from the dead, or he might not raise them from the dead and give them eyes to see because there's nothing there true to see.

Which means my words are a portrait in front of people which is somehow worthy of Jesus, and the Holy Spirit says, "Oh, I like that portrait. I will now grant this person the eyes to see that portrait." And then if I ask myself, "Okay, what is it about Jesus that I should portray?" Well, he's true, and he's beautiful, and he's stunning, and he's amazing, and he's something which says something about the kind of descriptions I want to make of him.

So that's my reason for giving effort, like you just read to me in that question about trying to bring people bold, awake, by saying something striking. All I mean by that is Jesus really is striking. Jesus really is amazing. Jesus really is worthy of the most wonderful or the most surprising ways of describing him truly, and the Holy Spirit regularly honors that effort by opening the eyes of the blind to see a truly described Jesus.

Thank you, Pastor John. You will find those messages referenced earlier in this podcast at DesiringGod.org. The messages are titled, "Is There Christian Eloquence? Other Words and the Wonder of the Cross," and the other message is titled, "Saying Beautifully as a Way of Seeing Beauty, the Life of George Herbert and His Poetic Effort." Thank you for listening to this podcast.

Please email your questions to us at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening. Ask Pastor John for a free podcast.