This is such pompous supercilious nonsense.
There has been no greater evangelist in post-Biblical times than George Whitefield, yet he freely divulged that many of his sermons were highly dependent on Matthew Henry's commentaries. If you read through many of his sermons and compare them with Henry on the same text, you can see the similarities. That did not stop God blessing his ministry in a way that very few others have ever been blessed.
You should definitely use commentaries. It is most important that you understand your text fully before you start preaching on it. Otherwise you may be led into such terrible soul-destroying errors as occasionally appear on this board. Of course you need to undestand (and I'm sure you do) that the Bible is God's word and a commentary is merely a help to understanding it, but it is the height of arrogance to suppose that one is of such superior intellect that one has nothing to learn from those who have gone before.
Steve
It is pretty ungracious for you to automatically cast everything I write in the worst possible light. I did not say for evangelist to not read commentaries at all, but to first of all, when starting a new study, to have a period when you are away from all commentaries and helps. This is not pomposity, but believing God teaches all believers through His Spirit.
After one has given the new subject a period of careful study and prayer
then, certainly, consult other works. But even then one must have a good balance of reading material, otherwise we merely reinforce our biases rather than objectively consider unconsidered perspectives.
Evangelist is not considering a wide spectrum of reading sources, which is why I wrote the cautions that I did. However he,
also misconstruing my comments, is starting a new thread as if I had said the very same thing that you accuse me of here.
It is not arrogance and "pompous supercilious nonsense". It is trying to get him - and now
you, brother -
to be first and foremost a Berean.
