The fact that we have been given the privilege of dispensing God’s word week after week can result in a kind of over familiarity that causes us to take undue liberty with it. Not in doctrine so much as in our disposition. “Our share in the table provisions may be that of analysts rather than guests” Jowett warns. “We may become so absorbed in words that we forget to eat the Word.”
The responsibility of exegesis makes us especially vulnerable to this. Instead of being hearers of God’s word we easily become handlers of it. We mistakenly conclude that effectiveness in the pulpit is evidence of personal holiness. Jowett warns of the danger of assuming that “fine talk is fine living, that expository skill is piety.” A good sermon does not necessarily guarantee a good life and outward success is no sure sign of God’s favor. Mastery of the word will never make us masters over it. Those who proclaim God’s word to others must themselves remain under it.