Who are you promoting in your preaching?

In this video, Tom Ascol emphasizes the importance of preaching the Lord Jesus Christ and not to promote ourselves. He warns against using personal stories that make the preacher the hero, as this detracts from God's glory. Ascol cautions against exalting oneself through eloquence or clever speech, as this can cause people to focus on the preacher rather than the Savior. 

Instead, preachers should use all the faculties God has given them to show the preeminence of Jesus Christ and avoid saying or doing anything that would distract from that purpose.

2 Timothy 2:15 (NKJV) - "Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth."

Well, the Apostle Paul said he preached not himself, but the Lord Jesus Christ. It's always a danger when you're preaching to preach yourself. You can tell personal stories in a way that make you the hero, and that's dangerous. We can detract from God's glory whenever we do anything that would call attention primarily to something or someone other than God and what He's done for sinners in Jesus Christ. So it is a great danger for pastors to exalt themselves by being too eloquent or too cutesy, too clever in their speech so that people walk away saying, my, what a wonderful preacher, rather than my, what a wonderful Savior.

We should always employ every faculty God's given us, our thinking, our experiences, our eloquence, whatever it is that He's entrusted to us for the sake of showing the preeminence of the Lord Jesus Christ. So we must not ever preach ourselves. We must always recognize that our sole purpose is to point to Jesus Christ and to avoid saying or doing anything in our preaching that would distract from that.