Rare Greek Words That Preach, Volume 1B: Service

The four volumes you hold in your hands — or one of which you are now reading — are the harvest of more than fifty years of preaching, teaching, studying, and listening for the word of God in the Greek New Testament. The project began with a question that any working preacher will recognize: why do some sermons land with the people of God like a stone in a still pond, sending ripples for weeks, while others slide off without leaving a mark? After watching this happen Sunday after Sunday for many years, I became convinced that one of the answers — not the only answer, but a major one — is the choice of words.

The Holy Spirit chose specific words when He moved the New Testament writers to put the gospel into Greek. Most of those words are familiar to anyone with a concordance and a willingness to study. But scattered through the Greek New Testament are words that the average preacher walks past without slowing down — words like ekkakeo (don’t lose heart), perikeimai (surrounded), splanchnizomai (moved in the inward parts), anapsuxis (refreshing from the presence of the Lord). These rarer words carry images, textures, and theological freight that ordinary translation often softens. When the preacher slows down and lets the original word breathe in the original color, the sermon lands differently. The text preaches itself.

This series gathers fifty-two such words. Some of them appear only once or twice in the entire New Testament. Others appear many times but are seldom unpacked in the pulpit. Together they form a portable lexicon of words that preach — words that come ready to walk into a Sunday morning service or a Wednesday night Bible study and do the work of conviction, comfort, and consecration.