Preacher, you are in Christ’s hand. Today, as you gather in His name, He has promised to walk among His people. The church is meant to be His lamp stand, shining into the darkness of this world. Whatever challenges you are facing, whatever infirmities you feel, whatever enemies you fight—just know that you are held by the nail-scarred hand of Omnipotence. None can pluck you out of His hand! Be faithful to proclaim the Word, for the Living Word will be faithful to you!
I know that with many of us there is a tendency to sit down and say, “All things are wrong, the world gets darker and darker, and everything is going to the bad.” We sit and fret together in most delightful misery, and try to cheer each other downwards into greater depths of despair! Do we not often act thus? Alas! it is so, and we feel happy to think that other people will blend in blessed harmony of misery with us in all our melancholies; or if we do stir ourselves at little, we feel that there is not much good in our service, and that very little can possibly come of it. This message of our Master seems to me to be something like fine sound of a trumpet. I have given you the strains of a dulcimer, but now there rings out the clarion note of a trumpet. Here is the power to enable you to “go.” Therefore, “go” away from your dunghills, away from your ashes and your dust. Shake yourselves from your melancholy. The bugle calls, “Boot and saddle! Up and away!” The battle has begun, and every good soldier of Jesus Christ must be to the front for his Captain and his Lord. Because all power is given unto Christ, He passes on that power to His people, and sends them forth to battle and to victory.
I don’t know all that the future holds, but I know Who holds the future. God has made the outcome clear, but the timing is only known to Him. May we have the desperate drive of the four lepers who sat starving outside the besieged city of Samaria and asked, “Why are we sitting here until we die?” (2 Kings 7:3). God not only provided a miracle for them, but poured out blessing on His people through them.
I think of the thousands of starfish that washed up on the beach in a storm, where they would die. A little lad knowing this picked one up and tossed it into the water, again and again. An old fellow watched with amusement and asked, “Son, do you think that will make any difference?” The boy picked up another and cast it into the surf. He said, “It did for that one!”
So, whatever challenges you are facing today—get up and go forward. Stop whining and start winning.
Spurgeon said concerning Christ’s commission:
If any of us would receive a commission for Christian service, it must come from Christ Himself; if we would carry out that commission, it must be in loyalty to Christ; and if we hope to succeed in that commission, it must be in a perpetual, personal fellowship with Christ. We must begin to work with Him, and go on working with Him, and never cease to work until He Himself shall come to discharge us from the service because there is no further need of it. Oh, that we did all our work in the name of the great Head of the Church! Oh that we did all Christ’s work consciously in the presence and in the strength of Christ! (Service and Honor, Spurgeon, p. 42, Kindle edition)
We have all heard the expression, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” When God sent His Son as the Incarnation of Himself, Jesus was, “The Word made flesh.” Certainly, Christ spoke the truth about God, but He also showed the truth of God. To see Him was to see the Father.
While the preacher will not accomplish this absolutely as Jesus did, nevertheless our objective is in speaking the Word in our communication of it, to also show the Word in our submission to it. Paul calls on us to do so in Philippians 3:16, “Nevertheless, to the degree that we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule, let us be of the same mind.”
There must be OUR DECLARING OF TRUTH, “Nevertheless, to the degree that we have already attained…”. This is the apprehension of the Word of God. We have attained a degree of truth, and should persistently seek to apprehend the message increasingly—to get a grip on the truth in such a way that the truth grips us. If the sermon does not move us, we may be sure it will not stir the people! This is what it means to apprehend something, and in this case, it is to understand the meaning of the text. We grow our people as we grow in our understanding and help them to do so. Yet, with the clarity of God’s revelation, there comes responsibility—for the preacher, as well as the people, to “be doers of the word, and not hearers only,” (James 1:22). That brings us to our second point.
There must also be OUR DEMONSTRATING OF TRUTH, “let us walk by the same rule, let us be of the same mind.” This is the application of the Word of God. The rule of truth is established to gauge the straightness of our walk. The revelation of truth is expounded to grow the measure of our understanding. The old cliche’ is, “Practice what you preach.” The familiarity of that phrase does not lessen the necessity of its performance. This is the hardest part of preaching. While grasping the meaning of the text and conveying it in a clear and compelling manner is a challenge, the rubber meets the road when we not only share the sermon, but show the sermon. Am I not a hypocrite if I urge the people to do something (read Scripture, pray, evangelize, give, pursue holiness, etc.) that I will not? This is expressed in a poem by Edgar Guest.
