Where are the Preachers for this Hour?

That the churches today have got plenty of speakers is not in question.  Not a service passes every Sunday but there is a speaker mounting the pulpits of our land.  There  are loads of speakers; but is there ‘a word from the Lord’?

There are many preachers in the various churches, standing up to preach to the congregations that have called them. But what are they preaching?  Are they bringing a ‘word from the Lord’? 

Is there anyone out there who waits upon God?  Is anyone listening to God?  Is there a preacher today who is spending time with God, and attuning his heart to the mind and will of God?  No preacher can hope to receive a message from God who does not spend time listening to Him.  And where does God speak?  In the Scriptures.

Now, it is precisely here where the problem arises.  Ministers of the gospel seem to think that all they have to do is to conduct an exegesis of a passage, bring out the original meaning of the passage, and then share that with his people; he concludes that that is s sermon.  But it is anything but!  It might be a commentary on a few verses of text, but it is not yet a sermon.   A sermon is what a minister of the Word has when/after he has listened to God speaking to his own heart in the Scriptures, and which is then delivered to the congregation. 

Now, a sermon, a message from God to the people, is a dynamic thing; it is throbbing with spiritual life.  It is something that must first come to life in the heart of the preacher.   It first warms his heart.  It impacts on the preacher before it can impact on the congregation.  If it doesn’t, then all the preacher has to give is a (hopefully) well-constructed is the equivalent of ‘cold tea.’  It is therefore delivered without passion, without warmth, without feeling, and without conviction.  You just have to listen to a preacher to discover whether or not he has been with God and had spent time listening to Him.  How many sermons have you listened to that have left you utterly cold!  Too many, I presume. 

But only a minister who has been with God (see Ac.4:13) had any right or warrant to be with people.  Only a preacher who has first listened to what God has said to him through the Scriptures has any right to stand in a pulpit and speak to people.  And he is then under a divine compulsion to say what God has said to him, nothing more, and nothing less.  He must listen to God, and then, as His ambassador, bring His message to the people, no matter how uncomfortable that message might be.  He only can warm the hearts of the people who has first had his heart warmed at the fires of God’s love and grace.  And the only preacher who can speak with the authority of God is the one who has submitted himself to that authority in the Word.  

Today, we have a load of preachers who have no authority in their preaching or for their preaching.  Their sermons are not ‘cutting it’ in today’s decadent society and church.  They do not address the sins of the present age.  Corruption and compromise go on without challenge.  Loose living is tolerated, and hypocrisy is not confronted.  Church members can live without in the least sense of dedication to Christ and His Gospel.http://thebible-online.com/  Indeed, the calling to ‘dedication’ has been lost from the Christian vocabulary.  There is too much contentment with ‘shades of mediocrity.’ 

Yes, many ministers have more than one university degree, and some have two or more.  But what does that matter; how relevant is that achievement to the work of the minister.  I know of a minister who was interviewed recently for the post of Evangelist and his interviewers mentioned the number of degrees he possessed; the interviewee’s response was that these are irrelevant.   And they are! Degrees from the world’s institutions are no substitute for being ‘with Jesus.’  It is this that differentiates the man of the world from the man of God.  And it is this man who brings the Lord’s message to a lost and dying world.