Dec 22
12
Preachers Needed and Sent
Romans 10:13-17
In order to hear the gospel, someone must preach the gospel to you. — “How shall they hear without a preacher?” God will not reveal the gospel to men by supernatural agencies. Someone must make the truth known to men. They cannot learn without being taught. So, let us carry the Word of grace to perishing men.
Preachers Needed
Preachers are needed. I have, for many years, regularly travelled many miles to preach to churches that have no pastor. Many who speak of being called to preach the gospel are aware of the need, but are not willing to go to unappealing places. How sad! I pity such men. God’s servants go wherever the Lord God is pleased to send them, without consideration for their own welfare and desires.
Let us heed our Lord’s command and pray incessantly that the Lord of the harvest will send forth laborers into the field to gather in his harvest by the preaching of the gospel.
If you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, you are his witness, and you should be his preacher. You may never stand in a pulpit, but you should be a preacher of the gospel. You do not have to have any great learning or unusual gifts to preach the gospel. If you know the gospel, you can tell it to others. You can tell sinners what Christ did at Calvary. And you can tell people what God has done for you by his grace. Usually, it is not a lack of ability that keeps us from witnessing to men; it is a lack of concern for their souls, and a lack of love for Christ.
When you have told a sinner the story of the cross, you have fulfilled your responsibility to him. This is a debt we owe to all men. Make it your business every day to tell some perishing, eternity bound sinner the way of life. It is a shameful pity that any man should live and die without hearing the gospel.
Preachers Sent
In order to preach the gospel, a man must be sent of God. — “How shall they preach except they be sent?” No man can truly preach the gospel in the power of God the Holy Ghost except he be sent of God. Here are four things that are true of every gospel preacher.
1. He has a message to deliver. He is an ambassador with a message.
2. He must deliver the message God has given him. There is an impulse within. He carries with him the burden of the Lord. It is like fire in his bones.
3. He will deliver his message with the authority and power of heaven’s eternal throne.
4. He will return to his Master to give a report of his labor.
Will you pray for your pastor, and for every man called and sent of God to preach the gospel, that every time they stand before eternity bound sinners to open the Book of God they may be at that hour sent of God? Every time you are privileged to hear a man preach the gospel, pray that God will graciously send him with a message to you. If he does, the gospel will come to you, not in word only, but “in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance.”
Don Fortner