What’s A Preacher To Do?

I’ve heard a lot of sermons in my life and I’ve preached a lot of sermons too.  Any preacher who is serious about his calling spends a lot of time each week preparing for those 20 or so minutes on Sunday morning.  Sometimes we get feedback on how we did, sometimes we don’t.  So we don’t always know if the words of our mouths or the meditations of our hearts have been pleasing either to God or to the congregation.  We can only pray that something good will result from our efforts.

The question that always stands out, though, is what makes a good preacher.  Some people have honed the art of public speaking to such a sharpness that they are bound to surpass your average run of the mill speaker.  I’ve read that Patrick Henry was such a talented public speaker that people would often lose track of time during his orations, thinking only a few minutes had passed when it was actually over an hour.  Must a good preacher have such a skill?  Or maybe a good preacher is a man whose knowledge of Scripture astounds even other pastors and who fills his message with a list of supporting passages almost too long to follow.  Or maybe a good preacher is a man who can, in the pulpit, comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

Well, in my opinion, there is only one way to measure whether or not a preacher was good on any given Sunday—did he proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ crucified and risen for you?  I don’t care how clever the argument, how well delivered the sermon, how sonorous the tone of his voice–if a preacher doesn’t tell you that you, yes you, are a sinner deserving of eternity in hell but that Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, bore your punishment on the cross at Calvary, rose from the dead on the third day and promises salvation to all who confess with their mouth that He is Lord and believe in their hearts that God raised Him from the dead–if you don’t hear that the preacher wasted 20 minutes of your life.

St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians that he came among them determined to know nothing except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.  That is what matters in the pulpit.  It is a message so profound, so filled with meaning that every preacher ought to be able to find 60 different ways to express it every year of his ministry.  I pray God shows each of us who dare to speak to His assembled people in any congregation how to do this small but immeasurably great service.