1 Tim. 4, The Preacher’s Portrait (1)

I believe that pastors today need to get a grip on this idea of being stewards of God.  I took somewhat copious notes on Stott’s chapter on stewardship and want to share these in the next couple of posts.  For me, it is a reminder of what I must be, and what the Body of Christ needs from its shepherds, as we think about the past and plan for the future of our nation.  I hope you will join me.

Again, these are notes from John R. W. Stott, The Preacher’s Portrait, Ch. 1, A Steward: the preacher’s proclamation and appeal (message and authority).

The preacher is not a prophet.  The prophet was an immediate mouthpiece of God.  The preacher is not an apostle; there is no idea of a “succession of apostles” in the NT.  The preacher is not to be a false prophet or apostle.  These are people who spoke/ speak visions of their own minds, and not from the mouth of the Lord.  The preacher is not a babbler, who has no mind of his own.  The babbler’s present opinion is that of the last person with whom he spoke.  He relays other men’s ideas without sifting them, weighing them, or making them his own.

But the preacher is a steward: he is the trustee and dispenser of another person’s goods.  “The Christian preacher’s message, therefore, is derived not directly from the mouth of God, as if he were a prophet or apostle, nor from his own mind, like the false prophets, nor undigested from the minds and mouths of other men, like the babbler, but from the once revealed and now recorded Word of God, of which he is a privileged steward.”

“The steward has received a trust; he must show himself worthy of this trust.”

The source of the preacher’s incentive.

The gospel was a sacred trust committed to him, weighed heavily upon him.  “Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel” (1 Cor. 9:16).  And “I am under obligation to preach the gospel” (Rom. 1:14).  “The steward has received a trust; he must show himself worthy of this trust.”

The content of the preacher’s message.

He is to be faithful to the goods themselves.  “Therefore, every sermon should be, in some sense, an expository sermon.”  Moreover, we are called to preach the whole range of the Word of God: not the New Testament only, not the best known texts only, not the passages which favour the preacher’s particular prejudices only. Therefore I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all men. For I have not shunned to declare to you the whole counsel of God (Ac. 20:26-27). Besides, the church needs instructed laity who should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting (Eph. 4:14).  All scripture is profitable (2 Tim. 3:16) but all is not equally profitable for the same people at the same time (Ac. 20:20).  He studies their needs, uses discretion in supplying them with suitable food.  The expository preacher is a bridge builder, seeking to span the gulf between the word of God and the mind of man.