Eph. 4:11-16, The Preacher’s Portrait (2)

 The nature of the preacher’s authority.

Authority is not incompatible with humility.  He can’t say “Thus says the Lord” like a prophet, or “Verily, verily I say unto you” as Christ; nor “according to best modern scholars” as the babbler.  But his formula should be the well-known “as Billy Graham), “The Bible says.”  The more the preacher has trembled at God’s word himself (Ezra. 9:4; 10:3; Isa. 66:2,5_ and felt its authority on his conscience and in his life, the more he’ll be able to preach it with authority to others.  Scripture comes alive to congregation only if it has come alive to the preacher first.  The preacher’s authority depends on the closeness of his adherence to the text he is handling and on the forcefulness with which it has spoken to his own soul.

The necessity of the preacher’s discipline.

“The systematic preaching of the Word is impossible without the systematic study of it.  It will not be enough to skim through a few verses in daily Bible reading, nor to study a passage only when we have to preach from it.  No.  We must daily soak ourselves in the Scriptures.  We must not just study as through a microscope, the linguistic minutiae of a few verses, but take our telescope and scan the wide expanses of God’s Word, assimilating its grand theme of divine sovereignty in the redemption of mankind. ‘It is blessed,’ wrote Spurgeon, ‘to eat into the very soul of the Bible until, at last, you come to talk in scriptural language, and your spirit is flavoured with the words of the Lord, so that your blood is Bibline and the very essence of the Bible flows from you.’”  We shall also use all the resources of our library, but above all we must pray over the text because the Holy Spirit, who is the Book’s ultimate author, is therefore its best interpreter.  Even when text is understood, preacher’s work is only half done for elucidation of its meaning must be followed by its application to some realistic modern situation in the life of man today.

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This concludes what we have wanted to share from John Stott.  My hope is that, if you are a believer in Christ, you will take this seriously.  As a pastor, it has helped me to see what I called to be and do.  As a sheep in the flock, it has helped me to understand what I need and what I want to expect from my shepherd.  I am not looking for a shepherd who will tickle my ears and satisfy my lusts.  The “expository” pastor/teacher will not always be exciting and entertaining.  He may not ever be those things.  My trust is in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Head of the Body, who gave these men to us.  I want one who knows me, who feeds me with the Word, the Bread of Life!

And finally, on this Independence Day 2026, 250th Birthday of the United States, this is exactly the message I want to share.  We need men who recognize they have a stewardship of the word of God.  I pray that there will not be a famine of the word of God in the USA, and that seeking after God will not be confused with heaping up teachers that tickle the ears and satisfy fleshly lusts.   We must be delivered from the laziness and foolishness of not being willing to "endure sound doctrine."