Joel Littlefield

The preacher? He’s the loud, ranting, pulpit pounding, control freak with an agenda rooted in bitterness, right? Have his unholy rantings ruined the name of wholesome, biblical preaching in your mind? We need preachers today in the Church just as much as we need teachers. Not copycats or spiritless wannabes, but men who are reaching down the corridors of time, right back to the days when Peter preached in the square of Jerusalem. We need men who are laying it all on the line so that through their preaching sinners get saved and death’s captives are set free.

Consider this: You can teach an engaged student. You can bring explanation to the curious. You can articulate to the already interested audience, but what about the unrepentant, the currently uninterested and unregenerate? Can you teach a heart that is dead? It must be awakened first. God often does this through his people. He doesn’t need us, but he desires to work mightily through willing vessels. And this is where preaching comes in. When men step forward as God’s ambassadors, God’s spokesmen, they are not only commissioned to teach (very important, too), but to proclaim the nonnegotiable news that Jesus is the only way. It is a calling out, a holy “come forth!” that is spoken, and even at times shouted from the lips of God’s people. It is the call for sinners, beggars, weak and weary men to come, to surrender, to respond, to believe and be saved through Jesus. This is the awesome work of God through the Spirit filled preacher.

The early Apostles preached Christ through the Holy Land and into Asia-minor. You couldn’t have stopped them if you tried. Their words went out with power, with the Holy Ghost, and with fire. Necessity laid hold of them and love constrained them. Their collective voice of zeal for the gospel still echoes in the halls of history, resounding in our ears as we look back in wonder. Can this still happen today?

Preaching is not the “old way”, as if some newer, better way has been invented. Neither does cultural relevance have anything to do with it. With the right content and the power of the resurrecting Spirit behind it, the preached gospel can shake the world as we know it once again. The men and women who saw Jesus rise from death took His message with a passion and proclaimed it. They turned the world upside down. This was preaching at its finest, and this is the preaching we need today. Whether on the streets or in our churches there are men and women who are living for this world and need to be quickened by the Gospel. Let us boldly preach Christ, the crucified King of Kings, the risen Lord of Lords, until all have heard the glorious news for themselves.

Don’t reject the preacher, “for how will they hear without someone preaching?” Be that preacher!

Romans 10:14 “How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?”