Called to preach
By Donald S. Fortner
Preaching at
one of our Bible conferences several years ago, Pastor Scot Richardson made a
profound statement about preaching. He said, ‘Preaching is getting a message
from God’s heart to my heart and delivering it to your heart. Anything else is
just filling in time’.
What a profound, insightful and needful
statement! The Lord God promised to give his church pastors after his own
heart, who would feed his people with knowledge and with understanding
(Jeremiah 3:15).
He commands his prophets, ‘Speak ye
comfortably to’ — to the heart of — my people (Isaiah 40:2).
That is the responsibility of a gospel
preacher every time he speaks to eternity-bound men and women in the name of
Christ.
But it is a task no man can accomplish.
The only way a mere man can speak the things of God to the heart of another is
if God himself is pleased to speak through him.
Called to the ministry?
How does a man
know if he is called of God to preach the gospel? How does God put a man into
the ministry? I have been asked those two questions many times by many men.
I gave up the notion of telling others
what God’s will is for them, a long time ago. And because the Scriptures give
no precise answers to these questions, I cannot answer them with certainty.
In the Old Testament, prophets were called
immediately by God himself, by a direct, unmistakable revelation — witness
Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel.
In the New Testament, the apostles were
called directly by Christ. The first seventy preachers were sent out by the
Master’s direct command. Other pastors and elders were chosen and ordained by
the Apostles.
Today we do not have such advantages, and
the Scriptures give us no clear instructions in the matter.
They tell us the kind of man a
pastor must be, and what a pastor’s responsibilities are. But they do
not specifically tell us how God puts a man into the ministry, or how a man may
know that he is called of God to preach the gospel.
My answers
So my answers
to those questions are just that — my answers. They arise from my
understanding of the Scriptures and the observation of experience. But this is
my best perception.
1. If God puts a man into the ministry he
first puts grace into his heart. No man is called by God to preach the gospel
who does not know the gospel, both doctrinally and experimentally.
2. Before God puts a man into the work of
the ministry he proves him as a faithful servant in his church — ‘not a novice’
(1 Timothy 3:6)!
No man will be faithful as a pastor who is
not faithful before becoming a pastor. A man who puts other things before the
worship of Christ, the cause of Christ, and the church of Christ, will do no
better because someone gives him some ordination papers.
He may be more regular in outward attendance
and in things seen and approved by men, but he will be the same, self-serving
man he was before.
3. If the Lord God puts a man into the
ministry he gives him his message (Isaiah 40) — ‘All flesh is grass!’ ‘Behold,
your God!’ Redemption accomplished! Salvation free! Christ crucified, risen and
enthroned!
Apt to teach
4. If God puts a man into the ministry he
gives him the gifts necessary for the work. He makes him ‘apt to teach’. Called
men are gifted with an understanding of the Scriptures and the ability to
communicate their message clearly to others.
5. If God puts a man into the ministry he
gives him a place to preach. As one old preacher put it years ago, ‘God never
made a possum without a persimmon tree; and he never made a preacher without a
pulpit’. No man has been called into the ministry who is not in the
ministry.
6. If God puts a man into the ministry he
gives him a hearing. God’s preachers never have to look far for a place to
preach or for people to hear them.
When a man is sent of God, he is sent to a
people who want to hear his message — ‘Now therefore are we all here present
before God to hear all things that are commanded thee of God’ (Acts 10:33).
God’s servants look to him to open doors
before them — and wait for him to do so. They do not make a way for themselves.
A man’s gift makes room for him and brings him before great men’ (Proverbs
18:16).
7. When God puts a man into the ministry
he gives him the support of his fellow-labourers in the gospel. All God’s
prophets see eye to eye with regard to the gospel (Isaiah 52:8) and labour
together as one in the cause of Christ.
8. A man put into the ministry by God
knows ‘both how to be abased, and … how to abound’. He is ‘instructed both to
be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need’. Yet God supplies
‘all his need, according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus’ (Philippians
4:12-19).
Preaching from the heart
When I hear a
man preach, I want to hear a man preach from his heart. When I preach, I want
to preach from my heart. Let no one mistake my meaning.
I do not suggest or imply that doctrine is
secondary. It is not. Gospel doctrine is vital. But the gospel must be preached
from the heart, passionately.
Two hundred years ago John Rusk wrote, ‘I
want an experimental preacher, one who, when he has had one meal, is tried how
he shall get the next; one who is tormented with devils fit to tear him limb
from limb; one who feels hell inside himself and every corruption in his nature
stirred up to oppose God’s work; one who feels so weak that every day he gets
over he views it as next to a miracle’.
Made a minister
Paul said, ‘I
was made a minister according to the gift of the grace of God given unto me by
the effectual working of his power’ (Ephesians 3:7).
God had called him to preach the gospel.
He knew it. He was humbled by it. He rejoiced in it. And he trembled because of
it.
Only God himself can make a man a
preacher. That man who is called of God to preach the gospel has a direct
commission and call from Christ, and it is unmistakably clear.
He knows that he has been sent by God. Any
man who is called of God to this great work takes the work seriously and
earnestly, seeking a message from Christ as he stands to speak for Christ.
Such men preach with urgency because they
have experienced in their hearts the message they preach. They carry in their
souls ‘the burden of the word of the Lord’.
They preach with urgency because they know
for whom they speak — and because they know the serious consequences of their
message.