AN UNPREACHED SERMON (160)
[Photo by Nycholas Benaia on Unsplash]
How often do you pray for your minister or the preachers who grace our pulpits week by week? If we are not careful, we can get into an unconscious way of thinking that because they are the so-called “experts” in Bible knowledge and spiritual matters, then they don’t need prayer in the same way that we who sit in the pews do. But every preacher needs the support and encouragement of those who sit under their ministry on a regular basis. However, often those engaged in the frontline activity of preaching are the last people we think of as having spiritual needs. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, a strong case could be made out for them needing more support as they prepare to mount the pulpit steps.
Even such a powerful and effective preacher of the Word as the apostle Paul managed to sneak in a plea for personal prayer at the end of his letter to the Ephesians. “And pray for me, that when I open my mouth, I may be given a message, so that I may make known the mystery of the Gospel” (Ephesians 6:19, 20). In a few short words he manages to set down what he regards as the most pressing needs of any preacher.
PREACHERS NEED THE PRAYERS OF OTHER CHRISTIANS.
“Pray for me” he writes. For a cursory moment, in this most powerful and deeply theological epistle, he centres the attention on himself and his needs. He exposes his vulnerability by asking them to intercede for him. Just as he makes special prayer “for all the saints (God’s people)” so he asks them not to forget him in their prayers. It is a kind of two-way traffic.
Paul was totally convinced that God had called him to be a prominent leader and preacher in the ever-expanding church. As such, he was aware of a heavy responsibility resting on his shoulders. That made him acutely conscious of his own weakness. To declare the message, he needed divine strength and guidance, and their prayers could make up for his inadequacies. If only congregations could be more aware of the fear, trepidation and self-doubt most preachers feel before a service.
Paul doesn’t ask them to pray for his release from the prison where he is writing this letter to them. Being in jail did not free him from his responsibility of being a frontline preacher. He must have felt very vulnerable, which is why he attaches great importance to their prayers for him.
PREACHERS NEED LIBERTY IN PREACHING.
This is probably a preacher’s greatest need as he takes up the task of declaring God’s message. Pray that “utterance may be given me”. He desired freedom of speech more than freedom of body.
Does it not seem strange that this man who had traversed so much of the world proclaiming Christ should be asking that every time he “opened his mouth a message would be given”? He was in a prison cell; was he intending to preach to the walls? Of course not; he was grasping opportunities.
Confined though he was, he still had a congregation made up of
· The prison guards to whom he was chained came and went in four hourly shifts
· The numerous visitors who were allowed to visit
· The Roman Tribunal before whom he was regularly hauled up to state his case
· Various live congregations on the outside with whom he was still in touch by letter
He couldn’t get away from them and they couldn’t avoid him. Granted, it wasn’t your regular congregation, but he was determined to secure divine assistance to share the Gospel at every opportunity. Isn’t there an old saying, “Prison walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage”?
PREACHERS NEED COURAGE TO SPEAK.
He not only asks for a message to speak, but courage and boldness to deliver it. If freedom of speech is the preacher’s greatest need, then holding back through fear in declaring the whole counsel of God is his greatest temptation. The more a minister knows and loves his people, the greater the danger of holding back from laying it on the line as need arises. You would have to see preaching as a job rather than a calling if Richard Cecil’s comment doesn’t strike a chord: “To love to preach is one thing; to love those to whom we preach is another”.
Paul was facing certain execution by Roman authority, and the ever-present temptation was to soft peddle the message. Wisdom in knowing how to say it and boldness to go ahead and say it are indispensable to all preachers. Straight talking and genuine concern are not in compatible.
· Jesus taught about it (Matthew 10:19)
· Peter and John demonstrated it (Acts 4:13)
Richard Baxter, the 17th cent Puritan, often prayed as he climbed the pulpit steps:
“Help me to preach as if I ne’er might preach again,
A dying man to dying men”.
“Opening the mouth” is a common Bible phrase often used to express that what is about to be said is of solemn and vital importance. No preacher wants to fail here. If the message has been given by God for this particular congregation, on this specific occasion, then it needs to come across as an open and undisguised declaration of God’s word for that time and no other. What a responsibility!
PREACHERS NEED TO BE FAITHFUL TO THE GOSPEL.
Paul was very much aware that it was by God’s grace he had been given understanding of the Gospel mystery. He knew that he couldn’t just preach what he liked. This Gospel was heaven-sent news, not man-made views. There was nothing puzzling, secretive or hidden about this mystery, it was an out in the open revelation for all to hear, understand and embrace. And as a preacher he had his part to play in making the message clear and plain.
It is nothing short of a prostitution of the high office of preaching when what is declared from the pulpit are merely ever-changing political and social ideas without any Gospel content in them. Said John Calvin, “You come across old rascals who imagine themselves so wise that the Gospel is not for them, for there is a simplicity in it that they will not admit”.
The Lord deliver us from such ministers and preachers; and may our regular praying for preachers ensure their clamant needs, hopes and desires are answered. More than ever in these days, we need preachers who will “make known the mystery of the Gospel”
The American Episcopalian preacher Phillips Brooks was right: “If God calls you to be a preacher, don’t stoop to be a king”.
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