The Commissioning of the Preacher

sharing the pulpit, and I hope
you get rested in these few weeks while you’re giving other men
the privilege. It is a privilege, and I want
to start with challenging you with that privilege. The challenge
is that you find the book of Jonah, if you could, in the Old
Testament there. He’s one of the minor prophets
toward the end of the Old Testament, if you’re not familiar with your
minor prophets. And if you see Amos and Obadiah,
just keep turning to the right a little, and if you see Micah
and Nahum, turn back slightly a few books. Jonah chapter three is what I’m
looking for. If you were here last week, you
heard our brother Mike talk about the Great Commission. He took
us to Matthew 28, the Great Commission passage. Well, it’s that theme
that I want to continue on. And by God’s providence, that
was determined before I knew what Mike was going to preach.
But there’s a particular element in the Great Commission that
I want to focus on this morning, though, and that is the preacher,
the preaching of the Word. So Jonah 3 is our main passage,
but we’ll take into consideration what the New Testament also has
to say about this, because we are talking about a book and
a man who is in the Old Covenant. And when we think of Jonah, do
we not immediately think of the fish story, right? We think of
that story, but it’s what happens after that is what I want to
focus on this morning. And if you’re having trouble finding
the book of Jonah, we have Bibles at the end of each pew, where
you will find that book on page 657. Page 657 in that, those
Bibles, if you need to grab those. And most of you are familiar
with the story of Jonah. You know that he was a Hebrew
prophet whom God was commissioning to Nineveh. And Nineveh was a
Gentile city, and it was the arch enemy of the Hebrew people. So it wasn’t easy for Jonah to
go. We see this in the beginning
of the book where he says, this is how the book begins. The word
of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, Arise,
go to Nineveh, the great city, and cry against it, for their
wickedness has come up before me. But Jonah rose up to flee
to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He didn’t want to
go. We know that his rebellion didn’t go so well either. And
we know that he ended up being tossed into the sea and was swallowed
by a fish. And that three days later he
was vomited up on the land again. And that’s, it’s in that, that’s
where we pick up the story here in Jonah 3. Please follow along
as I read the first two verses here. Now the word of the Lord came
to Jonah the second time saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, the great
city, and proclaim to it the proclamation which I am going
to tell you. That’s our passage, but I’d like
to pray before we begin. Would you pray with me? Our Father in heaven, we thank
you, as one brother prayed already this morning, we thank you for
the word. And as another brother has been praying, so how true
it is that this is no light matter. And so, Father, I pray that you
would help me to deal wisely with your people, to handle your
word accurately, and to speak with clarity. Lord, I know that
I would just be up here talking if you do not help me in this.
So please come help. for the sake of your people and
for the glory of your own name. Lord, as we sang this morning
that let everything that has breath praise you. It is my prayer,
Lord, that every breath I use here would be for your honor
and glory. It’s in the Lord Jesus name that I pray. Amen. It’s my desire that we as a church
and other local churches across the country and the world, that
we would better understand and become better equipped to communicate
the gospel. That’s my heart’s desire. It’s
my desire that the word of God would go unhindered, go boldly
across this city, across this nation, and across the world.
That’s my heart’s desire. And I also desire that it be
done according to God’s design. And that’s really what I’m focusing
on this morning. I desire that men would cease from doing what
is right in their own eyes, but would do what is right in God’s
eyes. What is right in God’s eyes when it comes to this topic
of preaching? Well, it’s that question that
I would like to answer this morning, begin to answer. I will certainly
not cover it all. And there are principles here
in Jonah 3 that And when studying this major element of the Great
Commission, we can learn from these principles. And I find
here the principles on the commissioning of the preacher here in these
first two verses. Look at verse one again. Now
the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time saying,
Arise, go to Nineveh the great city. And from that we can see
that the preacher is commissioned by the word of God. Right? Wasn’t it the word of the Lord
that came to Jonah and told him to go to Nineveh and make a proclamation? It was. And this isn’t an isolated
case. Listen to a few other men who
were commissioned by the Lord in the Old Testament here. Isaiah
6, he writes, Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom
shall I send? And who will go for us? Then
I said, here am I, send me. And he said, go and tell this
people. The Lord is the one who came
to Isaiah and by his word commissioned him to proclaim his word. And
this was also the case with the prophet Jeremiah. In Jeremiah
one, verse four, he says, now the word of the Lord came to
me saying, Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. And
before you were born, I consecrated you. I have appointed you a prophet
to the nations. And Jonah or Jeremiah has some
reluctance here. This is what he said to the Lord.
He said, Alas, Lord God, behold, I do not know how to speak because
I am a youth. You know, he had the same hesitation
that Moses had. He said, Lord, I don’t know how
to speak. Send someone else. But the Lord corrected both of
them. Here in Jeremiah, He said to
Jeremiah, Do not say, I am a youth, because everywhere I send you,
you shall go. And all that I command you, you
shall speak. Do not be afraid of them, for
I am with you to deliver you, declares the Lord. It was the
word of the Lord that commissioned Jeremiah also to send and sent
him to preach the word. He was commissioned by the word
of God to preach the word of God. You’ll find the same to
be true about Ezekiel. In fact, none of God’s prophets
went on their own. They were all commissioned by
God and His Word to go. Simple concept, right? But it
is the Old Testament we’re talking about. Has anything changed since
we’ve come under the new covenant? Well, let’s take a look. Just listen to Luke 10 here,
where Jesus, who we know is God, is with his disciples. Listen
to what he does. Now, after this, the Lord appointed 70 others
and sent them in pairs ahead of him to every city and place
where he himself was going to come. And he was saying to them,
the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore,
beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his
harvest. Go, behold, I send you out as
lambs in the midst of wolves. Now, granted, they are still
under the old covenant here, but they are in a transitional
period, but still the Lord is the one sending his servants
out to preach. So let’s go a bit further and
see how God operates under the New Covenant. If you would turn
to Acts chapter 13. Keep your place in Jonah. You
worked too hard to lose that, but we’ll be back. Acts chapter 13. We know that
God used the Apostle Paul more than most men when it comes to
preaching the Word of God to the Gentile nations. And here
in Acts 13, Paul, who’s also known by his Hebrew name Saul,
he’s one of the men leading the church in Antioch. And the gospel
had not up to this point been preached beyond Jerusalem, Judea,
and Samaria to any significant degree. So let’s see how the
Lord goes about getting his witnesses to the remotest parts of the
world. This is where Paul is being commissioned on his first
missionary journey. Paul and Barnabas. Acts 13, verse
1. Now there were at Antioch in
the church that was there prophets and teachers, Barnabas and Simeon,
who was called Niger, and Lucius of Cyrene, and Mannion, who had
been brought up with Herod the Tetrarch, and Saul. While they
were ministering to the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit
said, Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which
I have called them. Then, when they had fasted and
prayed and laid their hands on them, they sent them away. So,
being sent out by the Holy Spirit, they went down to Seleucia, and
from there they sailed to Cyprus. We know that the Holy Spirit
is also God. So here, under the new covenant,
God is still the one sending out the preachers, the ones who
are to proclaim the gospel, his word, to the world. But notice the difference here.
Notice the difference of what happened here under the new covenant
from the dispensation of old. The Old Testament prophets heard
the word of God and they went out to proclaim it. They were
commissioned by the word and there’s no evidence that other
men were involved in their commissioning. At least I haven’t found any.
If you come across that, let me know. But I see no evidence
of other men’s involvement in the commissioning of Old Testament
prophets. But that’s not what we see here in the first century
church. We see in Acts 13 here that God now uses other men in
that. So why the change? I’m sure there’s more to it,
but I believe that the fact that the body of Christ is now in
existence has a part to play in this. That this body of living
beings are interdependent upon one another. that the church
is to be interdependent. And in that interdependence,
there are men in leadership. There’s a leadership. It’s God’s
designed structure. And what we see here in Acts
13 is that the leading men in the local church are the ones
who God uses to recognize and commission the preacher. Look
at Acts 13 one again, would you? Now there were at Antioch, in
the church that was there, prophets and teachers. The teaching and
leadership have always gone together. So much so that the word master,
sometimes translated master when talking about Jesus, is also
translated teacher. They were synonymous. And these
prophets and teachers were the ones leading the local church
here. Maybe they were elders. I don’t know that. Either way,
they were functioning as elders there in Antioch. The spiritual
leaders in the local church is who God uses in our day to send
out his preachers. That’s his design. Though the church as a whole
is involved in this, you’re not excluded from that. There are
men in leadership roles The elders are given the role of overseeing
everything in the local church, and the ministry of the Word
is no insignificant part of that oversight. Let me repeat that.
Elders are given the role of overseeing everything in the
local church, and the ministry of the Word is no insignificant
part in which they must oversee. We see nothing in the New Testament
of men taking it upon themselves to go out and proclaim the Word.
It’s just not there. Acting independently from church
leadership and accountability. Paul himself said in 2 Timothy
1.11, he was speaking of the gospel, he said, for which I
was appointed a preacher and an apostle and a teacher. He
was appointed, he wasn’t self-appointed. He was appointed by God. And
at his initial commissioning, God used another man, even for
the Apostle Paul. And that was, you might remember,
Ananias, who the Lord sent to commission him. We have another
example in Timothy. Timothy was doing the work of
an elder in the Ephesian church. And while he was there, Paul
wrote him this. He said, The things which you
have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, and trust
these two faithful men who will be able to teach others also.”
Clearly, it’s the responsibility of the overseers to recognize
who is faithful and who is able to teach others also. Now, primarily
this exhortation is concerning passing on the torch to the next
generation of elders, but it also applies to all who are teaching
the word. But faithful elders will not,
again, faithful elders will not commission someone to preach
as soon as they recognize their gifting and calling. Faithful
elders know that there needs to be a time of preparation. In Ephesians 4, if you could
turn there quickly, that’s another passage I would like to bring
before your eyes this morning. Ephesians 4, where Paul’s telling
the Ephesian church how God has gifted the church. Here’s the
gift God has given the church. Ephesians 4, verse 11. He says,
And he gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some
as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers. Okay, why did he
give these? He says in verse 12, for the
equipping of the saints for the work of service to the building
up of the body of Christ. Now, the common denominator here
in these titles is that they’re all public teachers of God’s
Word. And we know that according to
Scripture, the elders should be the primary ones who are teaching
God’s Word publicly. But I would like to draw your
attention to another man who’s in this passage, and that is
the evangelist. The evangelist is also given to the church to
build up the saints for the work of service. And since we’re talking
about sending out men to evangelize, that’s the theme this morning,
how appropriate it is for the evangelist to be involved in
this and to help equip the next generation of evangelists. The
evangelist also has a leadership role to some degree. Everybody
who publicly teaches is leading in some degree. And we can see
this in both Acts 13 and Ephesians 4, that the teaching is part
of the leadership role. The evangelist has his part to
play in this. It’s clear in the New Testament
that the next generation of teachers of God’s word is to be monitored
by the leading men of the local church, that it should be monitored. And though I’ve brought you into
the New Testament to show you that this is still the case,
To show you how God operates today, the principle in Jonah
remains the same, that the preacher is commissioned by the Word of
God. Church leaders should not dictate who is going to be the
next generation of teachers. All church leaders should do
is recognize that and help them prepare and oversee all that. With the oversight and teaching
ministry of the elders and with the evangelists working with
them, the next generation is recognized, prepared, sent out,
or established in the local church. Now, I’ve talked about leadership
up to this point, and even if the leadership is faithful to
God in all this, there needs to be more. There needs to be
cooperation in us. who are being taught, right?
As faithful as they are, if we do not cooperate, God’s will
is not brought about, not according to His revealed
will. Neither the elders, nor the evangelist, nor the men being
taught should neglect this necessary training and preparation. This
is absolutely crucial. If we’re going to have a God-honoring
ministry, this is absolutely crucial. Elders have been given
the responsibility to oversee all the ministries of the local
church. And qualified elders should also
have the wisdom to know when one is ready, when one is prepared
to teach. The evangelist should also, he
should know his disciple well enough to know when his disciple
is ready to teach publicly. And this is important for us
young men to understand. We may be convinced that God
is calling us to preach the word, but even that has to be confirmed
by other men. You see, God uses other men now,
especially the elders. And we need to understand and
remember that even when we’re confirmed, we need to spend time
in preparation. And it goes without saying that
there are degrees of preparation I’m talking about here. Obviously,
the guy who goes out to have conversations in public, gospel
conversations in public, does not need to spend as much time
in preparation as the one preaching. That’s just a given fact. The
highest level of preparation would then need the most time
of preparation and that would be to go plant other churches.
That’s what we see here in Acts 13. They’re going out to plant
other churches and there was much time spent in their preparation. They were being sent out to other
communities and notice that they were also elder qualified men
who were sent out. And though the Apostle Paul,
he did begin preaching right after his conversion. He began
preaching. But I would ask you to also consider what he had
been doing in the years leading up to that. He was studying the
Scriptures under the respected teacher Gamaliel in Israel for
years. And now at his conversion, this
must have just been overwhelming how this all started to make
sense now. everything he had studied. And
so his case there is quite different than the average convert today
in his level of readiness to preach. Elders should be the most qualified
to judge one’s readiness. And there’s going to be a variance
from one individual to the next. These are just some of the ways
that being commissioned by the word Pardon me. There are some of us who are
being commissioned by the word to go preach the gospel. God’s
still doing that today. He’s doing that in my generation.
But we don’t, we should not go unprepared. The Lord is the one
who’s sending out the preacher. It’s God who gives the ministry
of reconciliation, 2 Corinthians 5. But in this age, he doesn’t
do it without the leadership of the local church. God sends
the preacher. But that doesn’t mean that everyone
who’s out preaching is sent by God. As one man stated, he said,
some are sent, others just go. In Luke 10, where the Lord sent
out these 70, I just read this passage. It says that he sent
them out in pairs ahead of him to every city and place where
he himself was going to come. I think there’s a principle here
we can learn from, and that is that the Lord doesn’t send his
servants to places where he himself will not come to some degree
or another. I’m not saying there’s going to be conversions in the
first 15 years or more, but he comes where his servants are
to some degree. But it would be presumptuous of us to go where
he hasn’t sent us and expect him to show up. In John 5.30, we see that Jesus
told his audience, I can do nothing on my own initiative. As I hear,
I judge and my judgment is just because I do not seek my own
will, but the will of him who sent me. Jesus himself was sent by someone
in a superior role. He didn’t do, he wasn’t seeking
his own will. He didn’t do things by his own
initiative. How much more than should we, who are sinners, lay
down our will? We don’t even know our own hearts
sometimes, what our motivations are. We should not pursue our
own will. And Paul and Barnabas, it’s also
important to remember that even when one is commissioned, even
at the highest level to plant churches, as Paul and Barnabas
were in Acts 13, that even that remains under the authority of
the local church from which they were sent out for a time. We
see that in Acts 14, 27, when Paul and Barnabas returned and
they reported to the church. They reported all that was happening.
Now there is such a thing as a local church being, I’m not
for a bishop, I’m not saying any of that, but the churches
that are planted should remain, I believe, under, I think we
see that in the scriptures, under the authority of the church that
planted them for a time. The Lord Jesus, nor his apostles,
acted independently from the authorities that God put in place,
and neither should we. Now, going back to Jonah, looking
at Jonah verse 1 at the end of that. Pardon me, it’s the end of…
End of verse 2. Now the word of the Lord came
to Jonah a second time. This implies there was a first
time. And I read that earlier, right? You know the story. Jonah
was called to go to Nineveh, but he rebelled and went the
opposite direction. And maybe some of you can relate to this.
Where we’ve neglected to heed the call of God to preach the
word. And we’ve gone the opposite direction
for whatever reason. Self-preservation usually. The
good news is that God gives second chances. He gave a second chance
to Jonah here. But, you know, as gracious as
the Lord is restoring his servants, we may have to spend some time
in the deep as Jonah did, as it were, if we neglected that
call. God uses his word to call men
to preach. He did so in Jonah’s day. He continues to do so today. But as I’ve said time and time
again, his commission doesn’t come apart from the oversight
of the local church. But far too many men in our day,
we see it everywhere, far too many are going out on their own
to plant churches or to preach the word. They’re not submitting
to authorities or the authorities that are in place are being negligent. We have both of those problems.
These men go out to preach on the street and rarely does this
result in the glory of God and the good of mankind. There may
be apparent fruit for a time, but if you look at the big picture,
I don’t think it hardly ever results in the glory of God. But not only is the preacher
commissioned by the Word of God, the preacher must communicate
the Word of God. He must communicate it. We see
that at the end of verse 2. And proclaim to it the proclamation
which I am going to tell you. God doesn’t commission his messengers
without a particular message to give. In fact, nobody does
that. Nobody sends out a messenger with no concern about what the
message is. Or even how accurately the message is communicated. God cares a lot about what we
communicate. He said here, Proclaim the proclamation
which I am going to tell you. The preacher must communicate
the Word of God. We see this throughout the Old Testament.
In Deuteronomy 18, Moses prophesied these words. It was the Lord
speaking through Moses. This is what the Lord said. The
prophet who speaks a word presumptuously in my name, which I have not
commanded him to speak, or which he speaks in the name of other
gods, that prophet shall die. You think God’s serious about
what message is communicated? Of course he is. That prophet
must die who speaks presumptuously things that God has not told
him to. And as I read from Jeremiah earlier,
God told him, all that I command you, you shall speak. We must
speak everything that he’s told us to speak. We must not take
away from it nor add to it. And this hasn’t changed under
the new covenant. Most of you know Paul’s words
to Timothy, In 2 Timothy 4, Paul’s last letter, and this was his
admonition to Timothy. I solemnly charge you in the
presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living
and the dead, and by his appearing in his kingdom, preach the word. Preach the word. Preach the infallible
and inexhaustible word of God. Why do we get bored with the
word? It’s inexhaustible. And nothing else transforms men. But we see this everywhere. And
we see men who take away from the Word. They don’t tell all
of the Word. And I’ll get back to that. I’ll come back to that.
We understand that the exhortations from Paul to Timothy here were
included preaching the Word to the saints in the local churches. God’s people profit from every
part of God’s Word. But since the context here in
Jonah is about communicating to unbelievers, I want to focus
on that facet this morning. What should the preacher be proclaiming
to unbelievers? And a lot of you have the right
answer. You think, well, the gospel.
Come on. Well, that’s true. But it’s also not as simple as
you might initially think. Here’s a few questions to consider.
And the experienced, seasoned evangelist could probably give
10 better questions. But these are the ones I’m bringing.
First of all, what is the gospel? Some of us struggle articulating
that clearly. How much of God’s word is about
the gospel? How many different facets are
there to the gospel? How many different facets? Do
we, must we include every facet of the gospel every time that
we communicate the gospel? In every gospel presentation,
do we have to cover everything? Should we only repeat a one minute
version of the gospel 60 times an hour? Just be like a broken
record. Is there ever an appropriate
time to not share the gospel? And how do you convince somebody
of their need of the gospel? Should we preach things that
are not directly related to the gospel to unbelievers? To whom
and when should more emphasis be placed on this or that portion
of God’s Word? These are just a few questions
that I raised to show that there’s some complexity here and that
it takes wisdom. And I don’t have time to address
every one of these questions this morning, but that’s exactly
my point. That we must communicate the word to unbelievers, but
it takes time to grow in wisdom on how to preach the word wisely.
And this is where the elders and evangelists come in. And
they come in to help. I’ve already mentioned that,
but I didn’t mention how they can help us. And so I want to
focus on that a little bit. I’ll give you three reasons,
three ways this morning in which they can help us. In fact, since
we should all be sharing the Word in our private conversations
at minimum, let me include everybody in this. This applies to all
of us. The elder and evangelist are
there to help us prepare to speak the Word to unbelievers. They
can help us by giving us better understanding of the Word. They
can help us by knowing how to use the Word of God more wisely.
And they can help us to use the Word of God without hypocrisy.
That’s an important factor. The need to understand the Word
before we share it, that’s a simple concept. I don’t have to explain
that to you, but let me give you one example in the negative
on this. Suppose a young believer who’s
zealous to share the gospel, he reads the book of Jonah, as
I just read to you this morning. He sees that God, the Word of
God, commissions the preacher, and the preacher goes. The young
believer might read that and go, without understanding the
rest of the Scriptures, in that we now are in a different economy.
And as I said, this is now done with the oversight of the local
church. And if he goes, he is likely to ruin his reputation. He’s likely to bring ruin to
his listeners. That’s a possibility. And he’s
likely, and this should be the most concerning factor, is to
bring dishonor to the name of Christ. So these are three reasons
that should motivate us in not going before we’re ready. It takes time and hard work to
understand the scriptures enough to help others with them. Even
though we benefit from them, it takes time and effort and
much labor to be able to help others. Be diligent, Paul writes,
to present yourself approved unto God as a workman who need
not be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth. We looked
at that verse the other day in Sunday school. We talked about
what the bad consequences there are. If you’re not diligent in
the study of the Word, it results in shame from mishandling the Word. So
we have to communicate the Word to unbelievers, but it takes
wisdom to communicate it appropriately. If all we talk about to unbelievers
is the love of God and His grace, the unbeliever is likely to remain
in his or her sin. That’s an important thing to
know. And remember, there are many false conversions that come
in this way. It gives the wrong impression
of God’s love if that’s the only element you’re giving of God’s
character. Now, God is love. He’s love. But in order to understand
His love, we have to talk about something else. We have to talk
about sin. But as soon as we do that, we
lose our following. We lose our support. Nobody wants
to listen to our message. The fame we could receive by
just sharing the love of Christ, and that’s it. We lose that. And so there is that self-preserving
part that motivates people to not talk about sin. If all we talk about is grace,
the definition of grace is forgotten. And people start to think it’s
owed to them. You see, and let me elaborate
a little bit on what I’m talking about, not understanding what
the love of God is, if we do not bring in the sin factor. The love that we have for someone
who has never offended us, that’s a shallow love compared to the
love God has for us and shows toward us. Consider the offense we’ve had,
the offense we have towards God in our rebellion against him.
And now the scriptures teach we are at enmity with God naturally. We want to do our own thing.
We don’t care what God has to say. It’s my way or the highway. But I’ll receive that love. God
loves me. I love me too, you know. But
when we understand that in spite of that rebellion and sinful
nature, God, not being obligated, sent His Son, crushed His Son,
The one who never sinned, he crushed him on behalf of the
rebellious people. Not because he was obligated,
but because he is love. And does that not put love in
a whole new light? And so, if one’s going to understand
this love and be under the love of God, the way I’m using the
word love, you must understand and acknowledge his sinfulness
first. You know, and it’s because we
have failed to talk about all of God’s character that the world
has this question. If God is love, then why does
so and so happen? Why does he permit that to happen?
We’ve failed to communicate the rest of God’s character along
with the depravity of man. We failed to communicate all
of his character along with the depravity of man. Some of you
might not like the fact I’m using the word we here, but I think
that comes from being too independent minded, if that is you. We are
a church, we are not independent, but there is a universal church
that we’re a part of. So my question is this, how often
do we tell people that God hates? When I preach on the streets
about God having hatred, I get a lot of looks of unbelief. Imagine
that. Unbelievers doubting God’s Word.
God hates? I thought God is love. Well,
He is love. And because He is love, He must
by necessity also hate. You see? How can we say that
we love children when we hate not abortions. How can I say I love the people
of God or I love my unconverted neighbor if I don’t care about
his soul and how the Word of God is presented to him? Anyone
who loves must by necessity hate that which opposes the well-being
of the object of our love. You cannot love without also
hating. How many Christians are familiar
with the verse that says of God, The boastful shall not stand
before your eyes. You hate all who do iniquity. You destroy those who speak falsehood. God destroys liars. It’s what
the psalmist says. It’s Psalm 5 here. The Lord abhors
the man of bloodshed and deceit. God does hate. And we must warn
of the wrath that is to come. We must preach the word. We must
preach all of it. The gospel. It is the power of
God unto salvation. But if the context in which the
gospel has come to mankind is not understood, then it’s likely
to fall on deaf ears. Or bring about a false assurance
of salvation. We see that happening all the
time, a false assurance of salvation because sinfulness and the need
to repent has not been presented. In other words, no one will see
the gospel as good news if the bad news is not first understood. If all we communicate is grace,
no one will see the need for it. The definition is lost. If
we do not first give unbelievers an understanding of their need
of the gospel by showing them how they are at enmity with God,
they are at war with God, by doing their own thing, not caring
what He has commanded, our efforts are going to be in vain if we
don’t bring up that factor. If we do not communicate the
fact that the wrath of God abides upon unbelievers, even for telling
lies. Right? He said, thou shalt not
lie. And so when we tell a lie, we’re
in rebellion. They’re likely, if we don’t mention
these things, if we don’t mention sin, they’re likely to believe
the lie that they’re not in danger. Then there are also times when
it’s appropriate to not share the gospel. To never get to it. The Lord ourself gave us this
example on numerous occasions, such as the good Samaritan and
the rich young ruler. He left them with only law. He
did not give them the good news of salvation because they were
self-righteous and they did not acknowledge their sinfulness
and their need of a savior. And so I believe it’s wise to
at times not share the gospel until they recognize their need
for God’s mercy. And so what I’ve done here is
I’ve just given you a few examples of how elders and evangelists
can help us prepare to communicate the Word with wisdom. But there’s
another major area in which we need help, and it’s also a facet
of wisdom. It’s possible that we can know
the Word of God beyond the average Christian, communicate it accurately,
but still not be a faithful witness of the Lord Jesus. It’s possible
to speak the truth, but to do so in hypocrisy. That’s a problem. So in our preparation to publicly
proclaim the word of God that he’s told us to proclaim, we
also need to be building character, to not be hypocrites. Wisdom
and hypocrisy are incompatible. We see that in James 3. James
writes, the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable,
gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering,
without hypocrisy. And the seed whose fruit is righteousness
is sown in peace by those who make peace.” The wisdom of God
is peaceable, it’s gentle, it’s reasonable, it’s full of mercy.
And if we’re going to sow seeds of righteousness, we need to
sow peaceably. with wisdom. And I can’t read
this passage without being reminded how I lack wisdom. By God’s grace, he brings this
passage in front of me to remind me that I have not attained some
level in which I can be satisfied with. And if you know of any
human who has reached that level of perfect wisdom, please let
me know. But what I’m saying is this,
that we cannot wait until we’ve reached that perfection, which
isn’t going to happen before glory anyway. But we can’t wait
until we’ve reached that level before we sow seeds of the gospel. But we do need to continually
strive to grow in that. God does freely give wisdom to
those who ask. But some, some lack wisdom to
the degree that they shouldn’t be teaching in any public forum.
These are usually lone rangers who despise being held accountable
by the local church. Or maybe they’re just part of
an unbiblical church. The necessary accountability
comes by way of membership in a faithful local church. That’s
how that accountability comes. And we live in an age where accountability
is despised by many young men. And as a result, we have many
maverick preachers and so-called evangelists who are out proclaiming
the word, at least parts of it. So in this, I’m also trying to
show you, to bring out another way in which every member has
a part in the Great Commission. You may not be called to preach,
but your relationship with those you are is important. It’s important. The best way to build up and
be built up is by fellowship of the saints under the ministry
of the word and prayer. That’s how we’re built up. So
your involvement in the local church matters. It matters. It
benefits not only you, but it benefits me and everyone else
who’s preaching. That’s how the local church can
get involved by holding the preacher accountable, coming alongside
him, giving feedback, Also, they’re to uphold the preacher in prayer.
Every facet of a faithful church has to do with the Great Commission. Our brother Mike mentioned this
last week. It’s the heart of our faith. And when it comes
to the preacher who’s commissioned by the Word of God to communicate
the Word of God, a faithful church will support these primarily
in prayer. As Paul made request in Ephesians
6.19, so do we. This is what our request is. And pray on my behalf that utterance
may be given to me in the opening of my mouth to make known with
boldness the mystery of the gospel. So just in closing here, give
a summary of what I’ve said. Some are called by God’s word
to communicate God’s word publicly. Others are not. And those who
are called should not go unprepared. It’s the God-given responsibility
of the elders and the evangelists to help such in their preparation. And then these should also know
their readiness. And for those who are not called
to preach, you are not excluded from this mission. The church
is a body that works together. And this mission of making disciples
includes every Christian. Working together as a whole.
Would you pray with me?