A Charge to Biblical Preaching - Darrell
W. Johnson
The
closing benediction of a DMin component entitled “Preaching That Transforms” - Fuller
Seminary
May
every time you open the Book, you do so asking of the particular text, “have
you seen Him whom my soul loves?” And may you experience the particular text
taking you by the hand and leading you beyond the words to the Word himself.
(E. Stanley Jones)
Before
you even think a thought about how are you are going to preach the text, may
Jesus Christ, to whom the text points, encounter you and preach His gospel to
you, causing you to live out “the obedience of faith” to which the text calls
you.
May you “limp”
into the pulpit, because like Jacob, who became Israel, you to have wrestled
with, not only the text, but with the God of the text.
May you
preach the gospel of Jesus with the systematic precision of Matthew, with the
spontaneous enthusiasm of Mark, with the prayerful compassion of Luke, and out
of the intimacy of adoring wonder of John. (So that you too can only call
yourself “the disciple whom Jesus loves”.
May you
preach the gospel of Jesus with the practical wisdom (“from above”) of James because
you too are a doer of the word and not just a hearer.
May the
preaching of Jesus’ gospel be as wide and long and high and deep as that of the
apostle Paul (“to me, the very least of all the Saints, this grace was given,
to preach the unfathomable riches of Christ”).
And as
you “limp” to the pulpit, in the power of the Holy Spirit, may you always
have the confidence that when you speak - because your speaking emerges
from, and is shaped by the text - God speaks; and that when God speaks
something always happens!
And so
may you be surprised by Joy.
