A Preachers Call

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.