-Transcript-
00:36 Amen. Thank you for joining me. Good to be at the cafe today.
00:41 Today we’re talking about a very important subject, the preacher. The preacher. Hey, I’m a preacher.
00:47 I know it’s not easy work, amen. And I know many that listen to radio ministry are also preachers. I don’t just preach on the radio, Amen.
00:59 I also listen to the radio ministry when I take kids to school in the morning. My kids, kids to school. I take my kids to school in the morning.
01:07 When I am working, I open up an app and listen to radio preaching. So I am a consumer or a one that is listening, not just one preaching. And so I understand that many people that listen to this program are involved in the ministry.
01:25 They’re involved in church. Amen. They listen to Christian radio and I appreciate that.
01:31 And today we’re talking about what God thinks about the preacher and the necessity of the preacher. Amen. A great verse here, Isaiah 52:7 how beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publishes peace, that bringeth good tidings of good, that publishes salvation, that saith unto Zion, thy God reigneth.
01:52 Amen. That’s Isaiah 52:7 And we see here in Isaiah 52, seven, the prophet Isaiah proclaiming by the working of the Holy spirit, that it is beautiful, the feet of them that bringeth good tidings.
02:03 You know, when I think of the feet, I think of the idea, this wonderful comparison, this wonderful illustration of a walking with the Lord. And as you preach the word, you don’t just stand still, you walk with the Lord. Evangelists and those that go and preach from town to town, city to city, country to country, they are moving with their feet.
02:29 They’re going about bringing the good news. I think sometimes we get the idea that all our evangelism or ministry work is done behind the four walls of the church, when honestly, that’s kind of the pep rally. That’s the place to come and fill up on the word and comfort one another and get edified in the word.
02:49 And then our mission field is where? Out in the world. And so we see how beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publish peace, that bringeth good tidings of good, that publishes salvation. Amen.
03:03 If you’re a preacher worth your salt, you’re preaching salvation and you’re not adding to or taking away from God’s word. It doesn’t become an entertainment session. It doesn’t become an about me session.
03:13 It becomes an about God session and God’s perfect plan of salvation. And I believe we need to preach salvation to this lost and dying world with a sense of urgency like we’ve never had before. Truly, this has to be God’s altar call.
03:30 Amen. As one preacher told me, I said, how are you doing? How’s your church? He said, it’s okay. We’re okay.
03:34 This is God’s very last altar call. And I believe that we are in the end of the end of the last days and we need to preach salvation. And that is intentionally, I believe, Holy Spirit inspired, included in Isaiah 52:7 to help us understand the primary role of the preacher.
03:52 It is to win souls to Christ and to edify the saints, to edify, to teach, to instruct, to exhort the saints. I had to write a description somewhere about our radio program. And those were the two sentences I put to win souls to Christ and to edify the church.
04:12 That’s pretty much what we do. And I believe that’s what we’re called to do. And now contrast that with the modern day church and not all of them, especially not here in the country.
04:24 I know there are many good churches out here and many good churches around the world, but there are also many churches that are preaching a false gospel of prosperity, of good news, of self-help, of tickling of ears. And there are many churches that are not publishing salvation, that are not talking about how to be saved. They’re never mentioning the blood of Christ.
04:45 And we know that without the shedding of blood, there’s no remission of sins. Amen. They’re not mentioning Jesus Christ, God’s only begotten son.
04:51 Amen. And so we have to realize that this is what God calls us to do. And we realize that God loves the preacher.
04:56 Romans 10: 13 -16. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shallthey preach except they be sent? As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace and bring glad tidings of good things.
05:20 But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah saith, Lord, who hath believed our report? All right, here we have in Romans 10:13- 16, Paul writing some very important truths. Number one, whosoever shall call upon the name shall be saved.
05:35 On our sign at church, that was what we put on the verse when we formed the church. We put that verse on there, on the sign, because that is part of salvation. All are eligible.
05:47 It was our way of saying all are welcome. None is too good to be saved and none is too wicked that they can’t be saved. Amen.
05:57 God’s beautiful, perfect gospel is for everyone. God says to the poorest person on earth, you may not have worldly riches, but you believe my gospel and you’ll be saved and you’ll have riches in heaven. God says to the richest person on earth, it may be harder than a camel going through the eye of a needle, but you believe my gospel.
06:16 You believe in Jesus Christ. You believe on his finished work on the cross. You believe in your need and your sin nature and your need for salvation.
06:23 If you truly understand that, that you are dying and you need to be born again and you believe on Christ, you’ll be saved. Jesus said it Himself in that very next verse, after mentioning the eye of the needle and the camel, that with God, all things are possible. Even the rich can be saved.
06:38 God says to the good person of the year, times man of the year, the one celebrated by everybody, God says, if you’re willing to humble yourself and realize that you’re not good and that nothing good can be done without me and that your righteousness is like filthy rags, like dirty gauze pads, if you realize that, you can be saved. And God will go to that murderer on death row, Amen, through His preacher, and God will go and meet with him and say, hey, you killed, society hates you. You are going to die.
07:08 You’re going to be punished for your wicked deeds. And if you believe, if you truly believe, you can be saved. You can be in my heaven.
07:19 And there’s examples of all four of those that I gave in scripture. There’s example of rich people being saved in the Bible and serving God. Joseph of Arimathea, I remember him, and Nicodemus, another one, I believe them to be saved.
07:35 I’m not 1000% certain, but they’re rich people that served God. There are many poor people. There’s almost too many to count that served God and were saved, Amen.
07:47 I think of the widow with two mites and the Lord complimented her. Surely she was saved. She was a believer.
07:50 She wouldn’t be given her last two mites. There’s examples of the thief on the cross asking God, hey, please remember me actually believing on God. And then Jesus saying he’ll be with him in paradise that day.
08:06 And there are very good people, Pharisees that he’d battle with back and forth that didn’t think they needed salvation. And there was others, Nathaniel comes to mind who there was no guile in him and he was saved, Amen. And so we see this conglomerate of all these different people.
08:21 We look at Luke, the physician, or Paul, who was brought up under this basically like the Supreme Court of that time, the Sanhedrin. We see people of all stripes being saved by Jesus Christ, beautiful gospel. But Paul gives something very interesting here.
08:36 He gives a progression and I’m going to read it to you here. How can you be saved if you don’t believe? Well, that’s a good point. How can you be saved if you don’t believe? How can you believe if you have not heard? That’s another good point.
08:45 How can you hear if you have no preacher? And how can you preach but that you’re sent? And so we see here Paul giving this progression of how God allows the preacher to be used by him. So God is perfect. He’s sovereign.
09:03 He’s all-knowing. He has all capabilities. He doesn’t need anything that he cannot fulfill on His own.
09:09 And so we understand the nature of God that then it allows us to understand, hey, you know what? God is giving us a blessing. He’s allowing an opportunity for those that He calls to surrender, to serve Him and to preach His gospel and to earn heavenly reward. And by the way, to have great peace on earth.
09:29 There’s no better profession in my mind than being a preacher. It’s incredibly hard, but it’s incredibly rewarding. And so God gives us this opportunity.
09:37 It’s an opportunity to preach. It’s incredible. And how can you be saved if you don’t believe? People will say they, oh yeah, I got Jesus in my heart.
09:46 Or, oh yeah, I was baptized in a parking lot. Well, what does that mean? Like explain to me what it means. And there’s many examples over the years I’ve preached on this.
09:56 We have to realize our need. When I was saved, I was walked through Romans Road before I was able to be baptized or anything else. They needed me to understand what was happening, my need, Amen.
10:08 And I had to explain that back to them in some rudimentary form. I remember in teen church several years ago, our current music minister was there and I’d been preaching and there was a young man that wanted to be saved. And that music minister was a young guy too.
10:24 I think he was a college kid at the time or high school kid. Sat him down and said, well, let’s make sure you understand what it means to be saved. How can you be saved if you don’t believe? If you don’t understand, you have to understand, you got to believe.
10:34 And how can you believe if you haven’t heard? Again, what preempts somebody from being saved? Oftentimes it’s not hearing, not fully understanding, right? And whose job is that? That’s the preacher, is it not? How can you hear if you have no preacher? And by the way, how can you hear if you have no preacher preaching the salvation gospel? And I’ve been in churches where they won’t preach that. They will preach a good word. They’ll preach a moral tale and they’ll wish you well, wish you to have the wind at your back and then have a great day and prosper and so on.
11:03 And they’ll never, ever mention Jesus Christ in the blood. And what a shame that is. What an absolute shame that is.
11:10 And why they don’t, only God knows. But how can you hear if you have no preacher or no teacher that would give you the straight gospel truth? And then here’s the key here. How can you preach if you are not sent? Paul is writing here, how can you preach if you’re not sent? We are called by God.
11:26 I told this story to our church recently. I was on a call with a Christian organization from a different denomination, a conference call with my wife and was talking to them. And they were asking me how I got involved in preaching.
11:40 Did I attend seminary and so forth? And I went through this long illustration of how I was in church as a young man, but was just there. And then I started going more faithfully. And then I was the video guy and God’s got a sense of humor.
11:55 And so I was always there recording things. And then I was a deacon and on and on and how God had this progression for me until I surrendered to His call to preach His gospel. And then eventually planted a church as God had me to do.
12:07 Well, all of that was a long-winded way of just saying I was called by God. And you have to be called to preach. There are many that may think that they’re called to preach or want or find it like a good idea, but God didn’t call them to do that.
12:21 And so they have to be called because it is a calling. Amen. It is what God calls people out to do.
12:30 Read a sermon from Spurgeon and tell me he wasn’t called to preach. He never went to seminary. And it’s incredible what the Holy Spirit reveals there.
12:38 Read the Bible. Was he not Holy Spirit inspired? Did they go to seminary? Did they have all of these refinements? They did not. Amen.
12:44 They are called to preach. And so we see this order that Paul gives. And what he is saying is that God loves the preacher because God can use the preacher to win souls to Christ.
12:56 And God gave His only begotten for that reason. So souls could be won so they didn’t end up in the devil’s hell. And this is a beautiful, beautiful thing to do, a beautiful vocation that we’re called to do.
13:08 So, if you are preaching, stand fast in the word, stay strong, have faith, realize that this is a calling that is a glorious one, that God loves the preacher, and that we should not give up. We should not give in. We shouldn’t just bend with the culture, but we should stand firm on what God calls us to do because it’s in scripture.
13:31 And there is this progression or there’s this way that God would have us to win souls. Amen. He’s the one that wins the soul.
13:38 We plant the seed. Amen. He waters it.
13:42 It blossoms. It’s all by the working of God. And he’s allowed us the opportunity to be involved in the ministry as he showed us in his word, how beautiful are the feet that publish salvation.
13:53 What a truth. Thank you God for your word. Thank you so much for allowing preachers to preach the gospel.
14:00 Lord, call many more to preach in these last days before it’s eternally too late. Allow us, Lord, to bear great fruit for you. Thank you all so much for listening.
14:08 Take care. God bless and Amen.