I want to give you ten reasons why persevering in Christian preaching — expository exultation — is a great privilege. By privilege, I mean the straightforward dictionary definition: “a benefit enjoyed by a person beyond the advantages of most.” But I don’t want to overstate the privilege, lest I come under Jesus’s rebuke of the 72 disciples, who returned to Jesus with the excited claim that they enjoyed the privilege that the demons were subject to them. Do you remember what Jesus said? “Do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven” (Luke 10:20).

One of my very first hospital visits as a brand-new pastor in 1980 was a visit to a dying old statesman of our church, Dr. Widen, who had spent the last twenty years of his life caring for his invalid wife. It was the first and (I think) last time that we met. He reached out and took this young pastor’s hand and said, “Pastor, the greatest thing in the world is to be saved.” Yes.

So, the note sounding from your pulpit should not mainly be, “I am thrilled to be your pastor!” (which is a good thing to say), but rather, “I am thrilled to be saved!” And then your people will watch you, in the pulpit and out, not to see what it’s like to be a pastor, but what it’s like to be thrilled that you are saved.

Truly, I say to you, among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist. Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. (Matthew 11:11)

Pastors, the greatest thing in the world is to be saved. Nevertheless, that’s not what Kevin asked me to talk about but rather the privilege — indeed, the great privilege — of preaching.

Privileges of Preaching

The way I have approached the preparation of this message is this: After a season of prayer, during which I was crying out for wisdom and faithfulness and usefulness, I sat down at my desk, folded an 8.5-by-11 blank sheet of paper in half, put it on my desk, took a 0.5mm mechanical pencil (I buy them by the dozen on Amazon), and wrote at the top, “the privilege of preaching.” This half-sheet would be a jumble within a matter of minutes, and I would have to use five or six of these.

I opened my Bible on the computer screen (I use Logos) with the ESV in one column and the original language in the other column, and I asked myself two questions. First, I asked, Where in the Bible does it say something about the privilege of preaching? Second, What in my own experience of preaching over the last fifty years have proven to be the privileges of preaching? And those two questions oscillate back and forth. There’s no neat sequencing of exegesis first with experience second. And that half sheet becomes a catchall for ideas from the texts and for everything that jumps out from my experience.

When I hit upon a text that describes a privilege, I ask, Has that proved true in my experience? And when I think of something in my experience that has seemed especially precious as a privilege, I test it and ask, Is that in the Bible somewhere, or am I getting off track? I want biblical precedent and biblical authority for everything I say to you. And I commend to you this oscillation of exegesis and experience as you prepare messages.

“Preaching is a great privilege because God feeds those who feed his people.”

I think it is unrealistic in preaching — indeed, probably damaging — to try to bracket fifty years of God’s work in life while I focus on a text. What matters in preparing a message is not which comes first or second — exegesis or experience. What matters is what’s in control: God’s word or your experience? But oh, the insights that can come in exegesis when the process of exegesis is permeated by your real-life experience, and your real-life experience is tested by good exegesis!

So, here we go. Here are the privileges of Christian preaching.

1. Immersed in the Word of God

Christian preaching is a great privilege because it immerses us in the supremely valuable and supremely enjoyable word of God.

The preacher has the enormous privilege of making his living by living in the divinely inspired, infinitely valuable, supremely enjoyable word of God, the Bible.

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable. (2 Timothy 3:16)

The rules of the Lord are true,
     and righteous altogether.
More to be desired are they than gold,
     even much fine gold;
sweeter also than honey
     and drippings of the honeycomb. (Psalm 19:9–10)

The law of your mouth is better to me
     than thousands of gold and silver pieces. (Psalm 119:72)

Therefore I love your commandments
     above gold, above fine gold. (Psalm 119:127)

How sweet are your words to my taste,
     sweeter than honey to my mouth! (Psalm 119:103)

I have treasured the words of his mouth more than my portion of food. (Job 23:12)

I remember when I got my very first job teaching biblical studies at Bethel College in 1974, earning $10,500 a year. I held up the contract to my wife and said, “They pay me. They pay me for studying the Bible and telling people what I see.”

Six years later, I resigned from my teaching job and became a pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church. On July 13, 1980, in my first Sunday evening message, I quoted Moses from Deuteronomy 32:

Take to heart all the words by which I am warning you today. . . . For it is no empty word for you, but your very life. (Deuteronomy 32:46–47)

The word of God is more precious than gold. It is sweeter than honey. It is your very life. “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4). “The words that I have spoken to you,” Jesus said, “are spirit and life” (John 6:63). What a privilege to have your very vocation in life defined as swimming in the ocean of God’s word!

2. Fed as You Feed

Christian preaching is a great privilege because God feeds those who feed his people.

He supplies his preachers with the spiritual insight and wisdom that we need to do what he calls us to do.

[God has lavished grace] upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ. (Ephesians 1:8–9)

How many times does the Christian preacher hear the Lord say, “You give them something to eat”? To which we respond, “I don’t have anything except this tiny lunch of five loaves and two fish. What good is that among so many?” To which Jesus responds, “Give it to me.” He touches it. He blesses it. He works a miracle with your meager contribution. And when the day is over, there are twelve baskets full, one for each empty, helpless preacher (Matthew 14:20–21). This is true, brothers. I testify that for fifty years the Lord Jesus has not failed to feed me when I feed the sheep.

Give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you. (Luke 6:38)

When God called me from academia to the pastorate, there was a long struggle. On the decisive night, October 14, 1979, approaching midnight, I wrote in my journal what I thought I would be losing. Here’s a sampling:

• I would lose the simplicity of task and routine in the college. My life and time would be much less my own.
• I would lose the serenity of undisturbed hours of study because the needs of the flock are unpredictable.
• I would lose the quiet of the study and trade it for hours in the car on the way to the hospital and to homes.
• I would lose the collegial stimulation of fellow theologians in return for a draining ministry to the hungry.

In other words, I was afraid that God would not feed me with the wisdom and the insight and the glory of his word if I had to live with the pressures of the pastoral ministry. And oh, how wrong I was. I believe that God delights to give exegetical breakthroughs, glorious insights, Solomon-like wisdom, prophetic gifting, contagious affections, and fresh expressions to desperate pastors who give him their five loaves and two fish, and look to him for the miracle. God feeds preachers who feed his sheep.

3. Filled with the Spirit and Truth

Christian preaching is a great privilege because it compels us to be full of the Spirit and truth in season and out of season.

You don’t always get to choose when you must preach. That uncertainty is a privilege because it compels you to be full of the word all the time. And what a blessing to be full of the word all the time. “Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season” (2 Timothy 4:2) — that is, when you expect to preach and when you don’t.

“God saves. God regenerates. God gives faith. But he does it through preachers.”

I was very new at this in 1980, my first year at the church. Rollin Erickson was the most respected statesman in our church. He was on the search committee that called me to the church. He showed me great patience and affection. I got a call that his wife had a heart attack and was on her way in the ambulance to North Memorial Hospital. I jumped in my car and felt very satisfied that I would be there in no time. I was in such a hurry that I neglected to take my little handheld Bible.

In the waiting room, there were about a dozen people when I walked in. Delores was in surgery. And Rollin turned to me and said, “Pastor, give us a word.” My mind went blank. I stumbled through a prayer.

I went home that afternoon, ashamed, and got down on my knees at my prayer bench and said to the Lord, “I’m sorry. That will never happen again.” And then I memorized Psalm 46:

God is our refuge and strength,
     a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear though the earth should change,
     though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea;
though its waters roar and foam,
     though the mountains tremble with its tumult.
There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
     the holy habitation of the Most High.
God is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved;
     God will help her right early.
The nations rage, the kingdoms totter;
     he utters his voice, the earth melts.
The Lord of hosts is with us;
     the God of Jacob is our refuge.
Come, behold the works of the Lord,
     how he has wrought desolations in the earth.
He makes wars cease to the end of the earth;
     he breaks the bow, and shatters the spear,
     he burns the chariots with fire!
“Be still, and know that I am God.
     I am exalted among the nations,
     I am exalted in the earth!”
The Lord of hosts is with us;
     the God of Jacob is our refuge. (Psalm 46:1–11 RSV)

Later, I memorized Romans 8 for the same reason. There is no crisis that does not find help in Romans 8. Do you think that experience in the hospital with Rollin was not a blessing to me? The pressure, the blessed pressure, to be ready out of season is a great privilege for the Christian preacher.

4. Commissioned for the Sake of Joy

Christian preaching is a great privilege because it demands that we gladly work for the people’s gladness in God.

Not that we lord it over your faith, but we work with you for your joy. . . . If I cause you pain, who is there to make me glad but the one whom I have pained? And I wrote as I did, so that when I came I might not suffer pain from those who should have made me rejoice, for I felt sure of all of you, that my joy would be the joy of you all. (2 Corinthians 1:24; 2:2–3)

Their joy is his joy. And his joy is their joy. That’s the meaning of Christian love. Love seeks to enthrall the beloved with what is supremely and eternally satisfying — namely, God. What a privilege that it is the life calling of a pastor to pursue the happiness of his people in God, even if it cost him much suffering, which it did for Paul, who said, “In all our affliction, I am overflowing with joy” (2 Corinthians 7:4).

[Your leaders] are keeping watch over your souls. . . . Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you. (Hebrews 13:17)

If we would be an advantage to our people, we must be glad in the pursuit of their gladness in God. This calling is a happy and glorious privilege.

5. Mobilized for Salvation

Christian preaching is a great privilege because by it we become agents of God’s eternal salvation.

Ephesians 2:5 says,

Even when we were dead in our trespasses, [God] made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved.

Yes. God saves. God regenerates. God gives faith. But he does it through preachers.

I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. (1 Corinthians 9:22)

“Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” How will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? . . . Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. (Romans 10:13–14, 17)

I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. (1 Corinthians 3:6)

The teaching of the wise is a fountain of life,
     that one may turn away from the snares of death. (Proverbs 13:14)

The faithful preaching of the word of God saves sinners and brings them safely home to eternal life. It brings them to conversion, and it preserves them over the decades from making shipwreck of their faith.

Jerry Halderson was not a believer. In his mid-fifties, he would come to church every Sunday with his believing wife and sit directly in front of me in the first row of the balcony. Our eyes would lock every communion service when I explained that unbelievers should not eat of this precious bread and drink this cup. He never touched it. This went on for several years. And then one day he took my hand at the door and said, “We need to talk.” We met on Wednesday night after the prayer meeting, and all his resistance was over. He believed. I baptized him a few weeks later. And that next year, he died of a heart attack. And Beryl, his wife, was — to her dying day — joyfully thankful to God and to me, the preacher, that her husband was willing to listen until he could resist no longer.

I asked my father, who was a full-time evangelist, and who was the happiest person I have ever known, “Daddy, what’s the key to staying happy in Jesus?” Without a pause, he said, “Leading souls to Christ.” Faith comes by hearing. That is a great privilege of the Christian preacher.

6. Appointed to Sustain Faith

Christian preaching is a great privilege because by it we sustain the faith of saints through trauma and loss.

Eternal security is a community project. “Those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified” (Romans 8:30). None of those who are called into the fellowship of his Son is ever lost. Those whom he calls he keeps. But he does not do it automatically. He does it by the ministry of the word.

Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. (Hebrews 3:12–14)

Whether through daily mutual exhortation or weekly preaching, we become the means of sustaining the faith of the saints. “The Lord God has given me the tongue of those who are taught, that I may know how to sustain with a word him who is weary” (Isaiah 50:4). “Receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls” (James 1:21). “I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory” (2 Timothy 2:10).

The elect are kept for eternal glory, but only through the ministry of the word. Your faithful preaching is saving the saints every Sunday. Every faithful sermon is a salvation sermon.

You feel the sweetness of this privilege when a young mother who has sat under your ministry for ten years gives birth to a disabled child who will never walk or have the mental capacities beyond a three-year-old, and she comes to you a year later and says, “Pastor, I would have gone insane if you had not taught me all those years that God is sovereign and has good purposes in all our sorrows.” Oh, how many stories could be told of how God has preserved the faith of his saints through preaching.

7. Authenticated Through Suffering

Christian preaching is a great privilege because the suffering it brings is a tribute of faithfulness, a badge of authenticity, and a path deeper into God.

Then [the apostles] left the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name. (Acts 5:41)

If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. (1 Peter 4:14)

Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. (Matthew 5:11–12)

If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household. (Matthew 10:25)

Faithful preaching will be spoken against. And into the winds of that suffering, you have the privilege of saying, “If [I am] afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation” (2 Corinthians 1:6), and “[Do not] lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory” (Ephesians 3:13).

8. Called to Sound the Call

Christian preaching is a great privilege because by it we impel people into Christian ministry and missions.

The Lord of the harvest sends workers because we pray and we preach (Matthew 9:38). Paul said to the Roman church,

I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else’s foundation, but as it is written, “Those who have never been told of him will see, and those who have never heard will understand.” (Romans 15:20–21)

Is it not remarkable that Paul did not trace his peculiar calling back to the Damascus-road experience but traced it to Isaiah 52:15? This is God’s ordinary way of causing people to change the entire course of their lives toward full-time Christian ministry. They are sitting under the ministry of the word, and something inexplicable happens as a word from the Lord takes root and grows into an irresistible calling and a lifetime of ministry.

“Your faithful preaching is saving the saints every Sunday. Every faithful sermon is a salvation sermon.”

It certainly happened to me that way — in the summer of 1966, lying in my hospital bed, listening to Harold John Ockenga preach in Wheaton’s Chapel. Everything in me — unbidden, unexpected, unstoppable — said, “I want to handle the Bible like that.” My whole life was turned by the preaching of the word of God. And that desire has never died now, for almost sixty years. Give yourself to the preaching of God’s word, and the ripple effect of your life will be immeasurable. It is a great privilege.

9. Bestowed with an Unfading Crown

Christian preaching is a great privilege because it brings the unfading crown of glory.

Shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you; not for shameful gain, but eagerly; not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock. And when the chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory. (1 Peter 5:2–4)

Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above; and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever. (Daniel 12:3)

If you serve up faithfully, week after week, a nourishing table of spiritual food for your people, and they prove to be thankless, then the words of Jesus apply to you in Luke 14:14: “You will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.” “This light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (2 Corinthians 4:17). The greatest privilege of preaching does not come to us in this life but the next, when the chief Shepherd puts the crown on our head.

10. Ordained as Unworthy Servants

Christian preaching is a great privilege because we are unworthy of it.

To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ. (Ephesians 3:8)

Paul had his very good reasons for feeling unworthy. So do you. So do I. When I look back on the follies of my teenage years — the anxieties, the loneliness, the lust, the deceit, the self-absorption — what can I say except, “I believe in sovereign grace”? Grace upon grace has been poured out on my life. It has never ceased. “Neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth” (1 Corinthians 3:7). So, I say with the apostle Paul, and you say with the apostle Paul,

The grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. . . . I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. (1 Timothy 1:14, 16)

Brothers, to the degree that you feel unworthy of this calling as a Christian preacher, let that feeling intensify your enjoyment of the privilege, the great and gracious privilege, of being a Christian preacher.