Matthew 3:1 - Homilies By R. Tuck

The mission of preaching.

"Preaching in the wilderness of Judaea." John Baptist was not a teacher; he was precisely a preacher, in the first and proper sense of that word. Everywhere in the New Testament it implies proclaiming after the manner of a herald. It is the term used in the Old Testament of the witnessing work of the prophets (see Nehemiah 6:7 ; Isaiah 61:1 ; Jonah 3:2 , etc.). There is a distinct place for the preacher and for the teacher. They may be combined in one man, and the processes of preaching and teaching may go on together; but usually, if a man has the one gift, he has not the other; and we are constantly making the mistake of expecting a man to have the one gift because we see plainly that he has the other. Two things are gathered up in the term "preaching."

I. PREACHING AS PROCLAIMING A MESSAGE . The preacher is but the agency, or medium, by means of which a message is conveyed. So John calls himself a "voice," because what he said was the all-important thing. This is the idea of the prophet, who was the medium through which a message of God was carried into the minds of men. It is essential to every preacher that he should have something to proclaim; therefore what Christian preachers preach is called the "gospel," or "good news."

1 . But the preacher must be sure of his message. Compare the expression used by prophets, "The word of God came to me." A preacher proclaims, not what he thinks, but what he knows; what he grips as the truth of God given him to declare. The "accent of conviction" is the test of the true preacher.

2 . And they who hear must feel convinced of the authority of the messenger. Not an authority arising out of his office, but out of the evidence that he holds a commission, and has a message. In what sense can preachers nowadays be said to have their messages direct from God?

II. PREACHING AS PERSUADING TO RESPOND TO THE MESSAGE . This brings to view the personal force of the preacher. To be a herald he need but be a voice. To be a persuader he must be a voice with a tone in it; and that tone is the personal element. See, then, the kind of preachers that become men of power. They are men who "tell the truth;" but they are much more than this—they are men who, like John the Baptist, can "make the truth tell."—R.T.