Introduction
There is no difference between the Jew and the Greek, for the same Lord is rich unto all who call upon him, for whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. The gospel is no longer limited to the nation of the Jews. Neither is salvation restricted to Old Testament Israel. The “all” and “whosoever” in the text refer to every nation, tribe, and tongue in distinction from only the Jews. Greek or Jew—it makes no difference. The wall has been broken down. The church is universal, and Christ has become the light of the Gentiles. God’s elect people in the new dispensation have the same Christ and the same salvation as Israel of old.
But how shall the Jew or the Greek call upon him whom they have not heard? The apostle Paul in Romans 10 connects calling upon the Lord and faith in Christ. Paul begins his explanation of the preaching of the gospel by the church through a man called and sent. He explains the importance and indispensable quality of the preaching for the salvation of God’s people throughout the entire new dispensation. The elect child of God must hear Christ. Hearing Christ, he believes in Christ. Believing in Christ, he calls upon Christ for salvation out of his guilt, misery, bondage, and affliction.
How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? There is faith. There is union with Christ. But there is no faith without hearing. And there is no hearing without a preacher. And there is no preacher unless he is sent by the church.
How beautiful are the feet of the gospel preacher! How welcome, essential, and necessary are those whom God calls, equips, commissions, and sends to preach the gospel of peace and to bring glad tidings of good things!
The minister has beautiful feet. Men do not say that the preacher’s feet are beautiful. The minister himself does not even say that his feet are beautiful. The minister’s feet are beautiful not because he is good at pastoral care, great at running a church, or is an inoffensive and pleasant person. Not at all! His feet are beautiful because of what he speaks, for whom he speaks, and more importantly, who speaks through him. A minister might be coarse, harsh, or abrasive, but if he preaches the gospel, his feet are beautiful. That is what God says about him. It does not matter what men say about him. It does not matter what he thinks about himself. The confession of all God’s people, of all who call upon the Lord, is, “What beautiful feet of the gospel preacher!” The church of Jesus Christ who is fed by the gospel makes this her confession. How welcome are they who bring the gospel!
My purpose with this editorial is, first, to set forth the truth of Romans 10 and the high value that the Reformed faith places on preachers and preaching. It is good for the church to have in her mind and consciousness the place of the ministry of the gospel and of the preacher himself. The value of the minister has nothing to do with whether you like the man or not, but it has everything do with what he speaks. He is a preacher, not of the law but of the gospel of the free forgiveness of sins and everlasting righteousness. This is what the apostle means when he says “the word of faith, which we preach” (v. 8). If the preacher does not speak the gospel of peace, his feet are not beautiful but disgusting, and neither is he a preacher.
Second, my aim is the young men in the Reformed Protestant Churches who are currently in the Reformed Protestant day schools. The young men in the schools should be considering the call to the gospel ministry. Teachers, parents, and friends should be on the lookout and encouraging the young men to consider whether they might be called to this noble task. We draw near to the beginning of another school year, and there are no students preparing for the ministry. The churches need men to preach the gospel. My primary and main purpose is to aid the young men in discerning the work of the Spirit of Christ in their lives to know whether they can do nothing else but preach the word of faith.
A Summons, Not a Career
This editorial was adapted from a sectional I gave at Grace Reformed Protestant School for career day in 2024. It has been revised and greatly expanded from when I delivered it over two years ago. But I open this article in a similar fashion as I did then. The ministry of the gospel is not a career, job, vocation, or an occupation.
There is no better time than now to go after some low-hanging fruit. In an interview with students in the Protestant Reformed seminary, the students declared that the ministry is merely a vocation. This is curious. Why do they understate the ministry of the gospel and place the office of minister on an equal footing with a plumber or an engineer? They are not equal because they are not even in the same realm. One is spiritual; the other is earthly. That is not to denigrate jobs and careers, but it is to assign to the ministry the importance that scripture assigns to it. There is no more noble and lofty task that a man can undertake than the ministry of the gospel. Said the Protestant Reformed seminary students:
It’s a vocation like any other calling—a plumber or an engineer—something like that. And the only thing that makes it unique is its qualifications are explicitly listed in the Bible. And so if someone’s interested in the call of the minister, he can go to certain passages of scripture and unpack the job description and the resume he’s going to need to bring to the job.
It’s a call that’s unique from every other call in a way, but it is still a vocation, just like another duty that anyone in the church might have.1
If one looks up the word career in the dictionary, it is defined as “a job for which you are trained and in which it is possible to advance during your working life.”2 One cannot go to the dictionary to find the true explanation of the preaching. The ministry is a summons. The king summons you to be his ambassador. The summons comes from God himself and belongs to his eternal decree: “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations” (Jer. 1:5). The character of that summons then is irresistible. God determined that this man at this time and in this place would be a prophet unto the nations. The man has no say in the matter. He really has no choice. The king summons him, and as the fruit of God’s grace, the man willingly and joyfully submits to that call.
As a summons the ministry is not something that a man undertakes for a portion of his life and then may leave. There are two ways out of the ministry—a man dies or he gets deposed. There is no such thing as switching careers when a man tires of the work.
Neither is the ministry a career in the sense that one may advance up the ladder in the church. There is no opportunity in the ministry for the advancement of personal goals. A man may not enter into the office because of personal ambition. Such a man would be a persistent bane on the church. That kind of man has no place in the ministry but would only destroy in God’s house. God and his glory are central in the church, and the minister is his servant who is consecrated to preach the gospel for the salvation of his people and the glory of his name.
The ministry is not a labor into which a man willingly enters of his own free choice. He does not take up this summons because he first wanted to but because he had no choice in the matter. In 1 Corinthians 9:16 the inspired apostle says, “Necessity is laid upon me; yea, woe is unto me, if I preach not the gospel!” The apostle felt the necessity and the obligation from God himself. When the holy God summons a man, he obeys willingly.
In a career there are fair wages exchanged for the work performed. No amount of money could ever be placed on the spiritual work of the ministry. The minister sows spiritual things and reaps the carnal things of the congregation, that is, the financial care and support of the congregation to whom he preaches. The church takes special care that the needs of the minister and his family are met. The gospel for a congregation might cost the members everything. But there is no price tag on the gospel.
God calls or summons his men to preach. When God calls, a man knows it. He will wrestle with that call, but in the end he will conclude that he must preach because God summoned him. God lays that summons on a man, and he simply cannot do anything else than preach the gospel. If a man feels in himself that he can do something else—anything else—God has not called him. The man whom God calls can do nothing but preach the gospel.
Speaking personally, around the time of the Act of Federation of the Reformed Protestant Churches, Second Reformed Protestant Church sent a letter to the churches informing them of Reverend Langerak’s health. I was sitting outside my house on the porch as I read the email. I sat there staring at it. My mind began to flood with questions. “What is going to happen?” “Is this the end of the Reformed Protestant Churches before the denomination has barely been started?” It was that event of Reverend Langerak’s health that God used to strike me like a divine bolt of lightning. God summoned me to the ministry in the most mysterious of ways, through the sickness of another minister. God placed the need and necessity to preach the gospel on my own heart. He pressed the need on my heart to “come over and help” God’s people. My experience is not every man’s experience. Some know the calling early in their lives. For some it might be later. But being sanctified from the womb to be a prophet unto the people, each man of God’s choosing is called in God’s time, and each knows that he received that calling from God himself.
The Preacher and His Task
Who is the preacher? The preacher is a herald or an ambassador of Jesus Christ. The minister is an instrument that the risen Lord Jesus Christ calls and sends through his church to preach his gospel. The minister is a messenger who comes with a message on behalf of God. The preacher and the preaching are inextricably tied together. The office of minister is joined with the message he brings. The preacher is a preacher because of the message he brings. He preaches or heralds the good news. If he does not preach but lectures and tells jokes and stories, he is no preacher. If he brings something other than the good news of salvation in the finished work of Christ, he is also no preacher, though he may fancy himself to be one.
The minister is to preach. Do not miss the obvious. Preaching is the authoritative proclamation of the gospel by the church in the service of the Word of God through Christ.3 The preacher brings God’s message with authority from Jesus Christ. The preacher does not beg, persuade, or convince, but he boldly declares, “Thus saith the Lord.” The power of that preaching is the Holy Spirit. He is the wind that blows in the congregation. He is the fire that destroys and consecrates. He is like the mother who spoon-feeds her little baby with nourishing food. He feeds the congregation with the nourishing, life-giving, saving food of Jesus Christ crucified. The Holy Spirit wields the preaching as the chief means to administer grace to God’s elect people.
In Romans 10:14 the King James Version includes the word “of”: “How shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard?” The original does not read that way. The verse should read, “How shall they believe in him whom they have not heard?” That little difference is significant. There is a world of difference between hearing about someone and actually hearing that person speak. I might have a friend who lives far away, and someone tells me about his life. I have merely heard about him. I heard about the details of his life and recent events in his life. But to hear my friend speak to me is entirely different. Men can hear about Jesus Christ. A man could open his Bible and read about Christ. A man could open a dogmatics book and read all sorts of biblical data about Christ. But there is nothing distinctive in that. Then I might as well stay home and read my Bible for worship on Sunday. The important point is that when the preacher preaches, the believer hears the voice of Christ himself. It means that Christ is actually present among his church and is speaking to her. We have no interest in the preacher or the preaching if Christ is not the speaker. This is also what Christ teaches in John 10:27: “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” And again in Ephesians 4:20–21: “Ye have not so learned Christ; if so be that ye have heard him, and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus.”
The minister does not speak about Christ. Anyone can do that. A woman can speak about Christ. A child can speak about Christ. An unbeliever can speak about Christ. We hear Christ himself speak in the preaching. The minister is a man through whom Christ is pleased to speak. Christ it is who says, “Come unto me and rest, weary laborer. Through my finished labor and work, enter into my rest that was ordained for you.” And when the congregation hears Christ, his voice creates faith in the hearts of his people. They believe in him, and by faith they call upon him.
That Christ is the speaker and the preacher is merely an instrument means that Christ is the chief officebearer of his church. One aspect of his threefold work as mediator is prophet. Preaching belongs to that work of prophet. A prophet’s work is to reveal that which is hidden. From the hidden and eternal counsel of God, Christ makes known the mystery of salvation. He makes the will of God known in the salvation of the church. It is Christ’s work to gather his flock and to preserve his flock unto himself. That work is never the work of man because the church is not an institution of man. Christ gathers his flock, and he causes his voice to be heard through a man.
Christ is the speaker, and Christ is also the content of the message. The content of the preaching is the Word, which is Christ. The minister does not have his own word to bring. He brings the message of the king. To do anything different would be like an emissary receiving from his king a message to deliver and then going off script. The emissary is under strict instructions to bring the one message of the king. To do anything else would make him a worthless messenger whom the king would rightly cast out of his sight. The preacher does not get to craft a message that appeals to the sensibilities of the congregation. The word he preaches will not always be well received. The minister desires in his flesh to be well liked and well spoken of, even in his own congregation. But if he comes with a word of his own, then he is no preacher.
The content of the preaching is the word concerning Christ. The preacher brings the gospel of peace. He preaches the word of faith that a man is justified by the righteousness of God in Christ by faith without works. This gospel brings peace with God to souls troubled by their sins and misery. The preacher speaks the good news that being justified by faith alone, there is peace with God for the elect, ungodly sinner. The preacher brings the good news of salvation by grace alone and without any work or activity of man.
The preacher is not a preacher of the law then. Moses described the righteousness that is of the law: “The man which doeth those things shall live by them” (Rom. 10:5). But the law only ever killed Israel. The law only ever hounded Israel from Sinai to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 73. The law killed and destroyed. It is out of the law that the child of God knows the misery of his nature, which always goes in the direction of hatred toward God and the neighbor. The law never shows a way to a blessing by the keeping of it. The ministers of the Protestant Reformed Churches preach the law this way. They first externalize the law like the Pharisees of old. Protestant Reformed ministers make the law doable and external: pray so many times a day, read your Bible, love your wife or husband and children, support the school, be a good member of society, give to the poor—all good things, of course. Then in the way of doing these things, whatever they may be, you can have a better family life, church life, and school life. That kills men and women because of the fact that the law exposes a totally depraved nature. The law is not so much interested in the mere outward deed but in the heart, as Christ taught when he gave the summary of the law and the exposition of the tenth commandment on covetousness.
The preacher preaches the law only as it serves the gospel. He preaches the law strictly, so that by the law there is the knowledge of the sinner’s misery. Even when the law comes as a guide for a thankful life, it is still preached in such a way that believers make the confession, “We are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousness is as menstrual rags.” The preacher does not preach the gospel of the law, which is no gospel. But he preaches the gospel—the good news of the finished, complete, and perfect work of Christ—as the only hope and comfort for the miserable, elect sinner.
That is some good news for ungodly sinners!
The preaching is expository. What that means is that by the leading of the Spirit, the minister draws out the doctrine and truth of the scriptures and arranges it in a logical, concatenated address for the hearers. This is the importance of exegesis (exposition of scripture in its words, phrases, and thoughts), dogmatics (systematizing dogmas and doctrine, showing the harmony of scripture), and homiletics (the art of crafting and delivering a sermon). The minister does not just go up on the pulpit and read the Bible. That is not preaching. The minister delivers an expositional sermon and applies the truth both in general and in particular to the congregation. When that preaching comes, which agrees fully with the scriptures, it is the word of God.
The minister preaches the creeds because they do fully agree with the word of God. And because they do fully agree with the word of God, Christ speaks through the preaching of them. The creeds are a faithful summary of the doctrine of the scriptures organized in a way that the child of God can grasp. Understand that the scriptures are not a systematized statement of doctrine, although doctrine certainly is found all throughout the scriptures. The value of the creeds is that they take hold of the doctrine of the scriptures and organize it logically. The Reformed tradition is to preach the Heidelberg Catechism every Sunday and complete the instruction, as much as possible, in one year. Why can the Reformed church do that? Because the Heidelberg Catechism fully agrees with and is faithful to the scriptures.
Called and Sent
A minister is sent. To be sent is to receive an official commission. There is no preaching anywhere without God’s sending.
This sending implies first an internal calling. The internal call is the Spirit’s laying on a man the necessity in his own soul to preach Jesus Christ crucified. The Spirit lays hold on a man, so that he can do nothing else. “Necessity is laid upon me; yea, woe is unto me if I preach not the gospel!” There is an obligation of God that a man cannot escape. A man is not a minister because he wills to be one but because he has no other choice. A good example of that is Paul. Do you think Paul willed to be a preacher? He persecuted and wasted the church. The Lord came to him on the road to Damascus and laid that necessity on him. Then he became an instrument in the hands of the sovereign God for the salvation of that church. He had no choice. He had to preach Christ.
God lays the necessity on a man’s heart. God gives to a man the gifts and abilities. God makes plain his will to the man that he must preach the gospel. God opens the door for a man. And the man, as the fruit of God’s working, enters the seminary, where he learns the languages, engages in the dogmatic enterprise, and works with the sacred scriptures. There is an old adage in seminary training that God calls through the Greek language. Whether one agrees with that statement or not, the point is that through the instruction of the seminary, the Lord makes plain his calling and summons of a man.
While yet in seminary training, a seminary student receives from the churches a license to preach. The character of that sending is temporary, but the church is still officially sending a man. When that student, being under the oversight of the elders, goes up and preaches, that is no merely edifying word, but it is Christ who is speaking to his church. Often, there is a distinction made between the official preaching of a minister and an edifying word by a seminary student. I do not agree with that distinction, and it is a distinction that is not above criticism. I agree with the conclusion of Rev. G. Vanden Berg:
Hence, whereas the ordination to office consists of two things—the calling and qualification—the student essentially has both of these when he is declared qualified by the Seminary and called by a particular church to minister the Word. He lacks only the formal ordination which he receives when the calling takes on a permanent instead of a temporary character.4
The man who feels that call in his heart will wrestle with it throughout his time in training. Hear the men in scripture as they wrestled with the Lord’s calling:
10. Moses said unto the Lord, O my Lord, I am not eloquent, neither heretofore, nor since thou hast spoken unto thy servant: but I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue.
11. And the Lord said unto him, Who hath made man’s mouth? or who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? have not I the Lord?
12. Now therefore go, and I will be with thy mouth, and teach thee what thou shalt say. (Ex. 4:10–12)
The prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 6 said, “Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.” In the context Isaiah saw a vision of the seraphim with six wings crying out, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory.” It was that thrice-holy God and his glory that caused Isaiah to fall down before him. The seraphim took a live coal and placed it on Isaiah’s lips, indicating that the Lord sanctified his unclean lips. Immediately, God asked, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me” (vv. 2–8).
Jeremiah protested, “Then said I, Ah, Lord God! behold, I cannot speak: for I am a child.” And God answered, “Say not, I am a child: for thou shalt go to all that I shall send thee, and whatsoever I command thee thou shalt speak. Be not afraid of their faces: for I am with thee to deliver thee, saith the Lord.” Jeremiah wrestled with that call, but God comforted him: “Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth” (Jer. 1:6–9).
God promised his prophets that he would put his words in their mouths. He promised that he would do that, although they were unholy, ungodly, and weak. Each prophet of the Lord throughout history has had the same response of faith to the call of the Lord. “Lord, I cannot because I am a terrible, ungodly sinner.” Each man has to wrestle with that fact. I cannot preach because God is holy and I am not. I am the chief of sinners, and I have to preach on behalf of the infinitely holy God? God assures the preacher, “I will put my word in your mouth. I have sanctified your lips.”
A wrong conclusion that a man makes in response to the call of the Lord is that he must sanctify himself. In the Protestant Reformed Churches there is a practical view that the minister is more holy than the rest of the congregation. True it is that his life must adorn the gospel that he preaches. He cannot, like any believer, live in unrepentant sin and live a wicked and an unconverted life. What I have in view is that he needs to clean up his life and be more outwardly holy. What comes along with that is a false piety and holiness on the part of the man. Suddenly, as a seminarian or minister, he speaks and behaves abnormally. He is not the person that God made him, but he acts and presents himself how he thinks he should be. He acts a certain way and has a certain demeanor. He speaks with pious speech and acts in a pious manner. He has to be in dress clothes wherever he goes. He becomes a seminary student, and suddenly his speech is full of “if the Lord wills.” You can hardly have a conversation with such a man, and it makes you roll your eyes at the false piety. It is completely fake, artificial, and forced. That is not pleasing to the Lord, and those things do not matter either.
When you wrestle with the call, a major element is that you first have to say, “I am an ungodly sinner. I am the chief of sinners, and God justified me by faith alone in Christ. And all my holiness is in Christ too.” The indispensable quality of a minister of the gospel and an officebearer is faith. All the qualities for office listed in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 stand under faith. The man must have faith in Christ, and the rest follows. A good minister is one who has a deep sense of his own sin and unworthiness. Having that, he knows what the congregation needs to hear because he himself needs to hear the good news and glad tidings of the gospel for the peace of his own soul.
That sense of unworthiness is what made Augustine such a valiant, ardent defender of sovereign, particular grace. He knew the wretchedness of his own sin and the wonder of grace for a terrible sinner. Such ministers that God sends are gifts of the Lord Jesus Christ to his church.
And positively, by faith the minister must know and believe that his sins are washed away in the blood of Jesus Christ. The minister himself belongs to the blood-bought church of Jesus Christ. He is redeemed from the curse. He is justified freely by grace. He has been given the love of Jesus Christ in his heart. From that flows everything else because all the rest is the fruit of the Spirit’s work—the humility, meekness, love, patience, long-suffering, and holy life.
As a man considers the call to the ministry, the question that ought to be brought before God in prayer is the question of Paul: “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?” (Acts 9:6). God will lay that internal call on a man’s heart, and he will know that the call to preach the gospel comes from God. There will not be any doubt. You simply will not be able to do anything but preach God’s gospel. If God lays on you the necessity, woe unto you if you preach not the gospel.
The calling of the minister today is essentially the same as in the old dispensation, but the form is different. God spoke directly to Moses, Samuel, and Paul. Christ directly called the apostles. Before Christ ascended he gave the commission to the apostles and thus to the church to go into all nations and preach the gospel. Today, God calls a man as really as he called the prophets and apostles, although he does not personally speak to the man. God calls through the instituted church. Christ gave the ministry of the word to the church and to no one else. It is the church who has the promise that Christ will speak his word through her minister. Only when Christ calls through the instituted church can a man be certain that his calling is from Christ.
That the minister is sent means that he is sent externally by the church of Jesus Christ. This is the main idea of the apostle in Romans 10. Jesus Christ, through the call of the instituted church to come over and help, seals on the man externally what was previously in his heart. He is declared eligible for a call, and a church calls him to preach. That calling by the church seals for the man the calling of God himself. What the man wrestled with heretofore—if he is called or not, that he is nothing, that he is unholy and a sinner, that he could not possibly herald the good news on behalf of Christ—he can then be assured that God himself called him to this holy office. The Belgic Confession in article 31 states, as an article of faith, “Therefore every one must take heed not to intrude himself by indecent means, but is bound to wait till it shall please God to call him, that he may have testimony of his calling and be certain and assured that it is of the Lord” (Confessions and Church Order, 65).
The Divine Importance
“How shall they hear without a preacher” (Rom. 10:14)? With those words scripture makes salvation dependent on the preaching of the gospel. The apostle Paul shows the importance of preaching.
How shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? To call on him is not only to worship God, but it is also to call on God in the midst of trouble. Our trouble is our sins, our corruption, our guilt, and our death. To call on him is to cry for help. And the apostle says that those who call on him shall be saved. But this calling on Christ is impossible without faith. The preaching of the gospel creates and kindles faith. By faith we see our trouble; and seeing our trouble, we call upon Christ. To believe in him is faith, and to call upon him is a fruit of faith. The preaching in which Christ speaks works faith. Our Heidelberg Catechism in Lord’s Day 25 says, “Whence doth this faith proceed? From the Holy Ghost, who works faith in our hearts by the preaching of the gospel” (Confessions and Church Order, 108).
How shall they hear without a preacher? Christ speaks only in the preaching. That makes the calling of the minister the most noble calling in all the world. There is simply nothing like it because it is not of the earth. That is why it is not a job, vocation, or career. Preaching is heavenly, and it is God’s. The urgency of the task of preaching is the eternal destination of souls. The preaching of the gospel as Christ’s key opens and shuts the kingdom of heaven. The preaching of the gospel binds men in their sins and loosens men from their sins.
In the preaching God carries out his eternal decree of election and reprobation. The preaching is the only thing in the world that deals with the eternal and not the temporal. Men hate this fact because they hate the sovereign God of predestination. The preaching and the gospel take salvation out of the will of man and put it in the hands of a God who shows mercy to whom he wills and is gracious to whom he will be gracious, and the rest he hardens. Men hate it. They count the preaching as foolishness. They reduce preaching down in their minds to only a man speaking. They pick and choose the content that they want to hear like a cheap Chinese buffet line at lunchtime. They feel free to contradict the true preaching of the word. But God’s word never returns to him void, and it always accomplishes and carries out his will to save a remnant and to destroy many.
The minister has to be content to be used by God as a savor of life unto life and a savor of death unto death. This is a fact that has to be impressed on the young men in seminary instruction. The minister in his preaching of the gospel is both a savor of death unto death and of life unto life. Both are savory to God because both accomplish his eternal will. The preacher of the gospel who is not willing to be such a sweet savor unto God in those who are saved and in those who perish simply cannot be a minister of the word of God.5
God uses a man as an instrument to carry out his eternal will for the salvation of his elect people unto eternal life and to damn the reprobate unto eternal death and condemnation. There is nothing harder for a minister than the fact that the minister’s preaching will send men and women to hell. I have seen the preaching harden and soften. I have seen the hard foreheads and faces when I have preached. When you see it, you never forget it. My heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel are that she might be saved. But my desire is not always God’s desire. The minister must believe in his own soul that the word he preaches is God’s word; second, that his preaching will both save and harden; and third, he must be content with the Lord’s will in this calling.
In Isaiah 6, the same chapter in which God called the prophet, God told him that by his preaching the cities would be wasted and utterly desolated. That too was glorifying to God.
9. And he said, Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not.
10. Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed.
11. Then said I, Lord, how long? And he answered, Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate,
12. And the Lord have removed men far away, and there be a great forsaking in the midst of the land.
13. But yet in it shall be a tenth, and it shall return, and shall be eaten: as a teil tree, and as an oak, whose substance is in them, when they cast their leaves: so the holy seed shall be the substance thereof. (Isa. 6:9–13)
A Plentiful Harvest
“The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few; pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest” (Matt. 9:37–38). By laborers, the Lord means true ministers of the gospel and that there are few of them. That is not a word that is born of the flesh. In the Reformed Protestant Churches, all the pulpits are filled. There is an angel in every congregation. We see a small denomination with seemingly no need for men and little opportunity for growth. But faith says that there are few laborers. Lord of the harvest, raise up more men in the Reformed Protestant Churches to preach to God’s people the glorious gospel of peace!
The harvest is plenteous, and the laborers are few. Scarce in the world today are pastors with beautiful feet who preach the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ. You can hardly find such men whom the risen Lord Jesus Christ has raised up and to whom he has given his Spirit. The harvest—that is, all the elect of the new dispensation who must be gathered and preserved into the church—is plenteous. Plenteous because God so highly values the elect, and they are precious in his sight. The harvest is great numerically as the elect whom God loves are more than the sand on the seashore and the stars in the sky and the dust of the earth as conceived in God’s eternal counsel. The universal church from all nations, tribes, tongues, and people under heaven must come into the possession of the riches of Christ.
We pray to the Lord of the harvest as churches that he will send forth laborers into his harvest, pastors and teachers with beautiful feet to preach to us the good news and glad tidings of the free forgiveness of sins and everlasting and eternal righteousness.
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