What Preachers Should Be

Excerpts from the Sermon by Lester Roloff

Our Father, before we unload the wagon that we believe Thou hast loaded, we ask for the power to practice and preach the simple, old-fashioned Gospel. As a room of preachers and future preachers, may we speak carefully and powerfully in Your Spirit and in Your Name. Lord, help us to know that there is nothing personal in this thing at all—that we are here on business for the King. We dare not take lightly the sacred call to preach. Help us to be true and faithful. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Turn to I Corinthians chapter 1. Time would forbid for me to say all the things I’d like to say. But I believe there are several things that the Lord would have me to say tonight. Our text will be I Corinthians 1:18-31.

For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God. –I Corinthians 1:18

For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdomknew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. –I Corinthians 1:21

I’d like to mention first off, that a preacher without a personal life is no good. I’m talking about personal sanctification and separation. You’ll never climb higher with your congregation than you do in your private life. I’m talking about throwing yourself out of joint with the world. I’m talking about living differently and choosing things that are sweet and pure and clean and right. We must be settled by the peace of God, soaked up in the love of God, and sent out with salty conversation and a simple message.

Your convictions should be as deep as your soul. See to it that you don’t compromise. And never apologize for having to live differently than anybody else. You’ve been saved and called and set apart as a special vessel of use for the Lord. You can’t be at every social occasion and then come up with the power on Sunday morning and Sunday night. You can’t attend every dog fight in town. Don’t wine and dine with the people. They’ll sap all your strength and then fire you because you can’t preach. And if you can’t, you ought to be fired. You can’t be a slave of the people if you want to set your people free. No church is ever free until its pulpit is free.

Man didn’t call you to preach, and man can’t stop you from preaching. This call is of God. I believe in the divine call to preach because I don’t believe God is going to put His Gospel into the hands of just anybody to preach it. The Gospel is that important! There are many preachers today who I don’t believe are called to preach. No man who will deny the virgin birth is called to preach—not by the Lord he isn’t.

You are enjoying the highest calling in all the world! Imagine getting a call from Washington tonight and being told that there has been a nationwide election and that you’ve been elected to be the President of the United States. They know that you are earnest and honest and upright, and they want you to come immediately. The President has stepped aside and has cast his vote for you. Brother, that would be no temptation to a preacher. Immediately, you would say, “I appreciate the honor, but I can’t stand the demotion. God has called me to preach, and I’m going to stay in the ministry.”

My homiletics professor used to say that the hot sun and a slow mule have called many men to preach. That could be, but it won’t keep them preaching. It’s going to take more than a slow mule to keep you in the ministry. But I am confident that all of you can have a fruitful ministry! If you will practice what you say you believe, the Lord can give you a full and fruitful ministry. I’m talking about letting the Word of God rule your faith and practice!

I’m going to talk like you were my son because I love you and I’m interested in you. And I want to make an investment in your ministry. Don’t get tangled up with this world or with unbelievers. I’m surprised at preachers who, by their testimony and by their practice, have indicated that the Church is not enough. They have to go somewhere else to get some fellowship. I believe that your ministry and your life ought to be soaked up and settled and saturated with the fellowship of God’s believing people. You have no right to run off to the world looking for fellowship. You can’t hobnob with the goats of your community and keep your sheep fed like they ought to be fed.

I’d like to challenge you to keep your convictions straight. If you don’t get them straight now, you never will. If you ever become a mountaintop preacher like Elijah was, the world will call for you to come down to their level. “Come down” (II Kings 1:9-12). They want you down where they are. That cry hasn’t come to a lot of preachers because they’ve never been up. They started out down. “Be one of us,” the world will cry. “Get adjusted, and fit in. Have a winsome personality.” It’s alright to have a winsome personality, but what it means is to “win some” for Jesus. Paul said, “I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some” (I Corinthians 9:22). Paul had a “win some” personality! Paul had a personal conviction to sacrifice for the sake of souls.

Brother, if you don’t exercise some personal discipline, you will never be well—and nobody wants a sick preacher. I’ve watched preachers get up in the pulpit on Sunday morning and say, “I just don’t feel well.” No matter who made you sick, you’re still sick. You owe it to God, and you owe it to your people to stay well. But you’re not going to stay well if you don’t discipline the flesh you’re living in.

We’ve got a rash of sickness across this country. Oh, the wasted time and wasted life and inefficient ministries because we have not disciplined these old bodies. Jesus clearly told us to deny ourselves (Matthew 16:24). Every preacher ought to learn what it means to pray and fast. Every great man of God that’s ever lived to bless his generation has been a man of prayer and fasting.

Moses fasted 40 days twice when he got the Word of God. How do you think you’re going to get the Word of God? It’s a revelation; you don’t learn it. I’m thankful for professors and godly men who know how to teach the Word of God, but the best they can do is to make an explanation. God has got to make the revelation.

Jesus declared, “Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father which is in Heaven” (Matthew 16:17). Paul wrote that he “conferred not with flesh and blood” but instead “went into Arabia” (Galatians 1:16-17). I believe every preacher needs an Arabian experience, where God speaks to you for Himself and His message becomes your message.

You can read all the books you want to read. But those books will be nothing but dry fodder until the Holy Spirit takes it and makes it real in your own heart. You might as well learn to get messages right out of the Word of God. That leads me up to this thought: I challenge you to accept the spiritual exercise of memorizing 60 chapters of the Bible during the next five years of your life. Anybody with your youth and brilliance and intelligence will have no difficulty at all if you set yourself to it. I’d like to meet you again in five years and see what it’s done for your confidence and power in ministry.

The Bible says, “Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God” (Matthew 22:29). If you want to double your power, double your knowledge of the Word of God. I believe that the Holy Spirit refuses to indwell anybody in His fullness who is a stranger to the Word of God and not in love with it.

Paul finished his course as an old preacher, beaten and battered and scarred. He had all of his ordination marks in his hide and on his head. His certificate was written in his own blood. Left for dead, 195 deep stripes in his body, in jails all over the country—and yet his final remark to Timothy was to bring “especially the parchments” (II Timothy 4:13). Brother Paul said, “I want to hear the old Sinai air thunder one more time. I want to climb that Old Hill with Moses. I want to fellowship with Job. I want to be on Mount Carmel with Elijah one more time.” Paul loved and treasured God’s Word (Job 23:12).

There’s only one thing that’ll make a preacher out of you, and that’s the Word of God. People say, “Well, I think you ought to go off to school.” Schools don’t make a preacher out of anybody. They may help, but they don’t make a preacher out of you. And if you don’t go to the right school, it’ll be a curse instead of a blessing.

Your words will be as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal apart from the Holy Spirit and a heart that sits right with the love of God. This is a wordy world—everybody wants to talk. Pulpits need men who can walk—in the real practice and power of the Word.

Don’t get tangled up in the world. Don’t wait till you get as old as I am to learn that you owe your allegiance to Christ first and Christ alone. Don’t worry about climbing some man’s totem pole, because it’s going to fall. Build the local church. That’s the thing that gets the job done and wins souls for Christ.

Be true to Jesus, and don’t worry about where you’re going to preach. Just get your message ready, and keep your gun loaded. God will give you more game to shoot at than you’ll ever be able to shoot—if you’ll stay loaded with the Word of God. Get up in the morning. Don’t go to bed at 12 or 1 o’clock at night. Don’t hobnob around all hours of the night. That’s what the world does. Get home, and go to bed, and get some rest. Beat the devil’s crowd to bed, and then beat them up in the morning.

I’m serious about this; I really am. This is part of my soul. If God can take someone as ignorant and sick and dumb as I was and convince me to be different, then God can use anybody. God said, “Son, you’re going to have to be different. You’re going to have to give Me some time.” So He wakes me up. This past week, I had four hours with Him, from midnight to four. It was a wonderful time!

Stay full of preaching. Stay ready to preach every day, not just once a week. If you can get on the radio, that’ll make you stay with it. The average preacher doesn’t preach enough—stay in practice. I don’t believe there’s any substitute for practicing. When the Lord called me to preach, I didn’t have a place to preach. I didn’t know anybody wanted me to preach. Fact is, nobody did! But I’d walk over to the mirror and preach to the only one in my audience—me!

With the call to preach comes the desire to preach. And when you lose the desire to preach, my brother, you’re backslidden. When you don’t enjoy preaching more than you enjoy eating, you’re backslidden. Never get to the place as a pastor where you’re glad to have a brother preacher visit and say, “Praise the Lord. I won’t have to preach.” You ought to say, “Well, I’m sorry. I’m going to have to make a sacrifice if I let him preach.” The preacher should have one love—preaching!

I’m going to say something else: I’m tired of having to mop up after a bunch of mothers and fathers who let Hollywood come in and take the place of the family altar. Hollywood has become the devil’s family altar. It’s time for God’s preachers to live pure and sanctified and holy lives. Don’t waste your time—time is all you’ve got between you and the undertaker and the end of the trail. You and I are going to have to give an account for our convictions and practices someday.

Don’t expect God to bless you unless your own personal life is right before the Lord. I wish I could encourage you to start every day in Bible reading and prayer. Then close out every day with the Word of God. Learn to meditate upon the Lord in the nightwatches (Philippians 4:7).

The second thing I want to say, and it’ll have to be brief, is that your home must be an example. Dear friend, you’ll never conquer in the homes of your people until you have a sweet Christian home. You can’t preach over a bad home, and you can’t pray over a bad home. Never get up to preach about family altar if you don’t have one. Never go for a day without praying with your family. Pray with your wife—she needs it, and you do too. It’s hard to fuss after having a warm family altar. And it’s hard to have a family altar if you haven’t got your fussing straightened out. There’s nothing that’ll make a husband apologize to his wife like leading in family altar.

The third thing I want to say is about your church. You are to love it; you are its preacher. You are to lead the church and direct the church. Be God’s man, and don’t be a coward. Stand up for God’s truth. You can preach through about nine-tenths of your problems. I’ve preached most of my problems either in or out over these 35 years. But don’t ever waste your time and the people’s time preaching a sermon to one man or one woman. If you’ve got something to settle with one man, get him off in the bushes somewhere, and settle it. Don’t waste your time trying to get even with somebody when he can’t talk back. Just preach to the people, and trust God to work out the problems.

There is no substitute for compassion. To me, there is nothing worse than dry cheeks and no tears. The pew will never weep until the pulpit weeps. Your people are precious in God’s sight, and you are to love them. Spend time in prayer, even with a little child. Love the members of your church, and love lost people.

One other thing: love the down-and-out. That’s one of the tests of your sincerity. Nothing will be like a tonic to you like loving the unlovely. Jesus didn’t come to call the righteous—there aren’t any. So love your church, and live close to the Lord and close to His Word. I covet for you the fullest ministry a man could ever have.

There’s only one walk that honors God, and that’s the walk of faith. Remember, your ministry is not effective unless you’re winning lost people to Christ. You’ve got to be out in the field, knocking on doors, talking to the people in hospitals and jail houses and street corners. Take a warm heart with you wherever you go, loaded with copies of the Word of God to give away, and say, “I sure wish you’d read this. It will be a blessing to you. And I’ll be praying for you.”

Love all of God’s people, and cooperate with them as God makes possible. Help them, and encourage them along the trail. Keep your missionary heart warm. Put your hand in every kind of missions there is. Give your life and all that you have to God. It is more blessed to give than receive. Dear friends, you and I are not at home down here, and we better not act like we are at home. We are pilgrims and strangers seeking the City to come.