It's Friday today on Things Unseen and all week we've been reflecting on the subject

of preaching, not in any systematic way in a kind of random way, but also because preaching

is important if our souls are going to be fed and nourished, and so we've thought

about preaching for the last few days, and chiefly to encourage us all to pray for those

who preach and to pray for ourselves as we receive preaching. Yesterday we were reflecting

on the way God gifts our preachers differently from each other. That reminds me of some words

written by an English merchant who on a visit to Scotland had three of Scotland's greatest

preachers, David Dixon, Robert Blair, and Samuel Reneford. He wrote that he had sat

under the ministry of a well-favorite, proper old man with a long beard who showed me

all my heart, and that was David Dixon. Then he said he had a sweet, majestic-looking

man who showed me the majesty of God, that was Robert Blair, and then he had a little

fair man who showed me the loveliness of Christ, and that was Samuel Reneford. Three

great preachers, but very different men, with different burdens from the Lord. And that

said, isn't it, the same spirit, but a diversity of operations, and like that merchant we should

rejoice in it. But with the diversity there's a common thread, isn't there? And it ought

to be more than the fact that a preacher sermon meets the standards of his preaching professors

preaching crit. I remember Dr Martin Lloyd Jones saying that he felt he could forgive

almost any failure in a preacher, as long as the preaching brought him into the presence

of God. Now what does that? I think the answer is, at least in part, what our forefathers

used to call, action. Now what's the action? It's the work of the Holy Spirit on a preacher

as he preaches, that has the effect of bringing us before the face of God, right into his

presence. Another great Scottish preacher John Livingston put it this way. He said there

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