“Preachers are “God’s fellow workers” (2 Cor. 6:1). Their efforts are not causative in power, but they may be instrumental in function (1 Cor. 3:5-9)… God does use preachers, but they don’t shake anything up. It is God himself who raises his deadened church to life. Therefore our self-exaltation is preposterous. The great principle driving all of history applies with special force to God’s reviving mercies: “Then you will know that I am the LORD” (v. 6).
Ray Ortlund
The weakness of human preaching was illustrated forcefully in a class at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School near Chicago, where I used to teach. The professor took the students into a local cemetery. He told one of them to preach to the gravestones. He insisted. The student was dumbfounded, of course. But the lesson was clear. Human preaching alone may expect true, spiritual results as much as preaching in a cemetery raises the dead. Only God can return life to the dead.”
Reflection:
When the Bible describes us as “dead in trespasses and sins,” it teaches us that God alone can bring us back to life again. If we forget this in our own lives or in any form of ministry service to God, then we will step into error with our methods. We must be desperately dependent upon God because only He can raise the dead to life.
But this reality extends beyond merely the moment of salvation. God is the author of spiritual growth just as He is the author of salvation. This means that at all times, we must look to the Lord for power. He will use us and take us up as instruments in His hands, but we remain certain that all power and all hope belong to Him. This truth humbles us when we are proud and lifts us when we are unsure. We can obey, knowing that God won’t fail.
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