What do you dream about? I dream about preaching. Some people dream while I am preaching. I heard a pastor who dreamed he was preaching and when he woke up, he was preaching. Another pastor asked a lady in his congregation to awaken her husband who was sleeping during the service. She answered, “You put him to sleep. You wake him up.” Why do pastors engage in the tiresome business of preaching, anyway? Richard Baxter explained, “I preached as one never sure to preach again, and as a dying man to dying men.”
In Troas, on the Lord’s day, the first day of the week, the people gathered to break bread. Paul preached until midnight that night. A man named Eutychus fell asleep as Paul preached, fell out a window and died. My friend Howie Batson says, “To be talked to death is a horrible way to die.” Thankfully, God raised the man back to life. Many pastors would have taken that inflection point as a sign to end the sermon. Not Paul. He had words of spiritual life and death to convey. Afterward, Paul preached until daylight. Eutychus’s people took him home and were greatly comforted. As a counter to Dr. Batson’s words, “To be talked to life is a wonderful way to live.”
Words have the power of life and death coded in them. When we speak the truth about Jesus, there is a chance that somebody will pass from death to life as they put their trust in Christ. This is why we preach. This is why we pray. Jesus Christ did not come into the world, die on the cross, and rise again to make bad people good. He came to make dead people live. Praise God, he is still doing it. It could happen in your church this Sunday. So be with God’s people on Sunday morning. God might bring somebody who is dead in trespasses and sins back to life. It might be you or somebody you love. As the hymn says, “Will you pray with all your power as we try to preach the word? All is vain unless the Spirit of the Holy One comes down.”
