The True Worth and Weight of Biblical Preaching.

What follows is an excerpt from a blog post about John Newton from Tony Reinke

"In a letter dated March 10, 1774, to his esteemed friend William Legge, the second Earl of Dartmouth, Newton explained that he had recently spent a six-week stretch investing several hours of each day in the hospital caring for souls. In the letter Newton recounted one meeting with a sick young woman. The memory of the hospital encounter was etched so deep into Newton's memory that he recalled it years later.

Permit me, my Lord, to relate, upon this occasion, some things which exceedingly struck me in the conversation I had with a young woman whom I visited in her last illness about two years ago.
She was a sober, prudent person, of plain sense, could read her Bible, but had read little besides. Her knowledge of the world was nearly confined to the parish; for I suppose she was seldom, if ever, twelve miles from home in her life. She had known the gospel about seven years before the Lord visited her with a lingering consumption [tuberculosis], which at length removed her to a better world. 

A few days before her death, I had been praying by her bedside, and in my prayer I thanked the Lord that he gave her now to see that she had not followed cunningly-devised fables [Ephesians 4:14]. When I had finished, she repeated that word, “No,” she said “not cunningly-devised fables; these are realities indeed. I feel their truth, I feel their comfort. Oh! tell my friends, tell my acquaintances, tell enquiring souls, tell poor sinners, tell all the daughters of Jerusalem (alluding to Song of Solomon 5:16 from which she had just before desired me to preach at her funeral), what Jesus has done for my soul. Tell them, that now in the time of need I find him my beloved and my friend, and as such I commend him to them.” 

She then fixed her eyes steadfastly upon me, and proceeded, as well as I can recollect, as follows. “Sir, you are highly favored in being called to preach the gospel. I have often heard you with pleasure; but [only when] you come into my situation, and have death and eternity full in your view, will it be possible for you to conceive the vast weight and importance of the truths you declare.”

Until we are faced with eternity it is too easy to take preaching for granted, to treat sermons lightly, to so quickly forget them like yesterday’s newspaper.

Yet it was here, beside the bed of a dying young woman in a hospital room and in other situations just like it, that Newton learned the true worth and weight of biblical preaching."

To God Alone be the Glory