The SBJT Sermon: The Minister God Uses -- By: Billy Graham

Journal: Southern Baptist Journal of Theology
Volume: SBJT 01:4 (Winter 1997)
Article: The SBJT Sermon: The Minister God Uses
Author: Billy Graham


The SBJT Sermon:
The Minister God Uses

Billy Graham

Billy Graham is the world’s best-known evangelist. He has preached the gospel to more people than any person in Christian history. This sermon is an edited version of a message delivered in Alumni Chapel at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1982. All biblical quotations are taken from the New International Version unless otherwise indicated.

Introduction

Tonight I want to take as my text the fifth chapter of Jeremiah beginning with verse one. Jeremiah 5:1–2 says, “Go up and down the streets of Jerusalem. Look around and consider. Search through her squares. If you can find but one person, one person who deals honestly and seeks the truth, I will forgive this city. Although they say, ‘As surely as the Lord lives,’ still they are swearing falsely.” I wonder if today we understand the times, what we ought to be doing at this hour of history, what our ministry ought to be, and what types of people we ought to be.

I have come to know that my own work in ministry is not the most important in the world. It seems to me that God is building a great mosaic in his kingdom today. This mosaic is made up of all different branches of the Christian church. Baptists cannot say that we’re the only people. I’ve found believers in the most unbelievable places. I’ve found true believers in our Lord Jesus Christ who have never heard that there is such a thing as the Baptist church. Now you may not believe that, but that’s true. I told them in a part of Germany where everybody’s Lutheran that I come from a part of the U.S. where nearly everybody’s a Baptist. I told them there is a sign in a town in Texas that says, “Drive carefully or you may hit a Baptist.” I told them we’re the largest denomination in America outside of the Roman Catholic. Oh, they could hardly believe it since they live in a country where there are only four to five thousand Baptists. But overseas three and four times more people attend the Baptist church than are members of the Baptist church because they are so evangelical, and so alive, and so evangelistic, and so dedicated. They don’t mind services going four and five and six hours. You sit down after you’ve preached your heart out, and they say, “While he’s catching his breath, and has a little sip of water, we’ll sing a little bit, and he’ll be back and preach another sermon.” I’ve been in a lot of places like that. The most important work in the world is a man or a woman doing what God has called him or her to do and doing it faithfully.

Jeremiah once said, “The Word of the Lord came unto me saying, what do you see?” And Jeremiah said, “I see a boiling pot, ...

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