I have a friend (if you read this you know who you are) who says that one of his favorite traits of a certain preacher is his honesty. It’s not that most preachers are liars. Rather, it’s that they don’t deal with the real, nitty-gritty stuff that the Bible speaks of all over the place. They don’t want to make the applications of Scripture that often need to be made. They don’t want to admit their own limitations, nor the limitations of the people who are listening to them. And they don’t want to deal with the sheer ugliness of life (not that life is always ugly) and difficulties of the Bible.
I’ve come to church, knowing that the preacher was going to be dealing with a tough passage, looking forward to seeing how he handles it, ready to have my toes stepped on. And then I leave, the issue never having been resolved, perhaps barely being brought up. My toes are just fine.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones said of Jonathan Edwards,
He was an original, suddenly shot forth, a mighty intellect, accompanied by a brilliant imagination, amazing originality, but above all by honesty. He is one of the most honest expositors I have ever read. He never evades a problem; he faces them all. He does not skirt around a difficulty (The Puritans: Their Origins and Successors, p. 355).
I may not have his intellect or imagination, but I pray that I would have his honesty.
