1. MESSENGER
The first title of a minister of God is 'messenger', or 'angel'. This is his title here as well as in other Scriptures: 'He is the messenger of the Lord of hosts' (Mal 2:7); in Revelation chapters 2 and 3 the ministers of the seven churches are called the angels of those churches. In one place a minister is an angel of God, and in the other place, the angel of the church, that is an angel, or messenger sent from God to his church.
Firstly for ministers themselves. These pages are addressed largely to those who are either prophets, or sons of the prophets. If you are a prophet, you are God's angel. If you are a son of the prophets you intend to be. You must understand your duty: prophets and ministers are angels; that is the very nature of their calling. Therefore you must preach God's Word, as God's Word, and deliver it just as you received it.
Angels, ambassadors and messengers do not carry their own message, but the message of the lords and masters who sent them. Similarly, ministers carry the message of the Lord of hosts, and are therefore bound to deliver it as the Lord's, not as their own.
The apostle Peter gives this exhortation: 'If anyone speaks, let him speak', not only the Word of God, but 'as the oracles of God' (1 Peter 4:11). God's Word must be spoken, and it must be spoken as God's Word. We must show our faithfulness to the Lord in sincerely discharging the message which he has honoured us to carry. God's Word is pure. It must therefore be purely studied and delivered. Let all those who are God's angels — and desire to be honoured as his angels and ambassadors — fulfil the responsibilities of God's angels, lest (as many men mar a good tale in the telling) they take away the power and majesty of God's Word in the way they deliver it.
Secondly, if ministers are God's angels they must preach God's Word in a way that expresses and demonstrates the Spirit of God; for the Spirit of God must speak through God's angel.
To preach in the demonstration of God's Spirit is to preach with such plainness, and yet with such power, that even the least intellectually gifted recognise that it is not man but God himself who is teaching them. Yet at the same time, the conscience of the mightiest may feel not man but God reproving them through the power of the Spirit. This is clear from Paul's words: 'But if all prophesy, and an unbeliever or an uninformed person comes in, he is convinced by all, he is convicted by all. And thus the secrets of his heart are revealed; and so, falling down on his face, he will worship God and report that God is truly among you' (1 Cor 14:24,25).
Notice the plainness and the power of which these words speak (although one might think that these two things could hardly belong together).
Notice the plainness. Since even the uneducated person sees his faults revealed, it follows that he understands what is said; and if he can understand it, then it must be plain. Then, in addition, notice the power: his conscience is so convinced, his secret faults so unveiled, and his heart so ripped up that he says, 'Certainly God speaks in this man'.