Sadly, very often the preachers are not turning many to righteousness. It is a sad and a strange thing today that there are even Reformed preachers, and you could tune into them on the television or the Internet; they are teaching all the right doctrines, all the right things. You say, he is a very sound man. He is holding to the great confessions. But then you realise something that makes you feel very uncomfortable: they never actually put their finger on anything; they never apply anything; they never tell you what you should have done, or how you should live for God. There is no application. Do they qualify as ‘they that turn many to righteousness’? You wonder! And then sometimes you look at their churches, and you see all sorts of things going on, and all sorts of worldliness. So they are teaching the right things doctrinally speaking, but are they really turning many to righteousness?
But by the grace of God there are also many other preachers all over the world who apply the teaching of the word of God: apply it to themselves and apply it to all the hearers, so that we never leave a sermon without knowing what it should mean to us, and what we should do, and how we should respond, and how we should be. So the prophecy of Daniel is even defining the preaching office, and certainly the kind of admonition which we owe to each other. Oh that we may all be ‘they that turn many to righteousness’: promoting it in ourselves, promoting it in one another, because they are the people who will shine as the stars for ever and ever.