We may look at him and hear him in the pulpit through the eyes of a contemporary, James Melville, who heard Knox preach in 1571, a year before his death.
Of all the benefits I had that year was the coming of that most notable prophet and apostle of our nation, John Knox, at St. Andrews. I heard him teach the prophecies of Daniel that summer and the winter following. In the opening of his text he was moderate the space of a half an hour, but when he reached the application he made me tremble so much that I could not hold the pen to write. He wielded this power when in bodily weakness, for he had to be helped into the church and lifted into the pulpit where he had to lean on his first entry. But when he came to his sermon he was so active and vigorous that he was like to beat the pulpit into pieces and fly out of it.
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Calvin wrote to the Duke of Somerset: "Send us preachers whose trumpet voice will reach to the corners of men's hearts." Like Luther, John Knox took Ezekiel 33 with deep seriousness. He was God's watchman, called to sound an alarm as one who must give an account, at whose hands blood might be required. He was bound up with his people not only in a solidarity of suffering, but also in a solidarity of guilt.
Gordon Rupp says of his preaching:
We are restive at his little dooms and judgments, the univocal relation he finds between the Old Testament and his own day, the ever repeated Ahabs, Jezebels and Jehus, reclothed in kilts and kirtles and bonnets, but amid so much that is naive and simplistic, we had better heed Knox's words: "My assurances are not the marvels of Merlin, nor yet the dark sentences of profane prophets but the plain truth of God's Word, the invincible justice of the everlasting God" (Just Men, p. 65).
While Knox was so much engaged in controversy and when needful smote hard and did not spare the people in his preaching, his was also the clear, ringing trumpet which rallied the people in the very moment of panic or despair. He could address himself to believers for their comfort and encouragement. A. E. Garvie says of him:
That his fervour sometimes passed the sounds of courtesy and consideration may be allowed. It was to his advantage in the eyes of men that he had to deal sternly and even harshly with a young queen, but he shrank from no task, however trying, to which the interests of the Gospel summoned him" (The Christian Preacher, p. 137).