I want to speak this morning on the
conditions for powerful preaching.
And I'd like to preface what I have
to say by a word on the origin
of these conferences.
As you know, in the late 1950s there
were various brethren in different parts of the
world who were able to begin printing Reformed
literature.
And in the work of the Banner of
Truth Trust, which shared in that ministry, it
was always an expectation and a belief that
books were not an end in themselves, that
books were not the most important thing, but
the most important thing was the divine institution
of the preaching of the living Word of
God, the spoken Word.
And after a few years, when these books
had been reissued through letters and through other
means, men spoke together of the possibility of
meeting, and thus a conference was held in
England in 1962, and it was supported from
the beginning by men on both sides of
the Atlantic.
And that conference has continued, and again it
has continued by the help and the mutual
strength of brethren on this side of the
Atlantic and of our own.
And this conference too, as you know, is
giving its attention to the work of preaching.
We believe that other means are helps, but
that the great need of our hour is
the recovery of the true powerful preaching of
the Word of God.
Perhaps I could take a few moments to
give a few reasons why we have reason
to think that preaching is in a state
of crisis today, generally, in the churches.
There was a book published, I think it
was in 1973, by George Dollar on the
history of fundamentalism, and in that book, speaking
about the conditions on this side of the
Atlantic, he spoke about an ebb tide of
pulpit oratory.
And he declared, when one looks at the
American pulpit, the outlook is frightening.
The pulpit has become more of a public
relations desk, and a place to explain and
educate.
And one of the few great reform preachers
of this century, Herman Hoeksema of Grand Rapids,
who died in 1965, he said, the nature
and the importance of preaching is very little
understood.
Today, everybody preaches, except those perhaps whose specific
calling it is.
A few reasons then to believe that preaching
is in a state of crisis.
Firstly, and briefly, we're all familiar with the
fact that in former times, it was the
conviction of the church that there was nothing
more vital than the strength of the pulpit.
That conviction has become greatly weakened.
There's a widespread doubt about the urgency and
even the relevance of preaching in this modern
world.
And secondly, and I think this supports what
I've just said, it is not an encouraging
feature that too often the leaders of the
church today, of the evangelical churches, are not
actually men who are in the pastoral ministry
and who are wholly engaged in the preaching
of the Word.
Now, of course, there are other functions in
which ministers may engage, but I believe it
has been true, I believe it has been
true, that in the ages of the greatest
spiritual prosperity, the leaders of the church have
been those who were in pastoral ministry for
the greater part, who gave themselves in the
first instance to preaching itself.
That is not nearly so common today.
And then thirdly, it must surely be said
that the state of preaching and its weakness
is connected with our theological institutions.
And unfortunately, not only with our liberal theological
institutions.
Now, of course, we believe that no seminary
can produce preachers.
That is not the purpose of seminaries.
The purpose of seminaries, I'm sure we would
all confess, is to train and nurture and
develop the gifts which God has already given
to men.
But having said that, the problem so generally
is that seminaries do not sufficiently examine whether
men are actually called and gifted to preach
before they begin their training.
And the result is that a man may
be orthodox, he may receive the necessary credentials
for the ministry, but he may in fact
never be actually qualified to preach in the
most fundamental sense.
And that is, of course, connected with another
problem.
The problem that while it is good that
men and women also should be given biblical
instruction, religious instruction, when seminaries merge that instruction
with the preparation of men for the specific
pastoral office, then, almost invariably, they become more
educational institutions than schools of the prophets.
The training of men for the ministry is
a distinct work and it is not the
same as instructing others who may in turn
be teachers of Bible and so on.
And then, as Hucsmann said, there is something
wrong with preaching when everybody preaches.
When the idea of preaching has been so
cheapened that the notion is abroad that a
man may be engaged in a thousand and
one things during the week and at the
weekend, as we say in England, do a
little preaching.
The preaching of the Word of God, as
we were reminded last night, is a calling
and an office.
How shall they preach except they be sent,
just as prophets and apostles were sent, so
pastors and teachers equally, although in a different
way, are called and set apart for the
gospel ministry.
The New Testament's warning is, be not many
teachers, my brethren.
It is not the work of all men
to preach the Word of God.
And the loss of that vision has resulted
greatly in the cheapening of the holy office
of the ministry.
And then a final proof and perhaps a
more practical one and certainly, I'm afraid, a
very true one of the weakness of our
preaching today.
The final proof is the general lack of
expectation and hunger that too often is found
even in orthodox churches for the preaching of
the Word of God.
That is to say that people indeed attend
upon the worship of God and they listen
to sermons, but do they listen with that
degree of expectation which has characterized the church
in other ages?
I think it is true that when preaching
is doing its real work, that is understood
in some measure in congregations.
And it is shown by the expectancy of
the people.
They do not come to hear because it
is their habit, far less do they come
to hear to be entertained, but they come
to hear because they have become aware of
what Jacob felt when he said, how dreadful
is this place.
They meet with God.
They believe that something is happening for them
and to them by God's blessing and help.
And therefore, my brethren, when people complain that
preaching is too long or too dull, in
the first instance we should not suspect the
people, but we should question whether there is
something wrong with the preaching.
People do not complain when a feast is
too long.
And we need to remember that the tradition
of long preaching which we sometimes quote, that
tradition did not begin with preachers deciding that
long sermons were good for the people.
That is not how it began.
It began because such was the thirst and
hunger of congregations that preachers were drawn out.
People were aware that God was meeting with
Lawrence Chatterton, the master of Emanuel College, Cambridge,
in the heyday of English Puritanism.
He was preaching on one occasion and discovered
that he had fulfilled two hours.
The hourglass had turned.
And he broke off and he said to
his hearers, I will no longer trespass upon
your patience.
Upon this we read, the whole congregation cried
out, for God's sake, go on, go on.
Now, this is what happened in the time
of the Reformation.
And it is to that period that I
want us to turn this morning.
And with some reference to the Puritans also.
The recovery of preaching.
A day when people thirsted for the Word
of God.
Now I believe that the Reformation brought the
greatest transformation in preaching that has been seen
since the Apostolic Age.
Before the Reformation, the great, splendid, medieval church
had almost everything except pulpits.
That was the one thing they lacked.
And of course, in lacking that, they virtually
had nothing.
There were wandering friars who went about telling
fabulous anecdotes to the people.
There were those, as you know, who went
about and preached papal indulgences.
But the pastoral office as such had virtually
disappeared.
John Calvin writes, we maintain that for several
centuries, the church was so torn and dismantled
that it was destitute of true pastors.
John Hooper, one of the English martyrs who
was a Cistercian monk before his conversion, in
the year 1546 he said, he that had
sought in all the churches in England above
16 years ago should not have found one
Bible but in every church abomination and idolatry.
And again he says, darkness and ignorance occupied
the minds of all men so that few
knew the true way to eternal salvation.
And Hugh Latimer, another of the martyrs of
the 16th century, he says in one place
how he wishes that God would grant to
men some vision of hell.
And I verily believe a man might look
as far as he could see in hell,
as far as from Calais to Dover, I
warrant you, and he would see nothing but
ministers who did not preach.
And even when the Reformation began, the number
of true preachers was very small.
In England, Paul Faggius, who was a continental
reformer who came to England in 1549, he
said, the labourers are few.
It is thought that there are scarcely ten
preachers in the whole kingdom of England who
can do anything with effect.
And others spoke similarly.
And then across Europe there came this great
transformation, slowly but surely.
It had begun, of course, earlier in Germany.
And as Luther saw the effects of preaching
on the hunger of the people, he came
to that point where he counseled all pastors
that preaching should now take place not only
on the Lord's Day, but on Wednesdays and
on Fridays as well.
And in Geneva, you may remember, there were
services every afternoon, three days a week, at
five o'clock in the great cathedral of
St. Peter's.
And in 1549, those afternoon services had become
so blessed that they became daily, the daily
preaching of the Word of God.
And that preaching was not imposed on an
unwilling people.
It was preaching that was lively and soul
-stirring and awakening.
John Calvin said, sermons should be like trumpets
which sound to the very depths of the
heart.
And this was the vision which in England
with the Puritans, in Scotland with John Knox,
and elsewhere, this vision was revived.
Now, I want to concentrate this morning on
reasons why preaching revived in the 16th century.
And in a sentence, it revived because the
conditions necessary for powerful preaching revived.
It did not revive because of the unique
charisma of certain eloquent speakers.
That was not the cause.
The cause was the restoration of the conditions
for powerful preaching.
The silence and the corruption of the medieval
church was not accidental.
It existed because the reasons for powerful preaching
were not present.
And wherever these reasons, these causes are recovered,
then preaching also will be revived.
The first reason then, the first condition for
powerful preaching.
The first condition for powerful preaching is the
presence in the Christian ministry of a commitment
to sound learning and to hard study.
Now, I put that first because I think
the Reformation, in a sense, teaches us that
almost in the first place.
The pervasive characteristic of the church before the
Reformation was mental indolence.
It was no sin to be ignorant, either
for priests or for people.
From the year 1408, the very Bible had
been forbidden in the language of the people
in Britain.
There was a mental stupor upon the church
and upon the nations.
And that stupor was broken up in God's
providence by the Renaissance.
And that came to its high-water mark,
of course, in 1516 with the publication of
Erasmus' Greek New Testament.
It was the breaking up of this state
of mind.
And yet, when Erasmus had even gone that
far, you may recall how he lamented the
reaction of the church.
He says, Oh, the strange vicissitudes of human
affairs!
Hitherto, the heat of learning was among such
as professed religion.
Now, while they for the most part give
up themselves to eating and luxury and money,
the love of learning is gone from them
to the secular princes, the court and the
nobility.
The feasts of priests and divines are drowned
in too much wine and filled with jests
and flow with frightful slanders.
Erasmus' complaint, the intellectual darkness of the church.
Well, Erasmus did not know that a new
age was dawning in which men were to
read the Scriptures as they had not been
read for a thousand years.
They were, of course, opponents of the Reformation
who were learned men.
But I'm sure it is true that as
far as biblical and linguistic knowledge of the
Scriptures was concerned, men like Luther and Calvin
and Tyndale were in a category of their
own.
It was Zwingli who said of Luther that
no man had so read the Scriptures for
a thousand years.
And Luther himself says, looking back on his
life, when I was young, I read the
Bible over and over and over again and
was so perfectly acquainted with it that I
could in an instant have pointed to any
verse that might have been mentioned.
So there came this great change in the
churches of the Reformation, intellectual sloth was a
sin.
The ecclesiastical ordinances of Geneva of 1541 that
were drawn up for the use of pastors,
these ordinances said negligence in studying and especially
in the reading of the Holy Scriptures, this
is a sin, a vice which has to
be rebuked in pastors.
Now of course, we know something perhaps if
we've read the biographies of these men, of
the hours at which they arose in the
morning.
And we remember that they lived in a
different culture.
But what we perhaps are inclined to forget
is that that attention to their study was
bound up with their view of the preaching
of the Word of God.
Hugh Latimer who was burnt to death in
1555, the man who on the high street
in Oxford a few minutes before he was
burned turned to Nicholas Ridley and said, play
the man Master Ridley, we shall by God's
grace this day light such a candle as
shall never be put out.
He was an old man when he died.
And it is said of him by someone
who knew him, he was a sore bruised
man of about 67 years of age.
He took great pains in preaching.
And about 2 o'clock in the morning
he was at his book most diligently, Hugh
Latimer.
And men like William Gouge who were typical
Puritan pastors in their studies in the summer
at 4 o'clock, in the winter at
5, it was no uncommon thing for them
to know the whole Greek Testament by heart.
They were mighty in the Scriptures.
Just this week I was reminded as a
friend showed me the life of the great
Benjamin Morgan Palmer who ministered here in the
South, Columbia and then in New Orleans.
Perhaps the greatest preacher of the latter part
of the last century.
The very same characteristics.
Sometimes up to 13 hours a day in
his study.
They gave themselves to the Word of God.
The first then condition of powerful preaching is
this commitment to hard study.
Now of course, knowledge alone does not bring
power.
But in our day when church is looking
for ways of influence and success, it has
to be asserted that there never has been
a school of powerful preaching that has not
emphasized the necessity of this study and close
attention to the Word of God.
It bled the church to death before the
Reformation almost that it was so neglected.
Now I must hasten on.
I have just one quotation from John Wesley
standing out of the 16th century and jumping
into the 18th.
John Wesley was once meeting with a group
of his ministers, pastors and he exhorted them
and indeed rebuked them with talking too much
and reading, he said, only too casually.
And then he went on.
We must, absolutely must, cure this evil or
give up the whole work.
But how, he says.
One, spend all the morning or at least
five hours in 24 in reading the most
useful books and that regularly and constantly.
But I have no taste for reading.
Contract a taste for it by use, he
says or go back to your former work.
But different men have different tastes.
Therefore, he says, therefore some may read less
than others but none should read less than
this.
So John Wesley.
A second condition then moving on.
A second condition for powerful preaching is a
true understanding of the means by which men
become the children of God.
In other words, a true understanding of the
way of salvation.
In the pre-reformation church it was believed
that men and women become Christians simply by
belonging to the church.
That made them Christians.
The sacraments worked ex opere operato.
If they were in the church, through the
church, through the priesthood they received everything.
There was no personal, no individual response necessary
in order to be saved.
And so if there was any preaching at
all it was mere moralizing.
It was assumed that the people were already
Christians.
And therefore under that system the idea of
preaching as dying men to dying men that
was unthinkable.
And it's noticeable that when the reformation did
begin that the Catholic powers were the most
hostile to it.
One Bishop Stephen Gardner in England he said,
for the people went to heaven before without
them, that is without sermons and he trusted
they should follow after to heaven though they
had no sermons or homilies.
So the medieval church that believed that salvation
is in Christ but that salvation comes to
man they did not say it but in
effect in a material way in the receiving
of the sacrament.
The mind was bypassed.
The conscience was bypassed.
There was no need for any pulpits.
And when preaching began it began with the
rediscovery of the truth that salvation is by
the obedience of faith and that faith cometh
by hearing and hearing by the word of
God.
And as soon as that was re-understood
immediately the work of preaching was restored.
Preaching is to make Christ known.
And preaching is to make Christ known because
where men do not know Christ they do
not have the words of eternal life.
Hugh Latimer again, when the word of God
is preached and opened he says, then cometh
our new birth.
John Barlow, one of the early Puritans, he
says, Was not England in the days of
our forefathers a chaos of confusion overspread with
the locusts which came out of the bottomless
pit?
How many it is to be feared perished
for want of knowledge and went to their
long homes not leaving the least sign of
salvation behind them.
But you who have better learned Christ bless
God for all things but especially for the
gospel for who can number the dust of
the righteous or tell the tenth part of
believers in our English Israel and what but
the gospel preached has brought this great work
to pass.
So these men, the reformers and the Puritans
who followed believed that preaching the gospel has
to do immediately with man's need of salvation.
And therefore, as we heard last night that
the preaching office is the most awesome office
in the world.
We are accountable to men's souls.
There is no place more solemn than the
pulpit.
The preacher has an unparalleled responsibility.
God says to him if thou dost not
speak to warn the wicked from his way
that wicked man shall die in his iniquity
but his blood will I require at thine
hand.
Thomas Brooks, a Puritan says a man were
better to have the blood of all the
world upon him than the blood of one
soul.
The blood of souls cries loudest and wounds
deepest.
The lowest and darkest place in hell will
be the place for those upon whose clothes
the blood of souls will be found at
last.
And the motto that should be written upon
preachers' study doors and on their walls and
on all the books they look on and
on the beds they lie on on the
seats they sit on should be this the
blood of souls.
The blood of souls.
When Martin Luther understood this he spoke about
the intolerable burden of preaching God's Word.
The preaching of God's Word is an intolerable
task.
Yet, he says also, he cannot stop preaching.
And because he groans and weeps for men
One of Luther's great letters to Cardinal Albrecht
in 1517 he says to the Cardinal poor
souls believe that when they have bought indulgent
letters then they are assured of their salvation.
The souls committed to your care excellent father
are thus directed to death.
Therefore I can no longer be silent.
What a horror!
What a danger for a bishop to permit
the loud noise of indulgences among his people
while the gospel is silenced.
So, fervent and powerful preaching was restored in
the second place because of a recovery of
the understanding salvation by faith in Christ crucified.
I move on then to my third and
last condition for powerful preaching and we'll take
just a little longer with this point.
We have spoken of the need of the
gospel in the pulpit and the need of
sound learning in pastors but even these two
things do not secure the presence of spiritual
power.
The Apostle Paul adds another dimension when he
asks the question how shall they preach except
they be sent.
The messenger is essential but the speaker alone
can do nothing effective.
True preaching, the New Testament tells us has
to do immediately with the activity of God
himself and it is only powerful work to
the extent in which God is in it.
So, I give as a third condition for
powerful preaching the necessity that the preacher's calling
and work be rightly understood.
The Reformers did not define a preacher as
a man who acts on Christ's behalf and
who speaks about Christ.
That was not their definition of preaching.
Much more than that was involved.
The God-sent preacher, they said is the
instrument by whom Christ himself acts and in
whom Christ himself speaks.
The preacher is not speaking about Christ as
an absent person but a God-sent preacher
is one in whom Christ himself speaks and
is present.
So, the second Helvetic confession one of the
great Reform confessions says that Christ is not
an idle spectator in the work of his
ministers.
It is Christ who builds the church.
The pastoral office is supremely his.
He gives pastors and teachers.
He sends them and he so enables them
that the authority with which they speak is
his own authority.
You remember those tremendous words in Revelation chapter
1 when the Apostle John says speaking of
the glory of Jesus Christ that he holds
his messengers, his servants, his preachers as stars
in his right hand but it is out
of his mouth that the word goes as
a two-edged sword.
Paul says that speaking of the work of
preaching whom we preach, Christ whom we preach
warning every man, teaching every man striving according
to his working which worketh in me mightily.
The question then is what is this power
and authority which belongs to preaching?
And no doubt to this question we shall
seek during these days often to return.
Now in part the answer is that the
power is the authority of the word of
God but that is not the whole answer.
It is not a sufficient answer and it
is not a sufficient answer for two good
reasons.
The first is that if the scriptures alone
were the power then the testimony of every
Christian to the Bible would be of equal
influence provided it was equally biblical.
Indeed there would be no need of preaching
at all if people had Bibles.
If we could simply put the word of
God into their hands then the preaching office
could be laid aside.
Reading the scriptures would be equal to preaching
but the New Testament doesn't teach that.
The New Testament teaches that there is a
distinct power above the actual word itself.
The apostle draws the distinction of course when
he says for gospel came to you not
in word only but also in power and
in the Holy Ghost and in much assurance.
Not the word only but also.
Calvin says should God leave preachers with their
work that is just with the spoken word
this work is dead and useless and devoid
of power if the Lord does not make
it effective by His Spirit.
And further we can say that if the
power of preaching consisted simply in the presentation
of Scripture then all preaching would be equally
effective provided it was equally scriptural and we
know that is not true.
But we know that there is a great
difference in the influence which accompanies the preaching
of the Word of God.
In other words we must not apply to
the Word of God the error which the
Catholics apply to the sacraments and assume that
biblical sermons work ex operae operata that provided
they are biblical and orthodox then they will
be much used.
That is not true.
And it is not true because the power
that is necessary to preaching is in the
hands of Him who sends His servants.
The power is given by Christ with the
Word indeed and not without the Word but
it remains in His hands and it is
by means of that grace and power that
preaching becomes that instrument in which as I
tried to say Christ Himself speaks.
I will He says draw all men unto
Me.
The dead will hear the voice of the
Son of God.
My sheep hear My voice and they hear
His voice and the dead are quickened by
preaching which is in demonstration of the Spirit
and of power.
Jeremiah Burroughs one of the Westminster divines commenting
on Matthew 28, 18 and 19 he says
when Christ sends forth His disciples to preach
He makes this preface All power is given
unto Me in heaven and earth go therefore
and teach as if He should say I
have received all power in heaven and earth
through the power I received I send you
to preach and I will be with you
to the end of the world.
So Burroughs says the concern of ministers should
be that Christ should preach in them and
likewise the concern of gospel hearers they should
not say come let us go and hear
such a man preach oh no let us
go hear Christ preach.
It concerns you that hear not to come
to hear this man or that man but
come to hear Jesus Christ the Puritan view
of preaching.
Preachers are workers together with Him and it
is God's power alone that gives preaching its
saving effect.
Now it was this vision of the true
work of preaching that inspired the vision and
boldness of the reformers and the Puritans in
their preaching.
Let me give you one example at least.
In the month of June in 1559 in
the city of St. Andrews in Scotland which
was the great citadel of Catholic power in
that month on one Sunday John Knox came
to St. Andrews and declared his intention of
preaching in the parish church.
He was told that if he did he
would be met with a round of shot.
He was offered an escort and protection.
He refused it.
And when that Sunday came in June 1559
he preached in that pulpit in St. Andrews.
You have seen many of you the picture
which represents it.
Knox in the pulpit and the Duchess of
Argyll sitting in front of him the Augustinian
canons on one side the Bishop himself is
there.
It's a great picture by Sir David Wilkie.
The actual thing did happen.
But what happened also was this that not
only was no shot fired at Knox but
so awed were the congregation by the preaching
of that word that it is said that
as many as twelve of the Augustinian canons
became confessors of the truth of Christ.
And says one of the historians the fear
of God so fell upon the provost and
the magistrates who were present that they agreed
at once to the removing of all monuments
of idolatry in the very sight of the
great dignities of the church.
The English ambassador once said of Knox the
voice of one man is able in one
hour to put more life in us than
five hundred trumpets blowing continually in our ears.
But that's not how Knox explained it.
Listen to how John Knox explained it.
He says the cause was this God gave
His Holy Spirit to simple men in great
abundance.
Or again he says I did distribute the
bread of life as of Christ I received
it.
Of this I am assured that the blessing
of Christ so multiplied the portion received of
His hands that during the banquet the bread
never failed.
In other words the conquest was Christ.
Knox was not preaching about an absent Christ.
He was the instrument in which Christ Himself
was speaking to the hearts of men.
Now that runs right through all the reformers
and puritans.
I could quote you many examples of it
but there is no time to do it.
One perhaps from William Perkins in his great
book The Art of Prophesying.
Perkins says the demonstration of the Spirit is
when as the ministers of the Word do
in the time of preaching so behave themselves
that even the ignorant and the unbelievers may
judge that it is not so much He
that speaketh but the Spirit of God in
Him and by Him.
That surely is what we have in the
book of Acts.
Men filled with the Holy Ghost and so
speaking as we were reminded last night so
speaking that a great multitude both of Jews
and Greeks believed.
I would like to give you one quick
word from the great Thomas Hooker.
How much I wish his writings were in
print and they are exceedingly rare.
Thomas Hooker the founder of Connecticut, first preacher
of Connecticut.
He is speaking in his book The Application
of Redemption on powerful preaching.
He is talking about the kind of preaching
for which they looked and prayed.
And he says having spoken of the absence
of such preaching too commonly he says such
as been ministers may here see the reason
of that little success and that little good
we do in the vineyard of the Lord.
Our pains prosper not.
Our preaching prevails not with the hearts of
men.
Not one mountain is leveled.
Not one crooked place is squared.
Not one poor soul prepared for Christ.
After many months and quarters and years prevailing
in the work of the ministry the time
was when Satan fell like lightning suddenly and
speedily when the disciples of Christ as sons
of thunder delivered the gospel in the power
and demonstration of the Spirit.
But now he says Satan stands up in
his full strength.
He takes up his stand and he maintains
his hold in the hearts of men.
What is the reason?
God is as merciful as ever.
His word and ordinances are as effectual as
ever.
I need not inquire where is the Lord
God of Elijah.
No brethren, I must rather ask where is
the spirit and power of Elijah?
We want power and spirit and then no
wonder we do not.
Nay, upon these terms in reason we shall
never prepare a soul for the Lord.
The word of God is the sword of
the Spirit and it is as sharp as
it ever was.
But our hands are weak and our hearts
are feeble and we have no courage nor
power to deliver the blow.
Ministers, he says, do not deliver the word
with a heavenly, hearty, violent affection.
They do not speak out of the abundance
of their hearts and so on.
Well, our time is almost gone.
Just a few concluding words.
I want to close with just three brief
characteristics of these Reformation preachers.
The first, they were men of profound dependence
upon God.
Ministers, they said, of all men should be
humble, prayerful, serious, dependent.
They had the same reasons as Paul to
preach in weakness and in fear and in
much trembling.
John Calvin says, we must keep before our
eyes the majesty of God in the Church.
The vision of Isaiah in Isaiah 6 is
the text upon which William Perkins talks about
the work of the ministry.
And he says, God sends no man into
the ministry, but first He abases him and
He casts him down and gives him a
sight of his own misery before He honors
him with a commission to preach His Word.
Men of dependence upon God.
Secondly, men who sought at all times to
keep their hearts under the power of the
truths which they preached.
Now, we've already touched largely on that and
I cannot take further time with it except
to give you just one quotation from a
man called John Livingstone.
Some of you will have read, I'm sure,
June the 21st in the year 1630 there
was a sermon preached at a place called
the Kirk of Shots near Glasgow as a
result of which a whole wide area of
Scotland was changed.
More than 500 people having lasting spiritual influence
from that sermon.
The preacher was John Livingstone.
When Livingstone was an old man many years
later this is what he says about preaching.
He says, it is most probable that no
gift, no pains a man takes to fit
himself for preaching shall ever do good to
the people or himself except a man labor
and keep his heart in a spiritual condition
before God.
A sanctified heart avails much for right preaching.
There is sometimes somewhat in preaching that cannot
be ascribed either to the matter or to
the expression and cannot be described what it
is or whence it is but with a
sweet violence it pierces the heart and affections
and it comes immediately from the Lord.
And if there be any way to attain
any such thing, it is by a heavenly
disposition in speaking.
Thirdly and finally, these preachers made much of
personal communion with the Lord Jesus Christ.
They had, as I've tried to say, this
exalted view of the ministry.
And what saved that view from becoming an
unbearable burden was their knowledge that they shared
that burden with Christ Himself.
They were His fellow servants.
They were not only His servants, but they
were friends of the bridegroom.
It was said of Rutherford when he came
to speak of Christ in the pulpit, one
of his hearers said, many times I thought
he would have flown out of the pulpit
when he came to speak of Jesus Christ.
There's a beautiful sentence of Rutherford's when he
was banished to imprisonment in Aberdeen, his reaction
was to say, Christ and I are able
to bear it.
That's their view of the ministry.
Christ and I are able to bear it.
And Rutherford in one letter, in many letters,
but in this one, he takes us to
the heart of the Puritan ministry when he
says this, Brother, I may from new experience
speak of Christ to you.
Oh, if you saw in Him what I
see, a river of God's unseen joys has
flown over, bank and bray, in my soul
since I parted with you.
I urge upon you, says Rutherford, communion with
Christ.
A growing communion.
There are curtains to be drawn aside in
Christ that we never saw, and unfoldings of
love in Christ.
I despair that I shall ever win to
the far end of His love.
There are so many plies in it.
Therefore dig deep and sweat and labour and
take pains for Christ.
And set by as much time in the
day for Christ as you can, for He
will be one with labour.
So these men were a fulfilment of God's
promise.
I will send them pastors according to my
own heart.
And that needs to be our prayer this
week.
May God make us to be pastors according
to God's own heart.
Amen.