01.07. VII. The Ministry Of Christ

VII THE MINISTRY OF CHRIST

“ And Jesus went about all Galilee . . . preaching the gospel of the Kingdom . . . and his fame went throughout all Syria . . . and there followed him great multitudes of people from Galilee, and from Decapolis, and from Jerusalem, and from Judea, and from beyond Jordan.”—Matthew 4:23-25.

ONE afternoon, riding with two of my aged deacons, they talked to me about some of the orators it had been their privilege to hear, Wendell Phillips, Horace Greeley, Elihu Burritt, Henry Ward Beecher, and others. What a privilege to have heard such men! No wonder the memory of it was fresh. But to have heard Jesus Christ, to have listened to Him who “spake as never man spake,” to have given attention to the oratory of the Nazarene,—who can understand that experience, who can imagine that privilege?

After two thousand years, yea, after six thousand years of human history, He is the incomparable orator, the peerless preacher, the only perfect prophet of God.

We invite your attention to Christ the Preacher. We want to speak on four phases of this subject.

I. THE SPIRIT Of JESUS THE PREACHER.

It was that of a commissioned man. It was that of one who never had, who never would, who never could question His divine call. After thirty years of silence He begins to speak, and in His very early ministry He gives His auditors to understand that He preaches because God appointed Him to that work, for in Luke 4:16 f. we read, “And he came to Nazareth where he had been brought up, and as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up for to read. And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias, and when he had opened the book, he found the place where it is written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor: he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and the recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord; and he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister and sat down, and the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened upon him, and he began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears: and all bare him witness and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth.” The first essential to success in the Gospel ministry is a profound conviction that God has called one to preach. His spirit was that of a conscientious man. He said on one occasion, “I must preach the kingdom of God, for therefore am I sent.” You must have noted in the study of history that the world’s most eloquent men have been the world’s most conscientious men. Socrates’ philosophical convictions accounted for his fervour and oratory.

Savonarola was heard by thousands because he so honestly believed what he said. Martin Luther moved all Europe when he became convinced of the truth. Wesley, Whitfield, Edwards were orators from conscience. The Puritan fathers who protested against the religion of the old world and the tyranny of England were peerless speakers, because they felt so deeply upon these subjects. Wendell Phillips, Abraham Lincoln, Henry Ward Beecher moved their auditors as they did because they saw in the slavery they denounced a Devil’s invention. No man can be truly eloquent until he is honest. The plainest man, the man ignorant of letters can hold the crowd if he speaks about a subject over which his heart is burdened.

Some of you know the history of the Chinaman named Wang. His features rendered him almost hideous to look upon, but he became the most wonderful teacher and preacher of Hankow and Chung King, and when he died the native Christians said of him, “there was no difference between Wang and the Bible.” That was the secret of the eloquence of Jesus of Nazareth. His spirit was that of a confident man.

He never intimated that He felt Himself unequal to any occasion. He knew His intellectual power, and so made no apologies when Nicodemus appealed to Him, And when the young lawyer came with his questions, He answered as if He were conscious of the fact that divine wisdom were with Him, and notwithstanding the subtility of scribe, and the insidious purpose of Pharisee, He was serene before their catch-questions. The intellectual supremacy of the Son of God has not been sufficiently insisted upon. There was no philosophy with which He was not familiar; no sophistry before which He feared to stand; no subject to which He hesitated to speak, and His confidence was not that of an inflated spirit, but that of the man who felt His sufficiency and was not deceived.

It is told that Napoleon, in his best day, would lie down to sleep soundly where other generals would not, have dared close their eyes, because of confidence in his own ability and in that of his battalions. And it does seem to me that Jesus, the Preacher, put before His successors in office a good example at this point.

If I am to speak for God, what have I to do with fearing the face of man? If my gospel is His gospel, what have I to fear from “the oppositions of science, falsely so-called”; the sophistries of unbelieving men, the scepticisms of the hour, or all of them combined? The preacher who does not believe with Paul, that “the gospel is the power of God unto salvation,” and cannot preach it in confidence that it will conquer, needs to sit at the feet of the Man of Nazareth and learn of Him, for His spirit was that of a confident man.

II. THE STYLE OF JESUS, THE PREACHER.

It is a fact, I suppose, that no preacher has ever made a profound impression upon the public mind without having peculiarities of style that in some measure accounted for his success; and there were elements that entered into the way that Jesus uttered His words that account for the statement of our text, “His fame went throughout all Syria.”

He was energetic in preaching. The record gives abundant evidence of that fact. In Luke 4:28 we read, “And all they in the synagogue, when they heard these things were filled with wrath.” No tame speaker ever excites his auditors to any frenzy. The trouble with the style of many men is that it is not energetic enough to arouse the vilest sinner to opposition. When He ministered in Jerusalem, some of the Jews asked, “Is not this he whom they seek to kill; but lo, he speaketh boldly, and they say nothing unto him.” Indeed He did! In human language there are no such sweet sentences as dropped from the lips of the Son of God, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven; Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted; blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth,” etc. “Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” But the man who supposes that Jesus was always using soft, sweet sentences is unacquainted with the New Testament record. When He spoke to His own disciples, to those who were trying their utmost to do right, He used such sentences. But when He spoke to the scribes and Pharisees, the high-headed, hypocritical pretenders of His time, His words cut like the surgeon’s lance, or the simitar of the Saracen. That accounts for the fact that some of the people who heard Him thought that He was Jeremiah, the sweet, soft-speaking prophet, while others said that He was Elijah, God’s Son of Thunder.

None of us like to listen to the preacher who stirs us too deeply, who brings our faults before our faces, who convicts and condemns us.

I cannot say I enjoy having my nose frostbitten and my ears nipped, and when that occurs, I complain against the cold; and yet I discover, after all, that the bitter season brings to me the most exuberant health. Long since we learned to listen with the greatest interest to the man whose words stung us deepest, because we knew that he was the man that could break our slumbers and bring us to the light of God’s day, and quicken our pulse to the healthiest point; and of all the preachers the world has seen, Jesus of Nazareth employed the style best suited to this desirable end. His style was dogmatic also. It could not be otherwise. He was no student feeling his way after the truth and always filled with fear that he had not found it. He was no reasoner who had to call into question every conclusion reached. He was no philosopher spinning out of His own inner consciousness untenable theories, as spiders weave their webs from their own bowels to have them swept away with the first breath or brush. In the Gospel of John (John 12:49-50) He tells us the source of His information. “I have not spoken of myself, but the Father who sent me, he gave me a commandment what I should say, and what I should speak, and I know that his commandment is life everlasting. Whatsoever I speak, therefore, even as the Father said unto me, so I speak.” The world is full of people that rail against dogmatic utterances and seem to think it an evidence of intellectual superiority, and of personal modesty for a man not to be quite certain of anything. Our so-called liberalism boasts itself at this point, and well it may, for in proportion as we depart from the Word of God, our conclusions are uncertain. But the true preacher has nothing to do with such conclusions.

It is not his business to dabble with them. He is not set to originate truth, but to repeat it; not set to formulate theories, but to declare God’s revelation, and he who keeps to that has no occasion of apology, no occasion of hesitancy, no right to be uncertain, and of him the people have no right to complain any more than you have to complain of the messenger boy that brings to you a telegram the purport of which is not exactly what you like. He did not form it; he delivered it. It is all he has to do with it. He has no right to change it in one iota, e’en though he discover that it is not what you expect, or what you would like.

It seems strange that people should not understand this fact, but the bitterest complaints that we have ever heard uttered against preaching have been lodged against the most Biblical statements, and oftentimes against the exact quotations from the Word. A man present in the Calvary Church, Chicago, listened to my reading of Matthew 3:8-9; of Mark 1:35 following of Acts 8:1-40; and Romans 6:4-5, and by the time I had finished these he was in a white heat, although I had not uttered a word of comment upon any passage; and to one of my deacons he declared he would never enter my church again, for he would not have any preacher dogmatising to him upon the subject of baptism. That is what they said to Jesus, but He only replied, “My Father gave this to me to say, and I will say it,.” And that is the only reply that any preacher needs to make.

Dr. Lorimer, in his “Argument for Christianity,” affirms that “a preaching based upon God’s revelation cannot be anything else than positive.” His style was illustrative. Perhaps no preacher the world has ever heard used as many illustrations as the Son of Man.

Pastor Stalker says of His sermons, “They were plentifully adorned with illustrations.” . . . “Christ illustrated truth so constantly that the common objects of the country in which He resided are seen more perfectly in His words than in all the historians of the time.” His speech was like a lecture with a magic lantern, scene after scene thrown upon the canvas. He made use of the cup, the platter, the lamp, the candle-stick, the millstones, the sewing, of the mother, of a new piece of cloth into an old garment; the putting of wine into old bottles. He pictured the hen gathering her chickens, the children playing in the streets. He painted the lilies of the field. He illustrated, by the crow picking up the seed, by the birds building their nests in the branches of the trees, by the doves, sparrows, dogs, and swine; by the fig tree, by the bramble-bush, by the south wind, by the red sky, by the vineyard and winepress, by the yellow grain, by the sheep and the shepherd. He told stories of the Pharisee and the Publican. He told stories of the Priest and Levite, and of the Samaritan, of Dives and Lazarus, of the unmerciful servant, of the robbers in the vineyard, of the prodigal son, of the wicked husbandman, of the marriage of the king’s son, of the ten virgins, of the talents, of the two debtors, the friend at midnight, the barren fig tree, the great supper, the lost sheep, the lost piece of money, the unjust steward, the unjust judge, the unprofitable servants, the pounds; and so we might go on!

Years ago I was preaching in a Southeastern city. They were without a pastor, and at a dinner table some brethren were discussing certain men, and I spoke most warmly of Dr. D. A small fellow present, who thought himself some great one, said, “I don’t like Dr. D. He is not logical enough. He tells too many tales in the pulpit. I have heard him put eight or ten into a single sermon.” I have no doubt that the very circumstance of his copying his Master in that matter accounted for his standing later in the strongest pulpit of England and also of this land, and being reckoned as one of the best Gospel preachers of his day. The difficulty with the audiences of many men that stand in pulpits is not with the people, but with the dry-as-dust preaching to which they have been subjected until they at last have departed one by one and left the preacher, and the choir and forty of the faithful to hold Sunday night services alone.

Charles Spurgeon, who was himself a good illustration of his claim, said to his students, “Illustrate your sermons. I have heard of a tailor who made a mighty fortune, and who, on his deathbed, called his tailor friends about him and said, ‘Before I go, let me give you the secret of my success. Always put a knot in your thread,’ ” and Spurgeon adds, “Some preachers put in the needle all right, but there is no knot in their thread, so it slips through and they have accomplished nothing. Brethren, what your people will best remember of the sermon preached will be the illustration.” In this matter Jesus is the Master, and no successor in office has so made heaven and earth, and all human history contribute by illustration to preaching.

III. THE SUBSTANCE OF HIS SERMONS.

If there were time we should like to speak to you in the third place on the substance of His sermons, and to show that it was serious. Read His sermons to see if it be not so.

It was Scriptural! Read His sermons to see if it be not so.

It related to salvation. Read His sermons and see if it be not so. But with this mere outline we pass to the more interesting point.

IV. THE SUCCESS OF HIS MINISTRY.

It varied with circumstances. There are those who think that the proper preacher will succeed anywhere, under any circumstances whatsoever; and if failure occurs, it must be the preacher’s fault. There were several occasions upon which the Son of God Himself failed or succeeded but measurably! At Nazareth He accomplished nothing, because the people knew Him, and met His wonderful words with the statement, “Is not this the Son of Joseph, and are not his brethren and sisters with us?” The world is full of folks who can never quite consent to unusual ability on the part of a boy with whose birth and breeding they are perfectly familiar.

There is not one church in twenty that ever calls to its pastorate a man who is born of God within its sanctuary, and brought, by the Spirit, into its membership. The record is that “He could do no mighty works there because of their unbelief.” In John 6:1-71 we find Him failing at another point. He had taught the people the necessity of receiving Him as the one through whom they should be saved, and had said “the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life,” and immediately there was a scattering of His congregation, “and from that time many of His disciples went back and walked no more with Him,” and there were only the twelve left, and Jesus said, “Will ye also go away?” In Gadara, where He healed the man and some of the people lost their hogs in consequence, they insisted that He should depart out of that land. So let us learn once for all that it is not the business of any preacher to be popular, to hold every auditor that ever gives him attention, and to keep the good will of all his people. His first business is to declare the counsel of God, and his second business is to sweetly abide the consequence.

Popularity is not the most difficult thing. I have no doubt Dr. S. enjoys it since he has turned dancing master.

Dr. Robert F. Horton, an Englishman with higher critical tendencies, but one who wields a facile pen, says, “There is a clergyman here in a fashionable English watering place who lives to suit himself, and tells his people not to follow his practice, but to act upon his precepts instead. His conduct was notoriously out of harmony with the Gospel, and yet his church was always crowded with young men and women who were only too glad to find a doctrine which could reconcile a certain religious profession with an unmodified worldliness.”

There is much of truth in what a socialist writer said, “It is through the sacrifice and failure of the individual that human emancipation has proceeded from the beginning. Our ability to divinely fail for right’s sake is the real measure of our faith. It is the victory of failure that overcometh the world.” And we are glad to say this, because there are some of our brethren who could not without being charged with self-defense. If our house were empty, if the people to whom we have preached had turned away, such utterances would appear to be in self-defense, but in the presence of a company which for twenty-seven years has not waned but waxed, we say that the Son of God was not a success under all circumstances, and that when the preacher fails the fault may be his, and it may be also the people’s to whom he has ministered.

There are churches in which no mortal man could succeed unless the Spirit of God should come upon them to regenerate, and we cheerfully attribute the blessing that has been upon the people in our sanctuary as much, yea much more to the spiritual atmosphere that the godly people of the membership have created, than to the pastor’s work. And if the Son of God failed or succeeded according to whether the people refused Him or exercised faith, the preacher of this present hour ought to pass through exactly similar experiences, and will if he is faithful to his commission. But the failure of Jesus Christ was not His common experience. There were those who denied that He had any success, and yet our text tells us that the multitudes followed Him. His words moved the people of all Syria, and of all Galilee, and of Decapolis, and of Jerusalem, and of Judea, and beyond the Jordan.

It is amusing to see how certainly some people will insist that the preacher they do not particularly fancy is a failure. In Chicago, years ago, I talked with a man about the one Baptist pastor of that city who was winning more souls, planting more missions, raising more money for the spread of the Gospel, and addressing larger congregations than was any man in the entire city, and he said, “Oh, he is a failure!” God send us more such, for we believe that in some measure with him, as we know it was in full measure with the Man of Nazareth, “God was satisfied”! And therein is the preacher’s success. God said of Him, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased,” and of His work Christ Himself said, reviewing it all as He was compelled to do while hanging on the cross, “It is finished. Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.”

I am asking myself, How may I be the best preacher to you? I am inquiring by what means I may lead you, my people, into the richest experience and up to the noblest heights. I am wondering how I can make this First Baptist Church the effective institution God would have it become, and I am compelled to believe the only secret of success for me, the only hope of good for you, the only prospect of power for the First Baptist Church, the only promise of victory for time to come, is in looking unto Jesus and learning of Him; is by putting that peerless Preacher before our eyes to see Him; is by opening our hearts to listen to Him, that our souls may catch His Spirit and our success become the sort that characterised His efforts.

I am so constituted nervously that I cannot sit under any speaker for a few days without imitating his tones, his gestures. It matters little whether I admire him or not, these things make their impression and it takes weeks for me to shake them off. I remember the struggle to get rid of Mr. Varley’s style after he had once visited our church, and for three or four weeks after the departure of dear Dr. Munhall I was chagrined by the consciousness of imitating him and feared that somebody would speak about it. Mrs. Riley did, and was answered, “Dear, don’t say a thing about it. I know it, but I cannot help it at the present. It will take me some time to shake it off.” But there is one Preacher at whose feet I want to sit, whose spirit I want to study, into whose style I want to come, so that the success which characterised His ministry and pleased His God may come to pass in some little measure in my ministry, and that man is Jesus of Nazareth, the peerless Preacher of the centuries.