03.02. II. The Problem Of Preaching
II THE PROBLEM OF PREACHING
PAUL, writing with the pen of inspiration to the Ephesians, tells us the source and also the secret of the Christian ministry. Referring to the ascended Lord, who “led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men” he says, “And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers.” (Ephesians 4:11) For the present moment, at least, I want to fix attention upon the phrase “And he gave some, evangelists; and some, pastors,” with particular emphasis upon the pastorate.
Too often we read even the Bible itself, God’s Holy Book, carelessly, and by such careless reading misinterpret and misunderstand. This text, while it involves the divine call, in that Christ gives these officials, states rather the benediction bestowed upon those to whom He has made the gift. It does not read, “And he gave some to be apostles, and some to be prophets, and some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers”; but it does read, “He gave gifts unto men,” and, “He gave unto some (men) apostles, and unto some (men) prophets, and unto some (men) evangelists, and unto some (men) pastors and teachers.” The emphasis in the text is upon the favors shown to men; but the plain inference of the text is divine appointment to each and every one of these offices. In other words, the risen and ascended Christ creates and fills the same.
Thinking along that line then, we conclude that the problem of preaching is not solved by man, but rather by the Son of God, without whose appointment these officials do not exist. Speaking, as we do, to students who confidently expect to fill some one of these offices, you will permit us to talk about the Essential Preparation, the Recurring Equipment, and the Pulpit Ministry.
I. THE ESSENTIAL PREPARATION The first essential is the divine selection.—If one is to be a minister of the Word, he is made such by a holy commission. Christ alone determines his appointment. The story of that yokel who decided he ought to preach and whose farmer father inquired as to why he so felt is apropos here. The youth replied, “Because the Bible says ‘Go preach my Gospel to every creature,’ ” to which the old man answered, “Yes, the good Book do say, ‘Preach the Gospel to every critter,’ but nowhere does it say that every critter is to preach the Gospel.” The ministry is not a mere profession to be accepted on the advice of a parent or friend, or to be entered upon with the thought of honorable office, possible social and intellectual advantages, or conceivable emoluments.
Charles Spurgeon may have seemed extreme but we believe that he was absolutely correct, when he said, “Young man, if you can be satisfied to do anything else, don’t preach the Gospel,” by which the great London minister meant to suggest that he alone who felt compelled by the consciousness of a divine call had either responsibility for the office or likelihood of success in the same. A second essential in preparation for the pastorate is a Scripturally based Faith.
It is our judgment that just now this suggestion needs particular emphasis. We are fully convinced that no conceivable scholarship can dispense with this necessity, or in any measure create a substitute therefor. Unless the man who is to preach can say with the apostle, to every assembly he proposes to address, “Brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I also received; how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; and that he was buried and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures,” he has no place whatever in the pulpit, and no right to maintain occupation of the same, (1 Corinthians 15:1-4) Luetta Cummins compasses this thought quite well in a poem entitled “A Sermon to Preachers”:
“I am greatly disappointed with some preachers of today, With their logic and their ethics; their aristocratic way; With their science and their theories and their new Theology Full of everything but Jesus, and His love for you and me.
“There is plenty in the Bible for the preachers of today, If they will but search its pages and for help divine would pray; For God’s Word is everlasting and it never will grow old—
’Tis indeed a priceless treasure—far more precious e’en than gold.
“What we want is consecration in a good true man of God, With a Bible education, and a love for God’s dear Word; Who can lead us and direct us to the truth, the life, the way, Which brings peace to soul and body through the burdens of the day.
“If the preachers in our churches would preach Jesus crucified, How through love for us He suffered, and through love for us, He died, Then our pews would not be empty, as so many are today, But be filled to overflowing, in a Pentecostal way.
“What we need is just plain Gospel, in the good old-fashioned way, In place of Emerson or Shakespeare, or some topic of the day, What care we for all their sayings, or their teachings true and tried?
We want just the dear old story of the Saviour crucified.
“That alone can make men better, that alone can make men free—
Just the precious, dear old story, of God’s love for you and That is what the people’s wanting, there is where the crowd will be; Where they hear the same old story which they heard at mother’s knee.” A third essential in preparation is Consecration to Study.
Here again the apostle Paul becomes our teacher, “Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” (2 Timothy 2:15) To be sure some of the versions have “Give diligence,” but that translation is only a greater emphasis upon the necessity. At this present moment I am not speaking of scholarly culture. We will come to that a moment later; but I am talking of mastering the text.
Dr. A. J: Gordon of Boston, perhaps the finest and most finished of our Baptist pastors, is reported by his son to have longed for a renaissance of farmer preachers with which his boyhood had been familiar. The reason he gave for wishing that this now defunct ministry could be reinstated was this, “They knew their Bible from cover to cover. With such men,” he said, “we could renew the religious life of New England.” The passing of time has made Gordon’s remark even the more meaningful. Strangely enough, just when educators, capturing public opinion, persuaded the same that only a cultured minister could accomplish aught, in and around Boston, for instance, the intellectual standing slipped, and today there are few sections of America that have so large a proportion of the illiterate as New England itself. Scholarship is meaningless to the overwhelming majority of its citizens; but the plain Word of God, committed to heart, and preached to the foreigner who has flocked to that section, represents practically the only hope of its evangelization.
Some years ago certain Theological Seminaries deliberately decided to create ministers for the cultured classes, and for those alone. The result has not been gratifying. Scores of country churches were closed in consequence, and in the city pulpits in which these finished orators hold forth they have proven practically unintelligible to the average man. In consequence of that fact, plain every-day people have largely ceased from church attendance, while the cultured company, who we confidently expected would pack the elegant sanctuaries, yielded themselves to desires of the flesh instead, and Sunday golf, Sunday picnics, Sunday motor excursions, have left the orator of the day to a vanishing and uninspiring audience.
We discuss the question, “How can we fill the church house?” Let it be distinctly understood that there are only about two ways: One is a secular show that for putridity equals or exceeds that put on by the picture house itself; the other is the preaching of the Gospel of Grace in the power of the Spirit. The first panders to the passions of the flesh and profits nobody; the second enjoys the divine favor, and results in human redemption. Whatever else the minister does or doesn’t do, he should master his Bible and “preach the Word!”
II. THE RECURRING EQUIPMENT
I promised a few moments ago to return to the question of scholarship. In spite of what we have just said, we believe in the scholarly minister, and heartily approve constant mental application.
Some years ago Dr. R. F. Horton of London, England, delivered the Yale lectures on Preaching. In the course of the same he said, “Every preacher should be, so far as circumstances permit, a scholar.” To be sure, he added, “There is an idolatry of learning, an esoteric spirit of the specialist, a superstitious reverence for the ‘original tongues,’ which will ruin any preacher. I do not advocate the sentiment which was expressed by the father of Coleridge when he used to speak with bated breath of Hebrew as ‘the immediate language of the Holy Ghost.’ To my mind the old countrywoman was considerably nearer the mark when, on hearing a minister quote Greek in the pulpit, she exclaimed indignantly, ‘Bless you; you don’t suppose the Apostle Paul knew Greek!’ It is a far saner state of mind which supposes that Paul was ignorant of Greek, than that which imagines that a mysterious and divine value attaches to the tongue in which, as it happened, the great communications of God were first made.” The ideal man, however, is the minister whose scholarly attainments no auditor can question, and yet whose directness and simplicity of speech is such that the most unlearned can readily understand it. In fact, some of the world’s greatest scholars have been characterized by utter simplicity of speech. My own revered teacher, Dr. John A. Broadus, was an illustration in point. He was easily one of the first Greek scholars living and an adept in other dead languages; and yet his sermons were delivered in the simplest English.
Savonarola, the immortal, was a student and a scholar, but doubtless the thing that made him a preacher of power is the circumstance stated by Herrick in his volume Some Heretics of Yesterday: “For seven years, from 1475 to 1482, when he was thirty years of age, he continued in the convent of Bologna until, as the story goes, he knew the Bible, every word by heart.” That indeed is the equipment above all others.
It is important that the pastor intelligently select sermon subjects. When I say intelligently, I do not mean to approve dull themes, or applaud sensational ones. If advertising of pulpit subjects is to take place, they ought to be such as harmonize with Scripture teaching and at the same time, so phrased as to attract public attention.
Robert J. Burdette once preached from the text “So shall he startle many nations” Isaiah 52:15. In that connection he said. “We have to startle men to make them hear. You have to startle them to stop them,” and “compel them to think.”
There are not a few people who condemn sensational preaching but patronize sensational places, revel in sensational sports, and as Burdette said, “They want their religion to be a mixture of laudanum, chloroform, lollypop and fudge.” But there is no such religion, except it be one of the pseudo-Christian cults which passes for a genuine faith.
Perhaps the most sensational thing that ever took place was the giving of the law of God, as the mountain smoked and the lurid lightnings filled the people with fear, and the thunderous words, “Thou shalt not,” “Thou shalt not,” “Thou shalt not” broke upon their ears.
There is a decided difference between such a sensation as Paul created in every city visited, and the cheap sensation that some ministerial montebanks bring about. In the instance of the Apostle, the people, attracted by his new methods and his revolutionary message, went away profited. In the instance of the montebank, they are called in the name of bread, and are delivered a stone. The Bible is wonderful in that it touches every feature and phase of human life. There is scarcely any subject with which mortal men have to do that is not discussed within its pages. It is quite practicable, therefore, to bring from its teaching, week in and week out, year after year through the longest pastorate, things “new” as well as “old”; nor is there any reason why the great essentials of spiritual progress should not be so stated as to interest and attract the public.
Think of old Isaiah, that marvelous, most eloquent of Old Testament preachers, and I can imagine the crowds running to see what is up, while he stands on a box at the street corner and lifting his voice until it can be heard afar, cries, “Ho, every one that thirsteth; come ye to the waters; Come ye!”
I know of no modern minister, Billy Sunday included, whose methods were more sensational than were those of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. But the sensationalism of their message was both justified and exceeded by the importance of their message! The third point of recurring equipment is contact with the Christ.
Prayer should be what the trolley pole is to the current in the wire, the medium through which power is conveyed to the wheels of human life.
Dr. Horton, to whom I made reference a few minutes ago, in the same Yale series, said: “The duty of the Christian minister is to bring his people in each service to that mountain top where Jesus retires to pray. No man can do that who has not been there himself and learned all the footprints up the mountain. In vain shall we expect to pray in the name of Jesus on Sunday unless we have been praying in His name all the week. No dress sits easily when it is new and Sunday clothes, which seem by prescription to be permissible in the pews, are useless in the pulpit. You must stand up to preach and pray in your weekday clothes; and therefore the weekday coat must be prayer in the name of Jesus.” When Andrew had spent “a day with Jesus,” it was not difficult for him to persuade Simon Peter. Christ contact is the source of strength.
III. THE PULPIT MINISTRY In preaching the Word certain characteristics should be found in the pastor and also in the evangelist. His ideas should be clearly expressed.—Mudiness of thought, mistiness of expression, are ministerial clouds in which the truth is lost. Among the characteristics of the Bible is clarity. To turn from Mary Baker Eddy’s “Key to the Scriptures” to the Scriptures themselves is like walking out of a California coast-fog into cloudless mountain air.
Since the purpose of preaching is to make the Book more clear, words should be chosen for their simplicity and readiness of understanding. The late O. P. Gifford was marvelous in this matter. His sentences scintillated; they flashed upon your mental vision as the rays of the sun, caught by reflecting glass may be turned upon your face almost with blinding light.
I asked him one day, “Man, how do you manage it?” To which he answered, “I spend hours in simplifying speech. When I ride on a train or street car and people let me alone, I employ my spare minutes in whittling my sentences.” Study simplicity of speech.
Yet again, Employ no artificial tones!
If in what I am saying it has seemed that I am ignoring the feminine section of the school body, let me say that just here I have that particularly in mind. There are men who are unfortunately born with female voices and vice versa. There are women who are blessed with feminine voices; who strongly determine to cultivate masculine ones. The result is the same in both instances, the auditor is repulsed, not attracted. And then, there is the further point of necessary consideration, namely, the assumed artificial, and by some called “holy tones” I was brought up under these. One of the preachers who profoundly influenced my youth was never supposed to be going well until he got to the “holy tones,” and at his best he sucked in his breath with such a voluminous sound, that at a distance of a hundred yards you would have had a hard time to distinguish between the preacher’s voice and the bray of an ass.
There are others who adopt the sing song, or “canonical whang” as one has called it, and to some people that tone is a signal of sanctification. But the truth remains that God had a purpose in the gift of the human voice, and that its proper employment involves a sensible use of the gift itself. Speak naturally provided your nature is not indolent; in that case stir yourself. Speak naturally provided your nature is not grandiloquent; in that case quiet yourself. Talk! Preaching is simply telling the good news of God’s saving grace.
Finally, control emotions; don’t destroy them.
Some speakers let their emotions run away with them. They have scarce begun before they begin to weep. The story is told that two small boys sat in the gallery and listened to a minister who was quite emotional. As he went on from word to word he wept his way through. Finally one of the boys said to the other, “Jack; what is that old codger crying about?” To which his buddy replied, “I guess if you had to stand up there and preach for an hour and a half, and didn’t have anything more to say than he has, you’d cry too.” The minister without emotion is not a true servant of God; he does not stir the people. But his emotion should be controlled! To lose one’s control of self is to lose also the interest, if not the respect, of auditors. On the other hand, the unemotional man cannot be a minister. Forever Jesus of Nazareth will remain the minister’s model. Most of His addresses are calm and logical; but it can never be forgotten that certain subjects stirred Him so deeply that sobs escaped His lips. When He stood on the hill overlooking Jerusalem and realized its coming fate, the waves of emotion swept beyond control, and He wept! One can readily imagine that each of these sentences was voiced in a sob: “Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not. Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.” Again, when He stood beside the grave of Lazarus His soul was swept with a sob. To preach a funeral sermon, or to attempt to administer to the bereaved apart from emotion is simply to add additional hurt to hearts already breaking. In counseling young ministers I know that I could do no better than point to Jesus and say once more: “Behold the Man! imitate Him!”
OUTLINE OF CHAPTER TWO THE PROBLEM OF PREACHING Introductory word—on Ephesians 4:11.
I. THE ESSENTIAL PREPARATION a.The first essential is the divine selection. b.The second essential is a Scripturally based Faith. c.The third essential is consecration to study.
II. THE RECURRING EQUIPMENT a.Scholarship is eminently desirable. b.The selection of sermon subjects should be Spirit-guided. c.Constant contact with Christ is most fundamental.
III. THE PULPIT MINISTRY a.One’s idea should be clearly expressed. b.Employ no artificial tones. c.Control, but do not discard emotion.