1 Timothy 4

1 Timothy 4:14-16

THE MAKING OF THE 1 Timothy 4:14-16. Sermon preached at the ordination of Dr. James W. Ford, of Owatonna, President of Pillsbury Academy, March 3, 1898. I the honor of being requested to preach the sermon of this evening and this occasion.If Dr. Ford were my only auditor, I should reckon this text not only too personal, but presumptuous, so far as my employment of it would be concerned, since my shorter years and more limited experience do not warrant even the appearance of my playing counsellor. But, we are not unmindful of the fact that this is Owatonna, the place of our Pillsbury Academy, in which a great multitude of young men who will eventually enter the ministry are now receiving their education, and I took it for granted that not a few of these would be present and give attention to this evening’s address; so that I am not preaching an ordination sermon in the most limited use of the term, but a sermon on “the making of ministers” instead.There are a host of people who consider a call to the ministry one of the most questionable of Divine favors. They see in that profession only poverty, dependence, much endurance, a target for critics and a secretly cramped life. When they pray the Lord to send laborers into the harvest, the mental reservation is, “But Lord don’t send me, or my son.” They are ambitious for their bone and blood above the ministry. They trust the son and brother may become a bond-holder instead, and the daughter no common missionary, but a leading belle in society.

This spirit of the times gives occasion to the saying of Dr. Cuyler, “The ambition for worldly gains and worldly honors is sluicing the very heart of God’s Church, and drawing off to-day much of its best blood through their greedy outlets.” Such ambitious ones poorly understand the true ministry of Christ and its splendid compensations.You will hunt a long time to find any other set of men who hold their profession in such esteem as do ministers. The last man among us, if he is in earnest, the lowest in ministerial station, the man most neglected and possibly most persecuted, loves his calling still and receives Paul’s speech with enthusiasm, when the Apostle says, “This is a true saying, If a mm desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work”.FOR GIFTED MEN IT IS GOD’S FIRST OFFICE Mark you, I say gifted men. I mean by “gifted” what Paul meant, when to Timothy he wrote, “Neglect not the gift that is in thee”. Paul referred to some of the gifts essential to success in this office. After enumerating the graces the minister must have, he takes occasion twice to say, “apt to teach”. Other gifts are necessary; that one is essential. When I say to my people, I intend to pray God to call your boys into the ministry, I mean some of them.

I do not believe they all ought to enter. I am disposed to agree with that old farmer whose dull son decided he heard a voice bidding him quit the field and flame in the first pulpit that was opened to him, and trying to convince his father that he was Divinely called, he said, “Why father, have you never read, “Preach the Gospel to every creature?’ ”“Yes,” answered the plain man, “the Scriptures say that, but I don’t find any place where they say, ‘Every creature shall preach the Gospel.’”THE GIFT IS TO GROW “Neglect not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy, with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery. “Meditate upon these things; give thyself wholly to them; that thy profiting may appear to all.” God does not put full-grown thought into the mind, nor full-grown oratory into the lips of the newly-called man, any more than he puts oak trees in the newly plowed fields. As the acorn must grow, so must the potentialities of the men called to preach, and I think the Apostle here suggested the means to that desirable end.“Meditate upon these things; give thyself wholly to them”, is one suggestion. It is scarce probable that Paul would change his counsel, if speaking to-night. He would emphasize it by as much as our feverish, nervous century makes meditation a less easy and a more necessary exercise of the soul. The chase that characterizes living in this electrical decade, and this northern latitude is cheating the closet out of its sacred office of prayer-place.We read that Luther used to spend three to four hours a day in meditation and prayer. If a minister did that now, he would need to keep it a secret or consent to being thought dilatory and negligent, and possibly to being dismissed from failure to put in sixteen hours a day for seven days in the week.

And yet who can prove that earnest meditation is not the best study to which a minister can give himself.Dr. Delano, formerly of Chicago, now in Heaven, told me that when, one evening, Mr.

Beecher was to lecture in his Eastern church, they walked together to the House of God at eventide. It happened on a summer day of a glorious sunset, and as the Western sky flamed with its celestial lights, Mr. Beecher stopped and said, “Look, what beauty! What heavenly splendor!” And standing, as if enrapt, he continued to remark, to rave almost, about the beauty.Delano enjoyed it for a time, but like the average American, he shortly took out his watch to see if they were near to the hour of the lecture, and said, “Yes, Mr. Beecher, that’s surpassing; but we must hurry on for it is almost time now for the lecture to begin,” and he started.But Beecher called him back by remarking, “Oh, well, Delano, let us not rush. I want to think. I want to look. I may never see such a sunset again.

This is one of God’s days, and I want time to meditate on His glory. Look! In that glory, I see my GOD.”I have a profound notion that Mr. Beecher’s meditation on God’s truth, whether read from the Word or supplied from nature’s lines, made him the master of many lessons that remained unsolved mysteries to the hasty and flippant spirits of his time.To meditation, Paul would have us add consecration.“Give thyself wholly to them”, suggests the thought of consecration.The modern minister spreads himself over too many fields, we fear. Some of our pastors are nothing to-day than platform lecturers and Sunday preachers. A man cannot give himself wholly to the things of the ministry, when he carries on as much business as his greediest neighbor, and is stimulated by such an ambition as characterizes successful politicians, and is more immersed in social life than the small brained, but beautiful belle.Hamilton says, “Aeropus was the King of Macedonia, and it was his favorite pursuit to make lanterns.

It was reported that he was very good at making them, but his proper business, was to be a king, and therefore the more lanterns he made, the worse king he became.“And if your work be the Gospel Ministry, you must not dissipate your energies on trifles, on things, which lawful in themselves, are still as irrelevant to you as lamp-making is irrelevant to the king.”The preacher of apostolic times was differentiated from his fellows by the very fact that he poured all of his pulsing energies into preaching. He could say, “This one thing I do”, to his people. “I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified”.This apostolic example gives occasion to Prof.

Phelps’ words to ministerial students, “Preach— let other men govern! Preach—let other men organize! Preach—let other men raise funds and look after denominational affairs! Preach—let other men hunt up heresies and do the theological quibbling! Preach—let other men ferret out scandals and try clerical delinquents! Preach—let other men solve the problems of perpetual motion, of which church history is full. Make a straight path between your study and your pulpit on which the grass shall never grow.”If one is truly consecrated to this work, no circumstances are likely to silence him.John Wesley was one day held up by a highway robber, and, while the robber was relieving him of his valuables, he delivered to the desperado a sermon, saying, “Sir, you may sometime repent of this, and if you ever do, remember that ‘the Blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth [you] from all sin’,” and that sermon saved this wretched sinner before many summers had gone by.Consecration to the Gospel of the Son of God would bring in an era of Gospel triumph that might easily eclipse the Pentecost of early times, by as much as the apostles have been multiplied.To consecration Paul enjoins Timothy to add carefulness.“Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine”! In many respects Philip Brooks was a model minister, and beyond doubt one secret of his success lay in the moral and spiritual excellence of the man. A writer to the “Homiletic Review” once said of Brooks, “One essential he magnified above all others—the character of the preacher. He it was who said, ‘Yes, the truth must conquer, but it must first embody itself in goodness. No man can permanently succeed in the ministry who cannot make men think that he is pure and devoted, and the only sure and lasting way to make men believe in one’s devotion is to be what one wishes himself to be believed to be.”It is reported that when Walter Scott was dying he said to his son-in-law, Lockhart, “Be a good man. Be a good man, Lockhart. That is the all-essential.”Our own sainted A.

J. Gordon, than whom none had a better right to speak, said, “Now it would be a grand thing if preachers could only live in their sermons.

Milton declares that, ‘to be a poet, one must make his whole life a poem,’ and it is clear that to be a true preacher one must make his whole life a Gospel sermon. It is a good thing to be able to find sermons in stones, but better to be able to find them in one’s own heart.”As a further essential, the Apostle mentions steadfastness. “Continue in them”.It was the proudest boast of Paul, and yet a boast that had occasion, that, as he neared the end, he could say, “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith”.Because Paul kept the faith, the faith kept him. It is a fact that in doing this, the minister saves both himself and them that hear him. The peril of the preacher, at the present time, lies in the temptation to overthrow the faith once delivered to the saints.How many brethren have forfeited the faith of the New Testament, and how we have seen the glory of their ministry dwindle down and die, leaving them not only in darkness, but effecting a black night for many who used to be of their admiring auditors.I find, in the great city-centers, a superficial culture, falsely so-called, that comes more and more to hold in contempt the plain Gospel of the Son of God; and the pressure that is brought to bear upon the modern preacher to turn him aside from that to “smooth sayings”, no man, outside of the ministry, ever imagines. But, remember young men, I have no need to address your honored President, but you, if you would save yourself to the Gospel of God’s Son and see the souls of them that hear you saved, you also must take heed to yourselves and to your teaching.Dr. Gordon tells of having heard an honest Bishop of Massachusetts, who was a broad churchman, without an apology, preach from the text, “We know that the Son of God is come”, in which he most eloquently set forth the thought that the King’s Son had been sent forth to visit an outlying province of the Kingdom; that on the announcement of His arrival, people were filled with an outburst of popular acclaim, and the people said one to another, “The King’s Son honors us with a visit.

He is our Prince. We are, therefore, brothers.”And then he drew his lessons—a new sense of our Divine sonship; a new impulse to universal brotherhood.

It was fascinating, oratorical, beautifully colored, and the crowd left to pay high compliment. But Gordon, in reply to one who expressed his admiration, said, “An eloquent sermon, surely, but do not the Scriptures teach that when the King’s Son came the citizens hated him, would not have him to reign over them, and eventually killed Him?”“Oh, yes, but,” replied the man, “you must remember that the preacher is an idealist,” to which Gordon remarks, “That is the point of the whole matter! We have no business being idealists; we are bound to be realists in the pulpit since we live in a world of real sinners, in danger of real judgment, a judgment resting on the awful, the real fact, that men have rejected the Son of God.” Idealism in poetry and romance, if you please; but not in the sermon!Not that one should be a pessimist in preaching, any more than an optimist; but, whatever else he is, he must be a truthist! He is the best friend of humanity who allures men from their self-complacent dreams and sets before them the real life of God’s revealed truth. “Take heed unto * * the doctrine”!THE SAVING OF SOULS IS THE ALL- END OF THE “Continue in them: for in so doing thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee”. We have already referred to the fact that to depart from the faith is self-destruction to the Gospel minister and we will not further treat that theme, but rather emphasize the suggestion of the last sentence, “and them that hear thee”.The saving of souls! That is the first and incomparable essential to the ministry. Souls—the subjects of essential worth, of priceless value! In the balance with one soul, the world with its wealth is wanting.J. Wilbur Chapman tells the story of the illegal arrest and imprisonment in Abyssinia of a certain Englishman named Campbell. It took six months for the English government to learn of this circumstance.

When it did so learn, a demand was made upon the King for his immediate release, but he haughtily refused it. The next day, 10,000 English soldiers shipped down the channel to the South Seas, and landing, they walked miles under a burning sun to the Abyssinian mountain height where Campbell was incarcerated, and there made battle. Tearing down the walls of the castle they carried Campbell out upon their shoulders and bore him off in victory to their English home. Six months were required for the expedition; ten thousand men were engaged in it and twenty-five millions of dollars were expended for it—all that the body of an English subject might be set free.Beloved, isn’t it worth time and energy, and expense, to bring release to God’s subjects who are bound by the evil one and destined, unless His soldiers effect their salvation, to remain in eternal chains?“Continue in them: for in doing this thou shalt * * save * * them that hear thee”. This is the chief compensation of the ministry— souls saved! It is an enthusiastic pen that James wields when he writes,“Let him know, that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins”. My own ministry has not been as fruitful as it ought to have been, nor yet half so fruitful as with better consecration; but, as I look over the years given to this work, or count the souls saved, or stand in the pulpit on the Sabbath and see the earnest faces of new converts into whose eyes new light has come; into whose hearts the holiness of God’s Son has been introduced, and into whose life the truest heroism has been born, I understand what Theodore Cuyler meant when, commenting on Paul’s word to the Thessalonians, 1 Thessalonians 2:9-20, he said, “Paul, I thank thee for a thousand things, but for nothing do I thank thee more than for that golden sentence in these words, ‘I have kept the faith’.”The greatest of Christian pastors rising above the poverty, homelessness and scorn that surrounds him reaches forth his hand and grasps his royal diadem. No man shall rob the glorious hero of his crown; no chaplet worn by Roman conqueror in the hour of his brightest triumph equals the crown that Pastor Paul sees flashing before his eyes. It is a crown blazing with stars for every immortal soul brought from the darkness of sin into the light and liberty of a child of God! Poor is he? He is making men rich!Despised is he? He would not change places with Caesar!Homeless is he?

His citizenship is in Heaven where he will find myriads whom he will meet and say to them, “Ye are our glory and joy”!Dr. Ford, you have held an honorable station until now. To be the President of such an institution; to be a power in moulding the thought of youth in moral and spiritual, as certainly as in intellectual lines; to educate the head and heart of young men and women that they might go forth to sweeten society, advance culture, and honor Christ, is to be a minister of Jesus Christ indeed.But to so give yourself to the things of the Word as to save them that hear you, and set them into “the path of the just” which “is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day”, is to take higher steps still; and so I congratulate you on the exaltation of this hour, and pray God to give to you (and to those of us who have entered the ministry, or who shall) the unspeakable privilege of winning men from the error of their way, of educating them into all holiness, and of fitting them for Heaven. Such a work God’s own Son counted worthy His labors and life! “It is enough for the disciple to be as his master, and the servant as his Lord”!