01.06. But How Shall They Preach Except They Be Sent?
But how shall they preach except they be sent? That introduces another and very important consideration, namely, the necessary spiritual equipment of A FULLY QUALIFIED SERVANT. In what does his fitness consist? It consists, we believe, in the measure in which, by the Spirit’s help, he makes use of two mighty moral forces. And we may add that it is to these two forces he owes not only his power to testify, but his very existence as a Christian. The first is a positive force, the second a negative one. Both are inseparable from Christ, and each one inseparable from the other.
I order more simply to draw the reader’s attention to the first of these, which, for the want of a better term we call moral forces, we shall follow the Spirit’s example and personify the same.
We would beg the reader to note carefully the various features as they come before him, and say if he does not consider that such a servant, if unhindered, would be a fitting vessel to do his Master’s work, carry his Master’s message, express his Master’s mind and spirit, and to do it anywhere. Behold, then, HIS MORAL PORTRAIT.
He can suffer with patience and still retain a kindly spirit - “suffereth long, and is kind”. Can see superior favours shown to others without the least jealous grudging - “envieth not”. Is neither rash nor insolent - “vaunteth not itself”.
Without self-importance - “not puffed up”. Not unmannerly - “doth not behave itself unseemly”.
Unselfish - “seeketh not her own”. Can endure vexations and contradictions - “not easliy provoked”.
Puts the best possible construction on everybody’s conduct - “thinketh no evil”. No scandal-monger, he rejoices in what is good and right, and is never glad to speak of the sins and shortcomings of others - “rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth with the truth”.
Very patient - “beareth all things”.
Never suspicious - “believeth all things”.
Always cheerful - “hopeth all things”. Will put up with anything - “endureth all things”.
Come what may, is never without resource - “never faileth”.
We have only to direct your attention to 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 to show you that the first quality in a divine equipment for any service is love. This is abundantly set forth in Scripture.
Love is the outward mark of every true disciple, the inward power of all acceptable service. In 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 we are not told what we ought to do, but what love does, whether we have it or whether we have not.
“Love is of God: and every one that loveth is born of God”.
Without love, in God’s account, we are nothing.
Men may go to college and learn to preach, but they must be “taught of God to love”, 1 Thessalonians 4:9.
Money may build imposing edifices, educate able preachers, train effective choirs, and purchase magnificent organs; but
“if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned”, Song of Solomon 8:7.
He may be taught to understand all mysteries; he may be well schooled in scriptural knowledge, and be as eloquent as an angel to set it forth, but if he has not taught of God to love he will have no more spiritual power to win a soul for Christ than the church bell or the chapel organ. The tongue of the bell can only set forth what the bell is, and however unconsciously, the unconverted preacher can only do the same; while an unseen hand writes “sounding brass” on both.
“Big Ben” lets all London know what his own sounding powers are, and “Simon Magus” gave out that “himself was some great one”. But Paul wrote: “We preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord”, 2 Corinthians 4:5.
“The Faithful and True Witness - Christ Himself” - Revelation 3:14 - was the perfect expression of Another. The love that sent Him, the love He was constantly enjoying, was the love that was every seen in Him. So should it be with every true servant. And so will it be according to the intimacy of his communion with the love expressed to him in Christ. Of course it is only those who are truly born of the Spirit, and have received the forgiveness of their sins, that can, by the Holy Ghost, enter into this; and only to such we here address ourselves.
“We love Him because He first loved us”.
It is by knowing His love that we love; and as the knowledge of His love increases in us, our love grows. The Holy Ghost sheds abroad that love in our hearts - Romans 5:5 - and, as He does so, our love is strengthened. Hence the first-mentioned “fruit of the Spirit” is “love”, Galatians 5:22. But how is it, says one, that with such marvellous possibilities as are to be found in the possession of the Spirit of Christ, I am able to express so little? This brings us to the consideration of the other element in the fitness of a divinely qualified servant.
We have said that the two elements of this qualification are inseparable.
Take an illustration. When a steamboat is about to commence her voyage two things are absolutely necessary.
She must have a motive force strong enough to propel her - an engine with steam to work it.
She must be able to resist and exclude the element that will beset her on every side from start to finish - the water through which she is driven.
Without the latter she would not go very far; without the former she would not go at all. The engineer who desires a record passage may think almost exclusively of the first, but a wise captain will carefully consider both.
Now let us seek to apply our figure. The motive power is love - “the love of Christ constraineth us”. The constantly besetting element is self. The only effective excluder is death.
Hence, if we are not to make “shipwreck” of our testimony, the great propeller and the great excluder - Love and Death - must go hand-in-hand together. Even Adam himself, outside the garden, was only like the ship we have been describing. The comfort of his Creator’s loving-kindness could be enjoyed within; the humbling witness of what he was could be seen in the skin outside. But a more marvellous development of the story had yet to be told. The Creator Himself, veiled in flesh, would come into this world of sin, and in His own holy Person would positively make use of death for the ends of love! Could anything be more marvellous? Well might the angels desire to look into such a mystery. But its foreshadowing was on record long before it was actually carried into effect. Did Goliath’s sword make Israel tremble? In the hand of David the same weapon should be used to drive all fear from their hearts and fill their mouths with praise. Did Satan’s weapon, death, strike fear and terror into the whole of Adam’s race? Hebrews 2:14-15. “By death” - the death of Jesus - God would declare His perfect love; and it is His “perfect love that casteth out fear”, 1 John 4:18. But we have yet to learn another thing. More was involved in Christ’s death than the putting away of our sins. And unless by the Spirit this is experimentally apprehended we can neither fully enjoy the love expressed, not be fitting witnesses of it to others. In every believer on earth an evil propensity still exists, and though, as born of the Spirit, with Christ as an object for his affections, a new being has been formed in him, yet “that which is born of the flesh is flesh”.
It is not only still there, but not one whit better than the day when man crowned the wickedness of crucifying the Lord of glory by battering to death a man who testified of Him - “Stephen full of the Holy Ghost”.
It is of this evil root - self, as born of Adam - that the apostle speaks when he says:
“I know that in me - that is, in my flesh - dwelleth no good thing”, Romans 7:18.
Now if this in dwelling principle of evil was such that nothing but the death of Christ could deliver the believer from it, then by that death God has proclaimed its hopeless exclusion from His service; has proclaimed it as unmistakably as by the flaming sword of the cherubims He proclaimed Adam’s exclusion from Eden. And if there was no more place for fallen man to “dress” and “keep” that garden, even before he had gone to the length of murdering God’s Son, how can there possibly be room in God’s present harvest-field for that which is born of the same degenerate stock?
If the services of disobedient Adam were righteously refuse, how could the services of the murderer Cain be righteously accepted?
What we have to learn is this great moral principle of Exclusion.
If you could improve the flesh you would do more than God did after trying it under various test for four thousand years.
If you imagine that you can bring to an end its actual existence within you, the Spirit of God says you are only deceiving yourself. 1 John 1:8.
Then you say, What can I do? We repeat, Learn the lesson of Self-Exclusion.
Gideon, before his great victory, had to learn it, however dimly; and we too must learn it, however slowly. By God’s special command, all that were “fearful and afraid” were excluded from Gideon’s ranks. Twenty thousand fell out immediately.
Self-preservation has long been called “the first law of nature”. So it may be; but self-condemnation and self-renunciation are the first elements in the triumphs of grace.
Then followed another ordeal. They were brought face to face with one of their greatest mercies - water. The test of non-self-gratification was applied.
All alike participated in the mercy itself, but nine thousand seven hundred of them showed symptoms of self-indulgence, and were excluded forthwith; and by “the sword of the Lord and of Gideon” the fearless, self-denying three hundred gained the victory without them! Judges 8:3, Judges 8:5. When the disciples asked respecting their inability to deliver the child from the power of the devil, “Why could not we cast him out?” the same secret came out –
“This kind can come forth by nothing but by prayer and fasting”, Mark 9:28-29.
Prayer brings the Blesser in. Fasting shuts the hinderer out.
Death is the great excluder, and fasting is the application of death in principle. Carried to its extremity it would be actual death.
Fasting is self-denial, but it is more: it is the denial of self. But even fasting in the way of self-denial is of the greatest service in the individual work of the gospel.
Secret self-denial has a peculiar joy of its own. It enables us to minister more freely to the temporal needs of the poor as we come across them. One shilling thus used in the compassions of Christ, we verily believe, will do more real service than all the stately spires in Christendom, though their cost could only be expressed in millions! The converted working man of our acquaintance who bought old sleepers out of his own earnings, chopped them up for firewood in his spare hours, and carried the result of his labour to the poor and aged, was no mean servant. [It was not from the man himself we got this information, but from his next-door neighbour.] True Christianity is full of such beauties! The bestowal of God’s unspeakable Gift cost Him something! And even the giving of a converted thief is to cost him something also, that he may have the honour of being an “imitator of God”.
“Rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth”, Ephesians 4:28; Ephesians 5:1. But to return. In the cross God writes His “No” on man born after the flesh. My own experimental knowledge of him gives me by the Spirit to write my “No” on the same man. Galatians 5:17.
Christ’s death as thoroughly excludes all hope of good in that man as the cursing of the barren fig tree excluded all hope of fruit in it.
Thus does the believer learn to take sides with God against himself, and judge in himself that which God has judged at the cross.
What a lovely specimen of the “victorious three hundred” type was Paul! What fearlessness when the interests of Christ were in question!
- “We were bold in our God to preach the gospel”.
What absolute self-renunciation too!
- “Death worketh in us, but life in you”.
What a tight rein he held! He did not go down on his hands and knees to make earthly comforts his object, thought constantly on his knees for the welfare and spiritual comfort of others! No wonder that he was carried in triumph everywhere. But perhaps some reader may say, “We are not all Pauls today”. No. And what is more, there are no Pauls today. But we have Paul’s God to please, and Paul’s gospel to preach, and Paul’s example to follow, and Paul’s equipment open to us!
All that is wanted is Paul’s heart to use it; and for that we have the same love that constrained Paul, and the same blessed Spirit’s power to shed abroad that love within us. What encouragement! But spite of this, some one may say, “How could I reach these ‘go-nowheres’ even if I tried?”
How? Consider the two mighty forces at your disposal, and you will soon settle that question for yourself. Is there any person in any house in the land that Death cannot reach? Is he to be abashed by the surroundings of the proud and wealthy, or kept at distance by the squalor of the dissipated poor? Does he wince at man’s laugh of scorn, or fall back as if paralysed by the sight of his indifference? Not he! Of all the fallen race who can resist him? Who can match his strength?
Well, he has found his match.
“Love is strong as death”, Song of Solomon 8:6. Is death able to reach the multitude? So is love! With such forces at our back we have nothing to fear.
Millions are made up of units, and “there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth”.