06.01. Chapter 1: The Preacher And His Preaching

Chapter 1 THE PREACHER AND HIS PREACHING IN BEGINNING this series of lectures to theological students, I have chosen as an appropriate title for a volume on homiletics, The Preacher and His Preaching.

It is my hope, and perhaps I should say my expectation, if life should be spared through the year, 1947, to publish these lectures in a textbook suitable for Bible training schools and theological seminaries.

I am quite disposed to believe that “The Preacher and His Preaching” is God’s plan for this—the church age; that from the days of John the Baptist until now, and further until Christ shall come to conclude the present dispensation, preaching has been, and will continue to be, the divinely-appointed medium of winning men to Jesus Christ. As the Apostle Paul, writing to the Corinthians, said: “For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe” (1 Corinthians 1:21).

We have had modern prophets suggest “a moratorium on preaching” of at least two years’ duration, arguing that it would be for the good of the nation; and another prophecy that “in ten years the custom of preaching would have been abandoned”; but neither suggestion was taken seriously, even! Time has already proven the inanity of both propositions. It still remains a fact, as was demonstrated in the days of John the Baptist and further illustrated in the ministry of the Master, that wherever a great preacher appears, great audiences gather.

It is now pretty generally conceded that it is not the multiplication of priests, magnificence of rituals, attractions of music, semi-political or professedly scientific disquisitions that call men and women in crowds! It is, as always, by great preaching, and there is no indication of approaching change. In the judgment of this writer, therefore, the objective of the present-day Bible training school and theological seminary should not be the finished orator, nor the superb scholar, nor the social reformer, nor the religious specialist, nor the popular author, but the virile Gospel preacher instead.

Turning now to the subject of our introductory chapter we will consider first THE PREACHER

Here I am righteously solicitous to discuss briefly and Biblically only the greater essentials. The profession is so many-sided that it would be almost confusing to attempt a full presentation of all that should be found in the ideal. There are, however, certain absolutes. We select three for consideration.

First, his profession should be a divine appointment. This subject we have discussed in Pastoral Problems, chapter one. Its importance is such, however, as to justify restatement and further emphasis.

Paul, writing to Timothy, 2 Timothy 1:11, speaks of himself as “appointed a preacher, and an apostle, and a teacher of the Gentiles” He evidently believed that he was among ‘the gifts’ to the church made by his ascended Lord in the promise of ‘prophets, apostles, evangelists, pastors and teachers.’ It is a significant fact that Paul was so impressed with the importance of divine appointment to the office of preaching that he claimed that high honor in every Epistle penned by him. To the Romans he said, “Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle” (Romans 1:1). To the Corinthians he repeated, “Paul, called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 1:1). Even when he wrote the second Epistle to the same Corinthian people, he repeated his divine nomination, and so on to the end. This is attested by the study of the first verse of every Epistle bearing his name, with the exception of the Epistle to the Hebrews, where the authorship has long been in dispute. Among the few arguments to be found in the favor of those who doubt that Paul penned this Epistle would be the failure to introduce it with a claim of divine appointment to the ministry.

It is indeed a question whether or not any man should ever occupy that high and holy office, except God set him in the same. It is not a profession to be chosen by mere human preference or occupied for personal pleasure or promotion. Ambassadors must have the backing of the throne!

Second, his preparation should be steeped in prayer.

Here we appeal to Pentecost in demonstration of our claim. The apostles, “Peter, and James, and John, and Andrew, Philip, and Thomas, Bartholomew, and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon Zelotes, and Judas the brother of James. These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication” (Acts 1:13-14). But for the upper-room ten days that preceded Pentecost, it is extremely doubtful if Peter’s preaching and the testimonies of the others could ever have fruited in the three thousand converts. A good story is told concerning two colored preachers whose conversation (eaves-dropped) went after this manner:

“Where am yo’ all preachin’ now, Brothah?”

“Nowhere,” was the answer.

“A fine preacher like yo’ is, too!” said the first.

“That is just it,” retorted the second, “I’m a preachin’ preacher; and what the las’ congregation wanted was a prayin’ preacher, and that ain’t in my line. Seems like too much specialization these days!”

It remains a fact, however, that specialization in prayer has always been the sine qua non of the gospel ministry. In his Yale lectures, R. F. Horton encouraged the students for the ministry to make the mountain top of prayer the place of constant visitations, and reminded them that no man could lead his people to that pinnacle of privilege who was not accustomed to go there himself and who had not made many footpaths up that hill.

I have found in one of my scrapbooks the following statement: “Years of millennial glory have been lost by a prayer-less church. The coming of our Lord Jesus has been postponed by a prayerless church. Hell has enlarged herself in the presence of a prayerless church. We are raising up a prayerless set of saints.” If there is some truth in that indictment, and there is, the ministry cannot escape responsibility. “And it shall be, as with the people, so with the priest” (Isaiah 24:2).

Third, his speech should be Holy Spirit empowered. The reservoir of hope for the ministry is in the Master’s promise, “Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me” (Acts 1:8). It is quite customary for the opponents of complete education for the ministry to remind the scholarly ambitious of the day that Dwight L. Moody of America was never equalled as an evangelist by the proudest product of our American universities; that Charles Spurgeon of England was never surpassed as a pastor or pulpiteer by anyone of the Cambridge or Oxford valedictorians; that Campbell Morgan, as an expositor, outshone all the competitors of his day; and since not one of them ever had any university education, the implication is that higher learning too often ignores the need of the Holy Ghost. But it might be well to recall the fact that Savonarola stirred all Florence to repentance and moral revolution; Martin Luther shook the entire fabric of Catholicism; President Dwight of Yale downed the skeptics of his day; Phillips Brooks of Boston made for himself an international reputation as a marvelous expositor of Scripture and interpreter of Christianity: each and every one of them reached the highest learning, giving basis to the better claim that what the preacher needs is the power of the Spirit resting upon him, whether he be the unlearned fisherman—Peter, or Paul—the proudest product of Gamaliel’s school.

Henry Ward Beecher, the Shakespeare of the American pulpit, once when speaking on “The Power of Humble Fidelity” said, “I have seen teachers and preachers whose distress of mind seemed to be that they were endowed with a royalty of talents which made it very difficult for them to know where to go. They were like big men-of-war that do not dare go into shallow channels for fear of running aground. On the other hand, I have known little, uncomely men, like Paul, who never thought about where they should bestow themselves, who took no great account of their talents, but who had warm hearts, and who were morning and evening by the roadside or in the car, or in the cottage of the poor, or in the resplendent mansion of the rich and who, wherever they were, were opening the fountain of true and divine benevolence.” If, in the explanation of this difference, one goes deep enough, he will discover that in the last analysis, it depends upon whether man is trusting in his own superiority or looking to the never-failing source of power—the Holy Spirit. We hear a good deal said these days about “tarry meetings.” The claim for them, at times, has come from questionable quarters, but the tarrying necessity will never pass! The preacher should never forget that “power belongeth unto God” (Psalms 62:11). HIS PREACHING

All that has been said to date regarding the preacher prepares the way for the further subject of his preaching. On this theme, you will pardon me if I employ three somewhat inclusive statements.

First, the Book should be his checking bank.

Paul, writing to Timothy, enjoined upon his junior, “Preach the word,” (2 Timothy 4:2). The word of the Lord to Jonah in the far past has never needed changed expression. Concerning Nineveh He said, “Go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I hid thee” (Jonah 3:2). Harwood Pattison, who has what I regard the best book on homiletics published within seventy-five years, defines preaching as the “spoken communication of divine truth with a view to persuasion,” Mark his language, “communication of divine truth” When in the mountain of Galilee Christ gave his marching orders for the church, He said to his chosen disciples, “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:18-20).

It may sound strange to this generation for me to remind it that William R. Harper was not always as remote from loyalty to the Bible as he became in his later years. I have in one of my scrapbooks a fine quotation from his pen to this effect,

There is a lamentable ignorance of the Bible on the part of many ministers and of students preparing for the ministry. Theological seminaries founded for the purpose of training men in the knowledge of God, His Word, and His dealings with men, discuss deeply the question whether God is knowable, spend much time in deciding whether the Bible is, after all, the Word of God, and study minutely every heresy that has sprung up since Christianity was established, while God as manifested in His Word, and the Word as giving God’s idea to men, are ignored.

Second, the preacher’s theme should be Christ and Him crucified. The decision of the learned apostle, as he exercises his ministry among the cultured Corinthians, becomes an example. Paul said, “For I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2). When Philip went down to the city of Samaria, he had but one subject for his sermons, he “preached Christ unto them.”

Dr. Theodore Cuyler of the Lafayette Avenue Church, Brooklyn, was at once a great pastor, a noble soul, and an efficient servant of Jesus Christ. When, at the end of thirty years he was unwillingly surrendering his loved work, delivering his last pastoral discourse on the joys of the Christian ministry, he said,

Today I write the last page in the record of thirty bright, happy, Heaven-blessed years among you. . . . When my closing eyes shall look on that record for the last time, I hope to discover there only one name—the name that is above every name, the name of Him whose glory crowns this Easter morn with radiant splendor, the name of Jesus Christ.

Blessed is that ministry which honors Him, ‘Whom God hath highly exalted and given a name which is above every name,’ the only One of Whom it could be said, “Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” To me, Joseph Parker was a mighty minister of the gospel of Christ. Christian philosophy scintillated at his lips, and I resent any criticism of his professional career; and yet I can understand the report of that American who, when in London years ago, went to hear Parker in the morning and Spurgeon at night, and was reputed to have commented concerning the morning service, “Grand preaching, marvelous pulpit oratory,” but at the close of the evening sermon delivered by Mr. Spurgeon said, “what a wonderful Saviour is Jesus I” The ministry that brings a compliment to the minister will never equal the ministry that exalts the Christ.

Third, his purpose should be complete persuasion.

Let us not forget the Harwood Pattison definition of preaching: “The spoken communication of divine truth with a view to persuasion .” The objective of every sermon should be identical.

Paul speaks of his ministry as “the ministry of reconciliation” and when he stood before Festus and pleaded the cause of Christ, Agrippa said unto Paul, “Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian” In fact, that was his absolute intent!

If the preacher’s sermon does not move to the objective of decision, as the arrow strikes straight for its intended mark, that minister’s preaching is in vain, and the oratory of politicians commonly employed for the express purpose of winning to an idea should surely shame him.

It is said that when Demosthenes addressed the Athenians against the Macedonians, his audience arose crying, “Let us go fight Philip”; and that when Mark Antony indicted the murderers of Julius Caesar, he stirred his auditors to action; and when Wellington, rising in his stirrups, shot forth the thrilling command, “Let the whole line advance!” Napoleon’s opposition was doomed. So when the minister reaches the conclusion and acme of his appeal (and there should be one), his audiences ought to be emotionally moved to high decision; the Christian company to undertake more for Christ, and the unconverted crowd to instantly accept Him. But I have brought you thus far, omitting the most important point concerning the whole subject of the preacher and his preaching, namely, HIS PREPARATION

Paul, writing to the Romans, raised the question, “How shall they preach except they be sent?” We propose a kindred interrogation, “How shall they preach except they be prepared?”

We have already suggested the necessity of prayer in preparation for preaching, but there are other essentials that should be added. Let me mention three of them. The first of them is self preparation! No man is fitted for a pulpit ministration of the Word merely because he is physically in fine fettle and mentally equipped. Preaching demands body and mind, but still more, an attuned spirit.

Walter Trine, the Christian Scientist, has a book entitled, In Tune With the Infinite. While dissenting from his general conception we willingly assent to the suggestion that no man can preach whose spirit is not in tune with the Holy One. To me, that is the explanation of what Joseph Parker, the great London Temple preacher, had in mind when asked concerning his remarkable prayers commonly uttered in connection with the Temple service. The question was, “Mr. Parker, do you prepare your prayers before you enter the pulpit?”

It was a very natural question, because any man reading Joseph Parker’s pulpit prayers is profoundly impressed by the intensity of feeling that even cold print cannot deaden, the chastity of language in which they were commonly voiced, and, above all, the almost infinite variety that characterized his successive petitions. His answer was illuminating in the last degree.

“No indeed! I prepare myself by prayer, rather than prepare the prayers. They are the spontaneous utterances of my heart as these are given by the Holy Ghost. I do not feel as if they were mine, and ofttimes I feel refreshed by what passes through my soul and by what is uttered by my lips, and sometimes I stop suddenly because no more has been given me to say.” A frequent visitor to the Temple, himself a minister, said, “I can listen to Parker’s sermons without a tear; but I cannot control my emotions when I follow him in his prayers.”

Let it be understood, then, that no man is prepared to preach until by communion with the Father he has somehow come into tune with the Infinite.

Second, study, not school, is the “sine qua non”!

God forbid that I should say aught that would discourage education. I believe in it. That’s why I am giving my life to it. I believe in schools. That’s why I attended them and why I have established three of them. Both the teaching of Scripture and my observation have convinced me fully and, once for all, that the school is important because it is a place of study, provides opportunity for study; in fact, lays upon the student the demands of study. It is not the school, therefore, that makes the preacher. It is the study instead! That is how it happened that Mr. Moody could be America’s most outstanding preacher and never know aught of higher schools of learning. He was a student. That is how it came to pass that Mr. Spurgeon was, like Saul of old, head and shoulders above the preachers of his country and generation. He saw little of the schools. He knew much of study. That’s why it came to pass that Campbell Morgan, the non-schooled but the assiduous student, outshone his fellow ministers in pulpit ministrations, especially in Biblical exposition.

I have a very dear friend, of my own age, who enjoys a national reputation as a Bible expositor. One day I asked him the question, “What college are you from?”

He laughed, “None!”

“What theological seminary?”

“Never saw the inside of one!”

“What high school?”

“Never entered one.”

“Where, then, were you trained?” His answer was, “In the College of Hard Knocks!” The truth was that he was self-trained by assiduous study. Nothing can take the place of it. Many a man has a sheepskin from college who is not a student and consequently, holds little or no prospect of eventual success. Many a student who has no diploma from any earthly school is on his way upward, and no man can tell to what heights he will eventually rise.

If your work in school makes a student of you, one of the essential preparations for preaching will have been accomplished. If you leave school with no love of study, the background of the school will be of little value.

Paul, writing to Timothy, said, “Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.”

Third, the Spirit’s enduement is the secret of power.

We have incidentally referred to this fact in the previous sentence of this communication, but we desire now to lay upon it special emphasis. Beyond question, one of the ways of impressing truth is by illustration, and a little while ago I happened upon a little booklet entitled The March of Faith, written by Lindley J. Baldwin. It was the story of a young African boy whose native name was Kaboo, but who, in the process of changes, came to be known as Samuel Morris. There seems every evidence that the story is true to the last letter; and, beyond all question, it is equally a divine work of grace and even more exciting and dramatic than was the conversion of the Apostle Paul. In fact, in many respects it parallels it, and in some, surpasses that outstanding historic incident.

Kaboo was the son of a tribal chieftain, and, as is the custom among the tribes of Africa, his father was often involved in war, and when the loser, was compelled to pay a ransom. Three times over he fought other chieftains and three times he lost; and, in each instance, after he had brought to his successful opponent every material expression of wealth that his tribe owned, the conquerer demanded more, and the son was turned over as a hostage. In each instance he was mercilessly beaten with the view to compelling his father to put up more wealth and thereby soften his sufferings. In the third instance the cruel, drinking chieftain finally went to the point of burying Kaboo in an upright position, leaving only his head above ground that ants, in the big ant-hill near by, might slowly torment to death and carry away by bits, every particle of flesh. It was at that point that the Lord interposed. Suddenly a light above the brightness of the sun broke over the entire company, blinding his tormentors, and an audible voice was heard, telling Kaboo to quit the grave and flee. All heard the voice and saw the light, but they saw no man, save Kaboo. In spite of the weakened condition of the lad from beatings and loss of blood, he was filled with strength from every muscle, and though he had had nothing to eat for a day or two, he felt neither hunger nor weariness. Leaping out, he obeyed, fleeing with the speed of a deer before the astonished eyes of his persecutors. Running into the forest he shortly found that night was falling, and felt that he had no more safety among the beasts and serpents than he had enjoyed with these beastly men; but, strange to say, the same light that had lifted him from the living grave reappeared with the coming of darkness and illumined the path ahead of his feet. It was like the time when the children of Israel, leaving Egypt, had the Lord go before them by day in a pillar of cloud and by night in a pillar of fire, and for the same purpose, ‘to give him light.’

Thus directed and illumined to the point where neither man nor beast approached him, he kept his way through the forest until he suddenly came upon a village of a sort he had never dreamed. Strange white men were found there, and to his amazement they were kind, and from them he learned of one Stephen Merritt in New York City, a far-away place of which he had never heard before; but in his yearnings after the truth he decided to go to New York and sit at the feet of Stephen Merritt, and in order to learn from him, become his slave.

After he was thrice rejected, a brutal sea captain, forced by the shortage of help, finally took him on; and though storms and enemies threatened the voyage many times and a number of the ship’s crew were killed in the process, Kaboo at last was put down in New York City.

He saw a man passing, and having learned from white friends in Africa of Stephen Merritt, Kaboo asked the man if he knew him. He was one of the roustabouts that hang around missions, and he said, “Yes, I will take you to him,” which he did.

Stephen Merritt proved afresh his wonderful Christian profession by taking this black ragged little boy into his home and found out shortly that wherever the boy went men were on their faces in penitence, crying to God for salvation. The colored meetings that he addressed were shaken as was the Jerusalem company on that day of Pentecost, and white people in great numbers repented at his word. The school that Stephen Merritt arranged for him to attend in Indiana, Taylor University, was on the verge of bankruptcy and door closing; but through the influence of this lad, money began to flow in, and upon his later and sudden death the flow continued until the school was recovered.

It is the most remarkable story printed in America in a hundred years, and it is the finest illustration of the fact that neither natural ability, nor literary culture, nor university opportunity, compare in imparting power to the preacher as does the enduement of the Holy Ghost.

I conclude this lecture, therefore, with the Master’s injunction, “Tarry ye . . . , until ye be endued with power from on high.”

BIBLIOGRAPHY Garvie, A. E. The Preachers of the Church (New York: George H. Doran Co., 1926).

Patton, C. S. Preparation and Delivery of Sermons (Chicago: Willett, Clark & Co., 1938).