06.04. Chapter 4: The Ministry For Our Day
Chapter 4 THE MINISTRY FOR OUR DAY Scripture Reading—Titus 2:1-15
YOUNG MEN, consciously called to the ministry, are favored indeed if privileged years of preparation at the feet of a great teacher. Doubtless one reason why the twelve apostles became immortal was the circumstance that eleven of them were trained at the feet of the MASTER Himself; and Paul, though converted by a vision of the Risen One, became also His disciple, and, having felt the posthumous power of His personality, was made an apostle.
Timothy and Titus were trained at Paul’s feet. Their teacher combined in himself many of the greater essentials to high instruction. He was, by nature, brilliant; by opportunity, cultured; by experience, Christian; by legal practice, an orator; and it was a superb privilege that Timothy and Titus enjoyed as favorite pupils of the famed Paul. His letters to these ardent students have been, to the ministry of twenty centuries, maps marking the way to success, and books of instruction on both professional behavior and possible attainment. Our theme is stated as “The Ministry For Our Day”; but it is my deliberate intention to make evident that the ministry for our day is the ministry for every century and every country ‘til He shall come!
These high points I propose to phrase in three suggestions: Sound in Belief, Saintly in Behavior, and Seeing That Blessed Hope.
SOUND IN BELIEF To Titus, Paul wrote, “Speak thou the things which become sound doctrine” (Titus 2:1). A Biblical belief is basal to the gospel ministry. That is why it seems inconceivable that any theological modernist should ever be spoken of as “a gospel minister.” Some years ago The Christian Century of Chicago (a confessedly modernist magazine, perhaps its perfect mouthpiece) said, “The God of the Fundamentalists is one God; the God of the Modernists is another. The Christ of the Fundamentalist is one Christ; the Christ of the Modernists, another. The Bible of the Fundamentalists is one Bible; the Bible of the Modernists is another.”
Thereupon the Christian cartoonist, Pace, immediately drew a picture revealing this division, in the form of a cleft in the mountain, on one side of which unbridgeable chasm was written. “The faith once delivered to the saints; namely, the Bible as the Word of God; Christ as the Son of God,” and so on through the essential teachings of Scripture. On the other side of the chasm, “The Bible, containing something of the Word of God; Christ, the son of a carpenter; Evolution, the explanation of all nature, et cetera.” The man who adopts the former for himself and who teaches the same to his fellows is in line with Paul’s injunction to Titus, ‘Believing and speaking sound doctrine whereas the cleric who proclaims the second, is a renegade from the ‘faith once delivered,’ and he faces the public with a message which may rightly name itself Modernism, but which can lay no claim to either a divine origin, or, for its proclamation, to a divine commission. The Baptist magazine, The Watchman-Examiner, in its “Forum Department” carried in the issue of May 14, 1942, an article on ORDINATION from the pen of W. Everett Henry. When we commenced reading it, we supposed it would be the usual plea for an A. B., possibly an A.M., college degree, together with a diploma from a theological seminary that had celebrated its centennial, as essentials to “the laying on of the hands”! But, instead, we were treated to a pleasant surprise. It called for “an accurate knowledge of the contents of the Bible as a condition of ordination.” Certainly! Young men going forth to practice medicine are supposed to be made familiar with the science of materia medica. Young men entering the profession of the law are supposed to have studied jurisprudence for some years; and young men entering the ministry, whatever else they do not know, should be familiar with SCRIPTURE. That is why the Bible training schools of the country are rapidly outgrowing the theological seminaries; and that is why the churches of the country are accepting their output is such a large measure as to greatly disturb seminary centers. In my own case, though having my college degrees of A. B. and A.M. and a full course diploma from a noted seminary, I left both institutions with a better knowledge of geology than I had of Genesis, having given far more time to the dead languages than to “the living Word.” That experience accounts for the fact that for those who are graduating from Northwestern, my school, BIBLE study has been their major; and, while not neglecting cognate requirements, the emphasis for the daily task has been put at this pivotal point—Bible study! This age needs a knowledge of Scripture as badly as any previous century ever needed it; and its material, social, and spiritual salvation can look for help to no other source. If the principles enunciated and practices commended by sacred Scripture cannot cure society of its ills, in vain will be the preaching of all nostrum-substitutes.
Christ said, “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” And to all those who ask, “What is truth?” we answer, “Thy word is truth!”
Little wonder, then, that Paul, writing to Timothy, placed his emphasis where he did: “Preach the word.” In sending forth each class of graduates, we bring no new advice; but for the sake of emphasis repeat the apostolic advice—“Preach the word.”
It is a custom these days for school youngsters, in particular, to approach the last visitor who has been asked to address them in chapel, or on state occasion, and ask for his autograph and favorite text. Following my name I commonly put Romans 1:16, “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth” And as you go forth to proclaim this Word, let me remind you that you have God’s eternal promise: “As the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater; So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it” (Isaiah 55:10-11). But it is hardly sufficient for one to be sound in belief. The head may be well stocked with Scripture; and yet unless the heart, the seat of emotions and the director of wills, be also the habitation of God, the feet may stray. Consequently, Paul takes the second step and expects of the preacher SAINTHOOD IN BEHAVIOR The preacher by profession and position becomes a pattern.
“In all things shewing thyself a pattern of good works” (Titus 2:7). The man who fails to be an example to his flock is, by just so much, unfitted for the gospel ministry. Possibly my personal reputation in America, as far as it has reached, rests largely on my long-continued defense of “Inspiration” and my well-known antipathy to “Skepticism”; and yet I must admit that false doctrines are not the sole cause of Christian deflection or church defeat. There is a heresy of conduct that is as deadly to the Christian profession as was ever departure from the truth. Fundamentalism has suffered much from some such! A preacher may proclaim always and eloquently the fundamentals; and yet if he live the life of the racketeer, if he be constantly guilty of falsehood in statement, if he is known to reek with lust, and by heart-anger, or smoking revolver, to have become a murderer, his proclamation of the truth will never atone for his iniquitous practices. Irrespective of any audiences gathered or honors bestowed, his ministry, instead of advancing the cause of Christ and influencing men God-ward, will detract from that course and widen the path to the pit; for when the heartblind lead the blind, both go into the ditch together.
Horatius Bonar was one of those white souls whose professional precepts and saintly practices rendered him an ideal exponent of the gospel preached, and well did he write in verse these words:
Thou must be true thyself, If thou the truth wouldst teach;
Thy soul must overflow, if thou Another’s soul wouldst reach;
It needs the overflow of heart To give the lips full speech.
Think truly, and thy thoughts Shall the world’s famine feed;
Speak truly, and each word of thine Shall be a fruitful seed;
Live truly, and thy life shall be A great and noble creed.
R. F. Horton, in his Yale lectures, truthfully said, “What the preacher is determines, in the end, the effect of what he preaches.” And again, “The preacher’s sermons are but fragments of himself.”
One time, two friends of mine had an unusual experience in the close proximity of a few hours. To one, the first baby was born. Naturally, he was pleased and proud. Strangely (?) he confessed to me the very next day that the child was beautiful. The other brought his first book from the press. His face indicated a kindred pleasure; his exuberance, a cognate pride. The reason for this exhilaration, on the part of both, was not far to seek. The one had found, in flesh, a veritable part of himself; the other had beheld in a book his mental image as clearly as a mirror had ever reflected his face. That is exactly what Horton meant when he said, “The preacher’s sermons are only fragments of himself.” It is when his life is a pattern that his preaching is with power. The weight of one’s ministry is reflected in membership morals.
Paul told Timothy that “sound doctrine” would result in “sober” old men, beautiful “old women,” “affectionate wives” and “successful mothers.” Yea, also, that even youth would be persuaded to sobriety, the gainsaying mantled with shame, and even hired servants would become conscientious and competent.
Few men ever lived in a period or place more utterly obnoxious than did Savonarola. He himself spoke of “the whole world” as “in confusion”; he deplored the fact that “every virtue had gone; vice had ceased to blush; rapine and murder were practiced without protest.” The Medici were the undisputed dictators of the day. Lorenzo had established his despotism by the murder of his brother, and had satisfied the lower classes by his munificence and public works. Herrick says he was “cultured but corrupt; of exquisite tastes but profligate habits—writing a sonnet of praise to virtue in the morning and devoting his nights to debaucheries.”
Into such an hour Savonarola found himself projected, and his very soul was overwhelmed by what he knew and saw. In anguish he began to speak, and the people found he had something to say. The throne of Lorenzo the despot shook as he said it; and Lorenzo himself, smitten by approaching death and fearing the eternal future, would have no other to counsel him on what to do. Although his son, Piero, equally vicious and less politic than his father, succeeded him in office, his station was unstable. The revolution was rising. Florentine blood boiled with indignation, and the only man who was equal to that hour was the calm monk who had dwelt “in the secret place of the most High” and “under the shadow of the Almighty .” So he was taken by the populace and pushed into the place of power, as the throng in Christ’s day sought to make Him king; and at once the righteous revolution was on. Ungodly gains ceased; deadly enemies embraced in love; sinful sports came to a sudden end; chastity took the place of incontinence; bonfires consumed obscene books; and, for a time, a hopeful people actually entertained the expectation that the millennium of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost was at hand. Who will say that the weight of a minister is not measured in the morals of the people who hear and follow him? But Paul is equally solicitous on another subject; namely, the unfailing fountain. We might sum up that idea in this sentence: The ground of all hope is in the grace of God.
Titus 2:11 reads, “For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men.” For your own salvation trust nothing else! “By grace are ye saved.” For the good of society look to no other source!
“For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world” (Titus 2:11-12). For the salvation of cities and nations, be assured there is no other hope! The recent World War, with all its infamy and wickedness, is but the fiery reflection of man’s wisdom. And those ministers who have imagined it is college courses that would not only render them accomplished leaders, but also lift the world from the mire of sin to the mountain of holiness, would today be suffering from nerve shock, but for the stupidity that ever led to such expectation. The world’s one and only hope is GRACE, and the only preacher that can ever prescribe for its ills an effective panacea is that one who proclaims “the grace of God.”
It was a wise preacher who said, “Though I have a scientific mind and a university degree in sociology and philosophy, and although I am an expert in social service and an authority on Browning, and though I use the language of the scientific laboratory so as to deceive the very elect into thinking I am a scholar, and have not a message of salvation and the love of Christ, I am a misfit in the pulpit and no preacher of the gospel.” But turning back to the text, we find another point of emphasis with the apostle—
SEEING THAT BLESSED HOPE
“Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ; Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works. These things speak, and exhort, and rebuke with all authority. Let no man despise thee” (Titus 2:13-15).
Here we have Paul’s profound conviction on the subject of pre-millennialism. To him, a man who is to be a good minister of the gospel must proclaim this truth.
He should entertain it as his personal faith.
“Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ.”
How strange that few theological seminaries recognize this most central and cohesive of all Biblical doctrines! As the late and famous I. M. Haldeman of New York said,
It is bound up with every fundamental doctrine: the resurrection from the dead, the transfiguration of the living, the judgment seat of Christ, the judgment of the living nations, the consequent judgment of the White Throne, the rewards of the righteous, and the punishment of the wicked.
It is bound up with every sublime promise: the recognition of the dead, the overthrow of Satan, the deliverance of creation, the triumph of God and Christ, and the eternal felicity of the saints. In other words, it is a key—the loss of which leaves God’s treasure chest of truth locked.
Let me congratulate you, young men and women, that your theological training has not done for you what mine did for me—deny you a knowledge of this great truth. Let me plead with you not only to retain what you have been taught these years by members of this faculty on this subject, but to add to that information by a personal study of the Scriptures upon this central subject.
Quite often we come upon magazine articles in which the question is seriously discussed, “Are the ministers of today fit successors of those of yesterday?” and it is much mooted. Modernists in their egotism will answer, “YES! They are an improvement upon their predecessors”; but neither the response of the public nor the progress of our churches provide confirmation to the claim.
England has no Spurgeon today; Joseph Parker’s pulpit never found a fit successor. The death of Dinsdale Young has left a vacancy that seems to wait in vain for an adequate occupant, so the pulpits of Henson, Lorimer, Truett, Matthews and Haldeman of America. The ardent advocates of a standardized ministry still insist that a candidate must bring at least an A. B. from the college, and a Th. B. from the Seminary, in order to receive the approval for ordination at the lips of sectional committeemen. William Law, in a striking address to the clergy, said, “How much then it is to be lamented that though all Scriptures assure us that the things of the Spirit are foolishness to the natural man, yet from one end of learned Christendom to the other nothing is thought of as true but that which every natural, selfish, proud, envious, false, vain-glorious worldly man can do.” A while ago one of our most notable editors, pleading for the university brand of a minister, reminded us that we “are living in an age of education and culture” and then said, “Yes, we know that God can use such men as Moody; but God makes only one such a man in a generation.”
Curious, isn’t it, that God for a full century, with a veritable multitude of university products from whom to choose and upon whom to put the spirit of power, passed them all up in favor of an uneducated, fat, and awkward shoe clerk; and that in England, with its Cambridge and its Oxford and a thousand other centers of culture, He could not find among them the hand-tooled material that He could take to stir London and pack the metropolitan Tabernacle, but He must accept the high-school boy Spurgeon!
Strange, isn’t it, that the outstanding Bible teacher of all England—Campbell Morgan—should also have come from the non-colleged classes, and, after being refused ordination by his Methodist inferiors, become the pride of cultured Congregationalism?
Passing strange it is that when you turn your eyes to the continent of America, the standards of present-day ordination seem almost to be held in contempt by the ordination divine.
Texas is the greatest state in the Union; the First Baptist Church of Dallas, the greatest church in the state; and the late Truett, a non-seminary product, was its greatest preacher.
Broughton held the spotlight in Georgia, but ordination now would be declined him by those denominations that have a college and seminary mold from which the minister must come. In New York, in the Calvary Church, a high school and Bible school graduate—W. W. Ayer—calls the best and most constant crowd. In Chicago, the thousands throng to hear Ironside, who never brought a diploma from any school. In Fort Wayne, Indiana, by far the largest assemblies used to sit at the feet of a man who never enjoyed even the advantages of the grades, but who came out of a mountain shack to the sidewalks of Atlanta to hawk newspapers on the street and so keep his body and soul together—Hollifield. In the Ozarks, the Salvation Army convert, John Brown, looms as an outstanding preacher and educator of the age! Is this to inveigh against education? No! But it is to remind the opinionated among scholars and the advocates of fixed standards, that “God is still in His heavens” and His Son still holds the right of appointment to the office of ‘prophet, apostle, evangelist, pastor, and teacher’; and e’en though one be a product of the schools, as was Paul, he will never know the highest success in a pulpit except he see that blessed hope so fully and faithfully set forth in the Word of God, and appreciate it as the kingbolt in the bridge of truth. To preach this hope is to present a great purifying prophecy.
It was the same Haldeman who sanely said, “It is bound up with every exhortation to high, to holy, and to practical Christian living. We are not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together as the manner of some is. On the Lord’s Day we are to break bread and drink the fruit of the vine, to show forth the Lord’s death till He come.”
It is in view of this doctrine that we are to “love God” and to “love one another”; that we are to ‘walk worthy of our vocation’; and ‘Let our moderation be known to all men’; that we are to be “patient” and “longsuffering”; that we are to engage continually in “prayer and supplication”; that we are to live blamelessly before men and God.
“In all the universe of God, there is nothing so impressive as the thought that you and I must give a personal account to Him ‘at His coming!’ Our conduct is to be correct and our lives are to be improved in view of this truth.”
John in his great epistle tells us our final and full redemption in body, soul, and spirit awaits that hour “when he shall appear” for only then shall we be “like him”
I read some time ago from the pen of one Dr. Miller of how a friend had taken a common earthen jar and filled it with attar of roses. It was not long until every particle of the substance of the jar seemed to be penetrated with rich perfume; and long afterwards, even when it was broken to bits, the fragments retained this fragrance. So it is that the blessed doctrine of the Lord’s Second Coming perfumes a life and gives to it purity, for He that “hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure.”
But, in order to meet the objection of some that this doctrine debilitates the Christian and tempts him to fold his arms and wait the blessed day when the return of the Lord shall right all wrongs, let us continue with the apostle and learn from this chapter that its last needful lesson—namely, that “looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ” is not only the promise of redemption from all iniquity and the purification of life, but also it pertains to “a peculiar people, zealous of good works”
Young men and women going forth to witness, Proclaim this doctrine, then, as a stimulant to God’s service!
It will be such. The greatest ministers that India, China, Africa, or the Isles have ever known have rendered their sacrificial service motivated by this “blessed hope”; and no man who is observing can doubt that, among other reasons, why Spurgeon and Dinsdale Young and Campbell Morgan of England; Scofield, Moody, Torrey, Pierson, Gordon, Dixon, Mark Matthews, Griffith-Thomas, James Gray, George Guille, L. W. Munhall, I. M. Haldeman, and others among the sainted Americans and a hundred living ones, are among the outstanding ministers of God, is due to the circumstance that all believed and proclaimed this blessed hope and saw the stimulating effect upon the services of men and women who were inspired by it. The young people should know a confession that Dr. Rainsford the radical, of New York City, made some year since. He spoke of his early ministry when he proclaimed with energy the doctrines of orthodoxy, and he said, “At that time, the incongruity of it all had not struck me.” Then he added, “Yet, so far as I know, I never influenced more people for good than in those green, unripe days when I was simply preaching the best I knew.” What a pity that he ever became sophisticated!
I often say to young people in Northwestern schools,
“Young people, I have sought, by my relation to you as president of your school, and through my associates—your professors—to give you the best intellectual training we could accomplish in the time you have elected to devote to study with us. When you have consulted me concerning further studies at college, I have uniformly favored it; but I solemnly declare to you that I would a thousand-fold rather send you forth knowing the contents of this sacred Book, the BIBLE, and proclaiming them in their simplicity of truth and expression, than to see you become Oxford University graduates every one, provided that in the process you went from your ‘green, unripe days’ of faith to sophisticated skepticism!” My city, my state, my country, my age need the ministry of sacred Scriptures. They are being destroyed today by the ministry of a godless science. It is a godless science that takes the third-grade child and teaches him that travesty of truth called “the early history of man”! It is a godless science that takes the university senior and steeps him in the geology of Evolution, rather than in a knowledge of the genesis of revelation. It is a godless science that invents the instruments of destruction and sets the homo sapiens (supposedly monkeys, in the finished form of cultured men), to war one with another, wrecking the world.
Better, even, the unscholarly, proclaiming the great gospel of God, than the scientifically trained, preaching ‘another, which is no gospel’! The world is dying today and the world is dying in want of the WORD!! My counsel, then, to you, the children of my affection, the individuals through whom I hope to minister long after my physical tongue is stilled, is this—“Preach the WORD!” Live the Word! Carry the Word around the world! THE WORD is the world’s only hope!
BIBLIOGRAPHY Miller, H. C. The New Psychology and the Preacher (New York: Boni & Liveright, 1924).
Hutton, J. A. That the Ministry Be Not Blamed. 2nd ed. (New York: George H. Doran Co., 1921).