Before I enter the pulpit to preach I habitually kneel to ask God’s help. I pray that God would drive away all the snares of the enemy, that he would fill me with his Holy Spirit, and that he would open the hearts of the hearers to his truth. I am aware that I am a very weak vessel of the Word of God, that opposition to it is strong, minds are dull of hearing and I may be misinterpreted or fail to proclaim the Gospel. Over fifty four years of preaching I am constantly amazed at the response of the congregation. John Stott has some perceptive comments on why people respond as they do.
Preachers are specially exposed to the danger of flattery. I fear that the whole frame of mind in which some people go to church is wrong. They do not go to church to worship God or to hear God’s Word. They go to hear a man. So it is not the message to which they listen, but the oratory. They savor the sermon with their minds as if they relished some tasty morsel in their mouths. They say afterwards how much they enjoyed or did not enjoy it. But sermons are not meant to be ‘enjoyed’. Their purpose is to give profit to the hearers, not pleasure. Sermons are not artistic creations to be critically evaluated for their form. They are ‘tools, and not works of art’ (Phillip Brooks). A sermon is never an end in itself, but a means to an end, the end being ‘saving souls’ (P. Brooks). I have no hesitation in saying that people who ‘congratulate’ a preacher on his sermon, and preachers who expect such congratulation from their people are alike most offensive to God. Men are called to preach not themselves but Christ Jesus as Savior and Lord (1 Cor.1:23; 2 Cor.4:5). What matters, therefore is Christ himself who is proclaimed, and not the men who proclaim him. To think or act otherwise is not only to usurp God’s glory, but to jeopardize the preacher’s whole ministry, bringing it first into discredit and finally to ruin.
The Corinthians attached too much importance to their favorite preachers. We are mere servants, Paul asserts, servants of Jesus the Lord, and what glory is due to servants? We are ‘servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each’ (1 Cor.3:5), and having stated this, Paul enlarges on the correct view of the Christian ministry throughout this and the following chapters of his Epistle.
We must begin by reminding ourselves of the urgent and indispensable need for God’s power in preaching. I hope we are all oppressed by the spectacle of the Church’s powerlessness today. We thank God that in some parts of the world God is manifesting his power to save. But in too many areas, especially in the older, historic Churches, there are few signs of life or power. There may be large attendances, great social activity, and a busy program, but there is little power. The masses of the people are ignorant of the gospel or indifferent to it. They regard the Church as out of date and irrelevant, a curious anachronistic survival from an earlier age. To them the Church is impotent, decadent. And if the Church at large lacks power, what about our own ministry? Are men and women being converted through our preaching? Not emotionally stirred and superficially affected, but deeply and permanently regenerated by the gracious work of the Holy Spirit? As preachers we shall never begin to seek the power of God until we have come to see the futility of attempting to proclaim God’s Word in man’s weakness alone (2 Cor.4:4).
The folly of it appears when we consider the biblical estimate of the depraved condition of man, who is altogether beyond the reach of merely human enlightenment or persuasion, and will respond only to the life-giving power of God. This the Scripture teaches clearly that man in his natural state, unredeemed and unregenerate, is blind. How can any man see and believe? (2 Cor.4:6) Men are not only blind, but dead (Eph.2:1;4:18). This, then, is the state of unredeemed man according to the Scriptures. He is both sightless and lifeless, both blind and dead. How can we reach him? Granted that only the power of God can make the blind see and the dead live, where is this power to be found? How can preachers become such channels of it as to be ‘servants through whom’ others will believe? See 1 Cor.1:17-2:5. It is, perhaps, the passage of Scripture which preachers should read and study more than any others, and by which we should judge and reform our ministry.
First, there is power in the Word of God. Our task as Christian preachers is not to subserviently answer all the questions which men put to us; nor to attempt to meet all the demands which are made on us; nor hesitantly to make tentative suggestions to the philosophically minded; but rather to proclaim a message which is dogmatic because it is divine. The preacher’s responsibility is proclamation not discussion.
“If any one among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool what he may become wise” (1 Cor.3:18). I believe that this ‘let him become a fool’ is one of the hardest words of Scripture to the proud hearts and minds of men. Like the brilliant intellectuals of ancient Greece our contemporaries have unbounded confidence in the human reason. They want to think their way to God by themselves, and to gain credit for discovering God by their own effort. But God resists such swelling of pride on the part of the finite creature.
Secondly, there is power in the cross of Christ. What offends the proud, saves the humble. There is wonderful power in the cross of Christ. It has power to wake the dullest conscience and melt the hardest heart; to cleanse the unclean; to reconcile him who is afar off and restore him to fellowship with God; to redeem the prisoner from his bondage and lift the pauper from the dunghill; to break down the barriers which divide men from one another; to transform our wayward characters into the image of Christ and finally make us fit to stand in white robes before the throne of God.
Thirdly, there is power in the Holy Spirit (1 Thess.1:5). Every preacher who has been endowed with gifts of personality and fluent speech knows the temptation to put his confidence in the power of his own ability. Only the Holy Spirit can convict the conscience, illumine the mind, enflame the heart and move the will. I cannot help wondering if this may not be why there are so few preachers whom God is using today. There are plenty of popular preachers, but not many powerful ones, who preach in the power of the Spirit. Is it because the cost of such preaching is too great? It seems that the only preaching God honors, through which his wisdom and power are expressed, is the preaching of a man who is willing in himself to be both a weakling and a fool. We are constantly tempted to covet a reputation as men of learning or men of influence; to seek honor in academic circles and compromise our old-fashioned message in order to do so; and to cultivate personal charm or forcefulness so as to sway the people committed to our care. So let preacher and congregation humble themselves, willing to be despised as both weak and foolish, in order that all the wisdom and power of salvation may be ascribed where they belong, namely to the three glorious Persons of the eternal Trinity.
When telling thy salvation free
Let all-absorbing thought of thee
My heart and soul engross:
And when all hearts are bowed and stirred
Beneath the influence of thy word
Hide me behind thy cross.
THE PREACHER’S PORTRAIT, John Stott, pp.89-111.
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