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September 10, 2018 - March 1, 2019
Consider the condition of your hearers. Reflect upon their spiritual state as a whole and as individuals, and prescribe the medicine adapted to the current disease, or prepare the food suitable for the prevailing necessity.
Do not suffer your heads to be turned by respect to those one-sided members of the congregation, who have a sweet tooth for one portion of the gospel, and turn a deaf ear to other parts of truth; never go out of your way either to give them a feast or a scolding. It may be satisfactory to think that they are pleased, if they are good people, and one respects their predilections, but faithfulness demands that we should not become mere pipers to our hearers, playing such tunes as they may demand of us, but should remain as the Lord’s mouth to declare all his counsels.
Diary of Work in St. Kilda: “Friday, May 27. At our morning exercise this day, I read and gave some illustrations of Romans 12, which afforded me an opportunity of stating the connection between faith and practice, and that the doctrines of grace are according to godliness, and lead to holiness in heart and life. This I deemed necessary, as from the high ground I had occupied for some days past, I was afraid the people might veer towards Antinomianism, an extreme as dangerous as Arminianism, if not more so.”
Consider what sins appear to be most rife in the church and congregation—worldliness, covetousness, prayerlessness, wrath, pride, want of brotherly love, slander, and such like evils. Take into account, affectionately, the trials of your people, and seek for a balm for their wounds. It is not necessary to go into minute details, either in the prayer or in the sermon, as to all these trials of your congregation, although this was the custom of a venerable minister who was once a great bishop in this neighborhood, and has now gone to heaven. He was wont, in his abundant love to his people, to
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It would be unwise to insist perpetually upon one doctrine to the neglect of others.
I think it well frequently to look over the list of my sermons, and see whether any doctrine has escaped my attention, or any Christian grace has been neglected in my ministrations. It is well to inquire whether we have been too doctrinal lately, or too barely practical, or too exclusively experimental.
We do not desire to degenerate into Antinomians, nor, on the other hand, to descend to be mere teachers of a cold morality, but our ambition is to make full proof of our ministry. We would give every portion of Scripture its fair share in our heart and head. Doctrine, precept, history, type, psalm, proverb, experience, warning, promise, invitation, threatening, or rebuke—we would include the whole of inspired truth within the circle of our teachings. Let us abhor all one-sidedness, all exaggeration of one truth and disparagement of another, and let us endeavor to paint the portrait of truth
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I walked off with the greatest possible composure, considered the passage during my long and lonely walk, and preached upon the peculiar people, and the persecutions of their enemies, with freedom and ease to myself, and I believe with comfort to my rustic audience.
Some may ridicule, but I adore; others may even censure, but I rejoice. Anything is better than mechanical sermonizing, in which the direction of the Spirit is practically ignored.
Every Holy Spirit preacher, I have no doubt, will have such recollections clustering around his ministry. I say, therefore, watch the course of Providence; cast yourself upon the Lord’s guidance and help. If you have solemnly done your best to get a text, and the subject does not start up before you, go up into the pulpit firmly convinced that you will receive a message when the time comes, even though you have not a word at that moment.
Brethren, I beseech you, believe in the Holy Spirit, and practically carry out your faith.
As a further assistance to a poor stranded preacher, who cannot launch his mind for want of a wave or two of thought, I recommend him in such a case, to turn again and again to the Word of God itself, and read a chapter, and ponder over its verses one by one; or let him select a single verse, and get his mind fully exercised upon it. It may be that he will not find his text in the verse or chapter which he reads, but the right word will come to him through his mind being actively engaged upon holy subjects. According to the relation of thoughts to each other, one thought will suggest another,
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By way of precaution, however, let me remark, that we ought to be always in training for text-getting and sermon-making. We should constantly preserve the holy activity of our minds. Woe unto the minister
who dares to waste an hour. Read John Foster’s “Essay on the Improvement of Time,” and resolve never to lose a second of it. A man who goes up and down from Monday morning till Saturday night, and indolently dreams that he is to have his text sent down by an angelic messenger in the last hour or two of the week, tempts God, and deserves to stand speechless on the Sabbath. We have no leisure as ministers; we are never off duty, but are on our watchtowers day and night.
Your pulpit preparations are your first business, and if you neglect these, you will bring no credit upon yourself or your office. Bees are making honey from morning till night, and we should be always gathering stores for our people. I have no belief in that ministry which ignores laborious preparation.
Habitual mental exercise in the direction of our work is advisable.
The lamented Thomas Spencer wrote, “I keep a little book, in which I enter every text of Scripture which comes into my mind with power and sweetness. Were I to dream of a passage of Scripture I should enter it, and when I sit down to compose I look over the book, and have never found myself at a loss for a subject.”
I am asked whether it is a good thing to announce arrangements, and publish lists of projected sermons. I answer, Every man in his own order. I am not a judge for others; but I dare not attempt such a thing, and should signally fail if I were to venture upon it. Precedents are much against my opinion, and at the head of them the sets of discourses by Matthew Henry, John Newton, and a host of others, still I can only speak my own personal impressions, and leave each man to be a law unto himself.
Ordinarily, and for ordinary men, it seems to me that prearranged discourses are a mistake, are never more than an apparent benefit, and generally a real mischief.
Surely to go through a long epistle must require a great deal of genius in the preacher, and demand a world of patience on the part of the hearers.
We know not what a day may bring forth—let us wait for daily teaching, and do nothing which might preclude us from using those materials which providence may to-day or to-morrow cast in our way.
When a friend suggests a topic, think it over, and consider whether it be appropriate, and see whether it comes to you with power. Receive the request courteously, as you are in duty bound to do as a gentleman and a Christian; but if the Lord whom you serve does not cast his light upon the text, do not preach from it, let who may persuade you.
I am quite certain that if we will wait upon God for our subjects, and make it a matter of prayer that we may be rightly directed, we shall be led forth by a right way; but if we are puffed up with the idea that we can very easily choose for ourselves, we shall find that even in the selection of a subject, without Christ we can do nothing. Wait upon the Lord, hear what he would speak, receive the word direct from God’s mouth, and then go forth as an ambassador fresh from the court of heaven. “Wait, I say, on the Lord.”
MANY WRITERS UPON HOMILETICS condemn in unmeasured terms even the occasional spiritualizing of a text.[‡‡‡‡] “Select texts,” say they, “give a plain, literal sense; never travel beyond the obvious meaning of the passage; never allow yourself to accommodate or adapt; it is an artifice of men of artificial culture, a trick of mountebanks, a miserable display of bad taste and impudence.”
A great deal of real good may be done by occasionally taking forgotten, quaint, remarkable, out-of-the-way texts; and I feel persuaded that if we appeal to a jury of practical, successful preachers, who are not theorizers, but men actually in the field, we shall have a majority in our favor.
Within limit, my brethren, be not afraid to spiritualize, or to take singular texts.
Continue to look out passages of Scripture, and not only give their plain meaning, as you are bound to do, but also draw from them meanings which may not lie upon their surface.
The first canon to be observed is this: do not violently strain a text by illegitimate spiritualizing.
This is a sin against common sense. How dreadfully the word of God has been mauled and mangled by a certain band of preachers who have laid texts on the rack to make them reveal what they never would have otherwise spoken.
Our second is, never spiritualize upon indelicate subjects.
Caesar’s wife must be without suspicion, and Christ’s ministers must be without speck in their lives or stain in their speech.
Next, and thirdly: never spiritualize for the sake of showing what an uncommonly clever fellow you are.
Our next caution is, never pervert Scripture to give it a novel and so-called spiritual meaning, lest you be found guilty of that solemn curse with which the roll of inspiration is guarded and closed.
Once more, in no case allow your audience to forget that the narratives which you spiritualize are facts, and not mere myths or parables.
The Bible is not a compilation of clever allegories or instructive poetical traditions; it teaches literal facts and reveals tremendous realities: let your full persuasion of this truth be manifest to all who attend your ministry. It will be an ill day for the church if the pulpit should even appear to indorse the skeptical hypothesis that Holy Scripture is but the record of a refined mythology, in which globules of truth are dissolved in seas of poetic and imaginary detail.
Benjamin Keach, in his laborious treatise, proves most practically what mines of truth lie concealed in the metaphors of Scripture.
When the apostle Paul finds a mystery in Melchisedek, and speaking of Hagar
and Sarah, says, “Which things are an allegory,” he gives us a precedent for discovering scriptural allegories in other places besides the two mentioned.
Then, too, the faculty which turns to spiritualizing will be well employed, in generalizing the great universal principles evolved by minute and separate facts.
This is an ingenious, instructive, and legitimate pursuit. Perhaps you might not elect to preach upon, “Take it by the tail,” but the remark arising from it is natural enough—“there is a way of taking everything.” Moses took the serpent by the tail, so there is a mode of grasping our afflictions and finding them stiffen in our hands into a wonder-working rod; there is a way of holding the doctrines of grace, a way of encountering ungodly men, and so on.
“Jesus took him, aside from the multitude”—the soul must be made to feel its own personality and individuality, and must be led into loneliness.
The learned commentator tells us, “the fatted calf ” was the Lord Jesus Christ!
Really, one shudders to see spiritualizing come to this. Then also there is his exposition of the Good Samaritan. The beast on which the wounded man was placed is again our Lord Jesus, and the two pence which the Good Samaritan gave to the host, are the Old and New Testament, or the ordinances of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper.
Such was his usual talk and such was his ministry. Peace to his ashes. He fed sheep the first years of his life, and was a shepherd of men the next, and, as he used to tell me, “found men by far the more sheepish of the two.”
With this I close, reasserting the opinion, that guided by discretion and judgment, we may occasionally employ spiritualizing with good effect to our people; certainly we shall interest them and keep them awake.
That overlooked topic is, How to obtain and retain the attention of our hearers.
Sin cannot be taken out of men, as Eve was taken out of the side of Adam, while they are fast asleep.
To a rational preacher (and all are not rational) it must seem essential to interest all his audience, from the eldest to the youngest. We ought not to make even children inattentive. “Make them inattentive,” say you, “who does that?” I say that most preachers do; and when children are not quiet in a meeting it is often as much our fault as theirs.
If I see anybody turning round, whispering, nodding, or looking at his watch, I judge that I am not up to
the mark, and must by some means win these minds. Very seldom have I to complain, and when I do, my general plan is to complain of myself, and own that I have no right to attention unless I know how to command it.
