Ministerial Duties Stated & Enforced 2

Next Part Ministerial Duties Stated & Enforced 3

II. The text instructs us in what way the duties of our office should be discharged, so as to APPROVE ourselves the ministers of God. "In all things approving ourselves as the ministers of God." We should approve ourselves to God, to the church, to the world. This expression implies that we not only assume the pastoral character, but that we commend ourselves to all who have an opportunity of observing our conduct, as faithfully and fully discharging its duties.

In a parallel passage to this we are exhorted "to make full proof of our ministry." 2 Tim. 4:6. According to M'Knight, the original word signifies "to be carried with full sail." This allusion is as instructive as it is beautiful. While some men who have nothing of the minister but the name, ignorant, indolent, and useless, are like empty and dismantled hulks moored in some narrow creek; do you find your emblem in the richly freighted vessel gliding with every sail set before the breeze of heaven, and traversing the ocean to enrich her employers with her precious cargo. The apostle has particularly specified in the verses which follow the text, in what way this may be effected, "In much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, in strifes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labors, in watchings, in fastings; by pureness, by knowledge, by long suffering, by kindness, by a holy spirit, by love unfeigned, by the word of truth, by the power of God, by the armor of righteousness on the right hand and on the left, by honor and dishonor, by evil report and good report." Leaving this beautiful directory to find its own weight, I shall class your duties in the following order—

1. Approve yourself the minister of God, by faithfully PREACHING his word. This is to be a great part of the business of your future life. I trust you will ever keep the pulpit sacred to the purpose for which it is erected. Preach there the word of God. The pulpit is not the place for philosophy or literature, and therefore whatever illustrations you may at any time borrow from the sciences, or to whatever use you may apply the aids of learning in the way of legitimate study, never act the 'learned academic' in the pulpit. The pulpit is not the platform for political declamation, and should never be enveloped in the mists of politics. It is not the arena of controversy where the preacher is to display his adroitness in attack and defense, and therefore however necessary you may sometimes find it to guard the truth from the assaults of its adversaries, or to direct the whole artillery of just reasoning upon the strongholds of error, I trust the character of your public ministrations will not, in the strict sense of the term, be theological debate.

The pulpit is not intended to be a platform, where the petty manufacturer of tinsel eloquence and rhetorical flowers shall display to a gaping crowd his gaudy wares; and therefore whenever you employ "thoughts that breathe and words that burn," I hope it will not be with a view to play the orator, but more deeply to impress the heart, and more powerfully to alarm the conscience. Nor is the pulpit merely the seat of the moralist, where Epictetus and Seneca deliver their cold and heartless ethics—but it is the oracle of heaven, appointed to deliver in full and faithful response the will and purposes of God concerning the salvation and the duty of the human race.

In pursuance of this idea, I shall remind you, of the MATTER of your preaching. Take care that it is truly and faithfully the word of God. May you be guarded from delivering error instead of truth. Oh! how tremblingly afraid should we be of substituting the 'inventions of human ignorance' for the 'doctrines of divine inspiration'! How earnestly should we pray to be led into all truth. How cautiously should we search the Word of God. Should we err, in all probability we shall not have the privilege of erring alone. A 'preacher of error' stands as a sort of volcano in the spiritual world—his mind is the dreadful laboratory where the mischief is prepared; his lips the crater whence it is disgorged upon the world; and every sermon that he preaches is an eruption of lava upon the spiritual interests of mankind.

No man has so much cause to tremble at those fearful words as a minister, "I testify unto every man that hears the words of the prophecy of this book, if any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book. And if any man shall take away from the words of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book." Guided by the Spirit of God, may you steer in safety through every hazard.

Preach the whole counsel of God. Elucidate its histories; explain its prophecies; develop its doctrines; inculcate its precepts; denounce its threatenings; unfold its promises; repeat its invitations; enforce its institutions. What a sublimity, what a variety, what a harmony, of subjects is before you! If you are restricted it must be in yourself—not in your themes. As a steward of the mysteries of the kingdom you have access to infinite and exhaustless storehouses. If your people are starved by the poverty, or wearied by the sameness of your preaching, it cannot be for lack of variety or opulence in the treasures of revelation, but for lack of industry and fidelity in yourself.

Do not then confine yourself and your people in some little nook or corner of revealed truth, and write upon all the rest, 'mystery'. Explore for them and with them the whole world of inspiration. Such is the boundless extent of this sacred territory, that without wishing or waiting for farther revelations, we shall never reach the end of those already given. By the aid of Biblical study, diligent reading, accurate comparisons, deep penetration—the Christian student will be continually disclosing to his people new regions and fresh treasures in God's most precious Word. Mines of wealth will open at his feet, and prospects of ineffable beauty will expand before his eye.

If you follow this advice, you will not be known, like some, by one favorite topic. The ministers of the gospel have no more right to divide between them the different parts of divine revelation, each taking only his favorite doctrine, than they have to share between them, or attempt to do so, the moral qualifications of the ministerial character, each selecting some one favorite grace, and neglecting all the rest. Our preaching and our conduct should be a spiritual microcosm, the former in relation to truth, the latter to holiness.

Still, after all, and in perfect consistency with what I have already advanced, I remind you that, as a minister of the New Testament, you are to be "a sweet savor of Christ." In this respect you cannot have a better model than the great apostle of the Gentiles. "I determined," says he, "to know nothing among you but Jesus Christ, and him crucified; whom we preach, warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus."

No phrase has been less understood than 'preaching Christ'. By some it has been confined to the eternal repetition of a few common-place thoughts upon the same first principles of divine truth. The epistles of Paul are the best exposition of this phrase, for as he determined to know nothing, that is, to make known nothing, but Christ—of course he intends that everything he did make known, should be considered as an accomplishment of this purpose. Now what a vast variety, what a mighty range of topic do we find in his epistles. There we find the whole compass of doctrinal theology, the whole body of practical divinity, positive institutions, church government, social duties, sketches of Old Testament history, a complete exposition of the ceremonial law—and yet all this was making known Christ. His cross is the center of the whole system, around which, in nearer or more remote circles, all the doctrines and the duties of revelation perpetually revolve; from which the doctrines borrow their light, and the duties borrow their energy.

Let all your preaching be directed to exhibit Christ in the dignity of his person, the design of his mediation, the variety of his offices, the freeness of his grace, the nature of his kingdom, and the perfect beauty of his example. And thus, while you cause your people to scent the fragrance of every flower, and taste the sweetness of every fruit in the garden of the Lord, you will more statedly collect them round the tree of life in the midst of the garden, whose leaves are for the healing of the nations.

Much may be said of the MANNER of your preaching. An air of deep seriousness should characterize our whole deportment while delivering the Word of God. The pulpit is the most solemn situation upon earth; and preaching is the most solemn employment upon earth—to which we should ever bring "that awe which warns us how we touch a holy thing." Not only should all merriment and jocularity be excluded, but all that flippancy of manner, that light and frivolous air, that careless and irreverent expression, that "start and stare theatric" which are but too common in the present age.

Every look, every tone, every gesture, should indicate a mind awed by the presence of God, impressed with the solemnity of eternity; should bespeak a heart filled with the magnitude of its own salvation, and oppressed with solicitude for the souls of others. In short, our whole manner should manifest a consciousness of our being "in a temple resounding with solemn voices, and filled with holy inspirations."

In the pulpit, we seem placed between the three worlds of heaven, earth, and hell, to unfold, as they lie expanded before our imagination, the glories of the first, the vanity of the second, and the torments of the third. Can we really be in earnest, or will our hearers think us so, or be likely to become so themselves, unless we discover a deep and impressive seriousness in some measure adapted to our situation?

All our preaching should have a holy and moral tendency. Great pains have been taken by two opposite classes of preachers and writers to introduce a schism between the Son of God and Moses—the legislator of the Jews. The tables of the Law and the Cross have been opposed, like hostile forts upon Mount Sinai and Mount Calvary, to demolish each other. Impious effort! Have nothing to do with it, my brother, but let your preaching be a sublime response to the song of Moses and the Lamb. The truth as it is in Jesus is "according to godliness." No doctrine is given merely for the purpose of intellectual speculation.

Even those doctrines which transcend the comprehension of reason, are designed to produce a moral effect, by humbling our pride and increasing our submission. The truths of Scripture are revealed, not simply on their own account; nor is the knowledge of them the last and highest end for which they are communicated. "Sanctify them," said the Savior, in his sublime prayer, "by your truth; your word is truth." Hence we gather that sanctification, or moral benefit, is the ultimate end, so far as man is concerned, of revealed truth. No preaching, therefore, can be scriptural, how ever apparently true its abstract sentiments may be, which does not represent those sentiments in such a manner as to have a practical tendency.

Many, without intending to be antinomian preachers, certainly make antinomian hearers, not by telling them to be unholy, but by leaving them to be so. That can never be true in sentiment, which is not holy in tendency. Let your sermons be like sunbeams, quickening and cherishing the virtues of the heart, at the same time that they convey the light of doctrine to the understanding.

Let your discourses be replete with instruction. It is greatly to be regretted that many professors of religion seem to regard judicious and instructive preaching as lying within the frigid zone of Christianity, and as eagerly migrate from the regions of intellect as birds of passage to a warmer climate at the approach of winter. Their religion is all feeling, with which the understanding has nothing to do, either in the way of exciting or controlling it. Their conversation is made up of terms which they but imperfectly understand, and of crude conceptions which they could with difficulty explain.

The fault in this case lies, to a great extent, in the pulpit. They have heard but few ideas there, and never venture beyond the track which their spiritual guides have marked out for them. I trust you will avoid a loose, empty, and declamatory style of preaching, and fill your sermons with theological truths clearly conceived, and perspicuously expressed. It is a painful circumstance, that in the march of improvement mankind seldom gain an advantage without an attendant inconvenience. The present method of delivering sermons, unshackled by notes, is incalculably more adapted to impression than the motionless, unimpassioned, scholastic reading of the last age. But is there no danger of losing in instruction what we gain in impression? The preaching of some men forcibly reminds us of the breaking open of the cave of Aeolus, and letting loose the winds.

To a thinking mind, nothing is more ridiculous than to see a man blustering about in a total vacuum of ideas; the hearer finds himself in the situation of a traveler who is suddenly overtaken by a storm in a wilderness, from which he feels happy to escape as speedily as possible. You will not conclude from anything I have said, that you are to undervalue an easy, graceful, energetic enunciation; on the contrary, this is of so much importance, that without it the most admirable sermon is stripped of more than half its power to please or to profit. As a Christian speaker, you should never forget the opinion of Demosthenes, that the first, and the second, and the third grace of an orator is delivery. It is perfectly obvious that the most useful preachers owe much of their success, under God, to an easy and pleasant method of delivery.

Let your preaching be characterized by plainness. Be sincere in the avowal of your religious sentiments. Let not the "trumpet give an uncertain sound." As an honest man, speak honestly. I do not enjoin a dogmatic tone and temper; still, I admonish you to use no concealment. Let not your sermons be mere pulpit riddles, or ambiguous as the responses of the Delphic oracle. Do not compel your hearers to throw your discourses into a critical alembic, to see if, by the application of a sort of chemical process, a few drops of orthodoxy may be extracted.

Let your perspicuity extend to your language. "Use great plainness of speech." I do not mean vulgarity or buffoonery; these are disgusting everywhere, but in the pulpit they are actually profane. In the house of God, the view of the worshipers ought ever to terminate in heaven or hell, neither of which is a fit subject for laughter. Some preachers seem to have no idea that they can handle a subject plainly, until they have dragged it through all the mire in which their own coarse and groveling nature loves to wallow. Provided other and higher properties be found in it, that is the best sermon which conforms most accurately to the rules of correct taste. Now perspicuity is the first grace of good composition. Attentive and enlightened observers have marked in many of the dissenting ministers of the present age a strong tendency to a glaring and bombastic style, by which the truths that should affect the conscience lose all their effect, by a mode of representation which bewilders the imagination. For what the bulk of their congregations understand, some men may just as well preach Latin or Greek, as the technical, highflown, far-fetched language which they have adopted in violation of every rule of good taste, as well as in neglect of a still more solemn responsibility.

What would we say of the messenger who was sent to a condemned malefactor with instructions to inform him how to gain a reprieve, but who, instead of explaining to him the means of life in the plainest and speediest manner, dressed up his commission in such high-wrought terms that the poor criminal did not comprehend them, and so lost his life, because this vain and cruel wretch chose to display his skill in elaborate and technical speech. And what shall be said of that man who, being charged with the offer of divine mercy to guilty rebels, allows them to perish for lack of knowledge, because he chooses to announce the means of reconciliation in hard words and fine flowers? Has language any terms of reprobation sufficiently severe for such a minister?

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