Expository Preaching: Plans and Methods

The one supreme object of the Christian ministry is to preach Christ, and Him crucified. The noble roads, by which the Romans bound the Iron Empire together, traveled from the ends of Europe to converge on the golden milestone in the City of the Seven Hills, and all sermons must culminate and find their loftiest purpose in the Divine Redeemer. We must never forget that, as its ministers, we have been allowed of God to be trusted with the gospel, and to us has been committed the ministry of Reconciliation; to wit, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. In the letter which the late Principal Rainy wrote to the Madras College students he said: ‘“We possess nothing so precious, we value nothing so much; we have no source of good so full, fruitful, and enduring; we have nothing to compare with the Lord Jesus Christ. To Him we bear witness.’’ ‘*Whom we proclaim,’’ cried the apostle, ‘‘admonishing every man, teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ.’’ Brethren, let us strive and labour towards the same end! Let our Lord Jesus be the one abiding reality with us, in our innermost thought, our private devotions, our ministry, and our preaching! Let Him be first, and last, and midst, and all-in-all! Let us wake with Him in the morning, walk with Him all day, and lie down to sleep in the quiet sense of His presence! To present Him to men, by life and ministry and written or spoken speech, must be the thread on which are strung all the incidents of our varied experiences!

Our ministry also must be cruciform. The thought that our Master was crucified must never be far from our thoughts. Not primarily as teacher, prophet, wonder-worker, or social reformer, but as having been slain from before the foundations of the everlasting hills! ‘‘Christ, and Him crucified,’’ the apostle said.

All the great churches of Europe are cruciform, and all our living and preaching must bear witness, first of all, to that which we also have received, ‘‘how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures.’’

In this connection we may again and again return to the memorable experience of Dr. Chalmers. If any man could have succeeded by the presentation of the high morality and noble example of Christ in winning the hearts of men, it was he; who was so magnetic in his personality, a torrent of fire in eloquence, and great in every quality of manhood? But what things were gain to him, these he counted loss, when, after reading Wilberforce’s ‘‘Practical View,’? he began to believe in and preach the great doctrines that center in the Cross. ‘‘I am not sensible,’’ he says, ‘‘that all the vehemence with which I urged the virtues and the proprieties of social life had the weight of a feather on the hearts of my parishioners. And it was not till I got impressed of the utter alienation of the heart, in all its desires and affections, from God; and it was not till reconciliation to Him became the distinct and the prominent object of my ministerial exertions; it was not till I took the Scriptural way of laying the method of reconciliation before them; it was not till the free offer of forgiveness through the blood of Christ was urged upon their acceptance, and the Holy Spirit given through Christ’s mediatorship to all who ask for Him was set before them as the unceasing’ object of their dependence and their prayers, that even those minor reformations began to appear.’’ This, then, is the conclusion of the whole matter. There is no way of preaching morality so effective as to set forth the kind of character which springs from the love of the redeemed to the Redeemer. What we need is the old, old story preached by new, new men! Kthics by all means; but the fair temple must have its foundations set deep in the death which destroyed Him that had the power of death, and delivered them who throughout their lives had been subject to bondage.

One other point must be borne in mind: Our ministry is a partnership. We are called into the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, who is the gift of the risen Christ, with whom our Master still cooperates with His servants. ‘‘So when the Lord Jesus had spoken unto them, He was received up into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God. And they went forth, and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them and confirming the word.’’

There are days in men’s lives that come unheralded and unannounced, when the full significance of this majestic co-partnership first breaks on their view. No angel-faces look down from heaven, no angel-voices put us on the alert. But as they look back they realize that these were the turning-points, the watershed of their history. It was thus with Moses. The sun rose as usual; the sheep browsed on the scant herbage or lay panting in the shadows of a great rock; the giant forms of red-sandstone mountains bared themselves to the glare of the scorching heat; when suddenly right before him the Bush began to burn with a glow above the brightness of the sun, and a voice from out of its heart said:

‘Certainly I will be with thee.’

Immediately he was transformed. He was no longer even an agent or instrument, but a companion and ally. He had simply to walk with God and do His will. He need no longer to be a servant, because henceforth he was permitted as a friend to know the things that his Lord was doing.

Passing to the extreme distance of time given that august theophany, and with the object of bringing such an experience within the reach of ourselves, whose dwarfed and stunted lives can hardly be compared with that of the great Lawgiver, let us recall that memorable experience of Hudson Taylor, the honoured founder of the China Inland Mission. Whilst that mighty agency was but a seed, as he walked one Sunday morning on the Brighton sea-sands it seemed as though the Almighty said to him:

‘‘Hudson Taylor, I am going to evangelize Inland China, and if you will walk with Me, I will do it through you.’’

Was it possible, after that, that any burden should seem heavy? God was with him, working out His own purposes, and making his poor barley loaves and small fish enough and to spare.

Similarly, in preaching, there are two, not one, in every pulpit where the true ideal is realized. As in a saw-pit, the workman on the surface is in collusion with his companion in the depth, and the two, with perfect rhythm, codperate, lifting and depressing the same saw; so the minister, on whom all eyes are fixed, aooherntes with One whom none can see, but who is certainly present.

‘<Tt seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us!”’

‘‘T heard a voice saying...’’ — and this is the voice of the preacher. ‘‘Amen, saith the

Spirit...’’this is the affirmative and co-witness of the Paraclete. Church members must walk, and ministers must preach, in the paracletism of the Paraclete.

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