The True Aim of Preaching (Charles H. Spurgeon, 1834-1892)

 

Acts 13:38

“Be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins:”

Paul’s mode of preaching, as illustrated by this chapter, was first of all to appeal to the understanding with a clear exposition of doctrinal truth, and then to impress that truth, upon the emotions of his hearers with earnest and forcible exhortations. This is an excellent model for all preachers and evangelists. They must not give exhortation without doctrine, for, if so, they will be like men who are content with “blanks” in their guns, they will have the smoke and the noise but no power. It is the doctrine we preach, the bullet we deliver, which God will make a power to bless men and women. However intense and zealous we may be in speaking, if we don’t have something weighty and solid to say, we will appear to be intense about nothing, and will not be at all likely to create a lasting impression. Paul, if you notice, through this chapter, first of all gives the history of redemption, tells the story of the cross, insists upon the resurrection of the Savior, and then he comes to the end of his message and deals personally with their souls, and commands them not to neglect this great salvation.

 

At the same time, it was not all doctrine and no exhortation, for whenever Paul finished his message, he made a strenuous, pointed, and personal appeal to those who had listened to him. Let those preachers who are passionately fond of mere doctrine, but having little of the spirit of divine mercy or the milk of human kindness in their souls, those who do not care to have the Word pressed upon the consciences of men and women, stand rebuked by the example of the apostle Paul. Paul knew well that even truth itself will be powerless unless it is applied. Like the seed in the basket, it can produce no harvest until it is sown in the ground. We cannot expect that men and women will come and make an application of the truth to themselves. We must, having our heart glowing, and our souls on fire with love to them, seek to bring the truth to them, to impress it upon their hearts and consciences, as in the sight of God and to the glory of Christ.

 

The subject to which Paul drew attention, the target at which he was shooting his arrows, was forgiveness of sins through the man Christ Jesus. That is my subject this morning; and when I have spoken upon it briefly, I will then have a few words to say about his audience, and what became of them.

 

I. PAUL’S SUBJECT was matchless — the subject of subjects — the great master-doctrine of the Christian ministry: “That through Jesus the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you.”

 

“The forgiveness of sins” is a topic which will be more or less interesting to every listener here today in proportion as they feel that they have committed sins, the guilt of which appalls their conscience. To those of you who fold your arms, and say, “We have done no wrong either to God or man,” I have nothing to say. You don’t need a physician, for you are not sick. You, evidently, would not be thankful for the heavenly eye-salve, for you are not blind. The wealth that Christ can bring you will not induce you to bow the knee to him, for you already think that you are rich and have acquired wealth and do not need a thing [Revelation 3:17]. But I am quite sure to have the attention of the person whose sins have been a burden to them. If there is any one here today who wants to be reconciled to God, who can say with the prodigal son, “I will set out and go back to my father” [Luke 15:18], then let them listen to what I have to say, for the theme itself will be sure to grab the attention of the person, who says in their hearts,

 

“How can I get my sins forgiven?

How can I find my way to Heaven?”

 

While we attempt to tell them that, we will ensure their utmost attention. This is our aim; and this will we do if God permits.

 

The Christian preacher tells men and women the underlying condition to receive a pardon, the exclusive method by which God will pardon sin. “Through Jesus,” says the text; that is to say, God will pardon, but he will only pardon in one way — through his Son Jesus Christ.

 

The Lord Jesus has a monopoly of mercy. If you will depend upon the mercy of God apart from Christ, you will find that you have depended upon a reed, and built your house upon the sand. Into the one silver pipe of the atoning sacrifice God has made to flow the full current of pardoning grace. If you will not go to that, you may be tempted by the mirage and try to drink fully of grace there, but you will die disappointed. You must die, unless you come for salvation, to Christ. What does Jesus say of himself? He says, “I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved” [John 10:9].  “Whoever believes in [Jesus] is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son.” [John 3:18] “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved…” [Mark 16:16]. These are the very words of Christ, not mine. Whoever believes will be saved, “but whoever does not believe will be” — what? Pardoned for his unbelief? No; they “will be condemned” There is no other alternative. The expression might seem harsh if I were the inventor of it; but it came from the very lips of Christ, who was the gentlest, meekest, and most tender of men, “Whoever does not believe will be condemned.” God offers mercy to men and women, but he has chosen to offer it in only one channel — through that God-man who died for sinners, the Just for the unjust, that, he might bring them to God.

 

For this reason forgiveness comes to us alone through Jesus Christ.  The whole method of redemption supplies us with an answer. The man Christ Jesus is a Divine Person. He is the Son of God. You will never doubt that reconciliation is an effect of infinite wisdom when you once clearly understand the condition that made it essential. Even though Christ’s people were objects of God’s everlasting love, their sins had kindled his fierce anger, as it were an unquenchable fire. Inasmuch as God is just, he must by the necessity of his nature punish sin. Yet he willed to have mercy on sinful men and women. Therefore it was the reason that Christ came into this world. Being God, he was made man for our sakes. He suffered the wrath of God that we, the offending sinners, ought to have suffered. God exacted from the man Christ Jesus that which he must otherwise have exacted from us. Upon the dear faithful head of Christ was laid the curse; upon his bare back fell the scourge that should have tortured our souls throughout eternity; those hands of his, when nailed to the cross, felt the excruciating agony that should have been ours; that heart bled with our bleeding. “The punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.”  [Isaiah 53:5]  “Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows.” [Isaiah 53:4]

 

Substitution, then, is the cause of it all. God will forgive sin because the sin which he forgives has been already atoned for by the sufferings of his dear Son.

 

You know, many of you, the story, in old Roman history, of the young soldier who had disobeyed the orders of the officers over him, and was condemned to die. But his elder brother, a noble and decorated old soldier, who had often been on the front lines in the battles of his country, came and exposed his chest, and showed his many scars, and exhibited his old uniform covered with the insignias, and honors of his victories, and he said, “I cannot ask for my brother’s life on account of anything good that he has ever done; he deserves to die, I know, but I set my scars and my wounds before you as the price of his life, and I ask you whether you will not spare him for his brother’s sake;” and with applause, it was decided that for his brother’s sake he should live.

 

Sinner, this is what Christ, does for you. He points to his scars, he pleads before the throne of God, “I have suffered the vengeance due to sin; I have honored your righteous law; for my sake have mercy upon these unworthy brothers and sisters of mine!” In this way, and in no other way, is forgiveness of sins preached to you through this man Christ Jesus.

 

It is our business also to preach to you the instrument through which you may obtain this pardon.

 

I can read the question in your anxious eyes, you are asking, “I can understand that Christ, having stood as a Substitute, has received from God, the power to pardon human souls, but how can I obtain the pardon, how can I draw near to him?”

 

Have you never read what Moses said about the righteousness of faith, and Paul endorsed his description, “The righteousness that is by faith says: "Do not say in your heart, 'Who will ascend into heaven?'" (that is, to bring Christ down) "or 'Who will descend into the deep?'" (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead).”  [Romans 10:6-7]  But rather, it says, “The Word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart," that is, the Word of faith we are proclaiming” [Romans 10:8].

 

You have no need to go home to your closet to talk with Christ. You have no need even to come here to find him. He is accessible at every hour, and in every place — the ever-present Son of God.  “But what is the way that I am suppose to come to him?” says one. Oh! you don’t need to mutilate or torture your body: you don’t need to afflict your soul; you don’t need to bring your gold and silver; you don’t even need to shed tears. All that you have to do is to come to him as you are, and trust in him. Oh! if you will believe that he is the Son of God, and is able to save you completely, and if you will cast yourself on him with your whole weight, falling upon him, leaning upon him, resting upon him, being totally humble before him, showing that you are depending on nothing and no one else for salvation, then you will be saved. Now cling to the cross, you shipwrecked sinner, and you will never go down while clinging to that. If you are enabled by the Holy Spirit to put your complete and simple trust in Christ, then earth’s mountains may shake, and the stars of heaven be extinguished, but you will never perish, neither will anyone ever pluck you out of Christ’s hand. Trust Jesus; that is the way of salvation. “What!” says one, “if I trust Christ today, will I have my sins forgiven?” Yes, forgiven this morning. “What! if I just rest in Christ, and look to him?” Even so. “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

 

“There is life for a look at the crucified One,

There is life at this moment for you;

Then look, sinner, look unto him, and be saved,

Unto him who was nailed to the cross!”

 

You will be saved, not by sorrowful tears; not by wailings and good works; not by doing and praying; but coming, believing, simply depending upon what Jesus Christ has done. When your soul says by faith what Christ said in fact, “It is finished,” you are saved, and you may go on your way rejoicing.

 

We have thus preached God’s way of pardon, and man’s way of getting God’s pardon; but we are also commanded to preach about the character of this forgiveness of sin.

 

Never had messengers such happy tidings to deliver. When God pardons a person’s sins, he pardons them all; he makes a clean sweep of the whole. God never pardons half a person’s sins, and leaves the rest in his book. He has pardoned all of our sins at once. I believe that, virtually, before God, all the sins of the believer were so laid to the account of Christ that no sins ever can be laid to the believer’s door. The apostle does not say, “Who does lay anything to the charge of God’s elects” but “Who will?” as though nobody ever could. I am inclined to think that these [Kent’s] words are literally true, —

 

“Here’s pardon for transgressions past;

It matters not how black their cast;

And oh! my soul, with wonder view,

For sins to come here’s pardon too!”

 

It is a full pardon.

 

God takes his pen, and writes a receipt. Though the debt may be a hundred talents, he can write it off; or if it is ten thousand, the same hand can receipt it. Luther tells us of the devil appearing to him in a dream, and bringing before him the long rolls of his sins, and when he brought them, Luther said, “Now write at the bottom, ‘the blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleanses us from all sin:’” oh! that blessed word “all” —  “from all sin,” — great sins and little sins; sins of our youth, and sins of our old age; sins committed at night, and sins committed during the day; sins of action, and sins of thought, — are gone! Blessed Savior! Precious blood! Omnipotent Redeemer! The Mighty Red Sea that thus drowns every Egyptian!

 

It is a full pardon, and it is likewise a free pardon.

 

God never pardons any sinner from any other motive than his own pure grace. It is all free of cost. It cost the Savior a great amount, but it costs us nothing. It is a pardon freely given by a God of grace, because he delights in mercy.

 

There is, too, this further blessing about it, that, while it is full and free, it is also everlasting!

 

Whoever God pardons, he never condemns. Once God says, “I absolve you,” then no one can lay anything to our charge. We have heard of men who have been pardoned for one offense, but who have committed another, and have therefore had to die; but when the Lord pardons us, he prevents us from going back to our old life of sin and corruption. He puts his Spirit in us, and makes us new creations, so that we find we cannot do what we used to do. That mighty grace of God is without repentance; God never repents of having bestowed his grace. Do not believe those who tell you that he loves you today, and can hate you tomorrow. O beloved! once you are in Christ, the devil cannot get you out of him. Get into the sacred clefts, sinner, into that Rock of Ages which was cleft for you, and no demon, nor the devil himself, can ever drag you out. You are safe when once you get into that harbor. Get Christ, and you, have got heaven.

 

All things are yours when Christ is yours; full pardon, free pardon, and everlasting pardon; and let me also tell you, it is a present pardon.

 

There are those that will try to tell you that you cannot know you are forgiven until you come to die. O beloved! when people talk like that, it simply shows what they know, or rather, what they don’t know about it. There are some here who can bear witness; no, there are millions of God’s people who, if they could speak from heaven, would tell you this, “We knew our pardon many years before we entered into rest.”

 

My friends, if you had ever been locked up in prison, as some of us were, and had been set free, you would know what present pardon is. Five long years it was with me a bitter agony of soul, when nothing but, hell stared me in the face, when I had no peace neither night nor day, and oh, what joy it was when I heard that precious truth, “Look unto me, and be saved, all the ends of the earth;” I felt the pardon really fall on me! I was as conscious of pardon as this hand is conscious of being clean after I have washed it, and as conscious of being accepted in Christ in that moment, as I am now sure that I am able to stand here and say as much with my mouth. A person may have this infallible witness of the Holy Spirit. I know that, to some emotionless minds, it will always seem like fanaticism; but what, do I care whether it seems like fanaticism to them or not, as long as it is real to my heart?

 

We consider ourselves as honest as others, and have as much right to be believed; whether they credit our sanity and our sincerity or not does not affect us one bit, so long as we know that we have received the grace.

 

If you receive a clear profit of ten thousand dollars [pounds] from some investment, and somebody said to you, “That’s nothing but foolishness;” the proof would be unanswerable if you had received the amount, and had the money to prove it. Then you would say, “Oh! you may think whatever you want about it, but I have the cash.”

 

So Christians can say, “Being justified by faith, we have peace: with God; ... and not only that, but we also have joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement.” When someone tells a Christian that he is not forgiven, he says, “Oh! you may say what you like about it; but I have the witness within that I am born of God. I am not what I used to be; if I were to meet  myself in the street, I would hardly know myself; I mean my spiritual self, — my inner self, for I am so changed, so renewed, so turned upside down that I am not what I was, I am a new creation in Christ Jesus.” The person who can say this can bear to be laughed at. They know what they are all about, and at the most sober moment of their life, even when lying on their bed sick and ready to die, they can look right into eternity, soberly judge Christ, and find him to be worthy of their confidence, and, thinking of the blood-washing, find it to be a real fact. There are a thousand things in this world that look good enough until you come to look at them from the viewpoint of the grave; but this pardon from our sins looks better the closer we get to eternity, and the more solemnly and deliberately we take our account of it in the sight of God.

 

Oh, yes! There is a present pardon; but what I want to say most emphatically is, that there is a present pardon for you. Yes, for you!

 

If anyone among you will come and trust Christ, there is present pardon for you. What! That gray-headed man over there, seventy years old in sin? Yes, blessed be the name of the Lord, if he this morning should rest, in Christ, there is an instantaneous pardon for him! And is there a prostitute here today? Is there a drunkard here? Is there one here who has cursed God? Is there one here who has been dishonest? Is there one here over whom all these sins have rolled? Why, if you believe in Christ, then your sins, which are many, will all be forgiven you. And even if there in one here that is so guilty of the vilest sin, that we all might want to turn away from them, if they will only trust Christ, Christ will not turn away from them, but will receive them. Oh! Wasn’t that a wonderful moment when the Savior wrote on the ground, as the woman caught in adultery stood before him, when all her accusers, being convicted by their own consciences, walked away, leaving the sinner and the Savior alone together, and when Jesus Christ, who hated all kinds of sin, but who loved all kinds of sinners, stood up and said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and sin no more”?

 

Oh! Poor sinner, Jesus Christ does not condemn you. If you condemn yourselves, he will never condemn you. He will only condemn your sin, for that is what he hates, but he does not hate you. If you and your sins part, Christ and you will never part. If you will only trust him now, you will find him able to completely save you from all your sins, which have become your plague and your burden. God help you, then, to immediately trust him right now, and to find this present pardon, — this pardon which will last you forever, and which you may have right now!

 

Now, as I said before, all this will be good news only to those who want to be pardoned, and not to those, who do not require it. I have nothing to say to those who do not want it; why should I? They that believe that they are not sick have no need of the physician, but for those that know they are sick, God will have something to say to you, one of these days.

 

I remember, and I hope you have not forgotten, the story of the rich man [Luke 16:19-31]. It is more than an allegory, it is a true story. You know that, while he was in this world, he lived in luxury everyday. He was dressed in purple and fine linen, and as for God’s child Lazarus, the rich man thought, he was a poor miserable, beggar, only fit to be with the dogs, and he despised him. He looked at him, and said, “Oh! I am a gentleman; I am dressed in purple and fine linen; I am not part of your beggarly saints that sit on the dunghill, though they call themselves saints, and all that; I am rich.”

 

Now, the truth of the matter is that he did not see himself as he truly was; he had scales all over his eyes. But he found out the truth one day. You remember Christ’s words, “In hell, where the rich man was in torment, he looked up!” Oh! and he saw then what he had never seen before. All that he had ever seen before had been a deception; he had been confused and blind. He had been the beggar—the one in great need, all along, if he had only known it; while Lazarus, who had wore beggar’s clothes, was waited on like a prince and carried by angels into heaven. So, the poor beggar, covered with sores, who thinks he is only fit for the dunghill, he is the man Christ will save, he is the man Christ will take up into heaven in the end. As for the self-righteous persons, who think themselves so good and excellent, they will see that all their external glitter will be completely burned up in the fire; the varnish and paint will all come off; God will knock the masks off their faces, and let the leprosy that was on their forehead be seen by everyone. But, sinner, you who are lost in your sin and corruption, and who know it, to you is preached this morning the forgiveness of sins, through the God-man Christ Jesus.

 

II. I will now proceed to remind you of THE CONGREGATION TO WHICH PAUL ADDRESSED HIMSELF AND WHAT BECAME OF THEM.

 

The text says, “The forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you.” Never mind the Jews and Gentiles Paul preached to; the verse is just as applicable here today as it was then. “The forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you.”  

 

My dear friend, it is no small privilege to be where the message of the forgiveness of sins can still be heard.

 

The forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you; but not to the many millions who have gone the way of all flesh, unforgiven and unsaved. How is it that you are spared? Your brother is dead; your children have, some of them, died; but you are spared. You have been at sea. You have been in danger. You have had a serious disease. You have been near death; and yet here you are kept alive, with death so near. Isn’t this a great privilege that the forgiveness of sins has been preached to you? What would those in hell at this very moment give to hear it preached once more? What would they give to have another opportunity to put their faith in Christ?

 

But it has been said of them, —

“Too late, too late! you cannot enter now.”

 

“The forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you.” I said that this was a privilege; but it is a privilege which some of you, have despised.

 

Those who heard Paul, had never heard the gospel before; many of you have heard it ever since your childhood. Sadly! I cannot help saying of some of you that I am ready to despair of your conversion. You do not advance in the Christian faith. All the exhortations in the world are to you as if they were spoken to a brick wall! Why will you die! What will happen to you? What will be said to you? The forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you today! When you die, foolish, Christless, unsaved — when the first bit of dirt is thrown on your coffin, we will have to think to ourselves, “Oh, that person is lost and in hell, and yet the forgiveness of sins was preached to them!”

 

Well, today, right now, it is still being preached to you. Despite the fact that you have continued to neglect the privilege, the gospel is still being preached to you. I wish I could point my finger to some of you, and say, “Well, now, I really do mean you personally. You people way in the back of the church, whom I can barely see, and you upstairs in the balcony, every one of you — to you, is preached the forgiveness of sins. God has not sent me today to preach to your neighbors, but to you — you, Mary, Thomas, George, John, Sarah — you, yes you personally — to you is preached the forgiveness of sins, and it is with you now, today, to consider what reception will be given to this message of mercy. Will a hard heart be the only answer? Oh, may the Spirit of God come upon you, and give instead a convicted conscience and a tender heart, that you may be led to say, “God be merciful to me a sinner!”

 

Do you ask, “What became of those who listened to Paul preach the Word with such gripping seriousness?”

 

Some of them became very angry and hostile at the message and the messenger. If you read through the chapter, you will find that the Jews were filled with envy, and they spoke against those things that were declared to them by Paul, contradicting and blaspheming, and so on, until Paul shook the dust off of his feet against them, and went his way.

 

But there was another class of people. The 48th verse says, “When the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and honored the Word of the Lord; and all who were appointed for eternal life believed” [Acts 13:48]. Oh, there is the comfort! There are some, whenever the gospel is preached, who do not like it. A person was once very angry with me because, in preaching on the natural depravity of man, I had charged mankind with being depraved, and I had said that man was proud. This one particular man would not confess it, and there he was proving the truth of the assertion as it was in regards to the fact that he was proud, because, he could not bear to hear the truth about himself. If he had said he was proud, I would have thought I had made a mistake; but when he got angry, I knew that God had sent me to tell him the truth. Outspoken truth makes half the world angry. The light blinds their eyes.

 

When the Jews resisted and fought against Paul’s preaching, did Paul feel disappointed? Oh, no or if he did feel depressed for a moment, there was a strong remedy at hand — that very thing which caused Jesus to rejoice in His spirit as he saw the grace of the Father in revealing unto babes those things that are hidden from the wise and prudent. Here was Paul’s comfort — there were some on whom there had been a blessed work; there were some whose names were written in the Book of Life, some concerning whom there had been covenant transactions; some whom God had chosen from before the creation of the universe; some whom Christ had bought with his blood, and whom the Holy Spirit, therefore, came to claim as God’s own property, because Christ had bought them upon the bloody cross, and those “some” believed. Naturally they were like others, but grace made the distinction, and their faith was the sign and evidence of that distinction.

 

Now, you needn’t ask today whether you are God’s elect. I ask another question — Do you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ? If you do, you are his elect, if you do not, the question is still not to be decided by us. If you are God’s chosen ones, you will know it by your trusting in Jesus. Simple as that trust is, it is the infallible proof of election. God never gives the gift of faith to a soul whom Christ has not bought with his blood; and if you believe, all eternity is yours; your name is in God’s Book—you are a favored one of heaven; the divine decrees all point to you; go your way, and rejoice.

 

But if you don’t believe, you are full of bitterness and in the shackles of iniquity. May eternal mercy bring you out of that state, yes, bring you out of it this morning! Oh, that I had the power to plead with some here who know that Christ died, who know that he can save, who know the gospel, but who still do not trust in that gospel for their salvation! Oh, may you be led to do it, and to do it, now, before this day is over! We want and pray for the conversion of many more beside you. If we had these souls given to us, what a token for good it would be, and what a comfort! May the Lord bring you in, and bring you in this morning! Oh, trust him, soul, trust him! May God help you to trust him, and his will be the praise, world without end! Amen.

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Preaching! Man's Privilege and God's Power (Charles H. Spurgeon, 1834-1892)

 

Mark 6:20

“For Herod feared John, knowing that he was a just man and an holy, and observed him; and when he heard him, he did many things, and heard him gladly.”

The preaching of the Word hath exceeding power. John commenced his ministry as an obscure individual, a man who led an almost hermit life. He begins to preach in the wilderness of Judea, but his cry is so powerful, that ere he has spoken many days, multitudes wait upon his words. He continues, clothed in that shaggy garment, and living on the simplest of food, still to utter the same cry of preparation for the kingdom of heaven—Repent! repent! repent! And now, not only the multitude, but the teachers, the respectable part of the community, come to listen to him. The Scribes and Pharisees sit down by Jordan's banks to listen to the Baptist's word. So powerful is his preaching that many of all ranks—publicans, sinners, and soldiers,—come unto him and are baptized by him in Jordan confessing their sins. Nay, the Scribes and Pharisees themselves seek baptism at his hands. Boldly, however, he repulses them; tells them to bring forth fruits meet for repentance, and warns them that their descent from Abraham does not entitle them to the blessings of the coming kingdom of the great Messiah. His word rings from one end of Judea to the other. All men wonder what this can mean, and already there begins to be a feeling in the hearts of men that Messiah is at hand. Herod himself hears of John, and now you behold the spectacle of a cruel and unrighteous king sitting humbly to listen to this stern reformer. The Baptist changes not his preaching. The same boldness which had made him rebuke the common people and their teachers, now leads him to defy the wrath of Herod himself. He touches him in his most tender place, strikes his favourite sin, dashes down his idle lust to the ground, counts it his business not to speak of truth in generals but in particulars. Yea, he tells him to his very face, "It is not lawful for thee to take to thyself thy brother's wife."

Oh, what a power there is in the Word of God! I do not find that the Pharynx with all their learning had moved Herod. I discover not that the most mighty of the Grecian philosophers, or of the Gnostics who were then in existence, had any power to reach the heart of Herod. But the simple, plain preaching of John, his declaration of the Word with all honesty and simplicity, had power to pin Herod by the ear, to vibrate in his heart and to awaken his conscience, for sure we are it was awakened; if the awakening did not end in his conversion, at any rate it made him troubled in his sins so that he could not go on peaceably in iniquity. Ah, my dear friends, we want nothing in these times for revival in the world but the simple preaching of the gospel. This is the great battering ram that shall dash down the bulwarks of iniquity. This is the great light that shall scatter the darkness. We need not that men should be adopting new schemes and new plans. We are glad of the agencies and assistances which are continually arising; but after all, the true Jerusalem blade, the sword that can cut to the piercing asunder of the joints and marrow, is preaching the Word of God. We must never neglect it, never despise it. The age in which the pulpit it despised, will be an age in which gospel truth will cease to be honored. Once put away God's ministers, and you have to a great extent taken the candle out of the candlestick; quenched the lamps that God hath appointed in the sanctuary. Our missionary societies need continually to be reminded of this; they get so busy with translations, so diligently employed with the different operations of civilization, with the founding of stores, with the encouragement of commerce among a people, that they seem to neglect—at least in some degree—that which is the great and master weapon of the minister, the foolishness of preaching by which it pleases God to save them that believe. Preaching the gospel will effectually civilize, while introducing the arts of civilization will sometimes fail. Preaching the gospel will lift up the barbarian, while attempts to do it by philosophy will be found ineffectual. We must go among them, and tell them of Christ; we must point them to heaven; we must lead them to the cross; shall they be elevated in their character, and raised in their condition. But by no other means. God forbid that we should begin to depreciate preaching. Let us still honor it; let us look to it as God's ordained instrumentality, and we shall yet see in the world a repetition of great wonders wrought by the preaching in the name of Jesus Christ.

Today, I shall want your attention to a subject which concerns us all, but more especially those, who being hearers of the Word, are hearers only, and not doers of the same. I shall first attempt to show the blessedness of hearing the Word of God; secondly, the responsibilities of the hearer; and then, thirdly, those accompaniments which are necessary to go with the hearing of the Word of God, to make it effectual to save the soul.

I. First of all, my dear friends, let us speak a little about THE BLESSEDNESS OF HEARING THE WORD.

The prophet constantly asserts, "Blessed are the ears which hear the things that we hear; and blessed are the eyes which see the things which we see." Prophets and kings desired it long, but died without the sight. Often do the seers of old use language similar to this, "Blessed is the people that know the joyful sound, they shall walk, O Lord, in the light of thy countenance." Godly men accept it as an omen of happy times when their eyes should see their teachers. The angels sang the blessedness of it when they descended from on high, singing, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. Behold, we bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be unto you and to all people." The angels' song is in harmony with the seers' testimony. Both conjoin to prove what I assert, that we are blessed in having the privilege of listening to God's Word.

Let us enlarge upon this point. If we reflect upon what the preaching of the Word is, we shall soon see that we are highly privileged in enjoying it. The preaching of the Word is the scattering of the seed. The hearers are the ground on which the good seed falls. Those who hear not the Word are as the arid desert, which has never seen a handful of the good corn; or as the unploughed waves of the sea which have never been gladdened with the prospect of a harvest. But when the sower goes forth to sow seed, he scatters it broadcast upon you that hear, and there is to you the hope that in you the good seed shall take root and bring forth fruit a hundred fold. True, some of you may be but wayside hearers, and evil birds may soon devour the seed. At least, it does fall upon you, nor is it the fault of the seed, but of the ground, if that seed does not grow. True, you may be as stony-ground hearers, who for awhile receive the Word and rejoice therein, but having no root in yourselves, the seed may wither away. That again, I say, does not diminish your privilege, though it increases your guilt, inasmuch as it is no fault of the seed nor of the sun, but the fault of the stony ground, if the fruit is not nourished unto perfection. And you, inasmuch as you are the field, the broad acres upon which the gospel husbandman scatters the precious grain, you enjoy the privilege which is denied to heathens and idolaters.

Again, the kingdom of heaven is likened unto a net which is cast into the sea, and which gathers of divers kinds. Now you represent the fish of the sea, and it is happy indeed for you that you are where the net is thrown, for there is at least the hope that you may be entangled in its meshes, and may be drawn out of the sea of sin, and gathered into the vessels of salvation. If you were far, far away, where the net is never cast, there would be no hope of your being caught therein. But here you are gathered round the fisherman's humble boat, and as he casts his net into the sea, he hopes that some of you may be caught therein,—and assuredly gracious is your privilege! But if you be not caught, it shall not be the fault of the net, but the fault of your own wilfulness, which shall make you fly from it, lest you be graciously taken therein.

Moreover, the preaching of the gospel is very much in this day like the mission of Christ upon earth. When Christ was on earth he went about walking through the midst of sick folk, and they laid them in their beds by the wayside, so that as Jesus passed by, they might touch the hem of his garment and be made whole. You, to-day, when you hear the Word, are like the sick in their beds where Jesus passes by. You are like blind Bartimaeus sitting by the wayside begging, in the very road along which the Son of David journeys. Lo, a multitude have come to listen to him. He is present wherever his truth is preached: "Lo, I am with you always, even to the ends of the world." You are not like sick men in their chambers, or sick men far away in Tyre and Sidon, but you are like the men who lay at Bethesda's pool under the five porches, waiting for the moving of the water. Angel of God, move the waters this day! or rather, O Jesus, give thou grace to the impotent man that he may now step in.

Yet further, we may illustrate the privilege of those who hear the Word by the fact that the Word of God is the bread of heaven. I can only compare this great number of people gathered here to-day to the sight which was seen upon the mountain in the days of Jesus. They were hungry, and the disciples would have sent them away. But Jesus bade them sit down in ranks upon the grass, as you are sitting down in rows here, and there were but a few barley loaves and five small fishes (fit type and representation of the minister's own poverty of words and thoughts!) But Jesus blessed the bread, and blessed the fishes, and brake them; and they were multiplied, and they did all eat and were filled. So you are as these men. God give you grace to eat. There is not given to you a stone instead of bread, nor a scorpion instead of an egg; but Christ Jesus shall be fully and freely preached to you. May you have appetites to long for the Word, faith to partake of the Word, and may it be to you the bread of life sent down from heaven.

Yet often in Scripture we find the Word of God compared to a light. "The people that sat in darkness saw a great light." "Unto them that dwell in darkness, and in the valley of the shadow of death, has a great light arisen." Those who hear not the Word are men that grope their way not only in a fog, but in a thick Egyptian darkness that may be felt. Before your eyes to-day is held up the flaming torch of God's Word, to shew you your path through the thick darkness. Nay, to-day there is not only a torch, but in the preaching of the Word the Sun of Righteousness himself arises with healing beneath his wings. You are not they that grope for the wall like blind men; you are not as they who are obliged to say, "We see not the path to heaven; we know not the way to God; we fear we shall never be reconciled to Christ." Behold, the light of heaven shineth upon your eyeballs, and, if ye perish, ye must perish wilfully; if ye sink into hell, it will be with the path to heaven shining before you, if damned, it will be not because you do not know the way of salvation, but because you wilfully and wickedly put it from you, and choose for yourselves the path of death. It must even be then a privilege to listen to the Word, if the Word be as a light, and as bread, and as healing, as a gospel net, and as divine seed.

Once more let me remind you, there is yet a greater privilege connected with the Word of God than this—for all this were nothing without the last. As I look upon a multitude of unconverted men and women, I am reminded of Ezekiel's vision. He saw lying in the valley of Hinnom multitudes of bones, the flesh of which had been consumed by fire, and the bones themselves were dried as in a furnace, scattered hither and thither. There with other bones in other charnel-houses, lying scattered at the mouths of other graves; but Ezekiel was not sent to them; to the valley of Hinnom was he sent, and there alone. And he stood by faith, and began to practice the foolishness of preaching, "Ye dry bones hear the word of the Lord; thus saith the Lord, ye dry bones live." And as be spoke there was a rustling, each bone sought its fellow; and as he spake again, these bones united and stood erect, as he continued his discourse the flesh clothed the skeleton; when he concluded by crying, "Come from the winds, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live," they stood upon their feet an exceeding great army. The preached Word is like Ezekiel's prophecy; life goes forth with the word of the faithful minister, when we say, "Repent!" We know that sinners cannot repent of themselves, but God's grace sweetly constrains them to repent. When we bid them believe, it is not because of any natural capacity for faith that lies within them, but because the command "Believe and live," when given by the faithful minister of God, hath in it a quickening power; as much as when Peter and John said to the man with the withered hand, "In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, stretch out thy hand," and it was done. So do we say to the dead in sin—"Sinner, live; repent and be converted; repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of the Lord Jesus." Owned of God the Spirit, it becomes a quickening cry, and you are made to live. Blessed are the dry bones that lay in a valley where Ezekiel prophecies; and blessed are ye that are found where Jesus Christ's name is preached, where his power is invoked by a heart which believes in its energy; where his truth is preached to you by one, who despite of many mistakes knows this one thing—that Christ is both the power of God and the wisdom of God unto every one that believeth. This consideration alone then—the peculiar power of the Word of God, might compel us to say, "That indeed there is a blessedness in hearing it."

But, my dear friends, let us look at it in another light. Let us appeal to those who have heard the Word and have received good in their own souls by it. Men and brethren, I speak to hundreds of you, who know in your own soul what the Word of God is. Let me ask you—you who have been converted from a thousand crimes—you who have been picked from the dunghill and made to sit among the princely children of God—let me ask you what you think of the preaching of the Word. Why, there are hundreds of you men and women, who if this were the proper time and occasion, would rise from your seat and say, "I bless God that ever I listened to the preached Word. I was a stranger to all truth, but I was enticed to come and listen, and God met with me." Some of you can look back to the first Sunday on which you ever entered a place of worship for twenty years, and that place was this very hall. Here you came an unaccustomed worshipper to tread God's hallowed floor. You stood and knew not what you were at. You wondered what the service of God's house could be. But you have reason to remember that Sabbath-day, and you will have reason to remember it to all eternity. Oh that day! it broke your bonds and set you free; that day aroused your conscience and made you feel your need of Christ. That day was a blessed turning point in your history, in which you were led to escape from hell, turn your back on sin, and fly for refuge to Christ Jesus. Since that day let me ask you, what has the Word of God been to you? Has it not been constantly a quickening word? You have grown dull and careless during the week; has not the Sabbath sermon stirred you up afresh? You have sometimes all but lost your hope, and has not the hearing of the Word revived you? Why I know that some of you have come up to the house of God as hungry men would come to a place where bread was distributed, you come to the house of God with a light and happy step, as thirsty men would come to a flowing well, and you rejoice when the day comes round: you only wish there were seven Sabbath days a week, that you might always be listening to God's Word. You can say with Dr. Watts,

"Father, my soul would still abide within thy temple, near thy side.
And if my feet must hence depart, still keep thy dwelling in my heart."

Personally I have to bless God for many good books. I thank God for Dr. Doddridge's Rise and Progress of Religion; I thank God for Baxter's Call to the Unconverted; for Alleyne's Alarm to Sinners; I bless God for James's Anxious Enquirer; but my gratitude most of all is due to God, not for books, but for the living Word—and that too addressed to me by a poor uneducated man, a man who had never received any training for the ministry, and probably will never be heard of in this life, a man engaged in business, no doubt of a menial kind during the week, but who had just enough of grace to say on the Sabbath, "Look unto me and be ye saved all ye ends of the earth. "The books were good, but the man was better. The revealed Word awakened me, it was the living Word saved me, and I must ever attach peculiar value to the hearing of the truth, for by it I received the joy and peace in which my soul delights.

But further, my dear hearers, the value of the Word preached and heard may be estimated by the opinions which the lost have of it now. Hearken to one man, it is not a dream nor a picture of my imagination which I now present to you, it is one of Jesus Christ's own graphic descriptions. There lies a man in hell who has heard Moses and the prophets. His time is passed, he can hear them no more. But so great is the value he attaches to the preached Word, that he says, "Father Abraham, send Lazarus, for I have five brethren, let him testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment." He felt that if Lazarus could speak—speak personally his own personal testimony to the truth, that peradventure they might be saved. Oh! what would the damned in hell give for a sermon could they but listen once more to the church-going bell and go up to the sanctuary! Ah, my brethren, they would consent, if it were possible, to bear ten thousand years of hell's torments, if they might but once more have the Word preached to them! Ah! if I had a congregation such as that would be, of men who have tasted the wrath of God, of men who know what an awful thing it is to fall into the hands of an angry God, oh, how would they lean forward to catch every word, with what deep attention would they all regard the preacher, each one saying, "Is there a hope for me? May I not escape from the place of doom? Good God! may this fire not be quenched and I be plucked as a brand from the burning?" Value then, I pray you, the privilege while you have it now. We are always foolish, and we never value mercy till we lose it. But I do adjure you cast not aside this folly, value it while it is called to-day, value that which once lost will seem to us to be priceless beyond all conception,—estimated then at its true worth, invaluable, and precious beyond a miser's dream.

Let me again ask you to value it in a brighter light—by the estimation of the saints before the throne. Ye glorified ones, what think ye of the preaching of the Word? Hark to them! Will they not sing it forth—"Faith came to us by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. It was by it that we were led to confess our sins; by it we were led to wash our robes and make them white in the blood of the Lamb?" I am sure they before the throne think not lightly of God's ministers. They would not speak with cold language of the truth of the Gospel which is preached in your ears. No, in their eternal hallelujahs they bless the Lord who sent the Gospel to them, as they sing—"Unto him that loved us and washed us from our sins in his blood, unto him be glory for ever and ever." Value, then, the preaching of the Word, and count yourselves happy that you are allowed to listen to it.

II. My second head deals more closely with the text, and I hope it will likewise appeal more closely to our consciences—THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE HEARER OF THE WORD.

Herod, you will perceive, went as far as very many of us, perhaps farther than some, and yet was lost. Our responsibilities concerning the Word do not end with hearing it. Herod heard it, but hearing is not enough. Ye may sit for fifty years in the sanctuary of God hearing the gospel, and be rather the worse than the better for all you have heard, if it end in hearing. It is not the Word entering into one ear, and coming forth out of the other ear which converts the soul but it is the echoing of the Word down in the very heart, and the abiding of the truth in the conscience. I know there are very many who think they have fulfilled all their religion when they go to their church or chapel. Let us not deceive you in this thing. Your church-going, and your chapel-going, though they give you great privileges, yet involve the most solemn responsibilities. Instead of being in themselves saving, they may be damning to you unless you avail yourselves of the privileges presented to you by them. I doubt not that hell is crammed with church and chapel-goers, and that there are whole wards in that infernal prison house that are filled with men who heard the Word, but who stopped there, who sat in their pews, but never fled to Christ; who listened to the call, but did not obey it. "Yes," saith one," but I do more than simply hear the Word, for I make choice of the most earnest preacher I can find." So did Herod, and yet he perished. He was not a hearer of a man with a soft tongue, for John did not speak as one clothed in fine raiment, John was not a reed shaken with the wind; he was a prophet, "Yea, I say unto you, and more than a prophet;" faithful in all his house, as a good servant of his God. There was never a more honest and faithful preacher than John. And you too, may with care have selected the most excellent minister, not for his eloquence, but for his earnestness; not for his talent, but for his power of faith, and you may listen to him, and that too with attention, and after all may be a cast-away. The responsibilities involved in listening to such a man may be so weighty, that like a millstone about your neck, they may help to sink you lower than the lowest hell. Take heed to yourselves, that you rest not in the outward Word, however fitly spoken, or however attentively heard; but reach forward to something deeper and better. "Yes," saith a third, "but I do not only hear the most earnest preacher, but I go out of my way to hear him. I have left my parish church, for instance, and I come walking five or six miles—I am willing to walk ten, or even twenty, if I can but hear a sermon—and I am not ashamed to mingle with the poor. I may have rank and position in life, but I am not ashamed to listen to the earnest preacher, though he should belong to the most despised of sects" Yea, and Herod did the like, Herod was a king, and yet listened to the peasant-prophet. Herod is clothed in purple, and yet listens to the Baptist in his shaggy garment. While Herod fared sumptuously every day, he who ate locusts and wild honey reproves him boldly to his face; and with all this, Herod was not saved. So, also, you may walk many a mile to listen to the truth, and that year after year, but unless ye go further than that, unless ye obey the Word, unless it sinks deep into your inmost soul, ye shall perish still—perish under the sound of the Word—the very Word of God becoming a death-knell to your soul, dreadfully tolling you down to deep destruction. But I hear another object. "I, sir, not only take the trouble to hear, but I hear very gladly. I am delighted when I listen. I am not a captious, critical hearer, but I feel a pleasure in listening to God's Word. Is not that a blessed sign? Do you not think that I must be saved, if I rejoice to hear that good sound?" No, my friend, no; it is a hopeful sign, but it is a very uncertain one, for is it not written in our text, that Herod heard the Word gladly? The smile might be on his face, or the tear in his eye while the Baptist denounced sin; there was a something in his conscience which made him feel glad that there was one honest man alive; that in a time of enormous corruption, there was one fearless soul that dare with unblanched cheek, to correct sin in high places. He was like Henry the Eighth, who when Hugh Latimer presented him on New Year's day with a napkin, on which was embroidered the words, "Whoremongers and adulterers God will judge;" instead of casting the preacher into prison, he said, "He was glad there was one man who dared to tell him and he stands up for you and defends you, but he is as bad a man as there is living." Oh sirs! I am glad you listen to me; I do hope that the hammer may yet break your hearts but I do conjure you, give up your sins. Oh! for your own soul's sake, do not abide in your transgressions, for I warn you, if I have spoken faithfully to you, you cannot sin so cheaply as other men. I have never prosed away to you; I have never been too polite to warn you of perdition, I speak to you in rough and earnest terms—I may claim that credit without egotism. If you perish, sirs, it will little boot you that ye stood up in my defense; it will little serve you that ye tried to screen the minister from slander and from calumny. I would have you think of yourselves, even though ye thought less of me and my reputation. I would have you love yourselves, and so escape from hell, and fly to heaven while yet the gate of mercy stands on the jar, and the hour of mercy is not passed for ever. Think not, I say, that hearing the Word gladly is enough; you may do so and yet be lost.

But more than that. "Ah," says one, "you have just anticipated what I was about to say. I not only listen gladly, but I respect the preacher. I would not hear a man say a word against him." It was so with Herod. "He observed John," it is said, "and he accounted him a just man and a holy," and yet though he honored the preacher, he was lost himself. Ah! what multitudes go to our fashionable places of worship, and as they come out they say to one another, "What a noble sermon!" and then they go to their houses, and sit down and say, "What a fine turn he gave to that period! what a rich thought that was! what a sparkling metaphor!" And is it for this that we preach to you? Is your applause the breath of our nostrils? Do you think that God's ministers are sent into the world to tickle your ears and be unto you as one that plays a merry tune on a goodly instrument? God knows I would sooner break stones on the road than be a preacher for oratory's sake. I would never stand here to play the hypocrite. No, it is your hearts we want, not your admiration. It is your espousal to Christ, and not your love to us. Oh that we could break your hearts, and awake your consciences, we would not mind what other results should follow. We should feel that we were accepted of God, if we were but felt with power to be God's servants in the hearts and thoughts of men. No, think not that to honor the preacher is enough. Ye may perish praising the minister in your dying moments.

Yet further. Some one may say, "I feel I am a better man through hearing the minister, and is not that a good sign?" Yes, it is a good sign, but it is not a sure one for all that. For Herod they said did many things. Look at the text. It is expressly said there, "He observed him, and when he heard him, he did many things." I should not wonder after that, that Herod became somewhat more merciful in his government, somewhat less exacting, a little more outwardly moral, and though he continued in his lasciviousness, yet he tried to cover it up with respectable excuses. "He did many things." That was doing a very long way, but Herod was Herod still. And you sirs, it may be, have been led to give up drunkenness, through the preaching of the Word: to shut up the shop that used to be opened on a Sunday. You cannot now swear; you would not now cheat. It is good, it is very good; but it is not enough. All this there may be, but yet the root of the matter may not be in you. To honor the Sabbath outwardly will not save you, unless you enter into the rest which remaineth for the people of God. Merely to close the shop is not enough. The heart itself must be shut up against the love of sin. To cease blasphemy is not sufficient, though it is good, for there may be blasphemy in the heart, when there is none upon the tongue. "Except ye be converted and become as little children ye shall in nowise enter the kingdom of heaven." For "Except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God." The Lord grant that you may not rest with outward cleansing, with moral purification, but strike deeper into the root, and soul, and marrow of these blessings, the change of your heart, the bringing of your soul into union with Christ. One thing I must also remark about Herod, with the Greek text in view "He did many things," will allow me to infer that he felt many doubts. As a good old commentator says, "John smote him so hard, that he could not help feeling it. He gave him such home blows that he could not but be bruised every now and then, and yet though his conscience was smitten, his heart was never renewed." It is a pleasant sight to see men weep under the Word—to mark them tremble; but then we remember Felix. Felix trembled. But he said, "Go thy way for this time; when I have a more convenient season I will send for thee. Happy the minister who hears the people say, "Almost thou persuadest us to be Christians." But then, we remember Agrippa—we remember how he returns to his sins, and seeks not the Savior. We are glad if your consciences are awakened, we rejoice if you are made to doubt and question yourselves, but we mourn because your doubts are so transient, because your goodness is as the morning cloud, and as the early dew.

I have tracked some of you to your houses. I have known of some who after a solemn sermon, when they got home could scarcely eat their meal. They sit down, leaning their head on their hand. The wife is glad to think that her husband is in a hopeful state. He rises from his seat; he goes up stairs; he walks about the house he says he is miserable. At last he comes down and sets his teeth together, and says "Well, if I am to be damned I shall be damned; if I am to be saved I shall be saved, and there's an end of it." Then he rouses himself, saying, "I cannot go to hear that man again: he is too hard with me. I must either give up my sins, or give up listening to the Word; the two things will not exist together." Happy, I say, are we to see that man troubled; but our unhappiness is so much the greater when we see him shaking it off—the dog returning to his vomit, and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire. O God, save us from this, let us never be men who spring up fairly, but wither away suddenly and disappoint all hope. O God, let us not be as Balaam, who prayed that his last end might be with the righteous, but returned to defy Israel, to provoke the Lord God, and to perish in the midst of his iniquity.

And now I hear many of you say, "Well if all these things are not enough, what is it that is expected of the hearer of the Word?" Spirit of God! help us so to speak that the Word may come home to all! Believer in Christ, if you would hear the Word to profit, you must hear it obediently. You must hear it as James and John did, when the Master said "Follow me," and they left their nets and their boats and then followed him. You must do the Word as well as hear it, yielding up your hearts to its sway, being willing to walk in the road which it maps, to follow the path which it lays before you. Hearing it obediently, you must also hear it personally for yourselves, not for others, but for yourselves alone. You must be as Zacchaeus, who was in the sycamore tree, and the Master said, "Zacchaeus, make haste and come down, to-day I must abide in thy house." The Word will never bless you till it comes home directly to yourself. You must be as Mary, who when the Master spoke to her she did not know his voice, till he said unto her, "Mary!" and she said, "Rabboni." There must be an individual hearing of the truth, and a reception of it for yourself in your own heart. Then, too, you must hear the truth penitently. You must be as that Mary, who when she listened to the Word, must needs go and wash the feet of Jesus with her tears, and wipe them with the hairs of her head. There must be tears for your many sins, a true confession of your guilt before God. But above all you must hear it believingly. The Word must not be unto you as mere sound, but as matter of fact. You must be as Lydia, whose heart the Lord opened; or as the trembling jailer, who believed on the Lord Jesus with all his house and was baptized forthwith. You must be as the thief, who could pray, "Lord, remember me," and who could believe the precious promise given, "To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise." God give us grace so to listen, and then shall our responsibilities under the Word be cleared up receiving the power of the Word into our conscience, with demonstration of the Holy Spirit, and fruits agreeable to our profession.

III. Now to conclude. I want your serious attention to THE NEEDFUL ACCOMPANIMENTS OF HEARING THE WORD.

There are many men who get blessed by the Word through God's sovereign grace without any of the accompaniments of which I am now about to speak. We have, connected with us, as a Church, a brother in Christ, who came into this place of worship with his gin bottle in his pocket one night. A chance hit of mine—as some would have thought it, when I pointed to the man and told him of it, not knowing aught but that the feeling that I was moved thereunto—was the man's first awakening. That man came without any preparation, and God blessed the word. Numerous have been the instances, which those who have not proved them deem utterly incredible, in which persons have absolutely come to me after a sermon, and begged me not to tell anybody about them, being firmly persuaded from what I said that I knew their private history, whereas I knew no more about them than a stranger in the market. But the Word of God will find men out. Preach the gospel and it will always find the man out and tell him all his secrets, carrying the lamp of the Lord into the hidden recesses of the heart.

But to you as a mass I speak this. If you will be blessed under the Word, would that you would pray before you come here. You sometimes hear of preparation for the Lord's Supper—I am sure if the Word is to be blessed, there ought to be a preparation for hearing it. Do you, when you come up to this house, pray to God before you come, "Lord, give the minister words; help him to speak to me to-day; Lord, save me to-day; may the Word to-day be a quickening word to my poor soul?" Ah! my friends, ye would never go without the blessing, if ye come up prayerfully looking for it, having asked it of God. Then after prayer, if you would be blessed under the Word, there should be an expectation of being blessed. It is wonderful the differences between the same sermon preached in different places, and I do not doubt that the same words uttered by different men would have different effects. With some men the hearers expect they will say something worth hearing; they listen, and the man does say something worth hearing; another man might say just the same; nobody receives it as other than common-place. Now if you can come up to the house of God expecting that there will be something for you, you will have it. We always get what we angle for. If we come up to find fault, there always will be faults to find. If we come up to get good, good will be gotten. God will send no man empty away; he shall have what he came for. If he came merely for curiosity, he shall have his curiosity gratified; if he came for good, he shall not be disappointed. We may be disappointed at man's door; we never were at God's. Man may send us away empty, but God never will. Then while listening to the Word with expectation, it will naturally come to pass that you will listen with deep attention. A young boy who had been awakened to a sense of sin, was remarked to be exceedingly attentive to sermons, and when asked why it was, he said, "Because I do not know which part of the sermon may be blessed to me, but I know that whichever it is, the devil will do his utmost to take my attention off then for fear I should be blessed;" so he would listen to the whole of it, lest by any means the Word of life should be let slip. So do you, and you will certainly be in the way of being blessed by the Word. Next to that, all through the sermon be appropriating it, saying to yourselves, "Does that belong to me?" If it be a promise, say, "Is that mine?" If it be a threatening, do not cover yourselves with the shield of hard-heartedness, but say, "If that threatening belongs to me, let it have its full force on me." Sit under the sermon with your breasts open to the Word; be ready to let the arrow come in.

Above all, this will be of no avail unless you hear with faith, Now faith cometh by hearing There must be faith mingled with the hearing. But you say, "What is faith? Is faith to believe that Christ died for me?" "No, it is not. The Arminian says that faith is to believe that Christ died for you. He teaches in the first place that Christ died for everybody, therefore, he says, he died for you; of course he died for everybody, and if he died for everybody he must have died for you. That is not faith at all. I hold, on the other hand, that Christ died for believers, that he died for no man that will be lost, that all he died for will be saved, that his intention cannot be frustrated in any man; that if he died to save any man, that man will be saved. Your question to-day is not whether Christ died for you or not, but it is this;—the Scripture says, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.'' And what is it to believe? To believe is to trust it is the same word, though believe is not so plain a word as trust. To trust Christ is to believe. I feel I cannot save myself, that all my doings and feelings cannot save me; I trust Christ to save me. That is faith; and the moment I trust Christ, I then know that Christ died for me, for they who trust him, he has surely died to save, so surely he died to save them that he will save them, so finished his work that he will never lose them, according to his own Word—"give unto my sheep eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any pluck them out of my hand" "But may I trust it!" says one. May! You are commanded to do it. "But I dare not." What! dare not do what God bids you! Rather say—"I dare not live without Christ, I dare not disobey. God has said—"This is the commandment, that ye believe on the Lord Jesus Christ whom he hath sent." This is the great commandment which is sent to you. To-day trust Christ and you are saved; disobey that command, and do what you will you are damned.

Go home to your chamber, and say unto God, "I desire to believe what I have heard; l desire to trust my immortal soul in Jesus' hands. Give me genuine faith; give me a real trust. Save me now, and save me hereafter." I dare avow it—I never can believe that any man so hearing the Word can by any possibility perish. Hear it, receive it, pray over it, and trust Christ through it, and if you are lost, there can be none saved. If this foundation give way, another can never be laid. If you fall, we all fall together. If trusting in Christ you can perish, all God's prophets, and martyrs, and confessors, and ministers, perish too. You cannot. He will never fail you; trust him now.

Spirit of God! incline the hearts of men to trust Christ. Enable them now to overcome their pride and their timidity, and may they trust the Savior now, and they are saved for ever, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

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Paul on Women Speaking in the Church (Benjamin B. Warfield, 1851-1921)

 I have recently received a letter from a valued friend asking me to send him a “discussion of the Greek words laleo and lego in such passages as I Cor. 14:33-39, with special reference to the question: Does the thirty-fourth verse forbid all women everywhere to speak or preach publicly in Chris­tian churches?” The matter is of universal interest, and I take the liberty of communicating my reply to the readers of The Presbyterian.

It requires to be said at once that there is no problem with reference to the relations of laleo and lego. Apart from niceties of merely philological interest, these words stand related to one another just as the English words speak and say do; that is to say, laleo expresses the act of talking, while lego refers to what is said. Wherever then the fact of speak­ing, without reference to the content of what is said, is to be indicated, laleo is used, and must be used. There is nothing disparaging in the intimation of the word, any more than there is in our word talk; although, of course, it can on occasion be used disparagingly as our word talk can also-as when some of the newspapers intimate that the Senate is given over to mere talk. This disparaging application of laleo, however, never occurs in the New Testament, although the word is used very frequently.

The word is in its right place in I Cor. 14:33ff, there­fore, and necessarily bears there its simple and natural mean­ing. If we needed anything to fix its meaning, however, it would be supplied by its frequent use in the preceding part of the chapter, where it refers not only to speaking with tongues (which was a divine manifestation and unintelligible only because of the limitations of the hearers), but also to the prophetic speech, which is directly declared to be to edifica­tion and exhortation and comforting (verses 3—6). It would be supplied more pungently, however, by its contrasting term here-“let them be silent” (verse 34). Here we have laleo directly defined for us: “Let the women keep silent, for it is not permitted to them to speak.” Keep silent-speak: these are the two opposites; and the one defines the other.

It is important to observe, now, that the pivot on which the injunction of these verses turns, is not the prohibition of speaking so much as the command of silence. That is the main injunction. The prohibition of speech is introduced only to explain the meaning more fully. What Paul says is in brief: “Let the women keep silent in the churches.” That surely is direct and specific enough for all needs. He then adds explanatorily: “For it is not permitted to them to speak.” “It is not permitted” is an appeal to a general law, valid apart from Paul’s personal command, and looks back to the opening phrase-“as in all the churches of the saints.” He is only requiring the Corinthian women to conform to the general law of the churches. And that is the meaning of the almost bitter words which he adds in verse 36, in which, reproaching them for the innovation of permitting women to speak in the churches, he reminds them that they are not the authors of the gospel, nor are they its sole possessors-let them keep to the law that binds the whole body of churches and not be seeking some new-fangled way of their own.

The intermediate verses only make it plain that precisely what the apostle is doing is forbidding women to speak at all in the church. His injunction of silence he pushes so far that he forbids them even to ask questions; and adds with special reference to that, but through that to the general matter, the crisp declaration that “it is indecent”-for that is the meaning of the word-“for a woman to speak in church.”

It would be impossible for the apostle to speak more directly or more emphatically than he has done here. He requires women to be silent at the church-meetings. For that is what “in the churches” means; there were no church buildings then. And he has not left us in doubt as to the nature of these church-meetings. He had just described them in verses 26ff. They were of the general character of our prayer-meetings. Note the words, “let him be silent in the church,” in verse 30, and compare them with “let them be silent in the churches,” in verse 34. The prohibition of women speaking covers thus all public church-meetings-it is the publicity, not the formality of it, which is the point. And he tells us repeatedly that this is the universal law of the church. He does more than that. He tells us that it is the commandment of the Lord, and emphasizes the word “Lord” (verse 37).

The passage in 1 Tim. 2:1ff is just as strong, although it is more particularly directed to the specific case of public teaching or ruling in the church. The apostle had already in this context (verse 8, “the men,” in contrast with “women” of verse 9) pointedly confined public praying to men, and now continues: “Let a woman learn in silence in all subjec­tion; but I do not permit to the woman to teach, neither to rule over the man, but to be in silence.” Neither the teaching nor the ruling function is permitted to woman. The apostle says here, “I do not permit,” instead of as in 1 Cor. 14:33ff., “it is not permitted,” because he is here giving his personal instructions to Timothy, his subordinate, while there he was announcing to the Corinthians the general law of the church. What he instructs Timothy, however, is the general law of the church. And so he goes on and grounds his prohibition in a universal reason which affects the entire race equally.

In the face of these two absolutely plain and emphatic passages, what is said in I Cor. 11:5 cannot be appealed to in mitigation or modification. Precisely what is meant in 1 Cor. 11:5, nobody quite knows. What is said there is that every woman praying or prophesying unveiled dishonors her head. It seems fair to infer that if she prays or prophesies veiled she does not dishonor her head. And it seems fair still further to infer that she may properly pray or prophesy if only she does it veiled. We are piling up a chain of inferences. And they have not carried us very far. We cannot infer that it would be proper for her to pray or prophesy in church if only she were veiled. There is nothing said about church in the passage or in the context. The word “church” does not occur until the 16th verse, and then not as ruling the reference of the passage, but only as supplying support for the injunction of the passage. There is no reason whatever for believing that “praying and prophesying” in church is meant. Neither was an exercise confined to the church. If, as in I Cor. 14:14, the “praying” spoken of was an ecstatic exercise—as its place by “prophesying” may suggest-then, there would be the divine inspiration superceding all ordinary laws, to be reckoned with. And there has already been occasion to observe that prayer in public is forbidden to women in I Tim. 2:8, 9. Unless mere attendance at prayer is meant, in which case this passage is a close parallel of I Tim. 2:9.

What then must be noted, in conclusion, is: (1) That the prohibition of speaking in the church to women is precise, absolute, and all-inclusive. They are to keep silent in the churches—and that means in all the public meetings for worship; they are not even to ask questions; (2) that this prohibition is given especial point precisely for the two matters of teaching and ruling covering specifically the functions of preaching and ruling elders; (3) that the grounds on which the prohibition is put are universal, and turn on the difference in sex, and particularly on the relative places given to the sexes in creation and in the fundamental history of the race (the fall).

Perhaps it ought to be added in elucidation of the last point just made, that the difference in conclusions between Paul and the feminist movement of today is rooted in a fundamental difference in their points of view relatively to the constitution of the human race. To Paul, the human race is made up of families, and every several organism, the church included, is composed of families, united together by this or that bond. The relation of the sexes in the family follows it therefore into the church. To the feminist movement the human race is made up of individuals; a woman is just another individual by the side of the man; and it can see no reason for any differences in dealing with the two. And, indeed, if we can ignore the great fundamental natural differ­ence of sex, and destroy the great fundamental social unit of the family, in the interest of individualism, there does not seem any reason why we should not wipe out the differences established by Paul between the sexes in the church. Except, of course, the authority of Paul. It all, in the end, comes back to the authority of the apostles, as founders of the church. We may like what Paul says, or we may not like it. We may be willing to do what he commands, or we may not be willing to do it. But there is no room for doubt of what he says. And he certainly would say to us, what he said to the Corinthians: “What? Was it from you that the word of God went forth? or came it to you alone?” Is this Christianity ours-to do with as we like? Or is it God’s religion, receiving its laws from him through the apostles?

Reprinted from The Presbyterian, October 30, 1919.

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