T H E K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S
April, 1940
128
Of What Use Are Sermons? By HERBERT LOCKYER Chicago, Illinois
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quality of reflecting God as He' is re vealed in the sacrifice of His Son. The sacred task of preaching is to make much of Christ—not to argue Him, or to defend Him, or even to state the need of Him, but to preach Him. We cannot read the exploits of the preachers in the Book of Acts without realizing that it was their unvarying aim to bring souls into contact with a living Christ. “Christ the text, and Christ the sermon, Christ the law, and Christ the faith.” Hopacker, the powerful German preacher, used to say: “I have only one sermon. It is this: ‘Come to Jesus.’ It is the only sermon I have, but, brothers, it draws hearts.” Ebenezer Morris, at the Carnarvon Association, preaching on the death of the Redeemer, repeated many times, with growing intensity and power, the words: “Y gwaed Lwn, this blood, this blood,” until hundreds were moved to a deep fervor of devotion. It is “this blood,” the blood of One who was will ing to die for sinners, that the preacher must exalt if he would be honored of the Holy Spirit. That was a quaint conceit of the ad visor of preachers who said: “Always enter the pulpit by ‘THE DOOR.’ ” Yes, JesuS is the “door” of the pulpit as of every good and useful abiding place. May we never enter any pulpit save by “ the door” ! John Kerr remarked expressively: "The Bible is the firma ment of which Christ is the sun.” And that cold hearts might be strangely warmed by such a "sun” is the end of all true preaching. 'Added Functions of the Sermon Another aspect of the mission of a sermon is that of comfort. The preacher will ever remember that he is in the presence of sorrow, that somewhere in his audience is a .»„c t>e-
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S ERMONS,” says Henry Ward Beecher, ‘‘are mere tools; and the business you have in mind is not making sermons or preaching sermons—it is saving men.” “Your only business,” said John Wesley to his preachers, “is to save- souls.” Dr. Dale in his Lectures on Preaching tells us that there is no work comparable to that of being “the ally of Christ in His great endeavor to save the world.” While much has been written concerning the substance and mission of a sermon, it will be found difficult to improve on Beecher’s definition! The preacher, as God’s ambassador, is a mediator between God and men, charged with the commission to bring God to men and men to God. Our obligation, then, is to proclaim a message; and to the messenger, says James Black, of Edinburgh, Scotland, both the method and the technique are subordinate; it is of little use thinking about these till we are clear about the message, for that will both make the preacher and shape the method. Some there are who are more con cerned about the method than the mes sage. Truth is sacrificed for technique. When preaching is done for mere effect, people witness a display but fail to experience a dynamic that blasts their shackles of sin. Souls are not reconciled to God by rhetoric, but by the simple, Spirit-impelled declaration of a cruci fied Christ. And, as Dr. Black has it, “ It is worth a lifetime’s Study, and a life laid down, to become the The Central Message: Christ Crucified
instrument of such reconciling love, and no art that produces any other impression, though it brings us to the‘ height of popularity, can com pare with the preaching of a man who brings even one soul into right relations with God.” In our preaching we must learn how to crash through the shelters of self esteem and self-sufficiency and give men and women a shuddering look into the depths. Preaching must cause those who listen to fear God, must make them sin-conscious, must bring them to realize their utter helplessness apart from the work, of redemption. A traveler tells of a curious mirror of silver picked up in Japan; this, when flashing the light, reflected not a mere beam, but the image of Buddha that had been subtly wrought into its tex ture. In a far higher degree, and trans cending all earthly imagery, good preaching should have the supreme First in a Series on wThe Art and Craft of Preaching9
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