THE PREACHING AND THE PREACHERS
[p. 177] THE PREACHING AND THE PREACHERS
2 Timothy 4:1,2; 2 Timothy 4:5; Acts 2:14; Acts 2:32-36; Acts 8:4-8; Acts 8:29-35; Acts 9: 20
It is on my mind to call attention to the need of activity in service and testimony for Christ. No one has more moral title to address us in this respect than the apostle Paul. His service for Christ was unremitting; he says that he “laboured more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me”; and as having finished his course he addresses Timothy, whom we may regard as a representative servant now, and he charges him before God and before the Lord Jesus Christ, who is about to judge the quick and the dead, to preach the word, to be instant in season and out of season, and furthermore to watch in all things to do the work of an evangelist, and to make full proof of his ministry. It will be readily seen, therefore, that there was not to be much holiday-time for this servant. The need of service was urgent, and it is urgent, and as the word came to Timothy so it comes to us. The Lord would lay it upon us, dear brethren, that the need is great, and I want to show from the Scriptures, in the Acts, just what it is that is to be preached. If we see that the preaching is to go on, it is obvious that we should understand what the preaching is.
The idea of preaching is not peculiar to our time, to our dispensation; indeed, we may say that the preacher is Christ, and whatever preaching according to God there may be, it is really His. And so His service in this respect has a backward bearing as well as a forward bearing, and in the backward bearing we have three outstanding preachers employed. Peter says, referring to this, “He [Christ] went and preached unto the spirits in prison; which sometime [p. 178] were disobedient ... in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing”. The first preacher, therefore, is a vessel for Christ. Noah is the first one who is said to have preached, then we have Solomon, and then Jonah. These are vessels which were employed by Christ in Old Testament times, and they may be taken as representative, and if we take the characters of these men and blend them, we shall find what is becoming in those who preach.
Noah was a preacher of righteousness, and he was personally in accord with his preaching. He was a man approved of God, he found favour with God. He was not the seventh from Adam, like Enoch. Enoch is the end of an exercise — the seventh. He represents the development of life beginning with Adam as restored. The restoration of Adam was the outcome really of the light that Seth had, for he called his son Enos, meaning that he was weak, mortal.
Through Seth and Enoch we have a development not of death, but of life, for Seth anticipated the longevity of the race as outlined in Genesis 5, but he knew that however long a man lived, he died, and so anticipating that he called his son’s name Enos. Light had broken in, for the divine sentence was accepted, and men began to “call upon the name of the Lord”, Genesis 4: 25, 26. Thus we have Adam set up afresh in Seth, and Enoch is the seventh from him through Seth.
It is in the acceptance of death that life is realised, and so Enoch before his translation had the testimony that he pleased God. He was at the end of a dispensation, he was the seventh from Adam. He had the precious sense in his soul, conveyed to him by God, that he pleased Him: “And he was not; for God took him”, Genesis 5: 24.
Now Noah is not that; he is the beginning of another period, and he carries forward what marked Enoch, for he walked with God and found favour [p. 179] with God. He was righteous in his generations and thus qualified to preach. Hence it says he was a preacher of righteousness; he was a vessel available to Christ in his day — a vessel in which Christ had preached to the spirits that were in prison in Peter’s time, sometime disobedient. The preaching expressed God’s longsuffering, a suggestion that should weigh with us, that however little the result through this there was a testimony to the longsuffering of God. There were few that went into the ark and were saved through water. We learn from the first preacher, therefore, that we must not look for great results; we must take account of things as they are, and accept them, and not be deterred because of the smallness of the results.
Now the next great preacher is Solomon. I do not say there were not others, for there were; but these stand out prominently. What we find in Solomon is that he is a son. No one can rightly present Christ except as a son. Solomon was a preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. There was with him conscious relationship and conscious affection, for he was the son of his father, and tender and only beloved in the sight of his mother, and there was withal moral power in his preaching, for he was a king. We may be assured that if we preach in the consciousness of sonship, there will be moral power, and that is what is needed.
When we come to Jonah we have a man that has gone through death. Let no one undertake to preach otherwise. These three men set out indeed the features of a preacher. There must be practical righteousness, a walk with God; there must be consciousness of sonship and moral power; and there must be the experience of death and resurrection; not the doctrine — the doctrine surely — but the experience of the doctrine. Hence you believe as having gone through things; as the great preacher of the New Testament says, “I believed, and therefore have I spoken”, 2 Corinthians 4: 13.
With Jonah we have a vow, but, like many of us, he was not true to it, for he fled to Tarshish when he should have gone to Nineveh. But he is brought to it and that brings in another consideration, that if you take up an attitude of soul before God — and it is right to do so, for I doubt if anyone is effective in service who has not a secret understanding with the Lord — the Lord gives you to understand what you are efficient in, what you are qualified for, and in the understanding of that you take up your work. There is often with us great indefiniteness. Many of us go about the work of the Lord in a most casual manner, far different from our ordinary employment; but the idea of a vow is that I have got a definite obligation resting on me. “For necessity is laid upon me; yea, woe is unto me, if I preach not the gospel!” Paul said, Does the Lord regard lightly any obligation that He gives to you? No; He holds you to it. If you think lightly of the obligation and the great privilege of ministry, He does not; it has cost Him much. And so the apostle says again, “We have this treasure in earthen vessels”. It was a treasure that he had in his soul, and he valued it. So, having received this ministry — what ministry? The one he had, not the one Peter had. It was the ministry indeed of the love of God in Christ, the new covenant, but to him it was “this ministry”, and he adds, “We preach not ourselves”; he was not giving out, like Simon Magus, that he was some great one, he was giving out that Christ was a great One, and so he says, “We preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus’ sake”.
And so Jonah, as he comes up out of the fish’s belly, says, “I will pay that that I have vowed”. God brought him to it, and you may depend upon it that if we have accepted an obligation from the [p. 181] Lord, the discipline will be sure to come. So I think these three preachers of the Old Testament furnish us in their blended characteristics with the divine idea of a preacher.
Now I turn to speak about what is preached, and first of all from Acts 2, to show that the preaching is light as to the wealth of heaven. The chapter sets before us what I may call administrative preaching. It is said that Peter stood up with the eleven, meaning that there were twelve — one was about to speak, and the others were standing by.
I want for a moment to enlarge upon this feature of the preaching, because one is conscious in oneself, and in what one sees, that in the preaching there is often a great sense of poverty; whereas the twelve represented an administration of infinite wealth. It was not a mere sermon of doctrine that Peter preached. He stood up with the eleven; you will observe that it does not say with the eleven apostles. Lower down in the chapter we have the apostles’ doctrine, not the doctrine of the twelve. When you have the term ‘apostles’, the idea of authority and rule is emphasised. Paul tells us that after the Lord appeared to Cephas, and to the twelve, that He appeared to all the apostles, a seeming repetition, but in no sense such. The first has reference to administration, the second has reference to authority, to rule. When I speak of administration it is not simply the administering of laws; what is referred to is the wealth of heaven. Think of that, dear brethren! Peter is dealing in his address with what was present and obvious to every one there; the Holy Spirit had come down, and He had come upon the disciples and had filled them. He came in as the sound of a rushing mighty wind, and that sound filled the house, and so we read those in Jerusalem said, “We hear them speaking ... the great things of God”.
But Peter stands up with the eleven, and now it is [p. 182] not exactly speaking, as every one can speak — sisters can do that — but every one cannot preach. It does not require gift to speak; but it requires gift to preach, and gift is available. If God has been pleased, beloved brethren, to give us the Holy Spirit — the greatest possible gift — do you not think He would give us sufficient gift or ability to speak of Him, and to speak of Christ rightly? The speaking by the disciples generally does not bring about conviction, but the preaching of Peter did. “The people said, Men and brethren, what shall we do?” There is that power given of God by which the truth is enforced so as to carry conviction. It is wonderful that gift is available; as it is said, “Covet earnestly the best gifts”.
When Peter stood up with the eleven, what you find in the administrative preaching is that the Scriptures are opened up with spiritual intelligence, so as to enforce what is immediately on hand. The Holy Spirit was present, poured out from heaven, representing the wealth of heaven; but in order to bring out the truth relative to the Spirit Peter cites Joel, and to establish the truth of the resurrection and ascension of Christ he cites David. We have, therefore, the prophets and the psalms linked together with spiritual intelligence so as to establish on the one hand that God would pour out the Spirit, and on the other that Christ should rise from the dead and sit at God’s right hand in heaven. So we see how Peter — the first preacher in our dispensation — by the Spirit links up Scripture and sets out in the clearest possible manner Christ risen and exalted and the Holy Spirit on the earth. “Therefore being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he hath shed forth this which ye now see and hear ... therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ”, Acts 2: 33, 36. I do not know anything more important than to make it known that the Holy Spirit, consequent on a risen and exalted Christ, is available for man.
Now I want to go on to Philip for a moment. He is the second preacher, and what we observe is that he is not primarily commissioned, and yet he preached in the most effective way, being one of those who were scattered, and what I may remark is that the Spirit of God always acts in accord with the governmental dealings of God. We are labouring at a great disadvantage unless we take into account that the government of God is favourable to the testimony, so that the very scattering here furthered the spread of the gospel. It is not now to set out the position, not to call attention to the Spirit exactly; it is to show that God has a Man who can do everything. What an immense thing it is to stand up with the knowledge of Christ in my soul and know that I am presenting a Man who can do everything. That is the idea of a commissioned preacher, for although nothing is said of this in his case, Philip was undoubtedly serving under the Lord’s direction; later he was sent by the Spirit to the eunuch. Every naval and military man knows what a commission is. A commission represents authority. The preacher stands up as commissioned; he is consciously representative of Christ, and he knows that he is presenting One who can do everything.
Now in Acts 2 there are no miracles recorded; Peter makes no reference to them, nor does he perform any in that chapter; the point was to call attention to the greatness of the position. When we come to the preaching of Christ we have miracles wrought, and so as Philip preaches, he performs works of power. There was the evidence there of the Christ — the Christ risen from the dead; He can cast out demons, He can relieve souls, He can meet any condition of soul; hence it says, “there was great joy in that city”. You may say that there are no miracles performed today. I am not so sure; there certainly are works of power at the present time. There is not one present here who loves Christ who is not the subject of the work of Christ. Philip had the evidence by him in the performing of the miracles of the power of Christ.
In the next evangelical work of Philip we have not the preaching of the Christ, but the preaching of Jesus — a preaching that must touch every heart. You will observe I am going over the great features of the subject — matter of the preaching and incidentally calling attention to the importance of being in accord with these features if we are to be preachers. And so he preached Jesus. If I preach Jesus, I preach a Man who has won my heart. “When we shall see him”, unbelief says, “there is no beauty that we should desire him”. Not so with Stephen; not so with Philip. How important it is that Jesus should be known personally, and a knowledge of Him in this light means that I am no respecter of persons; I recognise that He is Head of every man and I appropriate Him in relation to every man: “A light”, said Simeon, “to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel”. What a position; to stand up with Jesus, as it were, appropriated in my soul in relation to the whole race of men, for that is what the preaching of Philip involved.
Hence we have the coloured man here, the African, for if I have Jesus in my soul, I am not a respecter of persons. He does not respect persons; He is as much the Head of the African or the Asiatic as He is of the European — He is Head of every man. It is a wonderful thing to appropriate Christ in relation to the whole race, and that is what the preaching of Jesus entails. And so Philip does not say anything to the eunuch about the apostles at Jerusalem. Possibly [p. 185] we should have said how advantageous it would be to go there and get some help from the apostles. Not so; we are now occupied with Jesus — with the Man. You say, What became of the eunuch? Jesus had His eye on him; the influence of Jesus flows out to Africa as it did to Palestine; knowing Jesus, I know he was taken care of; Jesus would stand by His convert; He would maintain him rejoicing. What He is ministering now is for the whole race of men, for “there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all”. We may say assuredly that the testimony that has reached us is universal in its bearing; it is for every man, we may be sure of that. But it is in appropriating Him in relation to the whole race, like Simeon, that I can preach Jesus. Philip went down into the water with the eunuch; he did not stand on the bank and look at him, going down into death in figure; he was with him — a white man and a black man in the water together. How becoming in the light of Jesus!
In conclusion, just one word more, and that is the preaching of the Son of God. Paul is the third great preacher in the Acts. Peter, we may say, preached the Lord; that is, he emphasised administration — the wealth of heaven; Philip preached the Christ, and Jesus; and Paul preached the Son of God. The Son of God brings in another world. It is not now simply a question of meeting need in souls, but of apprehending One who can establish another world, a world for God; for the Son of God is on God’s side, as the Son of man is on man’s side. The Son of God is on God’s side, and He establishes an order of things for God. Is not that an important feature, beloved brethren, of the preaching? How shall we take our converts out of the world save as we point out another world for them? The Son of God introduces another sphere of things — a world for God; and so Paul says elsewhere, “When it pleased God ... to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen; immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood: neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me”, Galatians 1: 16, 17. So the Son of God is connected with heaven, bringing in an order of things for God, so that he says again: “For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us ... was not yea and nay, but in him was yea. For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us”, 2 Corinthians 1: 19, 20. It is all for the glory of God, you see. The preaching of the Son of God brings in an order of things for the glory of God, and that takes you entirely out of the world.
Now, having said that much, I go back again to the appeal. I believe the Lord is expecting much at the present time. To whom much is given, of the same much is required, and much has been given. We have much, and the principle of Scripture is, “Such as I have give I thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk”, Acts 3: 6. That is the principle; that is to say, we share with men by testimony what we have got. It is for men, not simply for us; what we have is to be shared with men. The principle of Christianity is giving. “If thou knewest”, says the Lord, “the gift of God”. If we have something, the principle is to share it with others, and that is by testimony, by preaching and by speaking of it. I feel it laid upon me to make this appeal, dear brethren, for the thing is urgent. We should face things and seek to share with our fellow-men that which God has so bountifully administered to us through Christ.
Pages 187 - 307 — “Readings on Ezekiel”, New York, 1925 - 1926. (Volume 79).