The following message was delivered
at the 1991 Trinity Pastors Conference held on October 20th through
24th at the Trinity Baptist Church in Monteville, New Jersey. Several
of the brethren, as I've indicated, will be passing out to you this
stapled collection of notes, and I would ask you to resist
the temptation to be looking ahead while we're in our sessions. You're free, of course, to do
that in between the sessions or when you take them home with
you. I have no objection whatsoever with you familiarizing yourself
with the outline. It may even help to enable you
to give yourself more to the delivery of these things if you
are familiar with them, but during the sessions, if you would, please
keep your attention at the spot that we are presently engaged
in. Now, as you know from the material
that was included in the brochure sent to every one of you who
is presently here at the conference or was in your packet when you
arrived. The subject matter for these
morning sessions this year is a condensed version of the lectures
given presently in the second term of the pastoral theology
course, up till now entitled Effective Pastoral Preaching. And the reason for doing this
is very simple. As a result of what happened
at last year's conference, there seemed to be a consensus coming
back from you men that you would appreciate being given, at least
in broad strokes, the material that is given to the men in the
academy in the pastoral theology course, And last year, as we
took up the subject of ministerial backsliding and ministerial burnout,
the fundamental materials dealing with the man of God himself as
a man before God, before his people, before his wife, those
great issues were touched upon in those messages. And therefore, as we contemplated
this year's conference and consulted as elders as to what subject
ought to be taken up, there was also a consensus among our elders
that I ought to attempt to do what obviously only fools would
attempt to do, and that is to reduce to eight 50 or 45 minute
sessions the substance of about 18 hours
of lectures on the subject of effective pastoral preaching. Now, the fundamental difference
in the class lectures will be seen in two areas. If some of you have listened
to the tapes of the class lectures, there will be a difference, first
of all, with respect to content. As I have sought to go over the
material of my class lectures with the question, how can I
reduce them to workable size for this conference, it was evident
to me that the first thing that would have to go is the collaborating
quotes from the old masters. And I tell you, it's with great
pain that I forego those quotes. because God has been pleased
to bless me with several brethren who have felt a burden to be
my eyes and my hands and even my purse in keeping a constant
eye out for good old works on pastoral theology and homiletics
and preaching and the richest part of my library next to the
section that holds of the reprints of the Puritans and some of the
old Puritan works that have not been reprinted is the section
on preaching and pastoral theology and about three quarters of those
books have come to my shelf because of these brethren who have been
constrained in Christian grace to keep their eyes open for such
books, and it's wonderful to have that collaborating voice
of the past, but brethren, I'm simply going to have to forego
using much of that material, occasionally injecting one of
those quotes. That's the difference as to content. And then as to the manner, hopefully
more of the elements of preaching will enter into these sessions
than the didactic and the straight teaching. And I do that, again,
conscious that my experience over the years has confirmed
me in the judgment that when preachers gather in a conference,
what they need, more than anything else, next to heart dealings
with God in prayer, such as I believe God gave us in the previous hour,
they need to be preached to. And when I go to pastors' conference
and some egghead stands up and says, well, you're all preachers
and I know you don't need preaching, I feel like standing on my feet
and saying, who in the world told you that? I need more than
anything else to have the Word of God preached to me as a preacher. And that's why my car is always
reverberating with somebody preaching to me. Rarely do I go anywhere
without a preacher in my car with me preaching. Now sometimes
it gets dangerous. I get so blessed and get to shouting
and praising God that I may be a dangerous driver, but at least
I'm blessed in my inner being. And so I do not want this to
be top-heavy in the didactic flavor and mode of presentation,
but rather, I hope, top-heavy in the preaching dimensions.
Now, as we take up our first lecture this morning, I want
you to notice with me in the outline that's been put in your
hands that in this particular unit we deal with the message
of the man of God, the sermon, its content, and its form. And then I've said that in the
introduction I would underscore the distinction between preparation
and delivery. Now many books on homiletics,
current books, don't do this. All of the old masters make a
distinction. between the preparation of the
sermon and the act of preaching. And I believe they are right
in making that distinction. And I want to spend just a moment
in justifying that distinction. Any serious and accurate reflection
on these matters will force us to recognize that there is a
fundamental difference between the disciplines of exegesis organization
and perception of the thrust of a given sermon, and the dynamics
of actually declaring the Word of God in the context of the
special presence of God in the midst of the gathered people
of God. On the one hand, there is primarily
the mental, the spiritual, and the mechanical activities of
the closet and of the desk, But on the other hand, there is the
mental, spiritual, vocal, and physical activity of the sanctuary
and of the pulpit. And the man that doesn't know
the difference between what he ought to be doing at his desk
and at his study, between what he should be doing in the sanctuary
and in the pulpit, is not fit to occupy a pulpit. To change
the imagery, one is that which constitutes the conception and
the gestation of the sermon, that's the study in the closet.
The other can be likened to the birthing room where a real life
baby comes to birth, or alas, that which was conceived and
gestated is stillborn. To use a biblical analogy, it
is said in Luke 3, verses 2 and 3, that the Word of God came
to John the Baptist. Then we read that John came preaching. And I see in that distinction
an analogy. It is one thing for the Word
of God to come to us in the disciplines of the study. It is another thing
for us to come with the Word in the glorious context of the
pulpit and of the sanctuary. So then as we begin to consider
this matter of effective preaching, effective pastoral preaching,
the preaching ministry of the servant of God, we must begin
with the matter of the content and the form of the sermon. And what I hope to do in our
time together is to give at least a distillation of the things
that I convey in much greater detail with the corroborating
evidence of the past and the collaborating voice of those
proven guides, these seven axioms. These great principles which
must be true of any sermon of any kind that can in any sense
be called a proclamation of the Word of God. Whether it is a
topical sermon, or as the old writers would say, a subject
sermon, whether it is the opening up of an individual text of scripture,
whether it is part of a consecutive exposition of a whole chapter
or a larger portion of the Word of God, whatever species of sermon
we may be preaching at any given time, these seven axioms ought
to be Consciously present in our minds and hearts, in our
preparation, if we are to have any hope that what we deliver
will be owned of God as a valid preachment of His Word. And axiom
number one, found there in your notes in italics, is that the
proclamation, explanation, and application of scriptural truths
must constitute the heart and soul of all preaching. Now, few issues relative to preaching
need more clear and emphatic articulation than does this axiom. Now, in opening up the axiom,
I want to demonstrate little letter A, its basis, and then
little letter B, its corollary truths. First of all, then, the
basis of this axiom. And I suggest that the basis
is to be found in three very clear categories of biblical
revelation. First of all, the function of
scriptural truth or special inscripturated revelation in the saving purpose
of God. According to the scriptures,
in the saving purpose of God, scriptural truth has a unique
function both in the begetting of divine life and in the nurturing
of divine life. In the beginning of divine life,
the presence and the activity of the Word of God in scripturated
revelation upon the understanding and consciences of men is a central,
fundamental instrument in the hands of the Holy Spirit in the
bringing forth of that light. The texts that make this abundantly
clear are there listed in your notes. James 1.18 Of His own
will, He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should
be a kind of first fruits of His creatures. And in that text,
there is a clear underscoring of the element of divine sovereignty
in the matter of begetting spiritual life. Of His own will, He brought
us forth. but He brings us forth by the
instrumentality of the Word of Truth, just as certainly as He
brings us forth that we should be sanctified and set apart unto
Him and to His service, even as the firstfruits were brought
in from the fields and offered unto God as an indication of
the dedication of all that belonged unto Him. Likewise, in 1 Peter
1.23, having been begotten again, not of corruptible seed, but
of incorruptible, by the Word of God, which lives and abides
forever. And as many of you know, the
word seed there is sperma. We have been begotten, not of
human sperm. We have been begotten by divine
sperm, that is, the Word of God is the instrument for the begetting
of that life. And Paul is bold enough to say
in 1 Corinthians 4, 15, I begot you through the gospel. Though you have 10,000 instructors,
Yet have ye not many fathers, for I begot you through the gospel."
And then Paul's tight chain of logic in Romans 10, 14 and following,
in which he demonstrates that men will not be brought to call
upon the Lord of whom they've not heard, they will not hear
unless someone comes and the word of God is preached. And
he gives a distillation of that argumentation in verse 17, faith
cometh of hearing, and hearing by the word of truth. And therefore we have no scriptural
grounds to expect that the sovereign act of begetting divine life
will take place in any other context than one in which the
word of God is being proclaimed. If John says that the person
who is begotten of God is the one who believes that Jesus is
the Christ, And none believes that Jesus is the Christ, but
he who is begotten of God, it is clear that the divine begetting
will always take place in a context where the gospel of our Lord
Jesus Christ is being proclaimed. And so the function of scriptural
truth in the saving purposes of God is clearly seen in the
begetting of divine life. And if we are in earnest, concerning
our desire to be used as instruments of saving grace in the lives
of others, then surely we will be committed to this first axiom.
The proclamation, explanation, and application of scriptural
truths must constitute the heart and soul of all of our preaching. But what is true in the begetting
of divine life is equally true in the nurturing of divine life. We do not see men begotten unto
life by the word of truth and then nurtured by a different
instrument. Our Lord Jesus, in His high priestly
prayer, prays, Sanctify them in the truth. Thy word is truth. Ephesians 4 15 speaking the truth
in love may grow up into him in all things who is the head
and that which is sufficient to make the man of God with his
additional responsibilities competent for every good work is by implication
sufficient for every child of God for all scripture is God
breathed and is profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction,
for training in righteousness in order that the man of God
may be complete, thoroughly furnished unto every good work. I say if
scripture is competent to make the man of God thoroughly furnished
to every good work, then by inference it is adequate to make every
child of God competent for every good work demanded of him. And furthermore, after giving
to Timothy many specific directions with respect to the life, the
doctrine, the practice of the people of God at Ephesus, Paul
says to him in 1 Timothy 4 and verse 6, If thou put the brethren
in mind of these things, thou shalt be a good minister of Jesus
Christ, nourished in the words of the faith and of the good
doctrine which thou hast followed until now. And so we can say
in the light of these and many other texts could be marshaled
to underscore the point that with respect to the function
of scriptural truth in the saving purposes of God, that truth is
central both in the begetting of divine life and in the nurturing
of divine life. Now in one of the works of Gardner
Spring that I hope will be reprinted along with his Power of the Pultet
and his Attraction of the Cross is a marvelous treatise entitled
The Glory of Christ. And in a chapter entitled, The
Glory of Christ as a Preacher, he wonderfully distills what
I've been attempting to say under this first heading. I quote him,
The knowledge of God's truth is the germ and principle of
all holiness. Spiritual life can neither germinate
nor be developed in the dark and cold bosom of ignorance. To overlook this great law of
man's intellectual and moral nature is to overlook what is
primary and essential to the great end at which the gospel
aims. There is no appeal to the conscience
or heart, no obligation urged, no right emotions excited, and
no practical conformity to God cultivated except by presenting
and believing the great doctrines of the gospel. Jesus Christ would
have the roots of Christianity strike deep in the barren soil
of this ungodly world, and therefore he taught that the sower soweth
the word. The great object of his ministry
was to disabuse the minds of men of error, to unteach them
where they had been taught erroneously, to enlighten them where they
were ignorant, to set the great realities of a supernatural revelation
before them, place them within their reach, and make them possessors
of this rich inheritance. He knew of no other means of
disarming the powers of death and hell delivering men from
the empire of Satan and the bondage of sin, introducing them into
the liberty of the children of God, and rendering them partakers
of the life eternal. His spirit operates only through
the instrumentality of truth. It is one of the laws of His
kingdom that faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word
of God." End quote. Now we not only have as the basis
of this axiom, that the proclamation, explanation, and application
of scriptural truth must constitute the heart and soul of all preaching,
the function of scriptural truth in the saving purpose of God,
but secondly, the nature of the ministerial and preaching office. The nature of the ministerial
and preaching office. When we stand to minister the
Word of God, what is our precise identity? Are we to think of
ourselves as philosophers, motivators, promoters, entertainers, educators,
orators, psychologists, or the new intern, the cutting-edge
term, facilitators? That's the new one. The preachers
are facilitators. I'd better resist the temptation
to go after that. What is your identity when you
stand on any given Lord's Day and open your Bible? What is
your own deepest consciousness of your identity? Well, I say
if you have a biblically framed consciousness of your identity,
you will be committed with all of your being to this first axiom. For according to the word of
God, and this could be amplified, this is only a sampling, you
stand as a herald, an ambassador, a steward, and a ruler or governor
in God's house. Just a moment on each of these.
You stand as a herald. The Apostle said in 2 Timothy
1 and verse 11, concerning himself, whereunto I was appointed a preacher,
a herald, and an apostle, and a teacher. Now what was the primary
task of the Terucs, the herald? It was nothing more or less than
to deliver the message of His Sovereign within the precincts
of the town or village where He was appointed to herald that
message. And therefore, one of the dominant
words for preaching in the New Testament is kērusō. When the Cherubs was doing what
he was supposed to do, what he did was Cheruso. He was heralding
the message of his sovereign. And it says in Matthew 3, 1,
that John the Baptist came preaching Cheruso. Matthew 4, 17, Jesus
came preaching. In 2 Corinthians 4, 5, the passage
read in our hearing earlier, we preach, not ourselves, but
Christ Jesus the Lord. And when Timothy is charged to
preach the words, 2 Timothy 4, 2, it is this verb that is used. I am a herald sent by the sovereign
not to concoct my own message, not to alter the message of my
King, but accurately, both in content and demeanor, I am to
herald the message of my Sovereign. And then secondly, we are ambassadors. The word presbuo and presbea,
not presbuteros, the word for elder, it's found in its verbal
form in 2 Corinthians 5 and verse 20. where the Apostle, speaking
of his apostolic ministry, says these familiar words, 2 Corinthians
5 and verse 20, We are ambassadors therefore on behalf of Christ,
as though God were entreating by us. We are ambassadors. Its noun form is found in Luke
14.32. You remember the familiar parable? Jesus said, which king of you
does not in first going out to war count the cost or else he
sends an ambassador to seek conditions of peace. Now what is the function
of the ambassador? Well again, it is very much like
that of the herald His function was to represent the mind and
the will of the sovereign. And it seems to me that whereas
the emphasis falls in the concept of a herald upon the proclamation
in the name of the King, the emphasis in ambassador falls
upon the proper representation of the mind and the will of the
King. We are ambassadors on the behalf
of Christ, as though God Himself were entreating by us. The same God who entreated through
the Lord Jesus in the days of His flesh, now entreats by His
ambassadors who represent His mind and His heart to fellow
sinners. And then there is the concept
of a steward, oikonomos. We had occasion to touch on that
yesterday morning. Titus 1.7 clearly identifies
elders as stewards. And Paul says in 1 Corinthians
4 and verse 1 that the great requirement of a steward is that
he be found faithful. The steward is basically a house
manager. The very etymology of the word.
He is to care for that which is another's. And we are stewards,
Paul says, of the mysteries of God. And though those mysteries,
truths long hidden but now revealed, were unfolded in a unique way
to the apostles, they are now ours in the apostolic tradition
embodied in the scriptures. And so they have come down to
us as those wholesome words of apostolic doctrine. And what
is the responsibility of a steward? He is to administer his trust
faithfully. I have a body of truth committed
to me, and it is that body which is to be passed on to others. The things that you have heard
of me among many witnesses, the same commit to faithful men who
shall be able, adding their own insights and their own perceptions,
The things you heard of me among many witnesses, they went from
Paul to Timothy, the same commit thou to faithful men who shall
in turn be able to teach others also. And the assumption is there
is no attrition in the content of the things that are passed
on. They were the deposit of the
apostle. They became the deposit committed
to Timothy, a deposit to be committed to faithful men, and then proclaimed
to the people of God. And the great requirement of
stewards is not that they be clever, not that they be successful,
but that they be faithful, that they rightly handle their stewardship. And then the other concept of
our own identity is set forth so clearly in Hebrews 13, 7,
where Paul admonishes the Hebrew Christians to remember their
former leaders. Remember them that had the rule
over you, and he identifies them especially in this way, men that
spake unto you the word of God. so that in the exercise of their
rule, their fundamental identity was that of men who spoke, not
their own notions. not necessarily what men desired
to hear, but who spoke the Word of God. The only standard by
which we are to exercise rule in our public and private ministries
is the Word of God, all of that Word, but the Word of God alone. Now when we bring these four
descriptions together, what is their common denominator? I think
you can see it. They all function as they ought
to when their task is administered in terms of a fixed body of authoritatively
revealed facts. All of them. The herald is to
proclaim the message of his sovereign. The ambassador is to represent
the mind of his sovereign. The steward is to be the faithful
guardian of what is entrusted to him by his master. And those
set to rule in God's house are given a fixed canon. by which they are to rule even
the Word of the Living God. And it is both a liberating and
a blessedly binding thing to have a consciousness of our identity
in this way. But then I hasten and say that
thirdly, the explicit command of Scripture binds us to this
first axiom. The explicit commands of Scripture. And I wish we had time to go
through all of those references in Numbers, but you remember
that even this strange character Balaam, who doesn't come out
very clean in the New Testament assessment of him, but in one
area, he is a marvelous model of what every preacher ought
to be. And I will only quote one of
the texts from the book of Numbers, Numbers 22 and verse 12. Numbers 22 and verse 12. Thou shalt not go with them,
thou shalt not curse the people, for they are blessed. He is forbidden
to curse them, though it is greatly desired by the other parties
that he would. Verse 38, And Balaam said unto
Balak, Lo, I am come to thee. Have I now any power at all to
speak anything? The word that God puts in my
mouth, that Shall I speak? And God wonderfully restrained
this man so that he could not curse when God had pronounced
blessing. But what a text for us as servants
of God to memorize and to pray in the word that God puts in
my mouth. That shall I speak. And God will
never put a word in your mouth that is contrary to the word
already embodied in Holy Scripture. And then Jeremiah, you remember
the constant conflict he had with the false prophets. And
in that situation, those wonderful words of Jeremiah in chapter
23, along came the false prophets, dressed like prophets, carrying
themselves like prophets, saying they had had God's word revealed
to them in dreams. And Jeremiah says in chapter
23 and verse 28, the prophet that hath a dream, let him tell
a dream. And he that hath my word, let
him speak my word faithfully. What is the straw to the wheat,
saith the Lord? Is not my word like fire, saith
Jehovah, and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces? Take your silly dreams, you false
prophets! God has spoken, and that word
is like a fire, and that word is like a hammer. God said through
the prophet Jeremiah that under the new covenant, God would give
shepherds after his own heart who should feed his new covenant
people with what? Not with the froth of their own
notions, not with the spun candy of lovely anecdotes and pious
platitudes, but he would feed them with knowledge and with
understanding. And when we turn to the New Testament,
our Lord's commission is that having made disciples and gathered
them into visible communities of the baptized, we are to teach
them all things whatsoever He has commanded, both in His own
Word as recorded in the Gospels, and that subsequent Word that
would come through the apostles. And again, the familiar text
in the pastoral epistles, Do thine utmost, that vigorous verb
spudazzo, bend all of your faculties and powers to show yourself a
workman approved unto God. No just cause of being ashamed
now or in the day of judgment, a workman that needeth not to
be ashamed. And what is it that will give
us such a blessed experience? Handling a right, cutting a straight
course in the word of truth, And though Paul has said to Timothy,
there will be declension on every hand, people will be masters,
literally piling up teachers around them, whose one great
art is that of ear tickling. People will come up with heart
hunger to be fed upon the substance of truth, but just a little bit
of religious itch in the vestibule of the ear. And they will heap
to themselves teachers who are all adept in the unholy art of
going no further than the vestibule of the ear to tickle it to relieve
the itch. No arrows to the heart, no penetration
to the conscience, no proclamation to humble the spirit. Just ease
the religious tickle in the vestibule of the ear. What's Timothy to
do? Preaching's passé. We can no longer stand as a herald,
an ambassador, a steward, and a ruler in God's house, armed
with His Word. We must find some new way. No! Though the teachers be piled
to the moon, who are adept in the unholy art of tickling ears,
Timothy, preach the Word! Preach the Word! the instant
in-season, out-of-season, reprove, rebuke, with all long-suffering
and pitching. Your commission does not change
because the religious climate declines and becomes indifferent. As I have said on many occasions
in this very place, If the time ever comes when the people who
sit in these pews want something other than services of worship
in which authoritative, anointed proclamation is central to that
worship, and they want their ears tickled, and they want to
sit around and share their own notions, by the grace of God,
we'll preach to the first two rows if that's all that is filled
until God humbles enough sinners who will come and long again
to have the Word of God preached to them by those whom the Lord
has set apart to that holy task. And then when you turn to Nehemiah
8.8, you have that wonderful prototype of the New Covenant.
Minister, the text is familiar. They read in the Scriptures and
they gave the sense that men might understand the Word of
God. What are we? What are we called
to do? I say we are called to proclaim,
to explain, and to apply scriptural truths. And this must not be
something oblique and ancillary to our preaching. It must constitute
the heart and the soul of all of our preaching. Let us pray. Our Father, we marvel that you
would entrust to the likes of us the high and the holy privilege
of preaching your Word. And we pray that you would fill
us with a renewed sense of our identity as defined by the Scriptures. that all carnal timidity and
all carnal diffidence would be blown away by the knowledge that
we have been sent by the Sovereign to proclaim His message to our
fellow men. O Lord, we plead with You that
You will take the truth of Your Word considered in this hour
and write it upon our hearts with power. We plead in Jesus'
name. Amen. Brethren, since we are a relatively
captive audience, any who were not here in the previous hour
who don't have the outlines, if you will raise your hand,
Pastor Barker will make sure you get a set of the outlines.
All right, we are dealing with the first axiom pertaining to
our sermons as to their content and form. that axiom being that
our sermons must be, by the grace of God, the proclamation, explanation,
and application of scriptural truths, and such things must
constitute the very heart and soul of all of our preaching. And having sought to give you
three lines of biblical evidence that form the basis of that axiom,
We come on note 2.2. small letter B, its corollary
truths. If that axiom indeed stands on
solid biblical footing, then there are some inevitable corollary
truths. Truths that grow out of it, truths
that necessarily attach themselves to it, and if time permits, I
want to address five of them, albeit each one in a relatively
surface manner. If we are indeed convinced that
the heart and soul of all of our preaching must indeed be
proclamation, explanation, and application of the truths of
inscripturated revelation, then corollary number one, our sermons
will be thoroughly exegetical in their raw materials. Since we believe that God has
spoken in words, words which the Holy Spirit himself has chosen,
and that is the apostles' teaching in 1 Corinthians 2.13, then the
burden is upon us. to make sure that we are handling
aright those words indicted by the Spirit. The parallel text,
2 Timothy 3.16, all Scripture is literally God-breathed, and
what has come out of the mouth of God are words. Words connected
in grammatical structures. Words set before us with subordinate
clauses. Words set before us in parallel
statements, in contrasting statements. Words bringing thoughts together,
hung together by connectives, such as Gar and Kai. Adversitives, such as Allah. Clauses of purpose are hena clauses,
and the Holy Spirit is as much the author of the logical connectives
as he is of the words, the words in grammatical construction forming
thoughts, and therefore if we really believe that our task
is to set forth the Word of God, scriptural truth, as the heart
and soul of our preaching, then this first corollary should be
evident to all of us. Our sermons will be thoroughly
exegetical in their raw materials. One has written, exegesis is
predicated on two fundamentals. First, it assumes that thought
can be accurately conveyed in words, each of which, at least
originally, had its own shade of meaning. Second, it assumes
that the content of Scripture is of such superlative importance
for man to warrant the most painstaking effort to discover exactly what
God seeks to impart through His words. Albert Barnes has stated
something that has been a great help to me over the years. The
Bible should be explained not under the influence of a vivid
imagination, but under the influence of a heart and a mind imbued
with a love of truth. and by an understanding disciplined
to investigate the meaning of words and phrases, and capable
of rendering a reason for the interpretation which is proposed. And this is why we must be committed,
if not to a working knowledge of the original languages, if
that has been denied us in the providence of God, There is no
excuse for anyone who has access to books written in English to
be a sloppy exegete. The helps that God has made available
for responsible exegesis are such that there is no excuse
for sermons that are not thoroughly and accurately exegetical in
their raw materials. Now, if that is indeed a vital
and an inescapable corollary, then such sermons will be in
marked contrast to treatments of texts or passages that I have
listed in five ways that will sometimes be a death knell to
the initial impression of a text or a passage. Many a sermon,
many a sermon outline has been scrapped when the powerful first
impression was subjected to the scrutiny of careful exegesis.
How many times have we had the experience, in our own devotions,
of truth corrupt us, and we said, surely God would have me preach
on that sometime, until you took out your Greek text Or you took
out your exegetical aids and you saw that all that you got
blessed with was not pure gold. No, you don't deny that God blessed
you and it was with truth that he blessed you, but truth taught
clearly elsewhere and not as you thought in that particular
text. And we must be prepared to give
up what was very precious to us when it does not stand the
scrutiny of careful exegesis. Sometimes it means abandoning,
secondly, the traditional use of a text or a passage. Not a
few texts have been pressed into the service of a fundamental
biblical doctrine. They are not used to teach heresy,
but they simply do not teach what they are used to teach. For example, in the old writers,
based upon the rather poor translation of Galatians 3.24, how many times
has that text been found by us in treatises that have ministered
to our souls, the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto
Christ. Now the truth that the law is
intended by God to make sin exceeding sinful, and that by the law comes
the knowledge of sin, is a truth taught in scripture, but that
is not the truth that is taught in that particular text. And
so if we're going to be thoroughly exegetical in our preaching,
we must not preach on the basis of the initial impression of
a text or passage or on the traditional use of a text or passage if it
doesn't stand up under the scrutiny of careful exegesis. Thirdly,
it means sometimes we must give up the dogmatic use or the dogmatic
flavor of a text. Some texts seem to ring loud
and clear with affirmations of a central doctrine. However,
they must not be carelessly used. A text such as Isaiah 33-14,
I have found it used in appealing with sinners. What will you do
when the day of judgment comes and you are cast into hell and
the question is asked, Who among us can dwell with everlasting
burnings? The text has nothing to do with
dwelling in hell. It has to do with dwelling with
God. God is the everlasting burning in that text. And we must not
allow the dogmatic use or flavor of a text to be the trigger for
us to use it. We must bring it through the
sieve of careful exegetical disciplines. And certainly in the fourth place,
the fanciful allegorizing or spiritualizing of a text or passage
is inconsistent with thorough exegetical treatment. For example,
there's a text which, if I could use it fancifully or spiritualize
it, I believe I could preach a rather decent sermon. I've
wanted to preach on it for years. It's the text in which old Isaac
says, Thy voice is the voice of Jacob, but thy hands are the
hands of Esau. What a wonderful text on which
to preach the subject, discrepancy between a man's theology and
his methodology. That's right. You have the voice
of the heir of the covenant. Your voice is the voice of Jacob.
You speak like Jacob, whom Jehovah loved. But your hand, the instrument
of action, is that of wild, hairy man Esau. And if I were to allegorize,
I believe I could preach a rather decent sermon on that text. But
I've not done it, even though I've tried to sneak it in this
way. And for you men who have Dabney
on preaching, I commend to you one of the choice quotes that
I simply don't have time to read. On page 96 to the top of page
98, a tremendous quote from Dabney on this very point in which he
says, and I'll only give you the key sentence, I would impress
you with a solemn awe of taking any liberties in expounding the
Word. I would have you feel that every
meaning of the text other than that which God expressly intended
it to bear, is forbidden to you, however plausible and attractive,
fruit which you dare not touch on peril of a fearful sin. It is a fearful sin to be guilty
of that concerning which Paul said he was not guilty. He said
not handling the Word of God deceitfully and fanciful allegorizing
and spiritualizing is a deceitful handling of the Word of God.
And surely then, brethren, we will put distance between ourselves
and this fifth thing I've listed, the clever and forced accommodation
of a text or a passage, a forced accommodation of a text. No text should ever be accommodated
simply to give a biblical flavor to what we desire to say. Far
better to say, I have a pastoral burden. I have no legitimate
text for that burden. Here is my burden. Open your
heart and buttress the various strands of it with clear statements
of the Word of God. But do not accommodate and force
a text. simply to legitimize what you
are desiring of saying. But then secondly, the second
corollary, if indeed we are committed to having the Word of God as
the basis of our preaching, our sermons will be predominantly
biblical in their overall substance. Now what do I mean by saying
predominantly biblical in their overall substance? Well, I'll
tell you what I mean. Some men, particularly if they've
come out of a background where they've treated the word of God
in a shallow and cavalier manner, are so determined that their
people be convinced that they have responsibly exegeted the
word. that they do not really preach
the Word and enforce and illustrate the Word with the Word, but they
bring all of the tools of the exegetical process into the pulpit. And they, as it were, work out
in the sanctuary all of the steps that they worked through in the
study, the only difference being they are now verbalizing that
process in the presence of God's people. And so they give detailed
word studies. They track down the roots of
words and the etymology of words, and what I call tunnel digging
into the roots and meanings of words. And there is precious
little time to declare what the scriptures say, convince the
judgment in as straight a line as possible, and then to begin
to apply that word to the conscience. Now, since the Bible is its own
infallible interpreter, and brethren, that is our Protestant heritage,
that the Bible is its own infallible interpreter and contains the
best confirmation and illustration of its own truth, we should seek
to have our sermons heavily interlaced with biblical texts, phrases,
allusions, illustrations, and enforcements. Since 2 Timothy
3.16 is true, all Scripture is God-breathed, and Scripture has
a unique power inherent in it, then we should seek to preach
sermons that are not simply begun with a text, and occasionally
enforced with another supportive text, but sermons that are predominantly
biblical in their overall substance. In Murphy's Pastoral Theology,
Murphy was a Presbyterian minister in Philadelphia, I found one
of the most helpful statements, and this I will quote not in
full, but in part. The matter of all true preaching
is to be found in the Bible, and out of its sacred pages the
mind of the spirit is to be searched and then delivered from the pulpit.
Every sermon should be carefully wrought out from the text, Every
point advanced should be proved by, a thus saith the Lord. Passages bearing on the subject
in hand should be quoted, or at least their substance presented. And the whole discourse should
be saturated with the word of God. This adherence to the scriptures
should not be merely incidental, but it should be studiously aimed
at. The Bible should be made the
substance of all preaching. Not only the matter of preaching,
but the manner of presenting the truth also should be guided
by the inspired pages. And then he goes on to buttress
this from the Word of God as illustrated in the lives of the
prophets and of the apostles. And so when I say, brethren,
that as a second corollary of this first axiom, that our sermons
will be predominantly biblical in their overall substance, that
is what I mean, that we will explain the Bible with the Bible. We'll enforce its precepts from
the Bible. We will seek to illustrate and
to adorn the sermon with biblical language. Now I am not saying
that our sermons should simply be a rearranged concordance,
hung together with a few of our own words. I remember years ago
preaching at a conference with a man that I believe gloried
in his reputation as having committed, I forgot how many thousand verses
to memory, and his preaching was really just a marvelous display
of his memory. And he never paused long enough
to open up any text. He just quoted one text after
another, and people sat there wooed and awed. But at the end
of the time, if you were to say, what text do I understand more
clearly? What text do I feel has come
home into the theater of my conscience with power? I'm afraid most of
the people would say, not a one. So I am not talking of that kind
of nonsense. But I am saying that our sermons
should be full of Bible language. And even when we are not specifically
quoting, even when we are not causing people to turn to a passage,
there is that biblical flavor to our sermons. Now this, if
true, will be in marked contrast with preaching that is, and I
have four things listed and I want to add a fifth. It will be in
marked contrast with preaching that is predominantly anecdotal. This is preaching in which stories,
true or contrived, are the major vehicle of explaining, illustrating,
or enforcing biblical truth. I heard such a sermon just the
other day. A friend of mine sent me a sermon
that apparently he thought was something quite effective and
quite impressive. But I was greatly disturbed because
while it was supposed to be an exposition of Colossians 3, 1
to 5, there was an occasional reference to a phrase in the
text and then three to four minutes of a story or an anecdote illustrating
that phrase. Then another phrase and another
story, but the bulk of the sermon was not the opening up of the
words and the thoughts as they come in the grammar of the text,
but it was taking the English text and simply using anecdotes
as the very substance of the sermon. No, the Bible should
be explained by the Bible. And as we'll come in one of our
axioms to the legitimate use of illustrative devices, figures
of speech, yes, but to take five to seven minutes for a story,
two or three minutes for explication, and then another four or five
minutes for illustration, this is not preaching the Word. I first encountered this matter
when I was in an itinerant ministry And people called me, when I
would come, an evangelist. I was coming to preach evangelistically. And I remember time after time,
after being in a place for two or three days, often a pastor
or people would come to me and say, you're not an evangelist,
you're a Bible teacher. And I'd say, well, what do you
mean I'm not an evangelist? Well, I said, am I opening up
the great issues of man's sin and ruin by the fall? God's provision
of a Redeemer in the Lord Jesus, the necessity and nature of the
new birth, the necessity and fruits of repentance and faith.
Oh, yes, you're doing all of that. Am I appealing to the consciences
of men? Am I pleading with sinners? Oh,
you're doing all of that? Well, why am I not an evangelist?
They said, well, because you're... And then I'd get them to say
it. Because they said, you're always opening up text of Scripture
instead of telling stories. And in their minds, the evangelist
was the man with the high-powered personality who'd quote his text
and then tear you off with his stories that fascinated and titillated
and caused laughter and terror and fear and occasionally dispersed
the text. But they would say, you're not
an evangelist, you're a Bible teacher. Well, what a privilege
it was to open up the Word of God and say, well, would you
agree that Peter and Paul were evangelists? Oh, yes. I said,
let's look at their stuff. And then I would seek to demonstrate
that there is no true evangelism that is not a proclamation of
the evangel as it is given to us in the Word of God. And some of you who are good
storytellers beware, lest that which under the discipline of
the Holy Spirit could greatly enhance your ministry does not
become a tool to dilute it of its solid biblical substance. Furthermore, sermons that are
predominantly biblical will be in marked contrast not only with
predominantly anecdotal preaching, but with predominantly biographical
preaching. And what do I mean by biographical
preaching? Well, I mean preaching in which
the personal experiences of the preacher predominate. Now, if
there's any text which stands against that, it's the text read
in the previous hour where Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4-5, we
preach not ourselves. But Christ Jesus is Lord, and
ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake. Is it wrong occasionally
to illustrate a truth from the crucible of our own experience?
I would be hard-pressed to prove from the Bible that this is wrong. But if our own experience becomes
a dominant element in our preaching, we have ceased to have sermons
that are predominantly biblical and they have become predominantly
biographical. Thirdly, it will be in direct
contrast to preaching that is predominantly imaginative. Now, the imagination is a marvelous
faculty. And if there's one thing I would
long to see in the preaching in our circles is more sanctified
use of the imagination among preachers. You cannot preach
the historical portions of scripture, whether in the Old or the New
Testament, in a gripping way if the faculty of imagination
is not highly cultivated. Now, I didn't say you couldn't
preach them in an accurate way. I said in an effective way. And
so I am not denigrating this unusual and precious faculty
of imagination, but what I'm saying is this, that a fertile
and active imagination that embellishes and adds to the statements of
scripture can lead people away from the naked testimony of the
Word of God. And we who have a more naturally
fertile and active imagination must place a tremendously tight
rein upon it, lest that very noble faculty undermine preaching
that is predominantly biblical in its overall substance. When
people describe the scene there in 2 Samuel 12, and they speak
of Nathan sticking his bony finger under David's nose and thundering
in a way that would have given the man a heart attack, thou
art the man, I ask, where do you find that in the text? He
might have been pudgy and had pudgy fingers. And he might have
been across the room when he said very softly, are the man. So you see, we must be sure that
in opening up the scriptures, we make a differentiation between
what is clearly revealed. If we want to say, it could have
been that, or it may have been, that's one thing. but to mingle
an accurate exposition of the text with our own imagination
in such a way that our people make no distinction, is to dilute
the integrity of the Word of God. And then it will be in contrast
to what I call literary preaching. And by that I mean preaching
which is either the unwise and injudicious activity of a mind
well furnished with broad reading, or a small mind seeking to give
the impression of being well read. Now literary preaching
is usually one or the other. There are men who have well furnished
minds and who without any effort can think of things they have
read that have been a great blessing to them, and they can be injected
into the sermons. Others have a small, poorly furnished
mind, but they seek to give an impression of being well-read,
and the way they're going to do it is to fill their sermons
with quotes. Now, this is an abuse of human
help, and excessive quoting will erode the authority of your preaching,
it will leave the impression in the minds of our hearers that
human authors have more weight in our interpretation of the
Bible than the Bible itself has in interpreting itself. And we
do not want over the long haul to have a people who have any
other perspective than this. that this blessed book is its
own infallible interpreter, and if I will pray over it and search
it enough, it will yield its meaning to me, and that I do
not need to have a library furnished with 3,000 volumes. And then
I would add a fifth. Sermons predominantly biblical
in their substance will also be in contrast to what I call
philosophical preaching. And by this I mean preaching
that expresses biblical realities and biblical truths, but does
not demonstrate the specific data from the Bible on which
the statements rest and from which they are drawn. In other
words, some men are so steeped in the scriptures that when they
speak, they speak in their own thought patterns in a way that
is biblically sound. But if they speak in that way
and don't lay bare the tap roots that have given birth to the
thoughts that are clothed in those words, they are really
speaking as Christian philosophers and not as a herald and as an
ambassador of the Lord Jesus Christ. I've recently been blessed because
one of the men in this conference knew of my great esteem and love
for the late Dr. A. W. Tozer and sent me some
thirty tapes of Tozer's and I've listened through all of them,
some of them two and three times. I put them on when I'm working
out down in my basement and I said, If someone were to come to the
window some days when I have the little casement windows open
to get some fresh air and see me, they'd think I were a madman.
There I am, huffing and puffing, working out, listening to a preacher,
and sometimes getting so blessed I raise my hands in praise to
God the tears stream down my cheeks. But after listening to
those sermons and asking why, why was the influence in ministry
of that dear saint of God so little perpetrated within his
own denomination and perpetuated in the congregations where he
ministered? I believe the answer lies in
this. Often Tozer spoke as a perceptive
biblical philosopher and not as a careful Bible expositor. so that though he was speaking
biblical truth to his people, he was not showing them the roots
of what he was saying with their own eyeballs fixed upon their
own Bibles. And if we are to have a people
well grounded in the truth, then our sermons must indeed be sermons
that reflect a sensitivity to the second corollary truth, that
they will be predominantly biblical, in their overall substance. May God grant that none of you
men will ever fall into the snare of preaching that is predominantly
anecdotal, biographical, imaginative, literary, or philosophical. Rather,
whatever legitimate elements of these things may be present
in varying degrees, may you be Bible preachers, preachers serving
up solid chunks of the Word of God. sermons which by all fair
judges would be described as predominantly biblical sermons
in their overall substance. But then third corollary, and
I must hasten if I'm going to cover all five, our sermons must
be theologically harmonious in their statements of truth. Our
sermons must be theologically harmonious in their statements
of truth. God's truth comes to us in what
Paul describes, and that should be 2 Timothy 1.13, I believe,
not 1 Timothy 1.13, in the form of sound words. Hold fast the pattern of sound
words. which thou hast heard from me
in faith and love which is in Christ Jesus." And within God's
Word there is a beautiful, delicate, and vital relationship between
all the facets of His truth. Each revealed truth sustains
an organic relationship to other truths. There is mutual support,
balance, and harmony. So if our preaching is truly
biblical preaching and not a shallow biblicism, we will seek to preach
in such a way that our systematically is vigorously present, exerting
its influence upon all of our exposition of the Word of God.
For the sum total of the witness of the Word of God on any given
facet of its truth is never to be sacrificed upon the altar
of an individual text that at first look may seem to contradict
the total witness of Scripture. Now, if our preaching is theologically
vigorous and harmonious, it will not be self-destructive. That is, we will not destroy
next week what we sought to build up this week. Some men so preach
the sovereignty of God when they preach it as to give the impression
that earnestly to plead with sinners, to reason with sinners,
to use every legitimate God-given tool to persuade men to close
with the offers of the gospel is somehow to cast a shadow upon
our previously preached conviction that salvation is all of grace. And they do this because their
preaching is not harmonious in its theological balance. And that brings us to that second
thing that will be in contrast. It will be contrasted to imbalanced
preaching. A tire out of balance while stationary
is no problem. If you're just rolling down the
driveway, it's no problem. But you get driving at 35, 45,
55 miles an hour and a tire out of balance can shake the whole
front end and cause you to drop the tie rod. And so certain truths
held in imbalance in the privacy of the garage of your own heart,
given your own constant contact with scripture, may do little
harm to you. But when you preach it and the
people of God begin to work it out and the wheel of that imbalanced
perspective begins to spin, then you begin to find the implications
of that in defective religious practice and experience. And then it will keep us from
half-truth preaching. J. I. Packer says in his classic
little work, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, a half-truth,
paraded as a whole truth, is a whole untruth. For example,
if I ask someone, is Jesus truly man? I hope he answers yes. There is one God, one mediator
between God and man, himself man, Christ Jesus. But if I preach
that truth as though it were all the truth regarding the person
of Christ, I'm a heretic. Equally, is Jesus truly God? Yes. But if I preach that as
though that were the whole truth, I am a heretic. And so it is
the function of systematic theology to be the quality control upon
all of my exegesis. And it is the bringing of the
total witness of scripture to bear in my thinking when dealing
with any one of the parts that under God will keep us from these
various errors. But then fourthly, the fourth
corollary is, if we are committed to preaching that at its heart
and soul is preaching of the Bible, our sermons will be intensely
practical in their overall thrust. And why do I say that? Because
Scripture says of itself that it is intended to be intensely
practical. That's why. It is not something
invented by the Puritans to think of use 1, use 2, use 3, use 4.
Because Scripture says of itself, 2nd Timothy 3.16, all Scripture
is God-breathed and is profitable for teaching. That is, the objective
stating of propositional truth. But that's not all. For reproof,
for correction, for training in righteousness. Scripture in
and of itself is practical. So if I'm preaching the Bible
biblically, my sermons will be pervasively, intensely practical
in their overall thrust. Concerning whole segments of
Old Testament history, the Apostle Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians
10, 11, another text listed in your notes, now these things
The things concerning the wilderness generation happened unto them
by way of a figure or example, and they were written for our
ravished sight of their Christological focus. That's why I abominate, as inimicable
to true preaching, the notion that unless we focus every passage
explicitly upon Christ, we've not handled the Scriptures aright. That concept is utterly undercut
by Scripture itself. These things were written for
our neuthesia or neutheteo, whether the verb or the noun is used,
our admonition. the impingement of the word of
God upon conscience with regard to conduct. Wherefore, let him
that thinketh, he standeth, take heed, lest he fall. Yes, we admonish
as Christian ministers, telling people that to fall is to bring
disgrace to Christ, is to denigrate the power of Christ. that if
they are to be upheld, it will be in the strength of Christ.
Yes, we point men to Christ as the answer, but to go through
Old Testament history saying its explicit focus must be something
Christological is to violate what this passage says they are
written for our admonition. They are written for our warning. And sermons, then, that are truly
biblical will be intensely practical in their overall thrust, for
the truth according to Titus 1.1 is according to, it leads
to, and is consistent with, godliness. And such preaching will be in
marked contrast with merely informational preaching. Preaching in which
we are parading information before the mental eyes of God's people,
and they sit there asking week by week, so what? And they never
get an answer. Never get an answer. It will
be in contrast to exclusively emotional preaching, that is,
preaching that is content to have the religious emotions of
the people of God stirred by truth and elevated, but not directed
into channels of holy endeavor and action. Is it right that
men's emotions be stirred by biblical preaching? Yes. God
have mercy on the preacher whose preaching does not stir the emotions. of any hearer who comes with
a teachable and with a willing spirit to hear the voice of God.
But those emotions, unless they give birth to holy actions, are
just a passing shadow. And then it will be in contrast
to merely rhetorical preaching, that is, preaching in which there
is, according to the rules of rhetoric, a very apt and able
preachment of some facet of God's truth. But again, the people
sitting in the pew, though entertained and informed and stirred and
even brought to admiration of the preacher, do not feel the
impingement of the word of God upon thought and upon practice. But then, fifthly, And I want
to close on this note, sparing... I'm supposed to quit in three
minutes. I'm going to snitch in an extra
few minutes. Our sermons will be pervasively evangelical in
their overall climate and faith and flavor. And what do I mean
by pervasively evangelical? What I mean by that is that they
will savor much of the Lord Jesus Christ and God's mercy to sinners
in him. We read in Luke 24-25 and following
that the Lord Jesus with the two on the road to Emmaus opened
up the scriptures and from every major section of the scriptures
he showed those two the things concerning himself. And the apostle
could say with reference to his evangelistic endeavor at Corinth,
I determine not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ and
him as crucified. Some people have used this text
in a wrong way to say that Christ crucified must be the explicit
focus of every single sermon. And they've used this to prove
it. If that's so, Paul contradicted himself in the rest of the epistles,
that very epistle, because he said, now concerning, now concerning,
now concerning, now concerning, now concerning, now concerning.
And he took up a whole range of subjects. He was talking about
the focus of his evangelistic endeavor He is speaking of what
was past. I came to you, determined to
know nothing among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him as crucified. And I was with you in weakness
and fear and in trembling. And my speech and preaching were
not with enticing words of men's wisdom, but in demonstration
of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not stand in
the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. Then he goes on
to open up a whole range of practical pastoral concerns, but this is
the element of truth. There is none of those concerns
which he does not ultimately relate to Christ. When he's walking
through the muck of the problem of immorality there at Corinth
in chapter 6, he gives many motives to the Christians not to indulge
in fornication. But the crowning motive he gives
is at the end of the chapter when he says, What know ye not
that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit which you have
of God? And ye are not your own. You were bought with a price. That's the crowning motivation,
but not the sole motivation. He says, in the whole matter
of creation, the body was not made for fornication, but it
was made for the service of God. And yet he brings in the cross
of Christ in the midst of the doctrine of Christian liberty.
Shall I, he said, grieve and cause to stumble the brother
for whom Christ died? He says, with reference to the
maturation of the Colossians, in Colossians 2, as you receive
Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and grounded and
built up in Him. He says, whom we preach, warning
every man, teaching every man, that we may present every man
perfect in Christ. And in Ephesians 3, 8, he speaks
of proclaiming the unsearchable riches of Christ. So when I say
that if our sermons are biblical, they will be pervasively evangelical
in their overall climate and flavor, I am not saying that
some aspect of the person and work of Christ must be the explicit
focal point of every sermon. No one can prove that from the
Bible. And furthermore, it flies into
the history of the preaching most powerfully owned of the
Holy Spirit who has come to testify of Christ as we trace the history
of preaching throughout the Christian Church. However, if we are sticking
close to our Bible, There is no truth, no doctrine, no practice,
no duty into which we delve based upon the scripture that will
not sooner or later lead us back to the central issues of the
evangel. that will not lead us back to
Christ and to His work and to His provisions for His people
and the motivations which grow out of the work of our Lord Jesus
Christ. One author has stated it this
way, whatever savors not of the cross of Christ has no place
in a Christian pulpit. Whatever savors not of the cross
of Christ has no place in a Christian pulpit. And if indeed our sermons
are pervasively evangelical in their overall climate and flavor,
they will be in marked contrast with legalistic or moralistic
preaching. What is legalistic or moralistic
preaching? It's preaching in which duty
is divorced from distinctive Christian doctrine. That's legalistic
or moralistic preaching. It is preaching in which biblical
duties are taught with no reference to the person and work of Christ. Paul cannot lay on husbands their
duty to their wives without putting Christ crucified central. He
cannot lay upon wives their duty to their husbands without putting
the nature of the church's relationship to Christ central. And we must not, in our concern,
legitimate concern, to give distinctive, explicit, biblical, moral conditioning
to the consciences of our people, We must not leave it hang out
there as empty, vacuous, moralistic preaching, but have it suffused
with the peculiar dynamics of Christ and Him crucified. It will be in contrast to bland,
didactic preaching, that is, preaching in which the great
truths about the whole spectrum of revealed reality are taught
with no reference to Christ. God is revealed to us in this
age preeminently in His Son. We are to seek to teach the great
truths of the Word of God in the light of the great statement
of Hebrews 1, 1 and following. And then surely it will be in
contrast to mere sentimental preaching, touching men's heartstrings
by stories of mother and babies and little children. but little
or no reference to His cradle, His cross, and His open tomb. Moving men by statistics and
stories of human need without having them look upon Him who,
when He saw the multitudes, was moved with compassion. And at the end of the day, brethren,
the real answer to this, to have sermons pervasively evangelical
in their overall climate and flavor, is to have your own religious
experience be one that is pervasively evangelical in its climate and
flavor. If you are really living in close
communion with Christ, your pulpit ministry will savor of the fragrance
of Christ. If you're going daily to the
fountain open for sin and uncleanness, how can you indulge in legalistic
or moralistic preaching? If you are motivated, constrained
by the love of Christ, how can you seek to motivate your fellow
believers without bringing them near the realities which, under
the blessing of the Spirit, will cause them as well to be constrained
by the love of Christ.