Well, we come now, brethren,
to axiom number six, as I've already indicated, axiom number
seven, which deals with the vexing question of how long should I
preach? is available on tape and I do
believe that there are some workable suggestions and principles in
that lecture that may be of help to some of you and commend it
to you for purchasing it and listening to it at your leisure.
But as we come to axiom number six, we are concerned to address
the matter of the proclamation, explanation and application of
scriptural truths with earthiness simplicity, and plainness of
speech. And this, like the other axioms,
ends with the words, This goal must constitute our continuous
labor. Once again, I begin with explaining
the key words in the axiom. The word earthiness. In some
ways, I would like to use the word worldliness But because of the connotation
of that word in scripture and in our common parlance, the word
earthiness, I believe, is a better word. By using this word, I'm
adapting the dictionary definition of the word earthy, which speaks
of that which is either coarse or unrefined, or that which is
simple and natural and hearty. And obviously I am not encouraging
coarse and unrefined preaching, but that which is simple and
natural and hearty. Now, I believe we all agree that
all true preaching has its origin in heaven and its end in heaven. It comes from the God of heaven
who has revealed His mind in the words of Scripture, 1 Corinthians
2.12. Its true nature is known only
when it is carried to the hearts of men by the power of the Holy
Spirit sent down from heaven, 1 Peter 1 and verse 2. And its great end is to bring
men to enjoy the life of heaven now and to enter heaven when
they die or at the return of the Lord Jesus. However, though
its origin and end are heavenly, Preaching does its work on earth
among those who are of the earth, and in the language of Paul,
are earthy. It must do its work in the theater
of the real world of real human existence, in which there are
broken homes, broken vows, broken lives, political and social upheaval,
inflation, recession, a world in which kids have homework,
exams, peer pressures, passing and failing, etc., etc. And therefore effective preaching
is preaching which in its choice of language, its illustrations,
its analogies, and its applications, makes it clear that heaven indeed
has come down to earth in the proclamation of the word of God. The incarnation of the eternal
word, our Lord Jesus Christ, should always condition our preaching. Our Lord Jesus was born in very
humble circumstances, amidst the ordinary groans and cries
and sighs of a travailing mother, covered with blood and mucus
as any baby, no halo around His head. He was not born fully washed
and with a saintly glow upon His face. There was no shimmer
to the rags in which He was wrapped. He was all man, true man, and
to the appearance of men, nothing but man. Now that's exactly what our preaching
ought to have as its fundamental paradigm. Though He was the Lord
of heaven who came from heaven, in the Incarnation there was
such identification with us in our true human condition that
Scripture does not scruple to say He was made in the likeness
of sinful flesh. He was in every sense made like
unto us sin, accepted. So by earthiness, I'm speaking
of that preaching that doesn't have a sanctimonious ecclesiastical
halo around it. I'm speaking of that preaching
that does not take the things of God and do with it what people
have done with the Incarnation when they would have our Lord
born while Mary was singing lullabies and Jesus was born fully washed
and with a glow upon His cheek. Our preaching should be earthy.
And then by the word simplicity, I am not speaking of simplistic. Simplistic preaching is preaching
in which shallow and unrealistically simple answers are given to complex
questions and issues. The dictionary definition of
simplicity suits my purpose. Simplicity is freedom from intricacy
and complexity, freedom from affectation, subtlety. It is artlessness. Simplicity of expression is that
quality of speech in which ideas do not lurk in the murky shadows
of imprecise verbiage, abstruse imagery, and esoteric vocabulary. We don't want truth lurking in
such shadows. but rather we want truth so to
be spoken as to have our ideas stand naked under the blazing
light of the noonday sun on a cloudless day so that none can fail to
see our ideas but those who deliberately and willfully shut their eyes
once we've spoken them. Real genius is the ability to
take the profound and to make it readily accessible to the
masses by a cultivated simplicity of speech. I go back again to
1 Corinthians 14.9. Unless you utter words easy to
be understood, how shall it be known what is spoken? And again, Bishop Ryle emphasizes
this principle with regard to the preachers who were mightily
used of God in the 18th century. He says on page 24 of 18th Century
Leaders, with respect to all of them, they preached simply. They rightly concluded that the
very first qualification to be aimed at in a sermon is to be
understood. They saw clearly that thousands
of able and well-composed sermons are utterly useless because they
are above the heads of their hearers. They strove to come
down to the level of the people and to speak what the poor could
understand. To attain this, they were not
ashamed to crucify their style and to sacrifice their reputation
for learning. To attain this, they used illustrations
and anecdotes in abundance, and like their divine master, they
borrowed lessons from every object in nature. They carried out the
maxim of Augustine, a wooden key is not so beautiful as a
golden one, but if it can open the door where the golden one
cannot, it is far more useful. They revived the style of sermons
in which Luther and Latimer used to be so eminently successful. In short, they saw the truth
of what the great German reformer meant when he said, quote, no
one can be a good preacher to the people who is not willing
to preach in a manner that seems childish and vulgar to some,
not vulgar in the sense of unclean, but vulgar in the sense that
the common riffraff can possess it. Luther said no one can be
a good preacher to the people who is not willing to preach
in a manner that seems childish and vulgar to some. Simplicity. And then by the word plainness,
I think of those texts in John chapter 10 and verse 24. The Jews therefore came round
about him and said, How long do you hold us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us
plainly. Tell us in such a way that we
cannot mistake the meaning of your words. John 11 in verse
14, Then Jesus therefore said unto them plainly, Lazarus is
dead. You see, in verse 11, he had
not spoken plainly. He had deliberately spoken in
veiled and what we might say enigmatic language. Our friend
Lazarus is fallen asleep. He did not plainly tell them
he was dead. He used imagery, language that
could have meant something other than the stark naked reality. And in contrast between verse
11 and verse 13, the Holy Spirit says, now he spoke plainly, verse
14, Lazarus is dead. And in that very contrast, we
have what I regard to be a most helpful illustration of what
I mean by plainness. It is the opposite of obscurity
and vagueness. It is a matter of holy bluntness. Plain preaching is preaching
in which the listener must labor not to understand it rather than
labor to understand it. Spurgeon said in a very cavalier
way, if I give my attention to a man for five minutes and can't
understand him, I never blame myself, I blame the preacher.
Well, I think he's right. Its serious, intelligent, spiritually
intelligent listeners labor to understand us, and they do not. The fault lies with us. And if we are to preach with
earthiness, simplicity, and plainness of speech, we will have to labor
at it. Because, you see, to have substance
to our preaching, we must be men who live in our Bibles and
in our books. And when in our Bibles and in
our books we are continually trafficking in the code language
of our trade, theological terminology, references to things that are
beyond the ordinary mental interaction of our people, And we must labor
to have two working sets of vocabulary, two working sets of intellectual
furniture, one that we use when we're among our books, and another
that we use when we are among our people. Now that does not
mean that our preaching cannot elevate the working vocabulary
of our people by using a new word and explaining it. I am
not in any way inferring that. But the overall tenor of our
ministry, if it is to be earthy, simple, and plain, It will only
be so as the fruit of continuous labor if we are men who are doing
our task in seeking constantly to fill our minds and hearts
with an ever-growing knowledge of the truth of God. Now, so
much for what I mean by the words of the axiom. Now then, secondly,
I want to give what I hope will be a convincing demonstration
that this is the scriptural style of preaching. Believing, as I've
said several times, that any theology of preaching must come
from the Bible, when we turn to the Bible, what kind of preaching
do we find? Well, first of all, it is the
very way in which God spoke in giving the scriptures. When God
spoke in Hebrew and some Aramaic and in Greek, He was speaking
with respect to the Hebrew in the language of the wilderness,
the villages in Israel, and in the Aramaics, the language that
would have been found in the court of Nebuchadnezzar. And
because he speaks in that language, we are to reflect God in our
speaking. When God spoke in Greek to give
us the New Testament, it was not Attic Greek, the Greek of
the scholastic world of the Greco-Roman Empire, but it was the Koine
Greek, the Greek of the street and of the marketplace in first-century
Rome. Believing then 1 Corinthians
2, 12, which things we speak in words which the Holy Ghost
teacheth, we are under obligation to seek to be like God in our
speaking, to speak and communicate in the earthy, the simple, and
the plain. Secondly, it was the way in which
our Lord spoke. Incarneth wisdom in whom are
hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. And yet, surely,
if anything marked the speaking of our Lord next to that authority
that caused Him to stand out above the scribes and the Pharisees
who were always quoting Rabbi Ben so-and-so says, He said,
I say unto you, and what He said was marked by earthiness, simplicity,
by plainness of speech. He was reared in a despised peasant
village. He moved with an inner circle
of disciples taken almost exclusively from the artisan class. Furthermore,
it's clear that he was a keen observer of life as it was lived,
with farmers sowing their seeds, kids playing in the marketplace
and fussing because they can't agree whether to dance or whether
to mourn. merchants in pursuit of gain,
men and women in their various social and domestic activities. Therefore, when He who was the
Lord of Glory spoke, there is a patent earthiness, simplicity,
and plainness in His speech. His speech personified His person. As God of gods, He spoke with
absolute authority and undiluted truth. As true man, he spoke
in the language patterns of his own day, with the imagery that
impinged upon the real world in which his hearers lived. There was gripping earthiness
and lucid simplicity. And then thirdly, it's the way
in which the prophets and apostles spoke. When we turn to the prophets,
we do find enigmas in apocalyptic visions sections of Ezekiel and
Daniel and the book of the Revelation, and they are deliberately ambiguous
in their nature as far as their specific details are concerned,
but when addressing their contemporaries in exposing sin, calling them
to repentance and reformation into covenant fidelity, pleading
that they return to Jehovah as their God, there was an earthiness
bordering at times on coarseness, which makes us, in our consecutive
reading through the Old Testament at times, wonder if we should
read what's there. Isaiah did not say that all of
our righteousnesses are as dirty rags. He said they're like menstruous
clogs. And imagine saying that in Israel
with all of the ceremonial rituals that made a woman in her impurity
ceremonially unclean. And God says, pile up all the
best things you do. And God says through the prophet,
they're like a pile of monstrous claws. God says through Malachi, I'll
spread the dung of your feast upon your faces. Malachi 2.3. That's pretty earthy. You people
sitting around feasting when you ought to be fasting and mourning
and seeking God, I'll take the very excess dung from your gluttony
and I'll spread it on your faces." That's earthy, folks. That's
plain speaking. We might say, of course, Psalm
50, God says that He will treat the wicked like an enraged lion. He said, I will tear them Brethren,
that's blunt, that's plain, that's vivid, that's earthy language. Now there is a way to use words
so that they blunt the sharp edges of the word which God says
is to be what? It's to be a sharp, two-edged
sword, and there is a way of giving the semblance of fidelity
to the text of Scripture while dulling the edge of that sword
that is to cut and to pierce. After Nathan used his parable
with David, suppose he had said, There is a certain homo sapien
whose contemporary situation is quite analogous to my parabolic
description. Upon thoughtful reflection and
personal scrutiny, you may find yourself amazed at some of the
striking similarities. Now break that all down, and
you know what that says? You are the man. But after David
had been enraged with that parable, I doubt the arrow would have
been driven into his heart with that kind of verbiage that acted
like so much foam rubber surrounding the sword. That would be no untruth were
he to say, David, there is a certain homo sapien whose contemporary
situation is quite analogous to my parabolic description.
That would be true! That would not be plain, simple,
earthy, straightforward speech. Nathan says, David, you are the
man. And what was true of the prophets
was true of the apostles as well. Take Peter's Pentecost sermon
as a specimen. We are not drunk with wine, seeing
it is but the ninth hour. He heard their objection and
their cavilling at what was going on, and he stood right up and
addressed it in a straightforward way. Rather, he says, this is
that which was spoken. And right on through the passage,
Paul on Mars Hill, as I passed by and beheld your devotions,
I perceived that in all things you are very religious. And I
have found this particular altar to this particular God, Him I
proclaim unto you." Yes, there are, according to Peter, certain
things in Paul's epistles hard to be understood. I take great
comfort from that. But the vast majority of it,
as Mark Twain said, it's not what I can't understand in the
Bible that troubles me, it's what I do understand. And when
we read through the vast bulk of the apostolic epistles, it
is clear that they were communicating to the churches in plain, straightforward,
earthy language with reference to the concerns of their heart. Brethren, we need to go back
and reread Richard Baxter in his section on the Reformed pastor
where he pleads with men to exercise great plainness in our preaching
I would urge you to get into Baxter if it's been a while since
you've read him, because not only does he exhort us to plainness
of speech, he exemplifies it in a most unusual way. But now I come thirdly, in dealing
with this matter of earthiness, simplicity, and plainness of
speech, having sought to demonstrate that this is the scriptural style
of preaching, I want to demonstrate something of the cost of cultivating
such a style of preaching. And first of all, it will cost
you pride of elegance. Elegance is defined as that which
is characterized by dignified richness and grace, a polished
fastidiousness. Now, polished fastidiousness
will not break in upon men's hearts and consciences. It will not awaken, it will not
alarm, it will not comfort, it will not bless. We must be willing
to die to any determination to be known as elegant preachers
and rather we must be willing to stand with our Lord, have
the common people hear us gladly and speak plainly, simply and
with earthiness to our people. There's a marvelous tribute paid
to J.W. Alexander by Nicholas Murray
in one of those rare books that someone has put in my hands called
Preaching and Preachers by Nicholas Murray, this is what he says
of J.W. Alexander. He was a student of
rare industry. The evidence of this we have
in the number of languages he acquired, in his published works,
in the sermons he preached, each of which seemed to be a model
in their way and exhaustive of their subjects. And to meet the
wants of such a congregation as was his, and the calls made
upon his time, he must have been as industrious a pastor as he
was a student. We've never heard of any interest
of his congregation suffering for lack of attention. While
he carefully prepared his sermons, now here's a man who had acquired
facility in a number of languages, a true scholar, his thoughts
and language were as clear as the water of the river of life.
He gave not the processes by which he reached conclusions,
but the results. He often extemporized, and well,
because his mind was full and his tongue fluent. And this he
did with universal satisfaction, and this is very, very interesting,
save in the case of the black congregation at Princeton, which
he served as a pastor when there as professor. They thought they
needed written sermons as well as the white congregations. In
other words, when he preached extempore, they thought he was
giving them second-rate stuff because he didn't have a manuscript.
And they wanted to have their minister dignify his exercises
with a manuscript. The very simplicity, which was
one of his great charms everywhere else, was there regarded as a
defect which it was thought might be remedied by writing. nor are
they the only people who esteem a man profound in the proportion
of his big words and obscure sentences, and unlearned in the
proportion of his simplicity and clearness. Brethren, if any
of you have been blessed of God with a good mind, and with an
appetite to read, and with some ability to express your thoughts
with literary elegance, if you are to be a plain, earthy, simple
preacher, you must die to any desire to gain a reputation as
being an elegant preacher. Secondly, it will cost you much
self-denial and labor To be a plain, earthy, simple preacher will
cost you much self-denial and labor. Often the lack of clarity
in our preaching is the result of an unwillingness to work through
the barrier of our own muddled thinking. You know what I mean
by the barrier of our own muddled thinking? And we say, well I
have a general conception of that and I'll just trust that
somehow when I try to articulate it will come out in such a way
that people will understand. No, what we've done is we've
hit the wall as the runner hits the wall in the marathon. And
no man wins the marathon or even completes it with respectable
time who does not have the discipline to drive himself through the
wall at which everything in him says quit. And so it is, in seeking
to be clear and earthy and simple, there are times when we hit the
wall and we say, there's just no way I can break that down
without destroying that element of truth in its essence if I
try to make it any more simple or clear, and we bail out of
the race at mile 19. We don't push through the wall
to the 26th mile. And brethren, it will cost us
much self-denial and labor if we are to be characterized by
earthiness, simplicity, and plainness of speech. Bishop Ryle underscores
this in his own experience, having in his background the disciplines
to be a true scholar and to speak as a scholar. He speaks of the
tremendous blessing it was to be thrust among simple people
and people who were not formally educated and how it forced him
to cultivate a simple and a plain style and long after some of
the great pulpiteers of the 19th century and there were some great
pulpiteers who held people in the mesmerizing grip of elegant
preaching and their sermons are not read by anyone today and
Bishop Ryle is still loved by the common people. because he
was willing not only to die to the pride of elegance, but willing
to deny himself and labor at being simple, clear, and earthy. And then, this may sound strange,
but it will cost you opposition from your peers in organized
religion. It will cost you opposition from
your peers in organized religion. You see, as long as religious
truth floats by people in terminology and in concepts and in a manner
of speaking that the common people do not hear it gladly, organized
religion will leave you alone. But let the masses of common
people begin to say, hey, there's a preacher, I can understand,
and then you're in trouble. That's what got our Lord in trouble.
And with all of the false accusations brought before him at his trial,
I love that statement that says, Herod, I mean Pilate wasn't confused
by all of this, it says, he knew that for envy they had delivered
him. And that envy is expressed in
their own words, they said, what are we going to do? The whole
world is going after him! And we're losing our following.
because he spake as one having authority. He spoke, bringing
heaven down to the world of kids in the marketplace, bringing
heaven down to the world of a mother in travail, a sower throwing
out his seed upon various kinds of soil. He brought the world
of heaven down to a master and his slaves and the stewardship
of talents while they were quoting Rabbi Ben so-and-so, Rabbi Ben
so-and-so ad nauseum. And this was not only true of
our Lord, it was true of Bunyan. I love to read his apology at
the front of Book One, Pilgrim's Progress. Where he struggles,
he's seeking counsel. Shall I take my dream which is
flowered far beyond anything I expected and print it? Some
said print it, some said print it not. My wife and I had a good
chuckle reading that a couple of months ago when we started
through Pilgrim's Progress together again. No wonder Owen said I
would give up all of my learning to be able to preach like the
Tinker. Now I'm glad he didn't give up his learning. But you
see, when Owen would go and listen to Bunyan, what was it that drew
him? It was not only the reality of
his spiritual experience, but his ability to preach in an earthy,
simple manner that caused the truth of God to come home with
freshness to the heart. And you see in the early days
Spurgeon was lampooned and caricatured in the newspapers. Why? They
said, who is this young Tyrell taking the great doctrines of
election and the covenant of grace and inter-trinitarian council
and bringing it down where shopkeepers and boot blacks are rejoicing
in this truth? He suffered for breaking the
back of all the high-blown religious terminology and taking biblical
truth and making it accessible to the common man by an earthy,
simple, and plain speech. And so, brethren, If you are
determined that this will mark your ministry, expect opposition
from your peers in organized religion, born on the one hand
out of jealousy that people will get excited about your ministry,
and out of a convicted conscience that there's something defective
in their own ministries, that they are either unwilling or
unable or both to be able to bring the truth of God down to
where it impinges upon the world in which the hearers live. But
then let me give you, yes we do have time, some practical
cautions with respect to this matter of earthiness, simplicity,
and clarity in preaching. Three simple but crucial words
of caution. Number one, do not stereotype
what this principle will mean in the real and varied situations
of preaching. Do not stereotype what this will
mean. What might be earthy, simple
and plain in one setting might be stilted elegance in another. For example, I don't preach the
same way when I'm in a small, culturally insulated, Midwestern
or Southern rural congregation as I preach here at Trinity.
I don't preach if I'm preaching to a group of men in a jail,
and I've had that experience the same way I would preach here
in this situation. We must adapt. What is earthy,
simple, and plain in one cultural setting would be offensively
crude in another. And you and I must seek under
God to be wise, and I'm assuming for the most part that as resident
pastors who really seek to understand our situation, we will apply
this principle in the realistic setting in which we find ourselves
and not in a stereotyped notion that we either picked up from
our early training Some men can never preach beyond the preaching
they heard when they were young kids and young men. And that
becomes the standard and the model, and they never break out
of it, go beyond it, or if necessary come down beneath it in terms
of what plainness, simplicity, and earthiness will mean for
them in the context in which God has placed them. I believe
this is just an adaptation of Paul's determination, to the
Jew I became as a Jew, to the Greek I became as a Greek, I
became all things to all men, that I might by all means win
some. Secondly, do not despise sanctified
elegance in those situations where it is warranted. Whitefield
speaking before Lady Huntington would be a different Whitefield
from Whitefield among the Welsh miners and the English tradesmen.
And we need that sanctified accommodation, and therefore I am not in any
way saying that we must have a wooden inflexible standard
of earthiness and simplicity. And then do not, thirdly, make
the mistake of thinking earthiness, simplicity and plainness mean
coarseness. vulgarity, simplistic or shallow
preaching. Remember the injunction of Paul
to Timothy, hold fast the form of sound words. The sermons marked
by these qualities of earthiness, simplicity and plainness will
not disgust or offend hungry-hearted believers of the highest culture. nor will they fail to feed humble-minded
believers of the highest intellectual capacity and culture. The true
people of God will love the truth in its simplicity and plainness. People of refinement in culture
will not be offended if they are the true people of God. Now
if they are not, and they don't have a hunger for the truth,
but they have an artificial standard of what is and is not proper
in a pulpit, then you may offend them, and as Calvin said, he
said, I never scruple at offending Pharisees. I never scruple at
offending Pharisees. And if you've got Pharisees who
want stilted, empty religion with its proper forms and with
its precast molds, then offend them every Lord's Day if necessary. Well, those words of caution,
and then finally some materials to help us, some concrete suggestions
to help us in the cultivation of these qualities in our preaching. Number one, expose your mind
to good models, whether sacred or profane. Lay your own mind
next to those minds disciplined in the art of simplicity, clarity,
and earthiness. Though Spurgeon takes off on
flights of Victorian semi-poetic rhetoric, and it's interesting
to read it, and it smells fragrant, and it sounds good when you read
them out loud, obviously you don't want to imitate that. It
would be out of place, just as much as if I were to wear the
kind of clothes that Spurgeon wore in the pulpit. But learn
the principle beneath. What you're reading, Bishop Ryle,
Brooks, Flavel, Bunyan, and in our own day, a writer like Packer,
with all of his solid scholarship, though I am deeply concerned
at some of the trends in his writings in recent days. This
is not a blanket endorsement of Dr. Packer, yet in this area
he can greatly help us. He has learned how, without sacrificing
the proven terminology of historical theology and biblical concepts,
yet he has learned how to take those things and express them
in a contemporary idiom that makes him a popular writer. And
you and I must read men like that to have our minds toned
and influenced by their style. Then listen to preachers. I cannot
understand preachers that don't listen to other preachers. Listen
to preachers and learn from other preachers. Find out preachers
that, under God, are holding the minds of their congregations
because they are, among other things, beginning to at least
master some dimensions of this earthiness and simplicity and
expose your own mind to their influence. Then, secondly, read
and reread the best authors on the subject. Periodically read
Ryle's essay. on simplicity in preaching. Read
Bridges, his section on plainness in preaching. Reread those things
periodically. It's amazing, as some of us,
the students have said, they've come up to me and said, Pastor,
I can see that the lectures have undergone refinement and additions
and the rest since I heard them, but I couldn't believe that I'd
forgotten so many of those things. It's been a refresher course.
Well, we all need that. Because in the labor, the sheer
pressure of producing week after week, we can let a thread drop
here and a thread drop there, and we don't realize how much
of the fabric has become undone. So we sit down and read a treatise
that brings it all together, and then we say, wow, I've come
a long way in the wrong direction. And then we begin, by the grace
of God, by prayer and pains, to shore up those areas of weakness. And then I would counsel you
also to Seek, by God's grace, to give
yourself to the constant reading of the Word of God, not only
to feed upon its truth, but with an eye to discern how did the
prophets bring the truth of God to the consciences of their hearers?
How did our Lord speak? How did the apostles speak? And
I never feel more safe in this matter than when I have some
degree of confidence that I'm expounding the scriptures in
the scriptural model of plainness, earthiness, and simplicity of
speech.