The following sermon was delivered
on Wednesday morning, October 19, 2005, at Trinity Baptist
Church in Montville, New Jersey, during the annual Pastors Conference.
The preacher is Pastor Albert N. Martin, and this is the second
sermon in a series entitled, Pursuing a Ministry Permeated
with Christ. Well, as I said beginning in
the previous hour, I didn't know whether I would get to heading
number two, and obviously I did not. But having sought to lay
before you what, in my judgment, are some of the most compelling
reasons for consciously seeking and cultivating, pursuing a ministry
permeated with the fragrance of the person and work of Christ,
what I think I'll do, I sought a little counsel from several
brethren Rather than give this extra biblical confirmation from
the past, something that I had in my notes to underscore would
be inappropriate in an ordinary sermon, but since I identified
this in the introduction as a sermon-slash-lecture would be appropriate, what I'm
going to do is to just give little teasing snippets of the larger
portions I had hoped to read I have sought to read and re-read
and re-re-read them, to try to read them in a way that some
of these men might have preached them, so it would not have been
an exercise in dullness to you. But let me at least tell you
the five men that I had hoped to quote from and give you a
little snippet and then give you what was going to be a brief
working bibliography of things that I have found helpful in
pointing me in this direction of seeking more and more to preach
Christ in all of my preaching. I was planning to begin with
a quote from J. W. Alexander and his priceless
little book, Thoughts on Preaching. And in the section entitled,
The Matter of Preaching, Alexander states his conviction that our
preaching should be such as, first of all, to set forth God
as the great overshadowing object in all our preaching. And secondly,
it ought to be such as sets forth a biblical anthropology, man
as created, obligated to God, and fallen in Adam. And then
point number three as to the matter of our preaching, He went
on to say, it must be God preeminently set forth as God in Christ, reconciling
the world to himself, not imputing to them their trespasses. And then let me give you just
one little abbreviated section of this. It's page 208. All else
converges toward Christ or radiates from him. it tends to lead us
to Him or flows from our union in Him. All unfoldings of God
in His perfections and glories, all exhibitions of the character,
condition, and duties of man, all inculcations of doctrine
and practice, if true and scriptural, lead the soul directly to the
Lord Jesus Christ for wisdom, righteousness, sanctification,
and redemption. Every doctrine, every duty, all
legitimate matter of preaching of whatever sort culminates in
Christ, in whom all things shall be gathered into one, and who
fills all in all. All duty leads to Him to discharge
the debt incurred by its non-performance, to obtain strength for its future
fulfillment. while the wisdom, power, and
love displayed in Christ evoke the highest love and adoration,
and incite while they enable us to render grateful and devoted
obedience." And that's just a sample of the section I'd hoped to quote,
and then the second voice from the fast, was that of Thomas
Murphy in his reprinted volume of Pastoral Theology. I was delighted
when it was reprinted here several years ago, after establishing
that as to what we preach, it must be the Word of God, nothing
but the Word. His third point is, and here's
the heading, Christ is to be the sum and substance of all
preaching. And then beginning on page 167
all the way through for a number of pages, this is the burden
of his exhortation. We have already shown that the
Scriptures and nothing but the truths of Scripture should furnish
the matter that is brought into the pulpit. We now go further
and say that the one great theme which the preacher must ever
bring out from the Word of God and present in the diversified
forms it receives from all scriptural truth is Christ and Him crucified. As Vinay has most aptly expressed
it, in every sermon we must either start from Christ or come to
Him. This will result necessarily
from the deep study and preaching of the Bible for Christ is the
burden of all scripture Hence, he laid the obligation upon his
followers, search the scriptures, for in them you think you have
eternal life, and they are they which testify of me." And then
he goes on page after page to just open up that concern that
those who were sitting under his lectures, would read his
lectures, would feel this burden of preaching Christ. But then
this lovely caution. Whatever text or theme then is
taken by the preacher, it ought to look to Christ. He should
be the great burden of every sermon. His name need not necessarily
be mentioned as that which is to be the subject, but the tone,
the spirit, the life, the deep undercurrent and steady aim of
every discourse should pertain to the person and work and infinite
blessings of Christ. And then the third witness that
I was going to bring forward, the third voice, was again Gardiner
Spring. And in his masterful work, Power
in the Pulpit, which thankfully again has been reprinted, Gardiner
Spring powerfully exhorts us with respect to this whole matter
of preaching Christ. The pulpit is powerless where
the cross of Christ is not magnified. Christ must be the theme, the
scope, the life, the soul of the pulpit. What savors not,
and I like the choice of his word, what savors not of the
cross of Christ belongs not to the work of the Christian minister. And then further, in another
discourse of his, though Christ crucified is to be the one great
burden of every sermon, it does not necessarily follow that there
must be a tiresome repetition. It may be that some preachers
are often driven by the fear of this to seek other subjects. But this supremely important
subject has an infinite variety of aspects. In Jesus dwells all
the fullness of wisdom, all the fullness of grace, all the fullness
of the Godhead, an ocean boundless and fathomless." And then he
goes on to amplify how it is that in preaching duty, history,
etc., Christ can indeed be the one, the flavor of whose presence
and savor of whose presence is evident in our preaching. Again,
listening now to the witness of another quote from Gardner
Spring, and remember now I'm doing this redacting on my feet. Every truth in the Bible brings
us at last to the cross, and the cross carries us back to
every truth in the Bible. So the sum and substance of all
truth is most impressively proved, illustrated, and enforced by
Christ and Him crucified. A right conception of what is
included in the cross ensures a right conception of every doctrine
contained in the Bible. This is the hinge on which the
whole system turns and the great truth by which alone any and
all truths may be understood. And then my final, my fifth a
voice from the past was going to be that incomparable Christ-soaked,
Christ-obsessed Prince of Preachers, Mr. Spurgeon himself. And I quote now from Spurgeon's
lectures to my students, sermons, dash, their matter. Of all I
wish to say, this is my sum. My brethren, preach Christ always
and evermore. He is the whole gospel. His person,
offices, and work must be our one great all-comprehending theme. The world needs still to be told
of its Savior and of the way to reach Him. Justification by
faith should be far more than it is the daily testimony of
Protestant pulpits, and if with this master truth there should
be more generally associated the other great doctrines of
grace, the better for our churches and our age. If with the zeal
of Methodists we can preach the doctrine of the Puritans, a great
future is before us. The fire of Wesley and the fuel
of Whitefield will cause a burning which shall yet set the forest
of error on fire and warm the very soul of this cold earth. We are not called to proclaim
philosophy and metaphysics, but the simple gospel. Man's fall,
his need of a new birth, forgiveness through an atonement, and salvation
as the result of faith, these are our battle acts and weapons
of war. We have enough to do to learn
and teach these great truths, and accursed be the learning
which shall divert us from our mission, or that willful ignorance
that shall cripple us in its pursuit. More and more I am jealous
lest any views upon prophecy, church government, politics,
or even systematic theology should withdraw one of us from glorying
in the cross of Christ and then he goes on to say some very strong
things if we allow that to happen and then of course it was Spurgeon
who had that wonderful example of someone who said that he wasn't
sure that Christ indeed would be the beginning or end of any
passage and speaks of how in every little hamlet in England
there was a road that led to London and likewise there is
for every text a road that eventually will lead us to Christ. Well,
that's just a little snippet of some of those things. Let
me mention several things by way of bibliography of materials
that may be helpful to you. Volume 3 of Brooks, pages 207
to 223, has a wonderful section on what it is to preach Christ.
Volume 3 of Brooks, pages 107 to 223. Flaval, Volume 1, in
the Fountain of Life, A very good section. You can
see the page numbers in the index. And then Taylor's work of the
ministry, pages 79 to 104. And I was tempted to read a section
out of that again. Very, very, in the right sense
of the word, unctuous, powerful, penetrating. William Taylor,
The Work of the Ministry, pages 79-104, and then this lovely
little treatise by an Anglican of another generation preaching
Christ, the heart of gospel ministry. This is the outgrowth of a message-slash-lecture
given to some of his brethren in the Episcopalian ministry,
and that's available in our bookstore. I've already mentioned the section
chapter 8 in Pastor Donnelly's book, Peter, Eyewitness of His
Glory. And then the Christian Pastor's
Manual, our brother Pastor McDiarmid made reference to this yesterday,
edited by John Brown, has a lovely sermon by John Jennings, I think
it's John Jennings, on this very subject, on preaching Christ. So I commend those things to
you as you have opportunity to take them in hand and to read
them. But my brethren have encouraged
me not to stint on heading number three, having sought to persuade
you from the Scriptures of the necessity, the biblical warrant,
for pursuing a ministry fragrant with the person and work of Christ
a few of these extra-biblical voices from the past urging us
to pursue such a ministry. Now, thirdly, the identification
of, and some suggested correctives to, some of the hindrances to
the pursuit of such a ministry. And here I want to address these
matters under two simple headings. hindrances of the head and their
correctives, and then hindrances of the heart and their correctives. What are some of the hindrances
of the head? And by that I simply mean hindrances
that grow out of either erroneous thinking or vacuous thinking
concerning this matter. Well, let me suggest three of
them. Number one, a deficient persuasion concerning the necessity
of pursuing such a ministry. With some of us it may be that
we have a deficient persuasion concerning the necessity of pursuing
such a ministry. Well, I hope my effort in the
previous hour has filled up some of the deficiency and has hopefully
won your conscience that you, with me, are under solemn obligation
constantly to pursue such a ministry. And if you're not fully persuaded,
I hope consulting some of these voices from the past will indeed
persuade you. And one of the reasons I've stuck
with some of the witnesses from the past is that these men were
not at all caught up in the present controversy of exemplary preaching,
of redemptive historical preaching. They were not caught up in any
of that controversy, so they can't be pegged as being in one
camp or another. And they were men, secondly,
who were not known primarily for the tones that they produced
on paper. They were preachers who cut it
in their own generation. And it's one of the irritants
that I have when men who have not cut it as preachers want
to tell me how to do my craft. I want a man that under God is
doing it, doing it well and done it over a lengthy period of time
to sit me down and say, son, I've got some things to point
out to you that I think you need to know. Now, I am not discounting
that God can give insights to the scholar, but it seems to
me it's only in the work of the ministry that non-practitioners
become the dominant authority for practitioners. What other
field is this tolerated? I ask you, what other field is
it tolerated? And so brethren, that's another
reason why I give you echoes from the past. These men, without
exception, were known to be preachers. The only one I can't speak for
is McIlvain, except he was asked to address his brethren, so I
figure he must have been a man cut above his peers. But with
all of the other men, they were men who were known to be preachers.
Gardner Spring for 60 years held congregations in rapt attention
under his preaching ministry. and alexander you read the uh... the the statements concerning
his preaching ministry of these other men's virgin and so brethren
i think we ought to listen to men whose ministries were mightily
owned of god and who speak to us concerning the necessity of
this kind of ministry so uh... if there is a persuasion that
the previous hour and the witness of these men from the past will
indeed persuade you that this is indeed your solemn duty and
your great privilege. And then I'd like to set one
other fact, a deeper persuasion, and it is this. If the most delightful
ministry of the Holy Spirit is to magnify our Lord Jesus, and
it is, I like to think of the Holy Spirit, and I hope it is
not irreverent to do so, as that person behind the stage who is charged
with the manipulation and control of the lights on center stage. And he has a script of the play,
and where the central character takes central stage His instructions
are to narrow the focus of His spotlight and to push up the
rheostat and increase the brightness of the light that shines upon
the central figure. And the Holy Spirit's greatest
delight is to narrow the focus of the beams of His influence
and to intensify their brightness when Christ is center stage in
our ministry. And our ministries ought to aim
to create a climate under God in which the Holy Spirit can
perform that most delightful of all ministries with great
intensity as we seek to set forth our Lord Jesus Christ. But then
there's a second problem in the head that may keep some of us
from this kind of ministry, and it's what I'm calling a deficient
skill. in exercising such a ministry. Like any other skill, it takes
time and pains to cultivate and to perfect that skill. And I
was delighted when in re-reading that essay in the John Brown
manual, Christian Pastors manual, and the chapter on preaching
Christ, that this man understood this principle and he wrote as
follows. But to arrive at any tolerable perfection in preaching
Christ is a work of time, a result of a careful perusal of the Scriptures
and studying the hearts of men. It requires mortifying the pride
of carnal reason, a great concern for souls, and a humble dependence
on the Spirit of God with the lively exercise of devotion in
our closets. But it's particularly those opening
words. To arrive at any tolerable perfection
in preaching Christ is a work of time. And so, brethren, if
you find that you're deficient in this area, and one of the
reasons is, how do I do it? I answer, work at it. Labor at
it. And in so doing, learn from the
proven craftsmen. We have a wonderful legacy of
the sermons of men who were known to be preachers who preached
Christ-fragrant sermons. McShane, Spurgeon, Flavel, Brooks,
John Owen, with all his ponderous Latinized sentences, Christ is
there. You remember in mortification
where again and again he repeats himself. And Owen doesn't do
that often in terms of what we might call, all right, I got
the message the first time, but he's so concerned to make plain
that the only cross on which we can ultimately know our lust
being crucified is the cross on which Jesus died. Any crosses
of our own making will not do. And I would commend to you current
preachers who manifest this, and among them that I'm aware
of and that I listen to whenever I get an opportunity. If I hear
that my dear friend and esteemed brother, Dr. Sinclair Ferguson,
has preached somewhere and there's a CD or a tape available, I'm
almost ready to give up a finger to get hold of it. That dear
man of God, in my judgment, exemplifies this to an unusual degree, and
I always get jealous to preach Christ like he preaches Christ
when I listen to him. So listen to those. Read the
sermons of those who, by God's grace, attain some measure of
skill in this matter of preaching Christ. A second practical suggestion
to overcome as a corrective, critique sermon before you preach
it. And actually ask yourself, from
introduction to conclusion, where will the fragrance of Jesus be
smelled in this sermon by anyone whose olfactory nerves spiritually
are not seared? Is there something of the fragrance
of Christ? Where is it? If not, where should
it be? Even, my brothers, and don't
be ashamed of being known, when we and I go to our graves, we're
not going to be remembered for a lot of things. And probably
one of the few things we'll be remembered for are those things
that have been woven into our ministries as a pattern. And
if you're dealing, for example, with the subject, you're dealing
with some of the cardinal sins of our age, and you're seeking
to encourage your people to be gracious or to be kind or to
be truthful, And if there is not, in the particular passages
you are dealing with, something that can very naturally lend,
just have the gall to say, now my brothers and sisters, we've
been talking today about the sin of laziness. And if it has
not been natural to you to point to Him who so fully kept the
law that everything involved in that other part of the fourth
commandment He fully kept every day of His life, six days shalt
thou labor, We see in our Lord Jesus the epitome of industriousness. My Father works hitherto, and
I must work the works of Him. If we don't go to Christ that
way, simply at the end of the exposition to say, now, my brothers
and sisters, where in the world are we going to get the strength
to overcome our laziness, woven into the fabric of our reigning
sin if we are not Christians? Our remaining sin, if we are,
is a disposition to be a sluggard. Where are you going to find grace?
And just tell them it's in Jesus. Now, if some people say, well,
that's an artificial tacking on of Christ, fooey on them. It's not at all that the grace
and strength to perform that duty is in Christ. Without me,
you can do nothing, i.e., you can do all things through Him
who strengthens me. And you claim them by the example
of Christ. There are all kinds of ways,
but begin to cultivate, if you don't do this, this mental discipline
of critiquing, critiquing your servants before you preach them
and say, where is Jesus? Where is the road that goes to
London? If it ain't there, construct
it. All right? Third hindrance of
the head. Deficient persuasion concerning
the necessity of pursuing such a ministry, a deficient skill
in exercising such a ministry, Thirdly, a naive assumption that
our listeners will make the connections that lead to or flow out from
the person and work of Christ. A naive assumption that our listeners
will make the connections that lead to or flow out from the
person and work of Christ. Now, for example, When we're
engaged in consecutive exposition, and I can remember, this is when
I determined to begin to do this far more repeatedly. When the New Covenant community
gathered and sat in a given place on a given Lord's Day, and someone
said, we have a letter from our beloved Apostle Paul, and one
of the elders assigned someone who had a particular gift of
reading or themselves had it, and the letter was read. When
you have, as you do in so many of the Pauline epistles, the
grand indicatives of grace, the statements of what we have and
what we are in Christ, then followed by the reasonable gospel imperatives,
what we are to be and to do because of who we are and what we have,
people would be making those connections between indicative
and imperative because they're hearing the whole thing all at
once. But when we're taking several verses at a time and we come
through, for example, I can remember it was when I was preaching through
1 Peter that I was determined to begin to do this. I kept saying
to our people, there is no imperative in this first chapter till we
get to verse 13 that begins with the therefore. It is dense with
gospel indicatives, all that we are and all that we have. Well, it was wonderful to preach
all the indicatives, but when I came to verse 13, And then
you go on, verse after verse, with very little of the indicative,
but the imperatives. It was necessary for me to keep
making that connection for our people, not assuming that they're
going to make it, not assuming that someone who's just begun
to come into the assembly, when you were preaching, say, from
verse 218 and onward, you must not assume that they're going
to, on their own, make the connection, so that you may have to have
a little more extensive review. And so, the persnickety, homiletical
perfectionist, and rhetorical critic will say, well, if you're
going to have unity of discourse, there ought not to be any overflow
into prevailing. Fooey on them! I've got a company
of God's people. That under God, I want them with
all my heart to think biblically. And they must never think of
the gospel imperatives detached from gospel indicatives. Don't
assume they're going to make the connections. So you must
make those connections for them continually and repeatedly. Now again, it takes time, it
takes effort to do it in a way that is not so sane and predictable
that people could, in a sense, just tune you out while you're
doing it. That's where the labor comes in. Do I love my people
enough to get this through to them, but to work so as I can
get it through with freshness? And don't assume they're going
to make the connections. Furthermore, when you've laid
upon them a sobering duty that has brought conviction. Don't
assume that they're automatically going to go to Christ. The devil
is at their elbow to drive them into despair that keeps them
awake. You and I must take them by the
hand and say, my brother, my sister, I know many of you, your
hearts have been wounded and laid bare. Mine has been laid
bare in the preaching. Let us go to our great high priest. If any man sin, We have an advocate. At the point of my assume, they're
going to make the connections to go to Christ for strength,
to go to Christ for forgiveness, or to see how that duty is connected
with their union with Christ, their profession of Christ, the
honor of Christ. There is, I believe in many of
us, a naive assumption that our listeners will make them or flow
out of Christ. And I think that's an error of
the head that needs to be corrected at the very practical pastoral
level as we preach to our people week after week. I can remember
again when this first began to really grip me, so it began to
shape my ministry. And I was asked in some setting
to preach on the Christian family. Well, I did not start in Ephesians
5 with husbands and wives without giving a swift overview. of all
of the indicatives of Ephesians 1-3, because when Paul said husbands
and wives, he assumed that they had all the experience that he
describes in chapter 1 of that great Trinitarian salvation. that they had experienced personally
the dynamism of saving grace as described in Ephesians 2,
1-10, that they were comfortable with the idea that this was not
atomistic and individualistic, but was part of God constituting
the new humanity, 2.12 on into chapter 3, and as Paul could
assume all of this, was to some degree filtering into husbands
and wives sitting in the assembly. We've got to see to it that it
filters into them before we come to husbands love your wives as
Christ loved the church. Don't naively assume that our
listeners will make the connections that lead to or flow out from
the person of Christ. So I lay before you, brethren,
for your consideration these hindrances of the head and a
few practical correctives. Now we come, secondly, hindrance
of the heart and their correctives. Plural, hindrances of the heart
and their correctives. And here again, I suggest three. First of all, a waning love for
the person of Christ. The most tender but most fruitful
plant in the whole garden of the graces planted in the human
heart by the grace of God and the power of the Spirit is love
to Christ. I like to think of it as a plant,
very tender, with a unique root system. Its roots reach out like
tentacles. and wrap themselves around the
root of every other grace planted in the garden of the human soul
by God's sovereign saving power. And to the extent that the root
system and the plant of love to Christ is healthy, it influences
all other graces in that garden of God that is your soul and
mine. But if that plant of love to Christ begins to wither, and
its root system no longer can share its nourishment with the
roots of all the other plants, then the whole garden begins
to be overgrown with weeds, the plants begin to wither, the leaves
begin to fall, and the soul is in a tragic state. And though
it is so significant and useful a plant in relationship to the
whole garden, it's a very tender, exotic plant. Just a blast of
the hot wind of an unconfessed sin can make it begin to wither. Just the starvation of its nourishment
by the sunlight of the presence of God in vital, Spirit-suffused
devotional exercises, it begins to lose its strength. And it's
obvious from the way the Lord deals with that whole issue in
Revelation chapter 2 that it is that most tender and most
significant plant in all the garden of graces. The Lord can
commend the Church for the apparent vigor of many, many other plants
in the garden. But he says, I have this against
you. You have left your first love and says, if that's not
corrected, it won't be long before there's a condition that will
cause me to remove your candlestick. And it's interesting that when
the Lord deals with the matter, he says, remember, repent, and
do. Get in touch with the reality
that your first love has been left. You have left your first
love. Let yourself come to grips with
the reality that is, and having come to grips with it, repent
the internal disposition, and do, there you have full purpose
of, and endeavor after, new obedience. What's the connection between
that and a ministry in the preaching of the Word that is suffused
and permeated with the savor and flavor of Christ? Well, the
connection is obvious. The Scripture says, Out of the
abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. Out of the overflow of
the heart, the mouth speaks. Find a man who's in the fury
and blessed disruption of first love. And I don't care what the subject
of discussion is in the social setting. The subject of discussion
may be Katrina, or Rita, or Who's in the World series, or nuclear
physics. He'll find something in what
you're talking about that precipitates from him some speech about his
Mary, or about his Jennifer, or about other unnamed women.
Some of you have a knowing look in your eyes. Why? Out of the abundance of the heart
the mouth speaks, until you want to say to him, But he's not sitting there contriving,
saying, I've got to find a way to talk about Mary. I've got
to find a way to talk about Mary. His heart's so full of Mary,
his mouth effuses Mary. Oh, my brothers, if our hearts
are full of Him in the secret place, in the cultivation of
His presence, in the ordinary, mundane effusions of life, the
outworkings of life, then surely, surely there will be places,
even in our preaching, where we don't calculate. He may not
have been there in our notes, but he's so much in our hearts,
that in the act of preaching, as the Holy Spirit enlarges our
hearts, and the truth, as it were, is intensified in its grip
upon our own souls, Christ comes out of our preaching. are people
desperately need in the pulpit, not just the man who labors at
careful exegesis, who labors at clear structure, who labors
at chaste use of illustrations to help make the truth more plain. They need us full of the passion
of our first love to Christ. And without that, anything else
will be mechanical. And we may have sermons which,
if transcribed and critiqued by others, they would say it
was full of Christ. But to speak of Christ without
that non-imitable glow, it doesn't cut it with our people. I mean,
a man has got to be the consummate actor who can imitate that dimension
in preaching that is so contagious. When a man is aglow with Christ
and you love Christ and you want to love Christ more, there is
a spiritual contagion in that very experience of sympathy of
mind and heart in the act of preaching. Well, if we have reason
to believe there's been a waning love for the person of Christ,
what do we do? We do, first of all, the hardest
thing, and that's own it. And one of the most shameful
things to own is that we do not love as we once did so lovable
a being as Jesus. I find that's the cruncher. There's
something about having to say, how shameful, that I should have
a waning love for one so lovable. It's irrational. It's spiritual
madness. And then set about to do something
about it. And nothing kindles love for
Christ unless Of course, we've got a controversy with God. That's
different. If you're mucking around with garbage on your internet,
then you can fast and pray for six weeks for restored love to
Christ. If you don't stop that nonsense,
you're going to get nowhere. That's a given. But assuming,
and I trust it's not foolish assumption, that that is a matter
that's so clear, I don't need to insult you by addressing it.
What do we do? Nothing kindles love for Christ
like gazing upon Him. Take a book like Octavius Winslow's
on declension and revival of religion in the soul. Someone
suggested Alexander's practical sermons, Love for an Unseen Christ. I believe I read it some time
ago. Take those books that are rich
with Christ, the glory of Christ. I hope we can get Spring's book. reprinted the glories of the
Redeemer, those things that are written specifically to help
magnify our blessed Lord Jesus before our eyes, and seeing Him,
and spending time contemplating Him, and praying that the Holy
Spirit will rekindle and intensify whatever we have known of previous
love for Him, that we would no longer have a waning but a growing,
blossoming love for the person of Christ. But then there's a
second hindrance of the heart, and that is a weakened faith
in the efficacy and power of the preaching of Christ and Him
crucified. A weakened faith in the efficacy
and power of the preaching of Christ and Him crucified. I alluded
to this a little bit in the previous hour. Romans 1.16, 1 Corinthians
1.18, And it's particularly interesting
that in the 1 Corinthians 1.18 passage, Paul says the preaching
of the cross is to those of us who are being saved the power
of God. It's not just looking backward
to its instrumentality in bringing us into union with Christ, but
the preaching of the cross becomes the primary means of the nourishment
of the soul that is in Christ. And that's why Paul lays Christ
and His cross over all of our duties and all of our provisions
and privileges until he can say, I have been crucified with Christ,
nevertheless I live. Yet not I, but Christ lives in
me, and the life which I now live in the flesh, He doesn't
live it through me. I'm not a passive funnel. I live
it, but I live it in union with Him, and by the Holy Spirit He
dwells in me. I now live by faith in the Son
of God, and I think of Him particularly, Paul says, as the one who loved
me and gave Himself for me. When the Lord Jesus Speaking
in the Bread of Life discourse, he said these profound words
that have tremendous implications for our ministry to our people.
John 6 and verse 53, Jesus said unto
them, Truly, truly, I say to you, except you eat the flesh
of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you do not have life in
yourselves. He that eats Present tense. He who is continually eating
my flesh and drinking my blood has eternal life and I will raise
him up at the last day for my flesh is meat indeed and my blood
is drink indeed. He who continually eats my flesh
and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him. Bring that over into John 15.
The man abide not in me. He is cast forth as a branch.
Men gather them, cast them into the fire. Here Jesus says, involved
in this abiding in him is the constant eating of his flesh
and drinking of his blood. What does that mean? It means
that Christ crucified is the life, the ongoing life of the
souls of his people. If that's so, then my preaching
must be holding out that bread and that drink continually, not
just when we come to the Lord's table. But it must be the sum,
the substance, it must be something of the diet that they receive
from you and from me day after day, Lord's day by Lord's day. It is in this way that they abide
in Him. and we abide in Him. They must
know that in this ongoing struggle with their indwelling sin, it
is the truth of Romans chapter 6 that lies at the foundation
of their ability to deal effectively with their remaining sin. They
must know that it is in union with Christ crucified that sin's
dominion has been broken. Here I want to give a word of
personal testimony. I don't often do that. but I'm
going to do it. Back some months ago, it had been probably four or five
months after my wife's homegoing, I faced what, as best I can remember,
was a period of some of the most intense temptation I have ever
known in my fifty-two, three years as a believer. And I found
myself so assailed in my own soul and mind that my only salvation
was morning after morning after morning after morning for a number
of weeks to sit down in my prayer and reading chair with my Bible
open and read and pray in Romans 6, 1 to 14. That's what I had
to do. Whatever else I did in my devotional
exercises, that became the very foundation of my spiritual sanity. And saying, Lord Jesus, You've
said that I was united with You in Your death, in Your burial,
in Your resurrection. Sin's dominion has been broken,
Lord Jesus. Be pleased. to break the power
of this temptation, do in the very depths of my soul, the chemistry
of my inner being, what I am powerless to do. And I stand
to testify today, feeding on Christ's flesh and Christ's blood. God was gracious. The season
eventually passed. that we've got to, and our people
have to. Colossians chapter 3, the whole
emphasis of understanding and laying hold of the reality of
what we are in union with a crucified and risen Savior is our salvation,
the salvation of our people. And do we really believe that?
And with respect to the unconverted among us, do we really believe
that planting the cross before them, lifting up our Savior in
His dying agony and in the significance of the darkened heavens and the
cry of dereliction and the cry of triumph, that that is God's
mighty weapon to reach out and lay hold of them and make that
His instrument of power? to their salvation, to break
the chains of a mesmerizing world of a powerful devil. Do we really
believe that, or do we have a weakened faith in the efficacy and power
of the preaching of Christ and Him crucified? That could be,
and that to me is not an error of the head, but that is a problem
of the heart. And then thirdly and finally,
Sometimes it could be a withering vigor in our consciously abiding
in Christ. A withering vigor in our own
consciously abiding in Christ. And this may be why there are
some significant hindrances to our preaching of Christ. And here again I go back to John
15. I commend you, brethren, what again I have found to be
a very helpful practice, along with John 15 and 2 Timothy 4,
1 to 8. Those are the passages I most
frequently read before going forth to preach, and remind myself,
Lord Jesus, you are the true vine. I am but a branch incorporated
into you. And unless your life flows into
me and through me, I can do nothing. Oh yes, if He sustains my physical
life and my mental sanity, I may be able to stand up and have
a way with words and say something, but Lord, I can really do nothing,
nothing of any spiritual profit. Lord, help me to believe that.
Help me to go to my service in that awareness, existentially
and really, in the depths of my spiritual gut, so that I can
truly say, as I preach Christ, when Christ, who is our life,
shall appear, He is my life, as I seek to preach the life-giving
Word. Where is the vigor of our consciously
abiding in Christ? not only prior to and entrance
upon our preaching, but in the midst of our preaching, when
we sense that something of the disposition of our own hearts
is less than that full, free, present enjoyment where we're
holding out food to others, but for the life of us we can't taste
any sweetness in it ourselves. That's the worst, worst misery
in the world to me. is to hold out food to others,
and I can't taste it myself. With the mouth of the soul, some
of you think I'm a wild-eyed mystic. Think what you will,
my brother. Once you've known what it is
to preach a felt Christ, you can never be satisfied with anything
less. And sometimes God curses our
subtle forms of self-confidence We've done our work. We've hammered
out the sermon. We may have even analyzed the
places where Christ is prominent and where the rays of light are
not oblique. They are directly upon Him. And
we say, surely the Holy Spirit standing in the wings is going
to sharpen the focus, turn up the rheostat, increase the brightness. Surely there. But our confidence
is here and not in Him. And He curses our self-confidence. so that our attempts to preach
Christ are flat and colorless and flavorless. And brothers,
I know that not simply because I read it somewhere. It's a horrible
reality. Well, if these, and any combination
of them, touch your own heart, my loving exhortation is you
know where to go. Go to the fountain open for sin
and uncleanness as all of us went there yesterday morning
when our hearts and our shoddy prayer lives were laid bare so
lovingly and tenderly by God's servant. That's where we go,
brethren. That's where we live. We live
by feeding on His flesh and drinking of His blood. We never get beyond
that. That's where we live. May God grant that we'll go there,
not go deeper in here, not go anywhere else. Go to him and
leave this conference by the grace of God determined that
indeed we shall be better preachers of Christ. Those who by the grace
of God have their own relationship to him sustained, fueled and
fed by warm, intimate communion, kept clear by not tolerating
unconfessed sin, dark, murky areas of our hearts that we don't
allow the light of his word to enter. and with a mind that is
fully persuaded that it is our duty to preach Christ, that God
by the Holy Spirit will help us as we seek to learn more and
more the spiritual art of how to preach our blessed Savior. Let's pray together. Our Father, once again we thank
you for the privilege of being together in your presence. Thank
you for bringing us together in this conference and for the
wonderful way you have drawn near to us, giving to us who
deserve nothing so much from your open hand. We pray that
you will seal your word to our hearts. You will further bless
us in the hours of this day And we plead, our Father, that all
that you have purposed for us in Christ would be realized as
with open hearts, looking to you, we experience your grace. Hear our prayers and accept our
thanks, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.