Whatever the true definition of preaching, it is certainly important business. DO we not read in the first chapter of the shortest Gospel that immediately after His baptism and His victory over the temptation in the wilderness "Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God" (Mark 1: 14)? Our Saviour's first public appearance was as a preacher. He "came .. . preaching." If Jesus began His public work in this world as a preacher, then preaching must be supremely important.
The word for "preaching" in this passage means "to proclaim," or "to herald," "to cry aloud." And the very heart of Christ's message was: "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel" (Mark 1:15).
This preaching of Jesus was definite, scriptural, prophetic. It was not based upon some finespun theory or philosophical argument. It was based upon fact—the fact of His presence, the fact that the prophecy made long before was now being fulfilled, the fact that it was time for great things to take place. His preaching was an appeal for action. "Repent," He demanded —"repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand." His preaching, therefore, was definite and personal.
We can see from Jesus' example that true preaching is an impartation from man to men. As Phillips Brooks put it, "It is the communication of truth from man to men." Therefore, the two essential elements of preaching are truth and personality. God might have written His message in letters of fire in the sky, but that would not have been preaching. A man must come and speak the words of God to other men.
God's Truth and Human Personality
There may be speakers who interest people, who dazzle them with oratorical fireworks, who philosophize and propound intricate speculations; but this is not preaching, because it is not truth. True preaching must have a true man behind it. True preaching always involved both a personality and truth; and there is a third element—it must be scriptural truth. So Jesus preached. He was a true man, the Son of man; He preached truth, God's truth; and it was from Scripture. He began His preaching by quoting Old Testament scriptures.
If there is a lessening of interest in our preaching today, it would be well for us first of all to look at our personality. Who are we? Do we live and believe the truth we preach? Is it in our hearts? Are we the embodiment of the message we carry?
Second, we should ask ourselves what is our attitude toward the truth itself? Have we watered it down or covered it with verbiage, or made it hard to understand, or perhaps even adulterated it with our own ideas and human philosophies? Remember this—true preaching will never die. It will never be superseded as long as true men, guided by the Holy Spirit, preach a true message. Such preachers will always have someone to listen to them. When God's man comes with God's message in God's time, there will always be hearts ready to burn within them when he opens to them the Scriptures (see Luke 24:32).
Truth and personality cannot be separated. God's messages are always proclaimed by a person, are actually incarnate in a person. We as Adventists speak often of "the message." Do we believe the message? Have we heard the message? If so, we must go out and preach the message. In New Testament times it was always a message and a man. "This . . . is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you," says the apostle John (1 John 1:5).
The Preacher, Christ's Witness
Every true preacher is a witness, a witness to Christ. Jesus said: "Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me" (Acts 1:8). He did not say, "Ye shall be My lawyers," but "My witnesses." A witness tells what he knows, describes what he has seen. As a young man I was once called as a witness before a court. Before I knew it, I was telling the court what I thought. The judge instantly reminded me that I was called there to tell what I had seen, not what I thought.
Preaching is not primarily arguing or commenting or philosophizing about truth. Nor is it an artistic weaving of speech into a beautiful tapestry of sound. Preaching is bearing witness, telling something that we know to other people who either want to know or who ought to know, or both. That is why preaching is bound up with personality. There never can be preaching without a person, without a preacher. There can be no witness without the witnesses.
To be true preachers we must be the sons of God and must speak the family language. Remember, we are not primarily lecturers, but preachers. We must first of all be Christians, sons of God in the midst of a wicked generation. The preacher must be God's man. He may have recognition by the highest schools of earth, ordination at the hands of the church; but unless he has been born again with the witness of the Spirit in his heart, he can never be a true preacher or bring a message that will reach men's hearts with the power of God.
Our Preaching Commission
Christ's preaching commission to us is "unto the end of the world" (Matt. 28:19, 20). And it is to "every creature" (Mark 16:15). Jesus not only commissioned His disciples to preach but He outlined their work to the end of the world and gave them their message as well. "The disciples were to teach what Christ had taught. That which He had spoken, not only in person, but through all the prophets and teachers of the Old Testament, is here included. Human teaching is shut out. There is no place for tradition, for man's theories and conclusions, or for church legislation. No laws ordained by ecclesiastical authority are included in the commission. None of these are Christ's servants to teach. . . . The gospel is to be presented, not as a lifeless theory, but as a living force to change the life."—The Desire of Ages, p. 826.
Preaching is a solemn, high, holy, and important mission. A preacher's business is not merely to present truth, but, by the presentation of that truth, to change life.
If you as a preacher were to speak to two hundred people for half an hour once a week, you would utilize in each sermon a total of one hundred hours of their time. This is equivalent to twelve eight-hour days for one person. Is there enough valuable material in your sermon? Is it of sufficient importance to warrant your going to any one man or woman in the congregation and saying, "I would like to have two whole weeks of your time to bring to you certain truths and blessings that I have here in my heart"? Think of the quantity of human life expended on just one sermon, for life is time. As Benjamin Franklin said: "Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of." Just think of the amount of life—the number of heartbeats, the opportunities for grace, the moments of decision, the building blocks of destiny—you have taken from this man, from this woman, from all of them! It is a humbling and alarming, but inspiring, thought.
Yet in spite of all this, some men are guilty of filling up the time with a lot of pious twaddle, with unimportant pleasantries, with a mass of thin, tasteless, powerless, hopeless, human inventions! Certainly when a man has given me a part of his life I should use it to bring to him the great things of God's law, the mighty revelations of His Word, the eternal promises of the holy gospel.
It is not my place to usurp the authority of the able teachers in this institution who open to you the science and art of preaching. You have men here who can give you the very finest instruction in homiletics. Your library contains books, or you may purchase them for private use, that give the best of the wheat on the subject of preaching from the early ages until now.
Central Theme of Christian Preaching
It is my appeal to you today to look at some of the more significant influences and the larger meanings of true preaching. Sermons have often been systematically grouped as expository, topical, factual, practical, et cetera; but I agree with Phillips Brooks that such classification means little. The great necessity of Christian preaching is that Christ be preached. He said: "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me" (John 12:32). True Christian preaching draws men to Christ. It is the magnetism of the cross alone that can make preaching irresistible.
The very center of all our ministry must be "the great, grand monument of mercy and regeneration, salvation and redemption,—the Son of God uplifted on the cross."—Gospel Workers, p. 315. "Great preaching only breaks out of the deep, rich soil of a great theology. It must come from great convictions of truth. It is not from too much theology the church suffers, but from far too little."—JonN R. MoTr, Claims and Opportunities of the Christian Ministry, pp. 70, 71.
Real Seventh-day Adventist preaching, the preaching that made this movement, the preaching that built the church, the preaching that started us on our way, is the sort of preaching that will bring the message to victory in the end.
Some men have been known to deliver sermons composed largely of moving stories, or even funny anecdotes. Others delight in discussions of world events of which the people know as much as the minister, and of other matters of which no one knows anything for certain. There are sermons about flying saucers and horrendous descriptions of atomic fission. Texts are sometimes used as pretexts. We need to remember that sermonets sometimes make Christianets. It is impossible to make Sequoia gigan tea character with mere tab-bid reviews. reviews. There will be no greater conviction in the heart of the sinner unless there is great conviction of the truth in the heart of the preacher.
No true preacher can follow the example of the man-pleasing vicar who, when he saw the lord of the manor in his audience, softened up his final appeal in words like these: "Except ye repent as it were, and be converted after a fashion, ye shall all be damned to a certain extent."
When we preach we need to preach for action, for a decision at that moment and in that place. We need preaching like that of the apostles on the day of Pentecost, when the hearers were so stirred in their hearts that they said, "Men and brethren, what shall we do?" (Acts 2:37).
So living and so speaking that the church is built up and sinners are converted to God—that is preaching!
