Mark 3:14

THE MINISTRY OF PREACHING

“He ordained twelve, that they should be with Him, and that He might send them forth to preach.’

Mark 3:14

Such is the Evangelist’s brief account of the origin and purpose of the Apostolate.

I. The decay of preaching.—Does the preaching of the message of Christ, does the preaching of Christ, hold anything like its proper place at present among us of the Church of England? If I see things at all as they are, it is far otherwise. A certain slight of the sermon is in fashion, and the preacher himself is not in love with his work—he allows himself to deal scantly and perfunctorily with his sermon. Perhaps it is not only brief (a merit, in the modern fashion) but thin. Perhaps it is but a glib essay, clever or otherwise, and sometimes all the colder and weaker to the soul for being that poor thing, clever. It is a discussion, a suggestion, an appreciation, a sketch, or what not; anything rather than a message; totally other than that delivery of Divine truth through human personality which Phillips Brooks finely tells us is the idea of the sermon.

II. The scriptural valuation of it.—Turn from such unworthy estimates of this great and sacred thing to the scriptural valuation of it, and to the reverent honour set upon it by the Church of England. Think of the sermon not as it can be travestied, but as the utterance by a man commissioned by the Lord and the Church, and who comes forth to his duty from converse with the Lord, of that ‘Word of God which liveth and abideth for ever,’ that ‘engrafted Word which is able to save the soul,’ yea, by which man can be ‘begotten again to a lively hope.’ In the name of the Bible, in the name of the Ordinal, in the name of prophets and apostles, and of an innumerable company of witnesses, are we not right in making all the appeal we can to the Church, and all the prayer we can to God, for a great revival of the pulpit?

III. The preacher and his sermon.—The man goes forth to preach, because his Master sends him. To go at his own bidding would be intolerable. What is not the rest and power of that thought, He hath sent us forth? And then, coming from that presence, from that Divine and human companionship, from the feet of that King, from the Cross of that Redeemer, what shall we go forth to preach? Not our ideas, but His Word. Not our guesses at a thousand things, but His revelation of the ‘one thing needful’; and the one thing needful is our Lord Jesus Christ Himself.

IV. A remedy for our divisions.—In the revival of the preaching of Christ—Christ in His glorious Person, His finished work, His never-finished working, Him first, midst, last, and without end—there may lie, by the mercy of God, one great means, perhaps the greatest means, of deliverance at last from the distresses of our divisions.

—Bishop H. C. G. Moule.

Illustrations

(1) ‘ “A few nights ago,” once said Bishop Moule, “it was my privilege to address one of those great congregations of our Durham mining people whose listening, when they listen, is indeed an inspiration to the preacher, an appeal to him to give out his whole self for their service, mind and soul. My theme was Jesus Christ, and I could not but tell them that I could take no other. ‘I used long ago,’ I said, ‘to preach of many things; but as life runs around and age draws near, I can preach of only one thing, it is Jesus Christ.’ ” ’

(2) ‘Well and nobly does Dr. Arthur Mason write (Faith of the Gospel, ix. § 2): “First among the appointed means of grace comes the preaching of the Word of God. There is a truly sacramental grace and power in preaching.” “The words are not mere words, but vehicles of something beyond words.” “If preaching is not reckoned among the Sacraments, but parallel with them, it is because it is more, not less, than a Sacrament. The gift conveyed through it indeed may not be greater, but it more immediately influences the springs of thought and will.” ’