THE PURPOSE OF PREACHING
It has been a rare thing to hear the voice of God Himself. Even in the days of open vision, only once and again did men like Adam and Abraham and Moses and Elijah hear Him speak, and then there was usually no multitude there to listen. On the few occasions when there was, the people were either terrified, and turned for comfort to a golden calf which could not speak, 1 or perplexed.2 Otherwise, throughout history, God has dealt directly with very few, and the rest of men who came to know His will did so by their ministry. For the people at large, God spoke of old time through the prophets, and afterwards in His Son.3

From the beginning, then, the privileged few who have heard God or seen His visions, have borne the responsibility of making Him known to their fellows. They have discharged their office, often willingly and at great personal risk, sometimes with reluctance and under constraint.4 The prophets spoke their " Thus saith the Lord," and those who heard saw the signs of authentic messengers from God, and hearkened or turned away. The prophets were then God's watchmen, to counsel and encourage, to warn and reprove.5

When writing and the power to read were rare, men could learn the Word only from preaching. But even now, when books are legion and, Bibles are everywhere, and all our countrymen can read, the duty of the preacher is not less than it was. In New Testament times, when the events of the Resurrection were fresh and vivid, the Apostles provided by their concordant testimony, their signs and their unwavering stedfastness, a witness to the Way, which could not be gainsaid.6 Though the Apostles are gone their words remain with us on paper, and the documents are broadcast. Yet it is not the same; and it is not enough.

" They have the Bible; let them read for themselves." This we have heard said, but it will not do. There are precious, diligent men and women who can take the uninviting black-bound volume and learn for themselves, humanly unaided, its message of salvation, and we know that we have reason to be grateful for the labours of such a one. But most men - most of ourselves -are not so, and the reading habits of our times conspire with our nature to turn us still further away.

It is far easier for a slighting word against the Bible to gain currency, for an attractive damnable heresy to travel the world, than it is for the sober Gospel of God's Grace to speak from the pages of a silent Book.

Whether we ourselves preach or not, men are preached to. The newspapers preach to them a gospel-of headlines and sensation, of potted thinking and proprietary politics and penny pools, and the people love to have it so. The cinemas preach a gospel - of thinly censored sensuality; and judiciously selected radio-programmes din into their ears the " loudness about our modern lives which shows that we are trying to silence something."7 Big print, alluring pictures, loud noises: these preach powerfully the gospel of the world; and if we set against that only the cold print of an unmediated Bible, we set truth more heavily than we need at a disadvantage.

Even the few who forsake their newspapers and challenge their traditions do not find the way easy. There must be many who follow the Ethiopian to say, " Of whom speaketh the prophet this? " and need an evangelist to preach to them Jesus. There must be more who have not thought to challenge. " How shall they believe on him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? "8

True, there is a problem here. We know, on excellent authority, that no one can come to Jesus unless the Father draw him, 9 and we could claim that the Father can draw without help from us. Indeed, we have heard that claim advanced as a thin disguise for our sloth. Yet, though the fact is true, this is not where it leads. It calls us, not to negligence, but to a proper humility in our activities, a salutary recognition that it is God that giveth the increase.10 Whatever our ability and zeal, with whatever resource we apply them, the greatness of the power is of God, and as it is written, " He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord."11

The problem does not concern us as preachers. For we know that God has committed to men such responsibility that Ezekiel and Jeremiah can warn and save, or refrain and be guilty of blood. And we know that this is true for us. In all our walks we can display Jesus or hide him; confess him or deny him. We can let our light shine as a light on a light-stand, that men may glorify our Father, 12 or we can behave so that the way of truth is evil spoken of.13 In our own midst we can turn a sinner from the error of his way, 14 or we can destroy him with our meat for whom Christ died.15 To hold forth the Word of Life is not therefore the voluntary pastime of a few of us: in some form it is the responsibility of us all.

This is plain enough. Jesus's clear commandments to " Go and preach," to " Go and make disciples,"16 and his intention that " repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name through all nations,"17 are matched by his unmistakable words concerning those who do or do not " confess him before men."18 In well-known words Paul exhorts Timothy, " Preach the Word ; be instant in season, out of season," and commends the Thessalonians because, having received the Word, they proceed to sound it far and wide.19 He speaks of himself as having the alternatives of preaching willingly for joy, or reluctantly as a duty,20 and commends those who watch his courage in bonds, and imitate it by their own bolder preaching.21

Certainly the first commandments to preach were given to the Apostles themselves (as was inevitable), but these examples show how much wider was their scope. In addition to the Apostles or those directly appointed by them, we find in the Acts alone that the gospel is preached by Prisca and Aquila, by Apollos, by men of Cyprus and Cyrene, and by " many others also."22 Preachers should be as many as learners: " The Spirit and the Bride say, Come; and let him that heareth say, Come."23 This admits of no exception.

Our duty is not a matter for conjecture or preference. And therefore, though much of the matter of this book is addressed to certain classes of preachers, its call has no bounds at all.

The commandments are a sufficient reason for our preaching, and many of us will begin our work in the world's harvest-field from a simple sense of duty. " Jesus says I must preach, and so I will." Paul's lesser motive, " A dispensation of the gospel is committed unto me "24 is a right motive as far as it goes. There is work to be done, and whether we enjoy the prospect or not, the fact that it is our Master's Will is an adequate reason for doing it, and doing it with our might. " Here am I. Send me! "

But there are fuller reasons yet. The whole purpose of redemption which God has declared leads us to it. God did not give to us the way of life from a sense of duty or of necessity, but from love. We know it well: He " commendeth his love toward us while we were yet sinners "; 25 He " so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son; "26 He " hath no pleasure in the death of a sinner,"27 and " willeth to have all men come to a knowledge of the truth."28

There is compassion with God, and though we may little understand it, we can surely know it. We see its expression in the life and death of Jesus and his fellowship with men. We see something of its price, and .the price was not low; God had a large interest in the death of Jesus. The passages which speak of this, particularly the best known of them all, 26 may seem outworn to the jaded imagination which has heard them in controversy too often, and listened to their message too rarely; but the appreciation of their message is the road to a deeper understanding of our role as preachers.

Jesus hath declared the Father. Qualities which we should find it difficult to envisage in an invisible God, we know to be in Him because the Son has revealed them.29 In the presence of five thousand hungry men, " He had compassion on them, for they were as sheep not having a shepherd," and the compassion went deeper than their search for bread, for we can hear the sorrow when they spurn his better fare: " Will ye also go away? "30 When friends whom he loved mourned the loss of a brother, "Jesus wept"31; and before Jerusalem his long bootless travail for his people's good breaks out into a passionate sorrow.32 His Apostles, and the prophets who spoke of him, echo his care. Paul, who endured something of Jesus's wrong at his people's hands, nevertheless shared with a meek and harassed Moses the supreme willingness to forfeit his own acceptance for his kinsmen's sakes.33

Jesus, Paul, Moses: they were all preachers commissioned -with a ministry of the Word. They dealt with the same raw, sinful, intractable human material that we meet (and are). They were spurned more harshly than we are likely to be; yet they bore with the hardness of their fellows, rejoiced with the angels of heaven at their repentance, and sorrowed "bitterly over their rejection.

" All things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself "by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation: to wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself . . . Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God."34

" We are ambassadors ": and this high office is primarily the apostles' only; but the code of behaviour for lesser ministers of their King is the same. But let us clear away a false modern thought. It is not helpful to think of the present-day ambassador's suavity and tactful insincerity. We do not represent a government whose policy changes and whose intentions must be concealed, but a King who changeth not, with a message for all to hear. Yet it is helpful to think of two of his qualities: that he should clearly understand his Monarch's counsels and be at one with them; and that his behaviour in a foreign land should be such as can reflect only credit upon the One he represents.

The first of these concerns our approach to God. We must be conscious of an immeasurable privilege. Our baptism must be known to us as a passage over a gulf which only God could bridge: before, we were enemies; 35 and at a stroke we are become, not friends only but emissaries. With gratitude, humility and reverence we must therefore seek to speak for our new-found Friend and King. With joy we must go forth in his Name: " This is a day of good tidings. We do not well that we hold our peace."36 In such a spirit we must seek ourselves to enter ever more intimately into his counsels, and pray that we may ever more acceptably present his Person to those with whom we dwell.

The second concerns our approach to men. We are God's instruments, and nothing in us must erect a barrier between Him and those He would save. Before Him we must surrender all our gifts, to be purified and received as His gifts, consecrated to His service. We must seek to be as Paul was, so that men may see our lives and service, and take them as their first sample of our Lord and be moved to seek him further.37 Those who hear our public words and continue will certainly, sooner or later, come to know what manner of men we are, and by that may be drawn further to our faith or be driven from it.

For we live among men as well as before them, and that is part of our duty. It is intolerable that the lecturers among us should be satisfied by merely lecturing to those we seek to save. Unless we have living contact with them we shall not enter into their minds nor they into ours; we shall not understand their doubts and difficulties and prejudices unless we speak to them face to face. If we should make it our practice to speak our formal message and then depart (pausing perhaps to chat with those we know), we lose valuable opportunities of improving the quality of our ministry, we set a bad example to our brethren and sisters in the audience who may be disposed to do the same, and we leave the Truth an unfriendly thing. We know how hard this can sometimes be: to deliver from the heart a living message is, to many of us, a physically exhausting experience, and it is with full sympathy that, notwithstanding, we place on record a better way.

We are, it is true, called to be separate, purified to God a peculiar people, zealous of good works.38 But the separation is not one of superiority nor of isolation. The " Friend of publicans and sinners "39 who received them and ate with them, was nevertheless " separate from sinners, holy, harmless, undefiled."40 When we turned from idols to serve the living and the true God, it was not thenceforth to shun and despise those who seek to idols still, but to yearn and to labour that they might be brought to come with us. We were brought from idolatry, and through no goodness of our own our stain of sin-worship was washed away, and we cannot now turn to those who remain and say, " Depart from me, for I am holier than thou." When David came to know his sin and seek forgiveness, it was with a clear understanding of what he should do when forgiven. " I have sinned," he says. " Forgive and cleanse me, and I will go and preach thy forgiveness to other sinners."41