The Economy of Force—Exposition of Exodus 18:1–27
2. Expository Preaching—What it is
There are many kinds of preaching, and he is the wise and successful man who knows how to vary them. As the husbandman rotates his crops, and adopts many methods to extract the utmost response from the soil, so in the spiritual realm “the vetches are beaten out with a staff and the cummin with a rod.” (Isa. 28:27.)
Our Lord’s first sermon was an example of the topical method. He read out His text, interpreted it, drew out the doctrine of it, illustrated it by Scripture examples, and was proceeding to apply it, when He was interrupted by the mad fury of His audience. Biographical preaching has found a chief exponent in our day in the masterly analysis of character given by Dr. Whyte, of Edinburgh, laying hold of the salient features and characteristics, and enforcing them for imitation or warning. Doctrinal preaching used to be more in vogue than it is, and found noble examples especially in the Scotch pulpits. It is a great treat to hear a sermon that gathers together various portions of Scripture and builds on their collation and comparison some sublime aspect of Divine truth, much as a scientist would from a number of isolated instances deduce the great natural law which coordinates them. It is well, sometimes, to have recourse to the hortatory method, in which the preacher exhorts his congregation to some neglected duty, to repent, to administer their property with more punctilious care for the claims of God, or to undertake some fresh field of activity. But among all these Expository Preaching should have a very conspicuous place. It should be the standing dish; nay, it is the table on which all the dishes are placed. From the point of view of this paper there is no reason why each of the foregoing should not find a place in the scheme of expository discourse.
Probably the ideal is that followed by the late Dr. W. M. Taylor, of New York, who said: “My own practice has been, for many years, to give up one of the services of each Lord’s Day to the systematic exposition of some book of Scripture, leaving the other free for the presentation of such subjects as may be suggested by the occurrences of the times or the circumstances of my people. This division I have felt to be not only very convenient, but also extremely serviceable.”
It is necessary to indicate the mistakes that have been made in regard to the nature of the kind of preaching for which we plead—mistakes which have brought it into disrepute in many quarters. We do not mean, for instance, that the preacher should take a longer or shorter chapter and preface his remarks by saying, “Dear brethren, I propose to make a few remarks on this portion of Scripture,” and so proceed to utter a few pious platitudes about the successive verses. This is milk and water with a vengeance, especially water, and that not hot. If the man of the world were to drop into such a parody of preaching, he might fairly go off after the first five minutes, thinking that religion might do well enough for women and children, but had nothing for him. A preacher of that sort, giving a lecture on the Minor Prophets, came finally to the Book of Amos. “We have now come to Amos,” he said; “what shall we do with him?” A man sitting in the rear of the house said, loud enough to be heard by his neighbours, “He can have my seat, for I’m going home.” This is one great advantage in open-air preaching; the audience departs unless there is enough honey to attract and keep the bees.
Still less, by expository preaching, do we mean that the preacher should give an exhaustive and exhausting digest of all the commentaries to which he has access. Congregations want results, and not the process by which they are acquired. It is necessary, of course, that the expository preacher should regard his paragraph or chapter under all the varying lights flashed on it from different minds, but there is no need to marshal all these venerable and learned men in the pulpit and give them the opportunity of demolishing one another. When people want food they are impatient with learned discussions as to the most wholesome dietary.
It is also a mistaken view of expository preaching which leads the minister to dwell minutely and particularly on every point in the Scripture with which he is dealing. Pre-Raphaelite painting has its merits, but in these hurrying days it is necessary to concentrate the mind on some one striking figure or conception. Men will not stop to count the number of petals in a daisy.
It is also possible, when expository preaching is rightly practised, to combine the didactic with the passionate, teaching with intensity, and explanation with appeal. John Knox was a prince among expositors. Indeed, it is to him that Scotland owes the custom still observed by the majority of its ministers, of devoting at least one of their discourses on each Lord’s Day to the regular and consecutive exposition of some book of Scripture. In the First Book of Discipline, which was drawn up mainly by him, we have the following direction: “We think it most expedient that the Scriptures be read in order—that is, that some one book of the Old and the New Testaments be begun, and orderly read to the end. And the same we judge of preaching, where the minister for the most part remaineth in one place; for this skipping and divagation from place to place, be it in reading or be it in preaching, we judge not so profitable to edify the church.” But that exposition in his hands was no languid, lifeless or scholastic explanation of the passage under consideration is clear from this graphic description of him in his last days by James Melville: “I heard him teach the prophecies of Daniel that summer and the winter following. In the opening of his text he was moderate for the space of half an hour; but when he entered on the application he made me so to shiver (Scottice, ‘qrue’) and tremble that I could not hold my pen to write. He was very weak, but before he had done with his sermon he was so active and vigorous that it seemed as if he would knock the pulpit in pieces (Scottice, ‘ding the pulpit in blads’) and fly out of it.” Wherever he laboured, his method was the same. The English Ambassador at the Court of Scotland described what he had himself seen, when he wrote to Cecil: “I assure you the voice of one man is able in an hour to put more life in us than six hundred trumpets blustering in our ears.”
We are now able, in the light of these distinctions, to define Expository Preaching as the consecutive treatment of some book or extended portion of Scripture on which the preacher has concentrated head and heart, brain and brawn, over which he has thought and wept and prayed, until it has yielded up its inner secret, and the spirit of it has passed into his spirit. That passion which we were just remarking in John Knox revealed itself in Rutherford and Chalmers, in Cairns and Caird. It is not an artifice nor a trick; it is probably the possession of a man’s nature by the Spirit which hides in true and sacred words, as sparks lie hid in flint. It is thus that the spirit of nature is concealed from all save her wooers, who wait patiently until she coyly drops her veil and shows her face. The highest point of sermon-utterance is when a preacher is “possessed,” and certainly, in the judgment of the writer, such possession comes oftenest and easiest to a man who has lived, slept, walked and eaten in fellowship with a passage for the best part of a week.
But let us consider more particularly the method adopted by the Expository Preacher. We will suppose that he had been led to choose either the Book of Exodus or the Epistle to the Hebrews. He will perhaps have made his selection for the coming autumn and winter before he starts on his summer vacation. With all his other preparations for golf, or fishing, or camping out, he takes a handy pocket copy of the chosen Scripture. On the moor or in the hammock, within sound of the break of the waves or of the crunching of glaciers, he reads again and again, until the central lesson, the motif, begins to reveal itself. The next step is to roughly divide the matter under some general divisions, which will be broken up ultimately into smaller and yet smaller ones, the one condition being that each paragraph or chapter shall contain one complete thought.
For instance, I am now at work with the Book of Exodus. Sometimes a few verses give me concisely and completely all that is needed for an effective sermon; as for example, 2:23–25 or 6:2–9. But at another time the whole chapter must be compressed into one discourse, as chapter 18, which could not be subdivided without serious detriment to the symmetry and force of the lesson it contains. The Epistle to the Hebrews is one of the easiest books in the Bible for division and subdivision. The least intelligent after reading it once or twice can see the natural compartments of this wonderful treatise; but the pieces of separate mosaic combine in a picture to which each is necessary, and none is complete without the rest. This earliest process of parcelling out the rich tract of land before us is one of the most fascinating experiments of the preacher’s life; and he contrives, as far as possible, that in every portion there should be a tiny bit of mountain moorland with its heather, some granite rocks, some foothills, corn for the gleaners, and flowers for the children.
When one has made one’s own divisions it is time to turn to see what others have done in the same directions. Often what seemed to be the best and most original of your findings will have been anticipated. Not unfrequently you will alight on the divisions of a Maclaren or a Storrs so perfect that you cannot but substitute it for your own. Generally the collision of another man’s brain with yours will strike out some fresh conception, which carries the likeness of the father and mother of its parentage.
When this is settled a great deal is settled. The land has been divided among the tribes, and the tribes into families, and the families into individual plots. It only remains to discover the pivot sentence in the next group of verses which you are proposing to treat. That phrase “pivot sentence” is absolutely important. There is in each paragraph one sentence on which it resolves, or a point on which it impinges, like the rocking stones left by the glacier period in balance, as though angels had been playing at a pastime of herculean feats.
It is a mistake for the preacher to read out a whole long paragraph as the text of his sermon. Should he do so, the ordinary mind wearily anticipates a long discourse, and all the boys and girls, who are expected to repeat or write out the text as a Sunday task, wince. The text should be appetising, like the liquors which, I am told, are taken by bon-vivants before their meals. It should be terse and crisp, bright and short, easily remembered and quotable. In every chapter and paragraph there is one such. In that mentioned from the Book of Exodus, the chord or keynote is struck in “Be thou for the people God-ward.” If the preacher announces this as his text, attention is awakened and interest excited. People wonder what he will make of it; and the stranger within the gates will not suppose that the sermon is one of a series.
It is a profound mistake for the Expository Preacher to spend any time in recapitulation. He ought never to utter the phrase, “As I was saying last Sunday.” There is no need for it, and it only conveys an immediate sense of the incompleteness of the present address. Each sermon should be complete in itself and should not require to be propped up against another to make it stand. Equally unsuitable is it to talk of what you may have to say next Sunday, unless under special circumstances, such as the immensity of the theme, of which you could only give one aspect. But these tricks for catching audiences are not the best. Give the people something worth coming for, and they will come. At the same time it is undeniable that young regular hearers will become interested as soon as they see that their pastor is pursuing a regular line of study and teaching, and will make every endeavour not to miss one link in the chain of thought.
When the pivot-text is chosen, it is desirable, so far as possible to weave into the structure of the sermon all the main points of the surrounding paragraph. There is no absolute law in the matter except one’s own sense of the fitness of things. Just as all the objects in the field of vision focus in the lens of the eye, and finally in the minute filament of the optic nerve, so the thoughts, images and suggestions of the context should pass through the chosen motto to the heart of the people.
The main burden of all our preaching, as we have seen, must be Jesus Christ, and the expositor questions often how much of Christ there is present and how he can make Him known. He remembers that the Lord told His critics that Moses wrote of Him (John 5:46) and that He interpreted to the two who walked to Emmaus in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself (Luke 24:27). Did not the angel that showed the beloved apostle the crowding glories of the unseen assure him that the testimony of Jesus was the spirit of prophecy? (Rev. 19:10.)
Expository preachers have the two experiences set forth in our Lord’s parables. Sometimes when they start on the preparation of their sermon, seeking the goodly pearls of truth, they suddenly come on one of great price, which so excels the others that they lose sight of all the rest and sell all for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus their Lord. The paragraph becomes a veritable transfiguration mountain, on which they lose sight even of Moses and Elijah and see no man but Jesus only. At other times they resemble the ploughman represented in the alternate parable, who was ploughing over a hard and rather uninteresting field and suddenly heard his plough clink against metal. Immediately he dropped the plough tail and ran forward to see what he had struck. He had alighted on a strong metal chest containing the savings of a life, which the owner had buried for safety, but had died suddenly without giving the clue of its whereabouts to his children. Many a track of Scripture, when we first read it over, seems as though it were hardly worth considering, and then the hidden Christ is suddenly discovered; and to have found Him is to have come on a mine of treasure from which the whole congregation will be enriched on the following Lord’s Day.
It was said of Philip Henry that he did not shoot the arrow of the Word over the heads of his audience in affected rhetoric, nor under their feet by homely expressions, but to their hearts in close and lively application. Such should be our aim in dealing with any part of God’s Word; we must apply it to each individual in the audience. Each bearer must be as one who stands on the seashore on a moonlight night. The waves of Scriptural teaching must break at his feet, and the path of light over the waters must come to where he stands. We must preach to the people as well as before them. It has been well said that a good sermon should resemble a good portrait, in looking directly at each in the room and saying, I have a message for thee. It is not enough to expatiate lucidly or eloquently on a passage of Scripture; we must show each person that it has a message for him, that it belongs to him, that he must heed it and obey.
The Economy of Force—Exposition of Exodus 18:1–27
There is a noteworthy parallel between the circumstances narrated in this chapter and those of which we are informed in Acts 6. Here the Hebrew people, emerging from centuries of slavery and oppression, which had almost obliterated the spirit of nationality, suddenly assumes a highly organized condition. Out of Jethro’s suggestion sprang an organization which laid the foundations of the national policy, and has existed with more or less permanence amid all the other changes that have swept over that remarkable race. In Acts 6 a similar movement was necessitated by the immense increase of converts. “In those days, when the number of the disciples was multiplying, there arose a murmuring of the Hellenists against the Hebrews, and The Twelve called the multitude of the disciples unto them, and said: “It is not fit that we should forsake the Word of God and serve tables. Look ye out, therefore, brethren, from among you seven men of good report, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business.” (Acts 6:1–6.)
In each case the increased organization was a sign of vitality and led to the immediate strengthening and increase of the entire movement. It is a great forward step in evolution when the bony case which had been exterior, as in the crab, becomes interior, as in the mammal. Life always tends toward increased complexity in organization.
There is little to detain us in the circumstances which led up to this great step of advance. Whether Jethro was the father-in-law or brother-in-law of Moses is still undecided by the experts, and does not greatly concern us. The Hebrew word may mean either. He had given shelter to Zipporah and her two sons until he heard of the Exodus, and then he crossed the peninsula from the extreme east to the Mount of God, somewhere in the near neighbourhood of Horeb. First, he desired to renew the friendly relations, which had subsisted during the forty years of companionship in pastoral and tribal interests; and secondly, he desired to restore the wife and boys whom he had received as a sacred trust.
The meeting was thoroughly Oriental. On the announcement of his approach, Moses went out to meet him, knelt down, and touched the ground with his forehead; then kissing his relative’s hand, he rose and kissed him on both cheeks. Each asked the other of his welfare with the minuteness and prolixity still characteristic of the sons of the desert, with whom time is a less precious commodity than with ourselves. The greetings of husband and wife, of father and children would probably be reserved for the privacy of the tent.
As Moses told of the marvellous dealings of God with Israel, not only in delivering them from Pharaoh, but during all the travail of their journey, Jethro rejoiced for all the goodness which Jehovah had shown and burst out into an ascription of adoration and praise. Perhaps, up to that hour, like the generality of the heathen, he had believed in a plurality of gods and regarded the God of Israel as only one among many equals. But under the marvellous recital given by Moses, he renounced that creed and declared his belief that Jehovah was supreme over all gods. How much might be done if only religious men to-day would recount their experiences! Many a wavering scale would be turned in favour of true religion, if only you would begin to tell of God’s dealings with your own life. “Go home to thy friends,” said our Lord to the man from whom he had cast a legion of demons, “and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee.”
It is remarkable that Jethro appears to have acted as priest in the sacrifice which followed. We have already been told that the sheikh was also the priest of Midian (Ex. 3:1). Like Melchizedek he was the priest of the Most High God. The fact of Moses and Aaron and the elders of Israel participating in the sacred feast which followed, shows that they recognized orders of religious life and priestly administration outside the limits of their own race, and this confirms us in the view, which surely needs no arguing, and which Malachi so clearly teaches, “that from the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same, God’s name is great among the Gentiles, and in every place incense is offered in his name, and a pure offering.” (Mal. 1:11.)
The spectacle he witnessed on the following day was remarkable. From morning till evening he beheld Moses sitting in the midst of a great throng of people, slowly ploughing his way through an immense number of causes, which were submitted to his adjudication. Even if we pare down the numbers of the Exodus to half or a quarter of a million of people, it is easy to see that an overwhelming task lay on the lawgiver, who was called upon in his single person to combine the legislative and judicial functions. The difficulty lay not only in the quantity but the quality of the people. The Hebrew character has always been stiff-necked and intractable. But, in addition, they had just emerged from generations of slavery, with all its debasing and demoralizing effects. There was as yet no Decalogue nor code of laws. The very effect of their recent emancipation was to induce the idea that they were free to do as they chose. The first experiences of the French Revolution were bewildering and disappointing to all thoughtful souls. How Wordsworth laments it! It seemed as if all hope of Liberty, Equality and Brotherhood was to be drowned in a deluge of sensuality and bloodshed. So with Israel, they were no longer under the despotic rule of Pharaoh and his myrmidons. Their knowledge of Jehovah was extremely vague. There was no general standard of appeal. The very rebound from centuries of oppression was in the direction of self-assertion and lawlessness. In addition, the recent rout of Amalek may have left in the possession of the victors an immense amount of costly property, as in the experience of Gideon afterwards. (Judges 8:25, etc.) Disputes about the proper division of these may have greatly added to the weight of that day’s business.
In any case, at the end of the day Moses was absolutely worn out, and even then the people were not satisfied. There was therefore justice in Jethro’s remark: “Wasting thou wilt waste away, both thou and this people that is with thee.” Jethro therefore suggested a division of labour, founded on the system still in vogue among the Arabs. Causes were in the first instance to be judged by rulers of tens, which recalls our own things, from which there was an appeal to the rulers of fifties, from them to the rulers of hundreds, and finally to the rulers of thousands. Difficult causes, which the rulers of thousands felt themselves incompetent to decide, were reserved for the judgment of Moses. After referring this to God (v. 23), as was his wont, Moses adopted this good advice, and by this arrangement the whole nation profited immensely.
The advantages were obvious. Moses was henceforth able to concentrate himself on the higher branches of his great calling. He was for the people God-ward, as mediator, looking into the bosom of God, where, as Hooker says, “law hath her seat.” He had also time to bring the difficult causes to God. Then, turning to the people, he taught them the statutes of the laws, and showed them the way wherein they should walk, and the work they should do.
Next, it immediately developed a large number of men, whose very existence had, up to that moment, been hardly realized. In every community there is an untold wealth of latent talent. To every man grace is given according to the measure of the gift of Christ. The King gives each of His servants the charge of talents, and none is absolutely destitute. It must have been rather surprising, however, to Moses to discover that there was a complete equipment for all the offices that had to be filled. “He chose able men out of all Israel.” These men might have developed into critics and schemers, but from the moment that they were entrusted with responsibility they became staunch and useful allies. Not only were their talents saved from wastage and developed in useful directions, but the men themselves were redeemed and purified, and their characters saved from that prostitution of the best which always becomes the worst.
The congregation also profited greatly by the swiftness with which disputes and quarrels were dealt with. Nothing is more hurtful to the individual or community than to leave a sore open. The longer a controversy remains unadjusted, the worse the tangle becomes; the more hot words are spoken, the more bystanders become involved. “Agree,” said our Lord, “with thine adversary quickly, while thou art in the way with him.”
We may apply this subject to Church Administration and Christian Service.
1. Church Administration. It is a mistake for any one person, be he minister or layman, to monopolize many offices. Some ministers insist on keeping every department of church-life and church-work under control. Some Sunday school superintendents have apparently never learned to educate their teachers to maintain the order of the school, or the children to feel that they may fill useful offices; and some church officials, in their desire to serve the church, prefer to undertake more duties than they can perform satisfactorily, instead of setting to work to educate and develop the younger men and women about them. Mr. Moody said, shrewdly: “It is better to set a hundred men to work than to do the work of a hundred men.” You do a service to a man when you evoke his latent faculty. It is no kindness to others or service to God to do more than your share in the sacred duties of church-life. For the hand to do the work of the foot, or the eye to intrude into the province of the ear, is to introduce anarchy and discord into body and soul. We are told that when Saul saw any mighty man or any valiant man he took him unto himself. (1 Sam. 14:52.) This is the law of church consolidation and expansion.
We must have, in every Christian community, our Moses, Aaron, and Hur—men who give themselves to prayer and the ministry of the Word, men who are to us God-ward, men who can enquire of God, who can teach statutes and laws, who can show the way in which we should walk and the work we should do. In every Christian community we must have the men of affairs, whose character is admirably summed up in Jethro’s words, Men of Ability! Jethro evidently expected that there would be one man in ten who would commend himself as exceptionally able, and though to-day’s standard of ability is higher than ever, the estimate is not too sanguine. They must be Men of Piety! “Such as fear God.” He who fears God will regard man; the unjust judge did neither. The apostles asked for seven men, “of good report, full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom.” Men of Truth! There can be no real piety without truthfulness, so that this qualification is, in fact, included in the last; and yet there is a semblance of piety, which is not over-scrupulous as to veracity. This, however, is a bastard growth. Men of Uncorruptible Honour! In the East it is rare to find the office of judge exercised without a strong susceptibility to bribes. Like the sons of Samuel, the judges turn aside after lucre, take bribes and pervert judgment. At whatever cost, let our nation preserve the great traditions which have always attached to our bench and legal profession. In all walks of life unbiased impartiality is of priceless worth to the community which is thus endowed.
We must also, in every church, have our warriors, who can encounter Amalak; our workers, whose deft fingers can build our tabernacle; our financiers, who will see that no part of the church finance suffers; our singers; our aged men and women, who can sustain the duties of perpetual intercession; our boys and girls, inspiring us with their boundless hope and inexhaustible activity; our sufferers, who teach us tenderness and patience. Some must open the doors, some light the lamps, some lead the service of song, some preach, and others teach. There is no one who is not his neighbour’s superior in some respect. There is no one from whom his neighbour may not learn something. It was necessary for Jethro to cross the desert to give Moses the conception of this organization, which, one would suppose, ought to have occurred to him during his own ponderings over his failure to discharge his enormous tasks. “The eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of thee; nor again, the head to the feet, I have no need of thee.” (1 Cor. 12:14–31.)
Some day we shall stand before our Lord, who at His own judgment seat, which must be distinguished from the Judgment of the Great White Throne, will allot our rewards. At such time He will pursue a far different method than that adopted amongst even the best of us. We applaud the man who reaps the results; but He will equally congratulate those who ploughed and sowed to produce them. We allot the crown and palm to the pastor or evangelist whose fervent appeals win the largest number of accessions to the church; but Christ will not forget the verger and the charwoman, the treasurer and the secretary, the organ blower, and those who bring refreshment to the harvest field. The players on instruments shall be there as well as the singers; and he that sowed shall rejoice with him who reaped. To each the rewards will be apportioned not according to the apparent results, but to the faithfulness with which each fulfilled his humble task. The smallest wheel in a big machine is able by its precision to promote or its inexactitude to impair the entire movement, just as a dispute among a few girls or in one class of operatives may throw out of employment hundreds of thousands and affect a whole district. It is necessary, therefore, in adjusting the rewards, that none be overlooked who have contributed, however slightly, to the general result.
2. The same principle applies in the spreading of the knowledge of Christ. There is too strong a tendency in most congregations to leave the work of saving the lost to a salaried class. The plan of sending substitutes may have its advantages for heathen lands, but it cannot become universal without serious loss to individual believers, as to the church and the world. Your personal witness for Christ is an imperative obligation. You cannot evade it by any excuse as to your temperament, your nervousness, or your circumstances. The King makes no exceptions. His command is decisive. If we belong to His church we are bound to proclaim His love and death to every creature within our reach. You must speak of Him to your brother, your neighbour, and your fellow-citizens, saying, “Know the Lord.” He that heareth must say, Come. In this respect the converts on the mission fields set us a notable example, as we gather from the reports handed in to the recent Edinburgh Missionary Conference.
Bishop Tucker, of Uganda, wrote: “The work of winning the souls of the people of this country to Christ is really being done by the natives themselves, under the supervision of the foreign missionaries. Dr. John Ross stated that of the twenty thousand church members in Manchuria less than one hundred had been led to Christ solely by the missionaries, and the remaining nineteen thousand nine hundred by the devoted labours of these newly converted souls. Dr. Moffet, of Korea, has stated that the Korean Christians for the last ten years have been bringing in the converts faster than the missionaries have been able to provide instruction for them.
It is quite common, says Dr. Mott, in Korea, in Manchuria, and other parts of China, for Christians to pledge themselves to give a certain number of days to the work of public preaching, as well as to speaking to individuals one by one, subscribing their time just as we in the homelands subscribe our money. At one meeting one church member promised to devote to work of this kind during the following year one hundred and eighty days, and in reporting at the annual meeting a year later he apologised because he had been able to give only one hundred and sixty-nine days.
In view of these facts, shall we not, each one, from to-day dedicate ourselves to Christ for this service? Is it impossible to promise our Lord that, if He will open the door of opportunity and give us a tongue and wisdom which cannot be gainsaid, we are willing to speak to some one daily on His claims? We shall not, then, have to assume any yoke of mere legalism, nor shall we force the matter on unwilling ears; but as the opportunity offers we shall look for the uprising impulse and the needed message. It is not what we do for Him, but what He does for us, that really tells.