Appendix 1: The Glory of Preaching: A Historical Sketch
The importance of preaching has been recognized throughout church history, as a quick historical survey will show.
Jesus and His Apostles
The writers of the Gospels repeatedly present Jesus as a preacher. He set out “to teach and preach in the towns of Galilee” (Matt. 11:1) and Judea (Luke 4:44). In the synagogue at Nazareth, he announced that this was the task for which he had been sent, in fulfilment of the prophecy in Isaiah 61 (Luke 4:16-20, 43; see also Mark 1:38). He accepted the title of “Rabbi” or “Teacher” (John 4:31; 9:2). When questioned by the High Priest, he said that he had “spoken openly to the world” and had “said nothing in secret” (John 18:20). He told Pilate that he had come “to testify to the truth” (John 18:37).
Jesus also sent his disciples out to preach, initially to “the lost sheep of Israel” (Matt. 10:6), and later to “all nations” (Matt. 28:19; Luke 24:47). The disciples obeyed him: “Then the disciples went out and preached everywhere” (Mark 16:20). The apostles did not allow themselves to be distracted by other tasks but gave their attention to “prayer and the ministry of the word” (Acts 6:4). This was the task to which Jesus had called them.
In Acts we are told that Peter and the others in Jerusalem “spoke the word of God boldly” (Acts 4:31). We see Paul undertaking three missionary journeys because he felt compelled to preach (1 Cor. 9:16). Even under house arrest, he “proclaimed the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ — with all boldness and without hindrance” (Acts 28:31). He knew that preaching was God’s appointed way for sinners to hear about the Saviour, and that without preaching the message would not be heard (Rom. 10:14). At the end of his life Paul passed his commission on to young Timothy, instructing him to “preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage — with great patience and careful instruction” (2 Tim. 4:1, 2).
The Church Fathers
We find the same emphasis on preaching among the early church fathers. The Didache, a church manual dating from early in the second century, mentions various teaching ministries. It states that travelling teachers are to be welcomed, provided they are genuine. (False teachers could be identified by the fact that their teaching would contradict the apostolic faith and by their conduct — they would stay for more than two days, ask for money and fail to practice what they preached). Genuine teachers should be listened to with humility, listeners “always trembling at the words which you have heard”. Believers should “remember night and day him who speaks the word of God to you, and honour him as you do the Lord”.
In about the middle of the second century, Justin Martyr published a document known as his First Apology in which he argued that Christianity is true because Christ is the embodiment of truth and the Saviour of all. Towards the end of this document, he described the worship of the Christians of his day, which emphasized the reading and preaching of the Scriptures:
And on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things.
The Latin father Tertullian also published an Apology at the end of the second century. In it he emphasized the love and unity between Christians and described their meetings:
We assemble to read our sacred writings . . . With the sacred words we nourish our faith, we animate our hope, we make our confidence more steadfast, and no less by inculcations of God’s precepts we confirm good habits. In the same place also exhortations are made, rebukes and sacred censures are administered.
One of the most famous of the early Christian preachers is John Chrysostom, who became Bishop of Constantinople in a.d. 398. He was given the nickname Chrysostomos or “golden-mouthed” and is still “regarded as the greatest pulpit orator of the Greek church” and “a model for preachers in large cities”. In a sermon based on Ephesians 6:13, Chrysostom pointed out that, like our human body, the body of Christ is subject to many diseases. While there are many things we can do to restore our own physical health, what can be done to heal Christ’s body when it is diseased?
One only means and one way of cure has been given us . . . and that is teaching of the word. This is the best instrument, this the best diet and climate; this serves instead of medicine, this serves instead of cautery and cutting; whether it be needful to burn or to amputate, this one method must be used; and without it nothing else will avail.
Chrysostom’s preaching was memorable for a number of reasons. First, he was biblical. Not only did he preach systematically through several books, but his sermons were full of biblical quotations and allusions. Secondly, his interpretation of Scripture was simple and straightforward. Thirdly, his moral applications were down-to-earth. Reading them, we get a vivid picture of the life of the city in which he lived — the pomp of the imperial court, the luxuries of the aristocracy, the wild races at the hippodrome. Fourthly, he was fearless in his condemnation of wrongdoing. Because of his faithful preaching he was driven into exile, where he died.
The Friars and the Reformers
Moving rapidly on to the start of the second millennium, we see the rise of Roman Catholic orders that celebrated preaching. The founder of the Franciscan order, Francis of Assisi (1182-1226), was as committed to preaching as he was to a life of service and poverty. He insisted that “unless you preach everywhere you go, there is no use to go anywhere to preach.” His contemporary Dominic (1170-1221) travelled widely in the cause of the gospel and organized his followers into an Order of Preachers that became known as the Dominican Friars. Prominent leaders of these orders even went so far as to assert that listening to preaching was even more important than attending mass.
Given this focus on preaching the word of God, it is not surprising to see the rise of the forerunner or “morning star” of the Reformation, Oxford’s John Wycliffe (1329-1384). He gradually came to see that the Holy Scripture must be the supreme authority in faith and life and spearheaded the first full translation of the Latin Bible into English. Himself a diligent biblical preacher, Wycliffe had no doubt about the chief task of the clergy:
The highest service that man may attain to on earth is to preach the word of God. . . . And for this cause, Jesus Christ left other works and occupied himself mostly in preaching, and thus did his apostles, and for this, God loved them. . . . The church . . . is honoured most by the preaching of God’s word, and hence this is the best service that priests may render unto God.
During the Renaissance, men like Erasmus and Thomas More studied the Bible and the writings of the early church leaders. As a result, they began to criticize the corruption in the church and to call for reform based on the word of God. Recognizing that preachers must play a key role in this, Erasmus wrote:
The most important function of the priest is teaching, by which he may instruct, admonish, chide and console. A layman can baptize. All the people can pray. The priest does not always baptize, he does not always absolve, but he should always teach. What good is it to be baptized if one has not been catechized; what good to go to the Lord’s Table if one does not know what it means?
These words explain the old saying that “Erasmus laid the egg that Luther hatched”, for Martin Luther (1483-1546) agreed with and expanded on Erasmus’ emphasis on teaching. Like other leaders of the Reformation, he regarded the pulpit as more important than the altar. People would be saved by hearing and accepting God’s word, not by simply attending mass and receiving the elements.
Luther stressed the liberating power of the word of God and its importance for our spiritual life: “The church owes its life to the word of promise, and is nourished and preserved by this same word.” He insisted that
the soul can do without all things except the word of God . . . if it has the word it is rich and lacks nothing, since this word is the word of life, of truth, of light, of peace, of righteousness, of salvation, of joy, of liberty. . . . To preach Christ means to feed the soul, to make it righteous, to set it free and to save it.
Given this high view of the word of God, it is not surprising that Luther regarded preaching as the “highest and only duty and obligation” of every bishop and pastor. He identified nine characteristics of a good preacher. He should “teach systematically . . . have a ready wit [intellect], . . . be eloquent, . . . have a good voice and . . . a good memory”. He should also “know when to make an end . . . [and] . . . be sure of his doctrine”. He said that the ultimate test of a good preacher is whether he is prepared to face ridicule and to lose his life, his wealth and his good name because of his preaching.
Luther lived by these high demands. Enduring both religious and political persecution, he insisted that “even if I were to lose my body and my life on account of it, I cannot depart from the true word of God”.
John Calvin (1509-1564), too, was committed to preaching the word of God to ordinary Christians of all ages, including those who were unable to read it for themselves. He expounded Scripture verse by verse and chapter by chapter, paying close attention to both the historical and the theological context. He also published his Institutes of the Christian Religion and many commentaries to help pastors become better preachers.
Calvin’s message was taken up by the English Reformers when formulating Article 19 of the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Anglican Church: “The visible church of Christ is a congregation of faithful [believing] men in which the pure word of God is preached, and the sacraments be duly ministered according to Christ’s ordinance.” The Anglican ordination service required the bishop to give each ordinand a Bible as a symbol of his office and to urge him to be “studious . . . in reading and learning the Scriptures”, authorizing him by the power of the Holy Spirit “to preach the word of God and to minister the holy sacraments in the congregation”.
The Puritans and the Evangelicals
The seventeenth-century Puritans have been called many things, not all of them complimentary. But the name which best sums them up is “godly preachers”. Like the Reformers, they gave great prominence to preaching. One of them, Richard Baxter (1615-1691), was so disturbed by the ignorance, laziness and licentiousness of the clergy that he wrote a book called The Reformed Pastor (published in 1656 and still in print!). He shared the principles which directed his own pastoral work:
We must teach them, as much as we can, of the word and works of God. Oh what two volumes are these for a minister to preach upon! How great, how excellent, how wonderful and mysterious! All Christians are disciples or scholars of Christ; the church is his school, we are his ushers [assistant teachers]; the Bible is his grammar [textbook]; this is it that we must be daily teaching them.
Baxter’s teaching took two forms. On the one hand, he and his assistant personally instructed each family in the parish at least once a year. Each family was invited to visit him for about an hour. During these visits family members would be asked to recite the catechism, be helped to understand it and be questioned about their personal experience of its truths. These visits took up two whole days each week. The other aspect of his work was the public preaching of the word, a work that he insisted
requireth greater skill and especially greater life and zeal, than any of us bring to it. It is no small matter to stand up in the face of a congregation and deliver a message as from the living God, in the name of our Redeemer.
A few years later, Cotton Mather of Boston (1663-1728) provided “Directions for a Candidate of the Ministry” in his book, Student and Preacher. His preface begins:
The office of the Christian ministry, rightly understood, is the most honourable, and important, that any man in the whole world can ever sustain; and it will be one of the wonders and employments of eternity to consider the reasons why the wisdom and goodness of God assigned this office to imperfect and guilty man! . . . The great design and intention of the office of a Christian preacher are to restore the throne and dominion of God in the souls of men; to display in the most lively colours, and proclaim in the clearest language, the wonderful perfections, offices and grace of the Son of God; and to attract the souls of men into a state of everlasting friendship with him.
In 1738 a young man named John Wesley attended a meeting in Aldersgate Street in London, where his heart was warmed as he put his “trust in Christ, in Christ only for salvation”. Assured that his sins had been taken away and that Christ had saved him from the law of sin and death, he at once began to preach the free salvation he had received. Influenced by his reading of Baxter, he encouraged house-to-house ministry and catechizing of converts. But above all he was a preacher, who addressed vast crowds in churches and churchyards, on village greens, in fields and natural amphitheatres. “I do indeed live by preaching” he wrote in his journal. His textbook was always the Bible, for he knew that its overriding purpose was to point to Christ and to show the way to salvation:
O give me that book! At any price, give me the book of God! I have it: here is knowledge enough for me. Let me be homo unius libri [a man of one book]. Here then I am, far from the busy ways of men. I sit down alone: only God is here. In his presence I open, I read his book; for this end, to find the way to heaven.
John Wesley preached what he learned from these biblical meditations, sharing with others what he had found, and pointing the way to heaven and holiness.
Although John Wesley has become better known, his younger contemporary George Whitefield (1714-1770) was almost certainly the more powerful preacher. In Britain and America, indoors and out of doors, he averaged about twenty sermons a week for thirty-four years! Eloquent, zealous, dogmatic, passionate, he enlivened his preaching with vivid metaphors, down-to-earth illustrations and dramatic gestures. He held audiences spellbound as he addressed direct questions to them or begged them earnestly to be reconciled with God. He had complete confidence in the authority of his message, and was determined that it should receive the respect it deserved as God’s word. Once when he was preaching he “noticed an old man settling down for his accustomed, sermon-time nap”. Whitefield began his sermon quietly, without disturbing him. But then he said,
“If I had come to speak to you in my own name, you might go to sleep! . . . But I have come to you in the name of the Lord God of hosts, and (he clapped his hands and stamped his foot) I must and I will be heard.” The old man woke up startled.
The Nineteenth Century
Charles Simeon (1759-1836) was converted while an undergraduate at Cambridge University and longed to preach the gospel there. Walking past Holy Trinity Church in the heart of the campus, he used to say to himself, “How should I rejoice if God were to give me that church, that I might preach his gospel there, and be a herald for him in the midst of the university.” God answered his prayer, and in 1782 he became pastor there. At first, however, he met violent opposition, but he persevered and over the years he won the respect of all. For fifty-four years he systematically opened up the Scriptures there, determined “to know nothing except Jesus Christ and him crucified,” as his memorial stone tells us. Simeon declared that
ministers are ambassadors for God, and speak in Christ’s stead. If they preach what is founded on the Scriptures, their word, as far as it is agreeable to the mind of God, is to be considered as God’s. This is asserted by our Lord and his apostles. We ought therefore to receive the preacher’s word as the word of God himself.
Throughout the nineteenth century, in spite of the emergence of higher criticism and the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin, the pulpit maintained its prestige in England and America. People flocked to hear the great preachers of the day like John Henry Newman and Charles Haddon Spurgeon and eagerly read their printed sermons. We see something of this respect in Herman Melville’s account of a sermon in Moby Dick (1851). The preacher stands in a pulpit shaped like the prow of a ship, which Melville considered appropriate, for “the pulpit leads the world”. Few would make that claim today, but it would not have sounded like an exaggeration to Melville’s readers.
The Twentieth Century
The twentieth century began in a mood of optimism. The West looked forward to stability, scientific progress and wealth; the church and preachers were respected. But within a few years this optimism was shattered by the horrors of the First World War and the ensuing economic depression.
Yet confidence in the privilege and power of pulpit ministry survived. Theologians like Karl Barth, who had gained a new realism about humanity and a new faith in God, were convinced that preaching was even more important than before. In the days before World War II, preachers like Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Niemöller showed great courage in preaching and equipping preachers, despite Hitler’s rise to power. In this context of persecution, Bonhoeffer stressed the importance of preaching. So did the Swiss preacher Walter Lüthi, who became convinced, in the words of the Second Helvetic Confession, that “the preaching of the word of God is the word of God”, and “set himself to the task of working through one book of the Bible after another and trying to find what those sacred oracles meant to his time and place”. In an essay on preaching, Lüthi writes that the act of preaching “is one of those things for which no one actually has true ability. The very moment a man thinks he has this ability, his preaching becomes art and grace draws back in grief.”
Although the Second World War accelerated the process of secularization in Europe, it did not quench preaching. The great Scottish academic and preacher James S. Stewart (1896-1990) could still write in his preface to his book, Heralds of God,
I have chosen the title of this book to stress one fundamental fact, namely, that preaching exists not for the propagating of views, opinions or ideals, but for the proclamation of the mighty acts of God. This is demonstrably the New Testament conception of the preacher’s task: and it is this that will always give preaching a basic and essential place at the very heart of Christian worship.
Stewart was faithful to this vision. One of his students later wrote,
He was an intensely biblical preacher. Stewart had a way of explaining a passage of Scripture that made it sound so simple. I never had the feeling that he was an ingenious interpreter of Scripture or had stupendous virtuosity. Once he got through the text, it was always so obvious . . . The man was simply a good man, and what he said I had to take as the word of God.
In the second half of the century, the tide of preaching ebbed. Yet there were still voices in many churches calling for its renewal. The “Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests” issued by the Second Vatican Council summoned Roman Catholic clergy to preach the gospel:
Priests have as their primary duty the proclamation of the Gospel of God to all. . . . [They must] summon all men urgently to conversion and to holiness . . . Preaching must not present God’s word in a general and abstract fashion only, but it must apply the perennial truth of the gospel to the concrete circumstances of life.
Donald Coggan, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1974-1980, and himself an able preacher, founded a College of Preachers in England. And many in the Reformed tradition were inspired by Martyn Lloyd-Jones, who ministered at Westminster Chapel in London from 1938-1968. His medical training and early practice as a physician, his unshakeable commitment to the authority of Scripture and to the Christ of Scripture, his keen analytical mind, his penetrating insight into the human heart and his passionate Welsh fire combined to make him the most powerful British preacher of the fifties and sixties. In Preaching and Preachers (1971) he declares,
To me the work of preaching is the highest and the greatest and the most glorious calling to which anyone can ever be called . . . the most urgent need in the Christian church today is true preaching. . . . There is nothing like it. It is the greatest work in the world, the most thrilling, the most exciting, the most rewarding, and the most wonderful.
This brief historical sketch is far from complete because it is limited to those whose views on preaching are recorded in Western books. Yet they were by no means the only good preachers, for God has raised up faithful teachers and preachers in many regions. Yet what this chapter does demonstrate is the length and breadth of the Christian tradition that accords great importance to preaching. Yes, there have been those who have disagreed, but they are the exceptions. The Christian consensus down the centuries has been that preaching is of vital importance. We should not lightly set aside this testimony.