Tag: preaching

But the Morrow Comes

“The arithmetic of your short-lived days may on Sabbath make the clearest impression upon your understanding—and from his fancied bed of death, may the preacher cause a voice to descend in rebuke and mockery on all the pursuits of earthliness, and as he pictures before you the fleeting generations of men, with the absorbing grave, whither all the joys and interests of the world hasten to their sure and speedy oblivion, may you, touched and solemnized by his argument, feel for a moment as if on the eve of a practical and permanent emancipation from a scene of so much vanity.

But the morrow comes, and the business of the world and the objects of the world and the moving forces of the world come along with it—and the machinery of the heart, in virtue of which it must have something to grasp or something to adhere to, brings it under a kind of moral necessity to be actuated just as before. In utter repulsion toward a state so unkindly as that of being frozen out both of delight and of desire does it feel all the warmth and the urgency of its wonted solicitations—nor in the habit and history of the whole man can we detect so much as one symptom of the new creature—so that the church, instead of being to him a school of obedience, has been a mere sauntering place for the luxury of a passing and theatrical emotion; and the preaching that is mighty to compel the attendance of multitudes, that is mighty to still and to solemnize the hearers into a kind of tragic sensibility, that is mighty in the play of variety and vigor that it can keep up around the imagination, is not might to the pulling down of strongholds.”

—Thomas Chalmers, The Expulsive Power of a New Affection (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020), 45-46. Chalmers said this while preaching on 1 John 2:15.

As a Nursing Mother Stammers

“For if our Lord spoke only of things that are obscure and beyond our reach, we might have cause to complain that we were wasting time on speculations which required much hard work, which in the end did us no good and left us no wiser than before. In that case it would be right for us to feel annoyed. When, however, our Lord condescends to our ignorance and teaches us in so intimate a way, as a father instructs his children or as a nursing mother stammers to her immature infant so that he will understand—when, I say, God treats us so graciously and makes sure that there is nothing superfluous in his word—nothing which does not yield good fruit for our salvation—when we see that, must we not be mad and naturally wilful if we fail to profit by it?”

—John Calvin, trans. Robert White, Sermons on Titus (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2015), 269-270. Calvin said this while preaching on Titus 3:8-15.

Feed Souls With the Bread of Heaven

“If a man chooses someone to manage his household, he assigns him duties. What duties, then, has God assigned to us, if not to impart to his people the food of life, that is, his word? Without that, does the title ‘pastor’ mean anything at all? Someone who claimed to be the shepherd of a flock of sheep or the keeper of a herd of cows, but who lets the poor beasts starve to death, would surely deserve to be stoned. Yet we are shepherds, not of brute beasts but of God’s children! Our task is to feed, not bodies with food that perishes, but souls with the bread of heaven. If we do not have what is needed to fulfil our office, do we not mock God by usurping so noble a title when the reality is otherwise?

Observe, then, that to be a pastor, overseer, minister, presbyter and ruler of the church is to be one whose teaching edifies God’s people.”

—John Calvin, trans. Robert White, Sermons on Titus (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2015), 88. Calvin said this while preaching on Titus 1:9-10.