Pure Church

Today I begin sermon preparation for Gen. 28:10-29:30. What a joy it is to look long into God's word with the privilege of then sharing it with His people! As I do so, I'm reminded of a couple of quotes from a short article we read in yesterday's staff meeting.

On one occasion, Spurgeon was asked the secret to his ministry. He replied without hesitation, "My people pray for me." Elsewhere he writes:

The sinew of the minister's strength under God is the supplication of his church. We can do anything and everything if we have a praying people around us. But when our dear friends and fellow helpers cease to pray, the Holy Ghost hastens to depart, and "Ichabod" is written on the place of the assembly.

What can we do without your prayers? They link us with the omnipotence of God. Like the lightning rod, they pierce the clouds and bring down the mighty and mysterious power from on high.... The Lord give me a dozen importunate pleaders and lovers of souls, and by his grace we ill shake all London from end-to-end. (C.H. Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit (repr. Ed. Pasadena: Pilgrim Publications, 1980), vol. 24, p. 445).

A second quote came from Pierre C. Marcel in The Relevance of Preaching (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1963), pp. 101-102:

When, then, will the believers en masse understand that they are primarily responsible for the preaching which they hear, yes, more than their preachers? If every pastor knew and felt that the congregation was praying and that each member had prayed, that the congregation was supporting him, interceding for him... what preacher would not feel himself a new man and whose preaching would not be transformed? Once again, preaching the word is a function and activity of the Church, not the function and specialty of a man.

Finally, a familiar saying among Dutch pastors translated (by Joel Beeke) as follows:

"If you pray me full, I'll preach you full."

Enjoy praying and preparing for the word on Sunday!

Somebody somewhere in the blogosphere recently plugged The Puritan Reformed Journal. It prompted me to dig out an old issue of the journal. I read Joel Beeke's article "God-Centered Theology in the Ministry of the Word," a brief exposition of 1 Cor. 1:1-2:5. It's an excellent brief treatment of the preaching ministry. But one of the things I found encouraging were the quotes on preaching sprinkled throughout the article. Here's a taste just for fun:

"Let us preach, as Francois Fenelon says, "with the zeal of a friend, the generous energy of a father and the exuberant affection of a mother."

Martin Luther: "I preach as though Christ was crucified yesterday, rose from the dead today, and is coming back tomorrow." (my favorite)

Charles Bridges: "Let Him be the diamond in the bosom of your every sermon."

Richard Baxter: "If we can but teach Christ to our people, we teach them all."

Spurgeon: "A sermon without Christ as its beginning, middle, and end is a mistake in conception and a crime in execution.... When we preach Jesus Christ, then we are not putting out the plates, and the knives, and the forks, for the feast, but we are handing out the bread itself.... [Let us] preach Christ to sinners if we cannot preach sinners to Christ.... I wish that our ministry--and mine especially--might be tied and tethered to the cross."

Samuel Rutherford: "Next to Christ I have one joy, to preach Christ my Lord."

William Perkins: "Preach one Christ, by Christ, to the praise of Christ."

Martyn Lloyd-Jones: "I can forgive the preacher almost anything if he gives me a sense of God."

Joel Beeke: "Faithful ministers aim to give God the same place in their own hearts and in the hearts of their people as He holds in the universe."

Lloyd-Jones: "Preaching is theology come through a man who is on fire."

My reading project this year is personal evangelism. So, Lord willing, I'll be working through a year's worth of reading on the topic, exploring it from various angles, with the hopes of developing and implementing a personal plan for doing the work of an evangelist.