Biblical Preaching – A Worthy Passion
Prepared for the Expound ’23 Workshop
Friday, January 27, 2023
Introduction
Institutions become dilapidated when discontinuity between their importance and our commitment to them is allowed to exist. Few enterprises are marked with more pervasive mediocrity than preaching. This is dreadful. The apostle Paul told Titus that God has “manifested his word through preaching which is committed unto me according to the commandment of God our Saviour” (Tit. 1:3). The incomprehensibly important truth of “eternal life” which God promised before the world began, is made known to the world, through preaching.
It is hardly possible to overrate the priority of preaching God’s word. It is God’s plan for saving sinners (1 Cor. 1:17-21; Rom. 10:14-17), the means for equipping the saints (Ep. 4:11-12; 2 Tim. 4:1-3), and the centerpiece of corporate worship in this age (Acts 2:41-42; 1 Cor. 14:1-3, 23-25). John Broadus said, “But alas! How difficult it is to preach well! How small a proportion of the sermons heard weekly throughout the world are really good.” While the assessment of John Broadus rings true, the dilemma is unnecessary. Erasmus famously said, “If elephants can be trained to dance, lions to play and leopards to hunt, surely preachers can be taught to preach!” If it is true that good preaching is so scarce and yet so achievable, why the scarcity?
1. Good Preaching Is Work.
The pastor’s responsibility is more demanding than what may be accomplished in a few brief hours, polishing an assortment of stories and syllogisms. Preaching that lays open the word of God is laborious. It involves more than clever wordplay and creative alliteration. Ecclesiastes 12:12 says, “…much study is a weariness of the flesh” and 2 Timothy 2:15 “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.”
2. Honest self-analysis is painful.
What preacher wants to discover egregious flaws in his content and delivery? Some truths are just too much to bear. Perhaps a better way of seeing this would be to rejoice that as long as we are alive, we have the opportunity to improve our craft. We can dig deeper, work harder, learn more and increase our passion for doing so. When we are honest with ourselves, we can see many ways that our preaching could improve.
3. The altered objective and therefore the process.
It is so easy to get lost in the effort to please men. While attendance numbers and statistical metrics should not be what motivates the preacher of God’s word, it is almost impossible to avoid the temptation to measure one’s success with statistics. The natural response to this struggle is to preach to entertain and woo instead of edify, exhort and warn. To preach the word of God is our primary duty as pastors. Without biblical preaching, whatever we are winning people “to” is not what we are called to extol.
4. Bad examples prevail.
In a little book entitled, How to Improve Your Preaching (1945), Bob Jones, Jr. said, “People who write books on etiquette have my sympathy. They must – poor creatures – find little pleasure at a dinner party…When one presumes to set down rules of practice in any art…he immediately becomes the object of observation when he, himself, attempts to practice it…” No one should seek to become so critical of epidemic insipidity in the pulpit that he cannot be encouraged by the simplest and most sincere exhortations from good men. Notwithstanding, even our most gracious analysis must conclude, there is an abundance of absolute nonsense in preaching these days. Foolishness in the pulpit is no new thing, for Spurgeon said, “I have frequently said of myself that I would not go across the road to hear myself preach, but I will venture to say of certain brethren that I would even go across the road in the other direction not to hear them preach. Some sermons and prayers lend a color of support to the theory of Dr. William Hammond, that the brain is not absolutely essential to life” (An All-Around Ministry, by Charles Spurgeon, pp. 316-317).
5. We prioritize practical application over sound doctrine and thorough exposition.
Application is helpful as far as it goes; however, a passage carefully explained (exposit = explain; expound = explain) will contain much implicit application. When the meat and meaning of a text is overlooked for agenda-driven practicality, the discourse has become something other than biblical preaching. Coaching, counseling, advising, cajoling or motivating it may be, but biblical preaching it is not when we have failed to communicate the word of God.
Preaching demonstrates in its form and function the vital truth that God has spoken and is speaking to man. God speaks through scripture, and; the medium of preaching reminds us of this when accomplished faithfully. Consequently, to stand with God’s word open and preach could be the most urgent of all Christian responsibilities. It is an irreplaceable act of the highest order.
To preach; therefore, is something specific. It is clear what preaching is and is not. To preach is to speak God’s word to an individual or group of listeners so that they understand it in the way in which God intended. Sounds simple, but it is not. It is laborious always, frequently complex and seldom without a direct challenge to our presuppositions.
In 2019, I began to study the work of preaching, collecting historic works and engaging in systematic research in order to improve my own preaching. Here are two ways that I planned to approach my objective:
1. By laboring in a text of scripture every week. Imagine the profit a local church would enjoy if their pastor toiled weekly to expound scripture with care. It can be shocking to examine what we are doing in the pulpit. Analyze some of your sermons. Remove the jokes, long stories, rants, politics, and personal opinions and notice how short the sermons become. Take some of the time back and preach God’s word to the people. In a decade you could effectively cover large portions of God’s word where families will be influenced by truth instead of belligerence and silliness.
2. Preach with the glory of God and the good of others in mind – a much nobler motive than performing for laughs or admiration. God is exalted when His word is communicated in clarion presentations of boldness and conviction. Speak the truth in love. Know that when the hearers of God’s word believe it, His word will change them. What an amazing privilege! What a vital trust!
Scripture- Our Only Authority in Preaching
Since preaching is our priority trust, a commitment to improvement therein would be in order. The work of feeding the sheep by preaching God’s word is a labor worthy of our most arduous industry. As New Testament believers, we are continuing in “the apostles’ doctrine (Acts 2:42), and as they, contending for the faith once delivered unto the saints (Jude 3). The apostles are our examples of how to minister. They were the original preachers of the New Testament message. Thomas Armitage called them “comprehensive expositors of Him and His gospel.” Preaching is lofty, challenging work. Doing it well – better than ever – is worthy of our deliberate effort.
What does better preaching involve? We are commanded to “Preach the word” (2 Tim. 4:2) because it is “able to make thee wise unto salvation” (2 Tim. 3:15), it is “profitable for doctrine” (2 Tim. 3:16), and it is, to state the distinctive principle of the Baptists, the final authority in all matters of faith and practice. Thusly, we find, the first necessity for better preaching is:
Routine remobilization of the axioms of biblical authority.
Often, the influence of extreme challenges to our ideological norms, move us imperceptibly toward positions once unthinkable. This digression happened to preaching in the 20th century. Many charge Harry Emerson Fosdick as a prominent influence in this regard.
Fosdick, the leading 20th-century liberal, famous for the sermon, “Shall the Fundamentalist Win?” and the book, The Modern Use of the Bible, brought a modernistic philosophy to sermonizing. In his frustration with the difficulties of preaching, Fosdick “came to the conclusion that a new approach to preaching was needed.” In an analysis of Fosdick’s methods, found in the book entitled, Preaching As Counseling, Edmund Holt Linn said:
The highly regarded expository method seemed to him fraught with weakness. It gave unwarranted importance to some passage in the Bible instead of to the business of living…”
Fosdick himself said, “Only the preacher proceeds still upon the idea that folk come to church desperately anxious to discover what happened to the Jebusites.” It is this kind of dismissiveness for God’s word that led an admirer of Fosdick to say, “If any young man wished to learn what to preach, he might look elsewhere; but if he would learn how to preach, let him tarry here.” Separating the how from the what is precisely how preaching took a downward trajectory in the last century. Preaching that is pithy, inspiring and informative and yet without biblical content…is not preaching.
Fosdick’s humanistic, liberal approach was described as “personal counseling on a large scale” where “the scriptures seemed to afford a source of interesting materials other than any kind of authority for Fosdick.” Sadly, some very influential fundamentalists, while rejecting Fosdick’s modernism, adopted an approach to preaching that is strikingly similar and theologically vapid. It hardly matters what one professes to believe doctrinally if doctrine never makes it into his sermons.
If our preaching is to improve, the authority of the scripture must be our overarching, regulatory principle. When our preaching is shaped and informed by this conviction, that is, when we have remobilized the axioms of biblical authority in our preaching, some things will surface:
1. We will submit our personal and fraternal agendas to the will of God.
The will of God is not, like some strategically located Easter egg, intended to be kept from us. His will is clearly communicated in His word. It is the plain thing that is the main thing, most of the time. By striving to preach God’s word and only His word, to never be wise above what is written, we will find ourselves limited to a more sanctified message. This determination keeps us trained on the goal of speaking what God has said, not so much what we want to say. God’s agenda does not accommodate ours. We are obligated to submit to His.
The solution is not to say that in our avoidance of personal crusades, we should seek unity at all costs. E. Y. Mullins said, “If denominationalism ever ceases to exist and all Christians become one it will be not by artificial schemes of union, but through the gradual growth of unity of view, that is, through the operation of the voluntary principle.” The gradual development of this “unity of view” will only be produced through the preaching and teaching of the word of God. Biblical persuasion is what produces the “voluntary element” upon which all genuine, Christian profession depends. Intimidation, ridicule and backroom politics will not do.
The chaffing effect of God’s applied authority is not just for those who are ideologically divergent. His Providence and convicting work will resist our carnal impulses as well. Through the years, I have found some of my own most cherished plans and ideas to be wholly personal and not of God. Remobilization of the axioms of biblical authority will cause us to submit our will to His, in preaching, teaching, leadership, and ministry in general.
2. The content of the word of God will be the message.
I wish I could recover the time and energy I burned each week in the first ten years of my pastoral work, searching for a “message,” or what I called, “something to preach.” While I was aware of the command to “Preach the word,” I had my own ideas of how to do it. It took years for it to sink in that whatever passage I studied laboriously and delivered faithfully on any given Sunday, would be light years better than the clever sermonizing I might produce. I was commanded to preach the word with “longsuffering and doctrine” (2 Tim. 4:2), to hold “forth the words of life” (Phil. 2:16), but I was motivated by the desire to be sensational. I valued emotional contrivances over communicating truth clearly and sensibly. There is no correlation between constancy to biblical study and spiritual deadness. There is; however, a direct line between doctrinal ignorance and powerless, wild-eyed mysticism.
It is common for some to make a distinction between a classroom and the pulpit. They love to say, “Get out of the library and back to the pea patch.” While I am not exactly sure what that means, I do know that the word of God commands the preacher to work hard in the field of study (2 Tim. 2:15). Paul requested, not only the parchments but the books as well. Bible preaching (the bold proclamation of God’s word that demands a response) cannot exist without the component of teaching (the transfer of knowledge with attention to detail). Doctrine is what is taught. To “continue in the apostles’ doctrine” is to be devoted to strong, informative, theological preaching, teaching, and learning. A commitment to the scripture as “the final authority in all matters of faith and practice” will, without a doubt, result in the distribution of God’s truth as our primary ministry commitment.
3. Salient doctrines will not be trivialized by absurdity.
I have become increasingly alarmed by the distasteful, irreverent, undignified way in which God’s highest truth is being delivered. I must say, I have been guilty myself. I have preached about hell and resorted to sensational anecdotes to provide the “power.” I have preached about holiness and utilized the ridicule of others as a means for challenging God’s people. I have preached the gospel and relied upon gut-wrenching stories to bring people to a decision instead of exercising faith in His word and sending it out with painstaking clarity.
False ideas abound concerning the Godhead, eternity and the gospel. How necessary it is for God’s men to preach every sermon with faithfulness! We must preach, knowing that lost, confused, ignorant people will formulate their impressions of Christianity by how we handle the truth. “Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God,” (Rom. 10:17), not by stories, tantrums, tirades, comedy routines, mysticism and guilt trips.
I offer these thoughts, not as a high-toned criticism of others, but as an expression of my painful realization that I have failed here myself. While I am abundantly thankful for God’s merciful demonstrations of grace in using me to the extent that He has, I am loath to continue without careful examination of my own heart and habits. With God’s help, I must preach better.
Practical Disciplines
Doing things well and continuing to do so requires the kind of self-maintenance conducive to excellence. Given the ordinary course of degenerative tendencies in unchecked human behavior, we do ourselves a favor by caring for, not only our need for improvement but our propensity for demise as well. We should expect our preaching habits, especially in the area of preparation, to drift into disrepair when unscrutinized. The practicality of systematic discipline becomes a servant to better preaching in this regard.
In a useful little book, entitled, The Disciplined Life, Richard Taylor said, “Disciplined character belongs to the person who achieves balance in bringing all his faculties and powers under control.” He said, “The difference is habit and habit is character.” These thoughts lead us to consider, how could our preaching improve if we applied systematic discipline to our approach to preparation?
Suggesting to preachers that our preaching could be better is similar to offering child-rearing advice to parents or telling your wife how to improve her looks. It is precarious; however, that does not mean that many parents do not need the advice, and wives…well, you get the point. I remind my readers, for whom I am grateful that I share these thoughts out of the overflow of research on the subject of Biblical preaching. I do not consider myself an expert, nor am I beyond the point of improvement – quite the contrary. It is difficult to image a preacher so haughty or hyper-sensitive that challenges to improve would be met with resentment.
By discipline, I mean to recommend the routine application of three practices that would help polish the finished product for any preacher from novice to veteran. By improving our preparation, we are sure to elevate the entire experience of preaching.
3 Disciplines For Improving Our Preparation
1. Reading
In his second letter to Timothy, pleading for assistance in his last days of service on earth, the apostle Paul told him to bring, “the books, but especially the parchments” (2 Tim. 4:13). Concerning this verse, “Spurgeon said, Paul was an inspired apostle; yet, he wanted his books, He had been preaching for at least thirty years; yet, he wanted his books. He had seen the Lord; yet, he wanted his books. He had heard things untranslatable; yet, he wanted his books. He had written a major part of the New Testament; yet, he wanted his books. ‘Bring the books,’ he said” (Exploring 2 Timothy, John Phillips). When preaching in Athens, Paul included, “…as certain also of your own poets have said,” (Acts 17:28), demonstrating the usefulness of an intentionally-developed, cultural sophistication.
William Cathcart, in his fantastic publication, The Baptist Encyclopedia, gave six-and-a-half pages of information under the entry, Baptist Literature. The amount of material that faithful Baptists of the past have written is staggering. While Alexander Whyte famously said, “Sell your shirt and buy a book,” we know that many of the great works of the past are available online, free of charge. There is no excuse for the small amount of reading accomplished by the average preacher. A cursory glance at social media would indicate that we have time for parties, dining out, ball games, concerts, travel, hunting, fishing, golf, and endless activities intended to please and entertain, but mention the need to read and it is amazing how busy everyone becomes.
It has been noted that if one reads slowly (250 words per minute), he could read 5,000 words in twenty minutes. The average book has about four hundred words per page, meaning you could read twelve-and-a-half pages in twenty minutes. At this pace, for just twenty minutes per day, you could read fifteen books a year on one subject, or you could plow through larger, classic works, in brief, nightly readings. The busiest of preachers can read, and if they do not, their listeners will know. A good goal for the extra reading required for front-loading for future preaching tasks or self-education in particular areas of theology or history is to set aside one hour daily, a morning, afternoon or evening weekly, a full day each month and a week annually.
Merely taking in words from the pages of a book does not constitute wisdom. Mortimer Adler said, “To be informed is to know simply that something is the case. To be enlightened is to know, in addition, what it is all about.” Montaigne spoke of “an abecedarian ignorance that precedes knowledge and a doctoral ignorance that comes after it” (How To Read A Book, Mortimer Adler, pp. 11, 12). I am not saying that knowledge, eloquence, and polish make a preacher, but neither does ignorance, incoherence, and crudity. How the fact of God’s powerful, effectual working through His word somehow negates the sense in our striving to be the best we can be is unclear. Improving our preparation through careful research and aggressive reading is no danger to faithfulness, though it may present certain hindrances for those who wish to confine us with convoluted philosophies and humanistic traditions.
2. Thinking
Through the study of scripture and laborious efforts to read one’s self full of good books, we find ourselves in consequent need of careful thought. The old advice is to “query the text” – to “beat importunately upon it.” As we question every word, phrase and statement in relation to context and sound theology, we are essentially thinking through the truth. We are referring to meditation (Jos. 1:8), which slows us down and takes us deeper into our subject. Thinking enables better understanding, and therefore, clearer elocution.
Jesse Burton Weatherspoon, said, “‘The only way to learn to preach is to preach’ – yet mere practice will never bring the highest skill; it must be heedful, thoughtful practice, with close observation of others and sharp watching of ourselves, and controlled by good sense and good taste” (On the Preparation and Delivery of Sermons, John Broadus, New and Revised Edition, 1944, p. 8). What we think shapes who we are and our authenticity determines the nature of our preaching. Thoughtfulness produces a rich thoroughness of soul – the kind that comes out in great preaching. Paul said to Timothy, in 1 Timothy 4:13-16:
Till I come, give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine. Neglect, not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy, with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery. Meditate upon these things; give thyself wholly to them; that thy profiting may appear to all. Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in them: for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee.
A good rule for measuring doctrinal comprehension is, if you cannot teach what you know simply to someone else, you do not know it yourself. Thomas Armitage said, “A great gulf is fixed between a preacher who has something which he must say and one who puts words together that he may say something” (Preaching: Its Ideal and Inner Life, Thomas Armitage, 1880, p. 166). The preacher who “has something he must say,” is one who has read thoroughly and thought carefully about what he has read. Armitage, warning about “shallow performances,”likened it unto “the farmer who scratches a thousand acres an inch deep, and then calls it plowing. I prefer his neighbor, who tills a hundred acres by subsoiling it. He puts the plowshare in to the beam and turns up the rich soil, for a harvest rank in its golden wealth. You cannot cultivate gospel truth by the square rod. Thorough work calls for an exhaustive process in that which you do till” (Armitage, pp. 246-247). Along these lines, Broadus said, in reference to exposition, “He who begins it as an easy thing will find expository preaching surpassingly difficult, but he who manfully takes hold of it as difficult, will find it grows easier and more pleasant with every year of his experience” (Broadus, p. 153).
Thinking, in sermon preparation, should include when possible, some element of rehearsal or “thinking out loud.” I recommend this not for the pursuit of theatrical sensationalism (for this is unimportant, and should be avoided) but to discover the best possible way to communicate the passage. Saying it to yourself before you say it to others can be invaluable in helping to develop big-picture concepts and smooth transitions.
3. Writing
Few things would improve our ability to communicate like learning to write well. I am not suggesting that preachers employ florid articulation or become sanctified Ernest Hemingways. I mean to recommend better writing as a means for developing the ability to speak with appealing clarity. The purpose here is to be understood. Broadus said, “The chief means of improvement in style is careful practice in writing and speaking – not mere practice without care, for this will develop and confirm what is faulty as well as what is good” (Broadus, p. 236). A great sculptor loves to chip the marble. A good preacher must learn to enjoy the language employed in the work of preaching.
One of the best helps available on this subject is The Elements of Style, by William Strunk and E. B. White. In this indispensable little book, White quotes his beloved professor, Strunk:
Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that a writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subject only in outline, but in every word tell (p. xiv).
Nothing that I am advocating is on the level with knowing God and scripture and striving to confront sinners and saints alike with the charge of divine authority. Instead, I offer simple, practical disciplines that could make good, Bible preaching better. If a preacher made a habit of reading with systematic toil, thinking carefully about what he has read and endeavoring to convey his convictions with boldness, clarity, and zeal, his preaching would most certainly improve.
Preaching well does not necessitate the “wisdom of words” (1 Cor. 1:17), but it does require wisdom (Jm. 3:17). It is not entertainment but can be engaging (Lk. 24:25-32). It is diminished by sensationalism, but not by excitement (Acts 2:14; 15:13; 17:1-5, 22; et al.). Gimmickry in preaching is off-putting while clever applications are memorable (Acts 20:28-30; 24:14-16; et al.). Mysticism is misleading, but truth embraced by the heart will lead to profound, passionate sermons (Acts 2:37; 7:54; et al.). Every preacher would be helped by the disciplines of reading systematically, thinking through the material and writing out his thoughts to develop clarity and force. When these extras are added to routine sermon preparation, improvements will be noticeable.
The Labor of Preaching
While challenging preachers to preach better sermons is as nerve-wracking as having lunch with Emily Post, the potential for good is staggering. One encouraged preacher can be used of God to shape eternity. Once the preacher is immersed in the effects of having remobilized the axioms of biblical authority, better preaching will demand…work. It is life-work. Preaching that pulls back the shades of ordinary misapprehension and enables people to see the riches of God’s grace, will only be developed with hard work – daily, relentless work. One could not find a better example of pastoral labor than the oft’ quoted, ubiquitous, Charles Spurgeon. The English Baptist pastor preached thousands of sermons, published in 63 volumes – the largest set of books by anyone in Christian history. Spurgeon’s son said, “There was no one who could preach like my father. In inexhaustible variety, witty wisdom, vigorous proclamation, loving entreaty and lucid teaching, with a multitude of other qualities, he must, at least in my opinion, be ever regarded as the prince of preachers” (C. H. Spurgeon Autobiography, Vol. 2, p. 278).
One biographer said that Spurgeon read six books a week, wrote over 140 of his own and often worked eighteen hours a day. This from the man who said, “Brethren, do something; do something; DO SOMETHING. While committees waste their time over resolutions, do something. While societies and unions are making constitutions, let us win souls. Too often we discuss and discuss and discuss, while Satan only laughs in his sleeve. It is time we had done planning and sought something to plan. I pray you, be men of action all of you. Get to work and quit yourselves like men” (An All-Round Ministry, p. 55). This work, this commitment to doing, must value preaching as the pastor’s ultimate priority. Spurgeon certainly did, and Paul required it (1 Tim. 4:13-16; 5:17; 2 Tim. 2:15). Spurgeon said, “Emotion, doubtless, is a very proper thing in the pulpit, and the feeling, the pathos, the power of heart, are good and great things in the right place; but do also use your brains a little, do tell us something when you stand up to preach the everlasting gospel. The sermons that are the most likely to convert people seem to me to be those that are full of truth…Tell your hearers something, dear brethren, whenever you preach, tell them something, tell them something” (The Soul Winner, p. 99).
It is easy for the sundry demands of ministry to crowd out the vital work that goes into good preaching. The inimitable, Brown University President and Baptist leader, Francis Wayland, lamented his struggles with the conflicting concerns of the pastorate:
When a man’s mind is thus occupied, his interest in his people will gradually diminish. His outside work seems to be religious; it must be done today: his work for his people may be done tomorrow or next week, and in the end it is not done at all. At last his real work, the work for which he is paid – labor for the souls committed to his care – receives only the chippings and leavings of his time; and even those chippings and leavings have in them no vitality (A Memoir of the Life and Labors of Francis Wayland, Vol. 2, p. 196).
The tangling effects of the pastor’s potential involvements may lead, not only to preaching that is less than good, but personal and moral crises as well. Wayland continued:
Another effect of this multiplication of business is, to break up all habits of devotion, till a man’s religion becomes often a dry skeleton of orthodox doctrine, rather than a living fountain within him, quickening his own soul, and refreshing the souls of others. But the minister has the same liability to sin as other people, and some temptations peculiar to himself. If his religion has become inoperative, the power of temptation is redoubled, and nothing but the especial grace of God can preserve him from falling into sin (Wayland, pp. 196, 197).
What an unspeakable tragedy it is for the man of God to give only the “chippings and leavings” of his time to the work of preaching. It is worth more and requires more. Could we not give more to this great work? Granted, every pastor faces variations of scheduling imposition. Each situation allows for fluctuating combinations of time, talent and toil. Some men have the privilege (Lk. 12:48) of giving “full-time” to the work of edifying the body of Christ while necessity requires others to serve bi-vocationally (something many men of God have done with great usefulness throughout the years). Some have vast resources for building libraries and collecting material without end, while others, as Alexander Whyte suggested, sell their shirts to buy books. Some are vehicles of near peerless, God-given talent for moving people with persuasiveness and charm; others plod beneath the weight of their inherent limitations. Regardless, let us take the time and talent that God has given us and work! God can take the hands-full of meal that we can gather from the bottom of the barrels of our human resources and feed His people well.
A simple, two-fold admonition is in order:
1. Let us seize our opportunities by faith and work hard!
Could it be that the potential for better preaching among us dies, not for lack of ability, but the absence of vigorous faith? If we believe that God will bless His word, then our efforts should be proportionately applied to the significance of the duty before us. Because we believe, because we expect God to work – we work! Every opportunity is big. Every Lord’s day sermon is monumental. Every open door is meaningful. May we prepare accordingly. May we seize our opportunities by faith and work hard!
Faith that expects God to work, that believes what God said because He said it in His word, has sustained centuries of preaching from the darkest of places and through the severest of trials. One American example of rare, faith-based fortitude in preaching and ministerial labor is Isaac Backus. Born in 1724 in Norwich, Connecticut, Backus grew, by slow degree, into a Baptist by conviction and an ardent defender of religious liberty. Alvah Hovey described the labors of this “firm, consistent, earnest and charitable Baptist” in this way:
Without turning back to rail at those whom he had left, his energies were faithfully applied to the great work of preaching Christ at home and by the way. From year to year the little church under his care grew in numbers and strength; neglected districts were made glad as heretofore by his occasional but zealous proclamation of the gospel; and feeble interests were kept alive by his wise counsels and stout-hearted faith (The Life and Times of Isaac Backus, Alvah Hovey, p. 129).
During a space of eleven years (1756-1767), Backus preached 2,412 sermons (avg. 4 per week) and traveled 14,691 miles on horseback, not counting the travel and labor within the immediate reach of his local church. Cathcart recorded that Backus traveled, in a six-month stretch in 1789, through Virginia and North Carolina to strengthen the churches. He traveled 3,000 miles and preached 126 sermons. He accomplished, according to Cathcart, an immense amount of work during his ministerial life.
Alvah Hovey wrote of the journeys of Backus:
These were frequent and laborious until the end of life. Over the hills, across the valleys, and beside the streams of New England, he pursued his rugged and toilsome way, and accomplished his useful mission…Once he was thrown from his horse and severely injured; at another time was near losing his life by the cold; and very often he rode from morning till night in the chill and drenching rain (Hovey, pp. 312, 313).
Backus set the example for seizing the God-given opportunities by faith and working hard! His labor involved more than enduring the difficulties of eighteenth-century travel; he gave himself to study. Hovey said, “He applied himself with deep earnestness to the study of God’s word, with the best helps accessible and examined with great care the chief works in his own language upon systematic theology, ecclesiastical history and church polity.” Backus, a prolific author and powerful influence with the pen, “keenly watched the shifting forms of error and assiduously qualified himself to withstand their approaches,” a commitment that necessitated reading “the fugitive writings of the day.”
What would be the fruit of the Backus brand of ministerial commitment? Would we not all desire to see souls converted by the grace of God? Besides the passion for God’s glory, what longing could legitimately overshadow the burden for souls in the heart of the preacher? Backus said this:
(March 28, 1756) Preached twice to this people, and the Lord did draw near of a truth and give my soul sweet enlargement. Such bowels of compassion for sinners I haven’t felt for a long while. Oh, that the Lord would appear for the deliverance of these precious souls!
(March 30, 1756) After meeting in the evening, I spoke with a young woman who gave me a clear account of her conversion. I hear that some others have been recently converted in this place. How blessed a thing it is to see a new-born soul!
(April 3, 1756) Upon returning home and finding his family in good health, Backus wrote: The divine favors have been distinguishing here; and while I have been gone, the assistance which I have enjoyed in preaching and the conversions which I have seen among sinners, together with the language of new-born souls, have made it the most comfortable journey to me that I have taken this winter.
Maybe, those of us who enjoy comfortable, heated and air-conditioned vehicles with advanced audio technology; warm, dry homes and hotel rooms; a near-endless restaurant selection in every single town; comfort-oriented wardrobes, offices, and libraries; affordable laptops, iPads, smartphones, internet and all the advancements resulting from scientific and medical progress, the industrial revolution and the subsequent information age…could work a little harder at preaching good sermons. May God help us to seize each opportunity by faith and work hard at the work of preaching!
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