Luke 19:10

Chapter 2

Christ's Object As a Preacher. Evangelical Preaching Christ's Injunction to the Church Charming the Poor By Music the Difficulty of Salvation

Text: "To save that which was lost." Luk 19:10

The preacher is bound to set before himself a distinct object. The question which he ought to propose is this: What is my purpose in this discourse? Is it to instruct, convince, or comfort? Is it to convince sinners, or is it to edify believers? He must be perfectly familiar with the end at which he is aiming, or he will spend his time in fighting uncertainly, and in beating the air. The preacher will always find his object in his text. What was Jesus Christ's object as a preacher? To save men. If that was the object of the Master, should the servant have any lower end in view?

But let us look at that word "save." Like many other simple-looking words, it is very large in its application. It is not to be limited to one point. Men are to be saved from sin certainly primarily. But does the word "save" end there? Men are to be saved from ignorance, to be saved from error, to be saved from the bondage of the letter, from false worship, from self-confidence, from despair; so that this word "save," which looked so little and so simple, stretches itself over our whole life of guilt, action, ignorance, behaviour, spirit. It includes in its holy purpose the whole circle of our being. I wish we could thoroughly understand this, and we should be more liberal and more just in our construction of what our ministers are endeavouring to do for us. When the preacher is refuting a false doctrine he is as certainly endeavouring to save men as when he stands by the very cross of the one Saviour, and speaks of nothing but the reconciling and all-cleansing blood. Men say to us, "Preach the simple gospel." What is simple? and why should there be any difficulty about the simple gospel? When we preach apparently otherwise it is not because the gospel is wanting in simplicity, but because sin, vice, is manifold in its duplicity. The ten commandments are not ten because virtue is divisible into ten mysteries: they are ten because vice has a tenfold aspect, and must be met in every phase and attitude.

Our whole conception about preaching, so as to save men, needs enlargement and purification. Only let a man cry out for the space of half an hour, "Come to Jesus, come to Jesus, just now; come to Jesus, just now;" and he is thought to be preaching the gospel. To me he would be preaching no gospel. I am so constituted that I must instantly ask him to define his terms. "Come " What is the meaning of that short word? Is it easy, is it a child's walk, is it a luxury, is it a natural expression of the intellect and conscience and will? Why come? And how? Thus that which appeared to be so simple, small as a grain of mustard seed, when I plant it or sow it, it becomes a great tree, outbranching widely, and shaking questions and difficulties from every twig of the gigantic fabric. So I must ask for definition of terms.

Another man might preach to me and never mention the name of Jesus, and yet he would so preach as to make me unhappy; he would so deal with my life, showing its mystery, its pain, its poverty, its self-helplessness, as to make me cry out, "What shall I do?" And when he had wrought that question in me, and brought it to my tongue, then he would unfold the infinite and unsearchable riches of Christ.

Now this was Jesus Christ's method of gaining his object. When I say "his method" I speak a millionfold term. When you heard him, though it were the thousandth time, you felt as. if you had never heard him before so new was he, vital, true, sympathetic, beautiful. The chariots of God are twenty thousand. Does he always ride forth in one chariot, so that you can tell it is the King by the chariot he rides in? No. Twenty thousand and thousands of thousands are his angels. So in the ministry of Christ I find innumerable methods, all converging upon one object. Watch that marvellous ministry. Jesus Christ told stories about a man who had two sons, about a man who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, about a woman who took leaven and hid it in three measures of meal, about innumerable other things, and he so told them that little children quickened their ears, and looked with eyes full of wonder. The busy man stopped with foot half way up in the air to hear what next he would say with that magical, mysterious, musical voice. He created fine fancies of the mind, as, for example, "A sower went forth to sow," "The kingdom of heaven is like to a net thrown into the midst of the sea." He asked questions. When they would not admit him into the house as a preacher, he went in as a doctor. Every preacher ought to be a healing man, a physician. He said, "If you will not have me as the Son of God, come to reveal the Father where is your poor child that is sick? I will raise the little life up again." And once he was so busy breaking bread that you would have thought he was the world's housekeeper. Martha never was so busy as was her Lord just then, and for what purpose? What does he mean by all this? to save men, to get a hold over them, to win their attention, to conciliate their confidence, and then to open their wondering and delighted eyes to the light of the kingdom of God.

Sometimes we must adopt a roundabout method in trying to secure our object as Christian teachers. Instead of sharply clashing with prejudice, we might diffidently ask a question. Instead of bluntly asking a man about his Christian condition, we might delicately ask him about his children. Instead of giving a man a tract, we might sometimes politely offer him the paper of the day. Only we should have our object always in view, and it should always be sovereign, supreme, holy. This was the Apostle Paul's method. He tells us exactly how it was with him in his ministry. "I made myself servant unto all that I might gain the more. Unto the Jew I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews. To them that are under the law as under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law. To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak. I am made all things unto all men, that I might by all means save some." When will the church learn this great lesson? The church is not fertile in invention; the church is not quick and full in suggestion and adaptation; the church is stiff, iron, stolid, wanting in elasticity and power of accommodation to the ever-changing phases and necessities of the time. If Paul had lived now how would he have modernised that paragraph in his letter to the Corinthians? "To the outsiders I became an outsider, to the musical I became musical, to the scientific I became scientific, to the man of the world I became as a man of the world, that by all means I might gain, save, bless, some." And to what pass have we come? This "If they will not come to me, I will not go to them. I have my church, and my service at eleven in the morning and seven in the evening, and if they will not come to me I will not go to them. I have so many hymns and prayers and readings. I begin at a point and end at a point, and I do the same all the year round; my programme never changes. If they come, so be it; if they stay away, so be it." An un-Christly speech, an ungodly and unholy position!

Look at this matter in a practical light. As a matter of fact, nine-tenths of the places of worship in London on Sunday night are almost deserted. Some of them are perhaps half full, in others there is what is called "a nice sprinkling." In many churches there are less than fifty men of any size and force. Now there must be a reason for this. Let us faithfully ask, What is that reason? It is either that the attraction at church is very poor, or that there is a greater attraction elsewhere. Let me, as a Christian teacher, ask myself the question, seriously, Is the singing cheerless, is the preaching dull, is the service too long, would some other method better gain the attention of the population than the method which I am adopting? If men will not have my methods ought I not to change them? If they would like a parable, a story, a high imagining about the kingdom of heaven, ought I not to endeavour to supply these? If I cannot supply them, ought I not to retire and make way for the man who can? What changes can I introduce so as to gain some and save some? This is the question which the church dare not ask.

What is the remedy for all this? Christ gives us the remedy. We must leave the ninety-and-nine and go out. I stop there, Go out. O wondrous word! Go out. How far! Far as the prodigal has strayed! Go out from old methods, old usages, old conventionalities, old habitudes, old institutionalisms. Go out. How far how long? Until we find it. The church dare not do this; the church is paralysed with timidity. Sydney Smith said the church was dying of dignity; its dignity is now drivelled down into timidity. Think of those great churches I mean by churches all kinds of places of worship standing nearly empty every Sunday night in the year. Why not have music in them? Music would fill them; music would startle the old echoes; music would make the walls wonder what was the matter with them. Music God's first-born angel! Try music. Why not have lectures? Observe, where there is no need of these things I do not advocate their introduction. If a church can be filled because a man is going to read a chapter of the Bible, and do nothing else, I should say that was the highest triumph of modern civilisation. If a church can be filled to hear a sermon preached about Jesus and sin, and truth, and God, and Heaven, so much the better; but when you find the people running away from you, abandoning your churches, leaving your finest edifices almost wholly empty, then leave the ninety-and-nine old methods, plans, programmes, and go out after that which is lost, and do not come back until you have found it.

How many noble church organs are standing dumb to-night that might be doing the work of God in the minds and hearts of the people. They will be used here and there for the purpose of eking out the ebbing life of some aged and asthmatic common metre tune mumbled by persons of decaying respectability, when they might be interpreting infinite and thrilling melodies to hearts in which baffled hope is dying. God made the organ! He who orders the winds out of their caves, and makes the ocean roar its hoarse amen, fills the air with birds of varying note, and makes the rills drip music as they fall down from mountain slopes, and sends the wide rivers singing to the sea, there to merge their liquid treble in creation's ancient bass he whose deafening thunders seem to shake the universe, he, mighty God, put it into the mind and heart of man to make that king of instruments, the organ, which can announce a jubilee or bless a mourner's heart. Yet we lock it up and hide the key, and must not have too much of it, though there be poor people to-night in many of these places round about us who would be glad to come in and hear the thousand-throated instrument, speaking its gospel of soothing and hope. Some persons would rather hear themselves humming and booming like lost bumble bees than they would admit stringed instruments into the house" of God. I say let us by all means seek to save some. If they will not hear the preacher preach, let them hear the organ play. If they will not hear the preacher theologise, let them hear the lecturer expound and instruct and startle by many a happy suggestion. By all means let us try to save some. You will be forgiven on the last day if you can say that you did stretch a point here and there, and you did really venture to do something irregular and almost eccentric in order to charm the drunkard from the public-house, and the sensualist from his den of iniquity, and the wayfarer from his strolling, and the prodigal from his wilderness. You meant it well. What will he say Man of the parable and the story, and the bread-baking and the child-kissing what will he say? "Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful according to thy light and opportunity; enter into the joy of thy Lord."

Many of you could help very much in gaining some and in saving others. Why don't you who have this gift of preaching by music take the schoolroom belonging to your several churches, and invite the poor old people round about who would not be admitted" into concerts, to hear any kind of music you could give them? a nice bright little song, sometimes a hymn, put in by stealth, as it were. What kind of people? Why, just the poorest old crones you could gather nobody to come in who had the slightest trace of respectability about him, the door shut in the face of every man who has one sixpence to rub upon another. Poor old bodies, with their knitting, it may be, or their sewing poor worn mothers, with two or three children in their arms, who have not seen their husbands for many hours get them in. But perhaps they will they will spoil the place? Let them spoil it. I like to see a place spoiled in that sort of way. "Lord, here is the place, unspoiled; no paint scratched off, no varnish interfered with, every chair in a nice cleanly condition. This is how we kept our place, but we took care never to open the church night or day more than we could help." What will he say? May I not be there to hear!

Now what I have said about one department outside the church, namely, music, I would say, if time permitted, about fifty others, and ask you music people, literary people, persons who can contribute towards the enjoyment of the people, especially the poor I would have you say, each of you, "What is my talent, and how can I spend it so as to save some?" I want allies of all kinds, lieutenants big and little; I want men to be doing all they can, each in his own way, and all meaning the same thing, namely, the gaining and saving of men. I take Jesus Christ's idea of preaching, which he turned into the widest institution upon the earth. It included feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick, healing those that were ill, working miracles, preaching the truth, revealing God, pronouncing benedictions, denouncing public sins, encouraging the young and the old a great ministry. He who built that great sky, and filled it with worlds so many and so bright, must have grand and gracious conceptions about any ministry that is meant to teach and save and bless the immortal soul.

Why is it so difficult to save men? We say, "If this gospel is of God surely it will at once vindicate itself and save the souls of them who hear it." The salvation of men is the supreme difficulty of God. The question you have just put would be to me the most disturbing and distressing of all questions if we could not relieve it by others which do not come strictly within the power of reason to answer. Why do men need to hear more than one appeal to come to the Saviour according to the way he has laid down himself in his blessed word and testimony? One would suppose that, with a divine message, a man had simply to stand at the place of the concourse of people, and say, "This is God's message," and instantly all hearts would yield their homage and their love. How can we relieve the fearful mystery? by suggesting, or rather calling to mind, the fact, how difficult it is to do right in any direction. Do you know how difficult it is to get any man to be thoroughly clean? I do not say difficult to get a man to wash his hands, but to be thoroughly clean and to love cleanliness. Do you know how exceedingly difficult it is to get some persons to be punctual? Why, to be punctual they do not know the meaning of the word. You say, "Eight o'clock is the time." They will be there at half-past nine, or they will forget the appointment altogether, or they will come the day after. Do you know how exceedingly difficult it is to get some people to pay their debts? To pay they are not to the manner born.

Now I use these outside illustrations, only on an inferior level, to lead you up step by step to the crowning difficulty. Do you know how difficult it is to get a man to say absolutely what he means? When Jesus Christ said, "Let your yea be yea, and your nay nay," he seemed to be talking a very small kind of talk, but where is the man whose yes means yes without a taint or shadow of no in it? Have you thought of that? Where is the man whose speech is dazzlingly true? The most of us speak what is generally true, relatively true, substantially true, true with a grain of salt, with a mental reservation, with a suppressed parenthesis but dazzlingly true, transparently and gleamingly true! If it be so difficult in these matters to do that which is right, can you not see, through them, how possibly it may be the supreme difficulty of the universe to save men? Jesus Christ said, "Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life." The great difficulty for us is to do right in any way. Now, if you could show me that it is so natural and so easy for men to do right in every other way that they ought to accept the gospel if it were true, I would say you had urged against this divine testimony a very powerful argument. But the whole head is sick, the whole heart is faint. Through and through, up and down, we are wounds and bruises and putrefying sores; the right hand is crippled, and the left hand is withered, and the head is giddy, and the heart irregular, and the foot skilled in going backwards. What wonder, when the grand climax, the sovereign appeal is reached, to surrender to God and to love him, we should come upon the supreme difficulty!

What, then, is left the preacher to do to himself, and to those who hear him? to proclaim the gospel, to speak of human sin and Christ's precious blood, to announce the grand catastrophe of evil, and the grander remedy of God's holiness in Christ. That is all he can do except to announce the consequences of the rejection or acceptance of his ministry. The rejection "The wicked shall be turned into hell, with all the nations that forget God. These shall go away into everlasting punishment. There is no more sacrifice for sins. The door will be shut. Many will say to me, Lord, open unto us, but I will say, I never knew you. Cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness, there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth." And the minister dare not trifle with these terms. They are not given to him to gloss, amend, soften, but to utter with self-suppression and with tearfulness. The result of acceptance "Ye shall find rest unto your souls. Your sins, which are many, will all be forgiven you. Let the wicked turn unto the Lord, for he will abundantly pardon. Great peace have they that love thy law."

Thus promise after promise must the speaker pronounce to them who receive the word with joy. This I would humbly, reverently do now. My friend, are you hearing the gospel for the thousandth time, and yet have not received it? Are you going to reject it now? This may be your last visit to God's house. Think! Are you going to receive Christ to-night, saying, "Well, he endeavoured by all means to save some, he shall save me. Lord, receive me, save me; open thine arms, and I will flee to thee"? Are you going to say that? There is joy in the presence of the angels over one sinner that repenteth.