The last few weeks have been quite chaotic for us in several ways as I have finished my ministry with Aim International and am now on the staff of the Faith Mission Bible College in Edinburgh. This has entailed major changes for us on a number of fronts; not least the need to move my study and library from home to the College, about 35 miles away. Still, I’m well settled in there now and already enjoying the surroundings which are very conducive to study and preparation - mind you, there are no students around at the moment!

I’m really out of sync with my reading, writing and blogging but expect to get back to normal very soon. Next week Caroline and I are away on holiday to the peace and quiet of Loch Lomond so there’ll be no internet or blogging during that time. However, I am looking forward to resuming regular posting when I get back and catching up with my book of the week reviews. I’ve got a number of things related to preaching that I am keen to write about and to get your comments on.

It’s been some time since I did a www - weekly web watch so I thought I’d round off with one today because I have come across some really excellent stuff this week.

Christianity Today has a tease of an article by my good friend Colin Smith,formerly of Edinburgh and London but now ministering in Illinois. I say a tease because to get the full article you need to subscribe. Colin is a great Bible teacher and communicator and you can access his sermons online.

Over at Expository Thoughts Randy McKinion has done a very useful two part ‘Hermeneutical and Homiletical Musing on the Psalms’.

Steve Camp has a tribute to John MacArthur and the text of a powerful sermon by him on 2 Timothy 3:1-4:4

Redeeming the Time has a piece called ‘The Sword of the Spirit’ which includes this great quote: “I have never been able to understand preachers and teachers who abandon the proclamation of the Scriptures for the proclamation of anything else, like the latest findings of the social sciences, or clips from the latest Hollywood movies. While all of life needs to be discussed in light of what the Scriptures teach, there is no power like the power of God’s Word brought home to the human heart by the power of the Holy Spirit. No amount of cleverness or contemporary relevance will make up for the absence of the faithful proclamation of the Word.”

Dan Dumas of Grace Church presents a comprehensive case for expository preaching

Peter Mead consistently posts insightful and stimulating material at Biblical Preaching and it’s always worth a visit

A couple of weeks ago I had the great honour of being asked by Colin Adams, aka Unashamed Workman, to join the illustrious list of preachers of whom he has asked 10 questions. It’s been an insightful and stimulating series which I have thoroughly enjoyed and I was delighted to contribute my own two pennies worth, as they say. Colin posted my piece yesterday and rather than post it on my own blog I want to encourage you to visit and revisit his site - one of the very best preaching related blogs out there. Visit Unashamed Workman

This week’s contribution to the subject of ‘The Preacher and….Study’ comes from the pen of Spurgeon and is in typically earnest Spurgeonic tones:

“Need I affectionately call upon you, my brethren, to stir up the gifts which are in you? Cultivate your natural and gracious qualifications for the ministry. The pastor knows far more than when he left College; has he learned all he ought to have learned in that interval?

No doubt many of our brethren -

“Grow wiser than their teachers are, And better know the Lord.”

I am not so sure about those who are the most eager to assert this of themselves. Real progress may be usually reckoned by the gauge of humility. He knows most who is most aware that he knows little. We have all great need of much hard study if our ministry is to be good for anything. We have heard of the French peasants who sent to the Pope for a curate “who had finished his education.” They complained that their pastor was always studying, and they wanted a man who knew all that was necessary, and consequently needed no time for books and thoughts. What fools they must be in that part of France! We need exactly the kind of preacher whom they despised. He who has ceased to learn has ceased to teach. He who no longer sows in the study will no more reap in the pulpit.”

This week’s listing of benefits of expository preaching comes from Dan Dumas, Executive Pastor of Grace Church, Sun Valley, California

1. It inoculates a congregation from doctrinal error (Titus 1:9).
2. It ensures that the gospel is preached (John 5:39).
3. It honors the “whole counsel of God” (Acts 18:24; 20:26–27).
4. It saturates your message in Scripture (1 Pet. 4:11).
5. It promotes the highest level of biblical literacy among our people.
6. It provides accountability for the preach

• It fosters good scholarship
• I never fret about Sunday
• It holds me accountable to preaching what God says and not my own opinions
• We are called to be not novel, but faithful.

7. It protects the preacher.

• An expositor rarely wastes time wondering what to preach next—or where to go next.
• You get to observe the marvelous providence of God.
• It keeps you from attacking people, developing hobby horses, and wasting valuable study time.
• It is not a homiletical straitjacket. It is a philosophy, not a style.
• Its form reflects the genre and text.

8. It prevents inaccurate proof-texting and Scripture twisting.

• You inadvertently train your people to hijack verses out of their context.
• Proof-texting robs the text of its meaning and power.

9. It gives your people an appetite for the Word (1 Pet. 2:2).
10. It has the inherent power of God (Isa. 55:11; Heb. 4:12). A Scripture-soaked preacher is an awful weapon in the arsenal of God.
11. It has inestimable value.

I’m picking up again the series ‘The Preacher and…..’ looking at different aspects of the preacher’s life and work. For the next few weeks we are going to consider ‘The Preacher and…..his study’. This is not so much the place as the practice - though we might unearth some helpful comments on the former. Having just relocated my study and library some 35 miles to the College where I am about to start work, I was amused by this quote I found some time ago. In his book, The Puritan Hope, Iain Murray recounts how David Bogue, who was greatly used in the preparation of mission workers in England around the turn of the eighteenth century, included in his issues to be considered, “What proportion as to expense ought a minister’s library to bear to his furniture?”

However, my main quote for this new theme comes from a biography of John Henry Jowett who ministered at Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York and at Westminster Chapel in London.

“I am learning to resist almost every hour of the day the tremendous forces that would push me here and there. I do not know what time ministers spend here in their studies. They are evidently engaged in a hundred outside works which must leave them very little time to prepare their message. I am going to stand steadily against this pressure, even at the cost of being misunderstood. When I get into my own home I shall allow nothing to interfere with my morning in the study. If the pulpit is to be occupied by men with a message worth hearing we must have the time to prepare it. I feel the preaching of the Word of God is incomparably my first work in New York.”

The original purpose of this blog was to stimulate discussion about expository preaching and to be a means of encouragement to those involved in this vital ministry. One of the ways of doing that is to share the experiences of those exercising an expository ministry and I have already posted some lists of the benefits and will do so again in the future. However, I thought today I would share two personal experiences.

During my first pastorate in London, back in the mid 80s, a young Christian man came to us who had been involved in a heavy shepherding and strongly charismatic fellowship and had come away battered and bruised by his time there. He was at a very low spiritual ebb. As a church we decided to simply love and care for him and expose him to the regular teaching ministry of God’s Word. We didn’t counsel him as such or anything like that; we just welcomed him into our midst and week by week he heard the systematic preaching of Scripture and was, in a remarkably short period of time, emotionally and spiritually healed. It was a great lesson to me, in the early days of my ministry, to allow God’s Word to do its work.

Then just yesterday I spent some time with a friend who pastors a city-centre church which is thriving and bursting at the seams and where the average age of those attending is about 23. The secret of his ’success’? Nothing gimmicky or fancy - just the regular, weekly systematic preaching and application of God’s Word.

Many have lost confidence in the ability and power of God’s Word to do its work and have resorted to manipulative and marketing techniques. The need is for a return to a faithful, passionate declaration of the Word of God.

Why not share your testimony or experience with others? Send it to me by email or as a comment and let’s encourage one another’s hearts and strengthen one another’s hands.

I’m continuing to read a book about preaching a week, though I am a little late in posting reviews because of all the changes in our circumstances at the present time. At the moment, I’m focusing on preachers to learn from their example, and you can’t do that without including Spurgeon in the list. My problem was that over the years I have read so much about and by the great man that I needed a fresh pair of eyes to see him through. Providentially I found it in a book in the library of my new College - ‘Spurgeon. Heir of the Puritans’ by Ernest W Bacon. The book was published in 1967 and is now, as far as I can tell, out of print. Bacon has also written a biography of John Bunyan and, judging by his treatment of Spurgeon, I should add that one to my list.

Bacon’s parents knew Spurgeon personally and visited him frequently so he grew up with an intimate awareness of the person as well as the preacher and I think that’s what has made this account of Spurgeon’s life and ministry so fresh. I certainly felt, at the end of the book, that I had encountered a man, not just a legend. It’s an engaging and absorbing read. I began reading it as I waited in the departure lounge at Khartoum airport for my flight home a couple of weeks ago. I continued to read as I queued and passed through the boarding formalities and by the time I touched down at Doha Airport in Qatar, some four hours later, the book was read. I got caught up and involved in the human side of the renowned preacher and even sensed tears in my eyes as Bacon recounted with great feeling the closing moments of his life and the last dialogue between Charles and Susannah.

The book is full of little touches that endear you to the subject and get you under the man’s skin, as it were. And it’s not just what we are told but the way we are told it. There’s a clear account of the growing sense of conviction of sin under which the young Spurgeon came, leading to his conversion; his first preach at the age of 16 and his fast growing reputation; his early years at new Park Street and then at the Metropolitan Tabernacle where there was such a remarkable anointing on his ministry so that it is notable, and was at the time a matter of note, that in one month only seven people were converted; his prolific preaching ministry, regularly preaching 10 or 12 times a week, always focusing on Christ and delighting in proclaiming him to all; his personal touch and intimate knowledge of and involvement with his vast and fast growing congregation so that he could claim, “I used to have such a trustworthy memory that I not only knew the nearly 6,000 members of this church by face, which I am still able to do, but I knew them all by name, and it was a rare thing for me ever to forget or make a mistake.”

But as always, I was in search of Spurgeon the preacher. Here’s a graphic account of his style. “With masterly skill he opened up his text, well divided his subject into many divisions, and sub divisions, as the Puritans had taught him to do; deftly dropping in a telling illustration, carefully explained a vital doctrine, carried home the argument or appeal to mind, heart, conscience and will, with now a touch of humour, now a touch of pathos. Texts there were many, but only one subject. Christ and His truth and great salvation is the essence of every sermon. He was truly the embodiment of the Puritan preacher in the picture which Christian saw in the Interpreter’s house in Pilgrim’s Progress: ‘It had eyes lift up to heaven, the best of books in his hand, the Law of Truth was written upon his lips, the World was behind his back; it stood as if it pleaded with men, and a Crown of Gold did hang over his head.’

“Spurgeon preached energetically too, at least in his earlier days, marching to and fro on his platform, rather like an American advocate in front of the witness’ stand, gazing at one part of his congregation, now at another. Without a doubt he overawed and gripped the vast assemblies as one man. The flow of simple Saxon speech, the rich, deep voice that penetrated to the most distant parts of the Tabernacle, the solemnity of the message as coming direct from the Lord Himself, and the homely comprehensibility of it all - attracted and held the attention, none present but realised that the Lord of Hosts was with him in very deed!”

Bacon himself, in a closing chapter, draws out some of the lessons to be learned from this prince among preachers -

i. His intimacy with God: “He lived for God, in the pulpit, in the study, in the home, in the street, in the college, in the orphanage. He calls us back to seek first-hand knowledge and dealings with our Maker and Saviour. Men talk of God, but do not seem to walk closely with Him. Spurgeon did.”

ii. His commitment to sound biblical doctrine: “Spurgeon would have us return to first principles, rooted in Bible doctrines…..He would recall us to a Christ-centred theology and to the doctrine of the Cross as the only hope for a sin-sick world.” Neither was Spurgeon afraid to contend publicly for the truth. Though not a natural confrontationalist, he engaged in the disputes over the downgrade controversy and baptismal regeneration as, in Bacon’s words, a Mr Valiant for Truth.

iii. His commitment to the Bible itself: “In God’s Word, he would say to us, God has revealed absolute truth and a firm foundation for our soul’s salvation and our Christian life.”

iv. His commitment to expository preaching: “Spurgeon’s preaching was an opening up and an application of the Scripture facts and truths themselves.”

v. His passion for souls: “He aimed at conversions as well as the building up of believers, and God gave them to him in abundance……He pressed home in nearly every sermon the necessity of a work of grace in the soul to bring forgiveness, cleansing and eternal life.”

vi. His passion for Christ: “Christ was the glorious theme of all his sermons. Christ in his divine Person, and His atoning work, in the graces of His character, and in the effectiveness of His offices as Prophet Priest and King. Spurgeon, as he himself once said, found his way sooner or later to Christ from whatever part of the Bible gave him his text. The Bunyan-like simplicity and beauty of his speech set forth Christ lovingly and persuasively, and the result was that hearts were warmed, melted, and constrained to Him.”

To Bacon’s list I would add three others -

vii. His knowledge of the Scriptures. Spurgeon was clearly a man saturated with the Word of God and it is reflected not only in his ministry but in the effectiveness of that ministry. “His methods of sermon preparation were peculiarly his own, and none but a spiritual genius and an alert, Bible-steeped mind could have continued to use it year after year.”

viii. His commitment to the training of others and the emphasis in that training on the centrality of God’s Word. “It seemed to me,” he said, “that the preachers of the grand old truths of the Gospel, ministers suitable for the masses, were more likely to be found in an institution where preaching and divinity would be the main objects, and not degrees and other insignia of human learning.”

ix. His voracious reading. “He read rapidly, making it a point to read half a dozen of the meatiest book per week. He would sit down to five or six large books and master their contents at a sitting.” He was not only a reader of the Puritans - 7,000 volumes of which were among his 12,000 volume library - but read widely in the fields of literature, biography, travel, science, history and poetry.

Whether you know nothing of Spurgeon or (so you thought) everything, this is a book for every preacher and lover of good preaching.

I am seriously out of routine with my blogging on this site due to the fact that I am in the process of packing and relocating my office and library from my home to the College where I will be working from next month - some 35 miles away. In a couple of weeks I hope to get back in the swing of things when things have settled down somewhat and in the meantime I will post as and when able. Today I post the third in my occasional series of The benefits of Expository Preaching as listed by various people. (Previous lists here)

Today’s contribution is courtesy of Richard L Mayhue and comes from his opening chapter of the excellent ‘Rediscovering Expository Preaching’, edited by John MacArthur which I reviewed earlier this year.

1. It best achieves the biblical intent of preaching: delivering God’s message.

2. It promotes scripturally authoritative preaching.

3. It magnifies God’s Word.

4. It provides a storehouse of preaching material.

5. It develops the pastor as a man of God’s Word.

6. It ensures the highest level of Bible knowledge for the flock.

7. It leads to thinking and living biblically.

8. It encourages both depth and comprehensiveness.

9. It forces the treatment of hard-to-interpret texts.

10. It allows for handling broad theological themes.

11. It keeps preachers away from ruts and hobby horses.

12. It prevents the insertion of human ideas.

13. It guards against misinterpretation of the biblical text.

14. It imitates the preaching of Christ and the apostles.

15. It brings out the best in the expositor.

 THE PREACHER’S CHOICE 

My latest Preacher to make his choice of the books that have most influenced him is David Jackman, President of the Proclamation Trust, popular conference speaker and author of several books

David says, “Herewith my 10 all-time ‘greatest influence’ books, as requested, with apologies for the delay.  They are in order of encounter during my Christian life, not importance.”

5. The Way (Godfrey Robinson & Stephen Winward) - basic handbook for young Christians, which got me started on the right pathway in personal discipleship.
6. The Craft of the Sermon (W E Sangster) started me thinking about Biblical preaching and how to begin to practise it.
7. Men Made New (John Stott) - exposition of Romans 5-8, which sorted out my understanding of living the Christian life.
8. Spiritual Depression - its causes and cure (Martyn Lloyd-Jones) - warmhearted practical exposition of godly living.
9. True Spirituality (Francis Schaeffer) rescued me from a narrow pietism and introduced me to the breadth and depth of Schaeffer’s thought and of a Biblical world-view.
10. Knowing God (J I Packer) - more of the same with a robust reformed and Biblical theology.
11. Institutes of Religion (John Calvin) - a constant source of treasure and a stimulating challenge to rigorous Biblical thinking and argument.
12. According to Plan (Graeme Goldsworthy)  introduced me to Biblical theology and its coherent hermeneutical key to the whole of Scripture.
13. The Supremacy of God in Preaching (John Piper) - a powerful stimulus and challenge to any tendency to dry exegesis in preaching.
14. The God of Promise and the Life of Faith (Scott Hafemann) - scholarly exposition married to warm pastoral application on many of the fundamental issues affecting Christians today.

I confess that Charles Simeon is a name that I have been aware of for a long time but knew really nothing about, so it’s been a sheer delight to read this superb biography of him by Hugh Evan Hopkins.

Mind you, it was a bit surreal at times, as I was reading this during my recent visit to Khartoum, with the juxtaposition between the life of this quintessentially Englishman of the 18th and 19th centuries and present day Sudan.

Hopkins account of Simeon’s life is a very warm but not uncritical one, and he paints a picture of a somewhat eccentric lifelong bachelor whose own ministry was quite remarkable but who also had a profound influence on the Church of his day and on the lives of some very influential Christians.

As a preacher, Simeon was in many ways, a man going against the tide.   In a day when the Anglican Church was dominated by patronage and ministers with little if any experience of the workings of grace in their lives and still less any sense of divine call to the ministry, Simeon, who had a clear conversion experience and call to preach, had a very high view of his calling and his commitment to an expository ministry of God’s Word.  “Simeon believed that his task was to let the Bible speak, and in doing so he was to act as an interpreter.   The deep things of God which he discovered in his long hours of personal study were to be expounded in such a way that his hearers, who may not often have read and seldom understood the passages concerned, would be left in no doubt of their meaning and application.  Hence his reiterated advice about giving a text ‘its just meaning, its natural bearing and its legitimate use’, and the need for the preacher to ‘ascertain from the original and from the context the true, faithful and primary meaning of every text’.”   He was a strong believer in well structured sermons and once said “A sermon should be like a telescope.  Each successive division of it should be as an additional lens to bring the subject of your text nearer, and make it more distinct.”

He published huge numbers of his sermon outlines.  Fifty years after beginning his ministry at the age of 23 he made available no less than 2536 outlines, covering the whole Bible; a publishing work which employed 32 men full-time for16 months.

There is no doubt that Simeon, gifted by God as he was, was a natural orator, and those gifts were used to the full and to great effect in his preaching.  He was a master at word pictures and making scenarios come alive in the minds of his hearers.  He preached with great fervour, so unlike the dry lecturing normally found in most pulpits of the day, leading one little girl who heard him to exclaim, “O Mama, what is the gentleman in a passion about?”

Simeon was also greatly used of God in what we would today describe as the mentoring of younger men starting out in the ministry.  “Simeon saw himself as supplying his beloved Church of England with generation after generation of young clergy instructed in their faith and trained to express it clearly”.  Literally hundreds of young ordinands embarked on their ministries under Simeon’s tutelage and guidance.   He had an amazing ministry of encouragement through letter writing.  Remember that this was the day of handwritten letters when copies were simply handwritten copies of handwritten letters, yet after some 40 years in the ministry, Simeon had more than 7,000 copies of letters he had written filed away in his study.

I was struck by how many influential Christian leaders and missionaries had been hugely influenced directly by Simeon or even brought to saving faith under his ministry.  People like Samuel Marsden, Patrick Bronte, Hery Martyn and others all owed a great deal to this outstanding Christian leader.  Simeon had a heart and passion for the work of world mission, again not common in his generation, and especially for the Jewish people.

In a day when the veracity of the Bible had not yet really been questioned, Simeon allowed perhaps more flexibility than we would be comfortable with.  “He was quite prepared to admit that ‘while no error in doctrine or other matter is allowed; yet there are inexactnesses in reference to philosophical and scientific matters because of its popular style’.”  Nonetheless, he clearly accepted its authority - “I soon learned that I must take the Scriptures with the simplicity of a little child, and be content to receive as God’s testimony what he has revealed, whether I can unravel all the difficulties that may attend it or not…I feel that I cannot even explain how it is that I move my finger, and therefore I am content to be ignorant of innumerable things which exceed not only my wisdom, but the wisdom of the most learned men in the universe.”

Hopkins brilliantly portrays a man with very strong convictions, a great heart for God’s Word and his workers and a compassionate and gentle spirit.   As I thought of these qualities and the amazing influence he had on so many within Anglicanism in his day, more than once I found myself thinking of him as a 19th century Dick Lucas.

During his last illness he wrote these moving and revealing words, testifying to his assurance “in the sovereignty of God in choosing such a one - and the mercy of God in pardoning such a one - and the patience of God in bearing with such a one - and the faithfulness of God in perfecting his work and performing all his promises to such a one.”