Listen to this message:
Albert N. Martin
Now, each of you who has had some acquaintance with the printed schedule will know that the subject announced for our meditation in the Scriptures this evening has been “Our Vision for These Days.” I believe just a word of explanation is in order with reference to that title and the rationale that lies behind it.
When the elders met prayerfully to consider the various subjects and the themes that should be dealt with at this particular conference, it became evident to us—as you already know, those of you who are part of the conference—that we felt it was a very opportune time to draw our attention to the 1689 Confession and to concentrate, in the public ministries of the Word in the morning, upon those biblical themes and subjects that will be altered or expanded in the proposed changes in the Confession, that in the evening session there ought to be at least one slot where the overall picture of that which binds us together in the fellowship of shared commitment and concern should be articulated.
So it was the direction of my fellow elders that on this occasion I should speak to you on the subject of “Our Vision for These Days,” and under that heading to make an effort to give in capsule form the burning concerns that lie at the heart of our own life and ministry here, and we believe which explains why most, if not all of you, are here because you share in that vision.
Now in addressing the subject our vision for these days, I want to make a dual disclaimer. We claim no extraordinary or direct commission from God to these things. None of us has had a visitation in the middle of the night, let alone in the middle of the day, in which God has spoken to us by the voice of an angel or an audible voice from Heaven articulating those things which ought to be the focal point of our concern as we seek to minister in our own generation, and so in using those terms we claim no extraordinary commission; furthermore, we claim no exclusive commission to these concerns.
We believe and have contact with many of God’s people in many parts of the country who are not here at this conference, and many of His people and His servants in other parts of the world whose hearts beat as one with us in these concerns. We make this disclaimer on the very threshold of our study, that as surely as we make no claim to extraordinary commissions from the Lord in these matters, so we make no claim to an exclusive commission. But rather, as we have sought to search the Scriptures and to know the mind of God as revealed in them, and then to access the particular circumstances in which we are called upon to minister at this point in history, these concerns that constitute what we are calling “Our Vision for These Days” are but a distillation of biblical truths on the one hand and of fallible judgment on the other hand, but we trust judgment which has had something of the promised wisdom and guidance of the Holy Spirit.
With that bit of explanation as to the origin of the subject matter, and then those two disclaimers, we come now to consider the subject “Our Vision for These Days.” It has been a rather traumatic thing to try to reduce to the irreducible those things which do indeed constitute our vision for these days. Those notes of inscripturated truth which form the pivots around which the entirety of our ministry turns. To change the imagery, those elements of divine truth which drive the wheels of our day-by-day endeavor as we seek to run down the track of obedience to the Word of God. In addressing the subject I have attempted to reduce our vision for these days under three simple headings. It is a vision of seeking a recovery of the biblical gospel, a renewal of biblical holiness, and a return to biblical churchmanship.
First of all, our vision for these days is that of seeking a recovery of the biblical gospel. Nothing is more important in any generation than the maintenance of the integrity of the gospel and the proclamation of that gospel in the power and demonstration of the Holy Spirit. I say that nothing is more important in any generation than the maintenance of the integrity of the gospel for the simple reason that the gospel is the exclusive, divine remedy for man in the manifold complexities of his sin and lostness.
Romans 1:16 stands as a beacon light continually reminding us of this elementary truth, “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation.” God has but one appointed instrument to bring to bear His glorious salvation in Jesus Christ, which at every point of its marvelous provisions answers to the intricate complexity of man in his state of sin. Because the gospel and the gospel alone answers and at every point to man and his sinfulness, nothing is more important in any generation than the maintenance of the integrity of that gospel.
It is for this cause that the mind and the soul and then the pen of the great Apostle Paul expresses in language that is nothing short of vitriolic. What he says in Galatians chapter 1 when in his own generation there were those who would tamper with the integrity of the gospel. Paul writes in Galatians 1:8-9, “But though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach unto you any gospel other than that which we preached unto you, let him be anathema. As we have said before, so say I now again, if any man preaches unto you any gospel other than that which ye received, let him be anathema.” “Let him come under the fearful, frightening curse of Almighty God!” Why does he speak with such wholly invective. such sanctified vituperation as to say, “Let every man be damned if he dare tamper with the integrity of the gospel”? He says those words in that spirit because he knew, he understood and was committed to the reality that the gospel maintained not in mere, shadowy outlines of the reality, but the gospel maintained in its undiluted integrity, was the power of God unto salvation.
Therefore, when its integrity was threatened, he calls down the curse of Almighty God upon any man, angel, or apostle who would dare to tamper with that integrity. Our vision for these days involves nothing less than a recovery of that biblical gospel.
Brethren, it is not an overstatement to say that by large our generation has lost the gospel. It has lost the gospel! Amidst the plethora of so-called gospel endeavors seen in the proliferation of radio broadcasts, television ministries, evangelistic campaigns and endeavors of all sorts and sizes, it is no overstatement to say that by and large our generation has lost the gospel! Our vision for these days—if our hearts are touched with any measure of genuine concern for the souls of men, any genuine concern for man as he really is according to the description of Holy Scripture—we cannot help but have a passion that there would be a recovery of that gospel, which alone will leave man in his real need, with real deliverance, and a real salvation.
Now, let me break down this heading into three major subdivisions. I would assert that we desperately need a vision for the recovery of the gospel in three areas. First, in its essential, doctrinal doctrine; secondly, in its appointed means of communication; and thirdly, in its efficacious power.
We need a recovery of the biblical gospel, first of all, in its essential, doctrinal content. There is abroad in our day a notion assumed by many, expressed and even defended by some: that the gospel is a kind of theological nose of wax, and as long as the wax contains the ingredients of Christ, and something of forgiveness and peace and joy and a little bit of the cross somewhere there in that wax, we are free to shake that in terms of the felt needs of men in any given place in terms of the sociopolitical climate in which the gospel comes, and to accommodate it in terms of that climate. As the well-known pop psychologist who calls himself Dr. Robert Schuller has said, “To preach the gospel means to find a hurt and heal it.” In such a climate there is a desperate need for a recovery of the biblical gospel in terms of its essential doctrinal content as defined by God Himself. There are two major motifs of gospel content to which I would direct your attention.
First of all, following on from quoting Romans 1:16-17, “For it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For therein
Now, we are told in our generation that legal concepts are relatively nonexistent. We live in a day in which the concept of retributive justice has well-nigh been banished from the awareness of our generation. The Pope’s penal institution system is considered far more as remedial than punitive. So, we are told, “You can’t communicate the gospel to this generation in terms of the imagery of God as a Judge, man as a subject, man accountable to God in terms of law, man guilty and culpable in terms of a violative law, God as an incensed and angry lawgiver, man as the culpable, guilty criminal.”
We have a generation that no longer thinks in those categories. Therefore we dare not present as the heart of the gospel that in it is revealed a righteousness of God from faith to faith! We are told, rather, “Let us accommodate the gospel to the areas of felt need and existential awareness among men.” If we are ministering in a generation whose great concern is its horizontal dilemmas; like the dilemma of the horrible scourge of age, the dilemma of the horrible scourge of addiction to illicit drugs, the horrible and frightening scourge of child abuse and international tension. “Surely, if we’re going to get a hearing of the gospel, we can’t be talking mumbo jumbo about the righteousness of God! No one will listen to us! Therefore, we must take the gospel and present it in its dominant emphasis, as that which has something to say about the plague of AIDS and the plague of drug addiction, etc. etc.”
What do we say to that?! Well, we say this: if we have a generation so out of touch with the reality, that Almighty God is the Judge of the earth, and every man, woman, boy and girl is regarded by that God as a subject accountable to His moral Law; and if reality is that every man, woman, boy and girl has been regarded in the court of Heaven as guilty and worthy of death from the moment Adam sinned, and has a culpability and exposure to divine wrath and anger intensified by every word, every thought, every motive, every deed that has not been in strict, mathematical parallelism to the law of God; if that’s reality, and this generation is so out of touch with that reality, the answer is not to reshape the gospel! It is to thunder into the ears of this generation the God who is, the Law that is, the sin that is, the wrath that is, the damnation that is, the court that is, and the sentence that is to fall upon every guilty sinner!
I say to you, my brethren in the ministry, our vision for these days must be nothing less than a recovery of the biblical gospel in its essential, doctrinal contents. According to the clear emphasis of Romans 1:16-17 and all that follows in the exposition of that gospel in the epistle to the Romans, it comes couched in, bristling with, surrounded by forensic, legal concepts. We have no liberty to change its dominant emphasis! We have the marvelous privilege, as well as the awesome responsibility, if necessary to begin with its foundational corollaries. If our generation is so out of touch with the God who is and so out of touch with what they are as described biblically, then we must labor to sound forth those truths which under God will create a climate of spiritual perception in which the announcement that there is a righteousness of God will be the best news in the world that men and women have ever heard.
There is one other strand of emphasis in terms of what I would call the dominant, doctrinal content of the gospel. It came before us in our consecutive reading yesterday in 2 Corinthians chapter 5. The word ‘reconciliation’ is the in word in our day, but alas, in most gospel preaching it is reconciliation at the horizontal level.
But Paul’s gospel of reconciliation—what we might call not a twin dominant note, but the second note in order of dominance—is found in 2 Corinthians 5:18, “All things are of God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and gave unto us the ministry of reconciliation; to wit, that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not reckoning unto them their trespasses, and having committed unto us the word of reconciliation. We are ambassadors, therefore, on behalf of Christ, as though God were entreating by us; we beseech you on behalf of Christ, be ye reconciled to God. Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf.” Now, notice the fusion of the two dominant notes. “That we might become the righteousness of God in him.”
You see that the dominant note in this gospel of reconciliation is not reconciliation at the horizontal level! Blessed be God for everything, that the gospel effects at the horizontal level! I am not denying that element of truth either in its manifestation, in the content of gospel effects as we see them in Scripture or in our own experience. But Paul says, as an ambassador who was sent on an errand by his King, that his message of reconciliation was pervasively Godward! “All things are of God who reconciled us to himself through Christ.” Christ, as the Mediator, has been sent forth that we might be reconciled unto God. That the enmity Godward to us and ours to Him to the work of Christ and subsequently the work of the Spirit, that that mutual enmity might be removed so that we might be brought unto God!
There is a God-centeredness in the message of reconciliation! “We beseech you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.” Why do I emphasize this? Again, for the simple reason that Christ has been looked upon not primarily for what He says He is as the Saviour of men. “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but by Me.” Who gave Himself for us, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God! But if the note of reconciliation is sounded, it is one which terminates on horizontal matters. Christ has come to help you get your act together, to get your own fragmented pieces all integrated again! Christ has come to reconcile the husband and the wife who are estrange, the nations who are at one another’s throats, and all of the other dimensions of horizontal reconciliations.
The great emphasis of Scripture is this: As surely as the gospel holds forth a righteousness of God, it sets forth this marvelous truth: that in Jesus Christ there is a way for man to be reconciled to God.
Eternal light! Eternal light!
How pure that soul must be
When, placed within Thy searching sight,
It shrinks not, but with calm delight
Can live and look on Thee.
The spirits that surround Thy throne
May bear this burning bliss;
But surely that is theirs alone,
For they have never never known
A fallen world like this.
But, how shall I, whose native fear
Is dark, whose mind is dim,
Before the ineffable appear,
And on my naked spirit bear
The uncreated beam?
There’s the great dilemma of reality! God, if only I am defiled and polluted and banished from His presence! Bless God for the next stanza.
There is a way for man to rise
To Thee, sublime Abode;
An Offering and a Sacrifice,
A Holy Spirit’s energies,
An Advocate with God.
These, these prepare us for the sight
Of holiness above;
The sons of ignorance and night
May dwell in the eternal Light
Through the eternal Love.
That’s the gospel! How can sons of night and darkness dwell in peace with a God of light? Brethren. we’ve lost that gospel in our generation! We are, I trust, committed to this common vision: that in our days there would be a recovery of this biblical gospel. This biblical gospel with its emphasis upon the legal, the forensic realities of who God is as the Righteous Judge of the universe, what man is as a guilty criminal before His court, and who God is as the great, eternal Father of our first father, Adam, the Father who has disinherited all of Adam’s sons because of sin; but who offers a way of reconciliation, who has effected a way of reconciliation to Himself. That once again, man the creature may not only stand in the court of Heaven credited with a perfect righteousness, but brought face to face with his God. To know Him, to love Him, to commune with Him, to feast upon His glory, and to count His greatest prize, precisely what Jesus said is the essence of eternal life. “For this is life eternal, that they may know Thee, the only True God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent.”
You see, brethren, when we begin to be consumed with a passion for a recovery of the biblical gospel in its essential, doctrinal contents, we will not have any rest or peace until we begin to sense that by the blessing of God our preaching is creating a climate in which the dominant emphasis of imputed righteousness and God-centered reconciliation can begin to become glorious good news. When we do, then we will find ourselves in our gospel preaching constantly engaged in two glorious, blessed activities: continually announcing the grand indicatives of the gospel, and continually thundering out the sober imperatives of the gospel.
Well, you see the gospel is essentially comprised of those two elements. It has its grand indicatives, it declares what God has done! 1 Corinthians 15, “This is the gospel we preach unto you, the gospel by which you are saved, if you hold fast to this truth: Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures; he was buried; he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.” He was seen, He ascended, He sat down, He sent forth the Spirit! The gospel is not primarily an announcement of subjective feelings. It is a declaration of the most glorious indicatives ever warranted upon the face of the earth!
The second Person of the Godhead has taken to Himself a real, a true humanity; and in the marvelous mystery of the hypostatic union the eternal Word takes to Himself flesh. While never, never ceasing to be what He always was, eternal God, He begins to be something He never had been: a true man. As the God-man, He lives the life we should have lived, He dies the death we dare not die, He validates the worth of His work and life and death by a glorious resurrection, and the Father vindicates Him by sitting Him in His right hand, handing over to Him the full reigns of authority in His mediatorial Kingdom. In that glorious, unique God-man, and in the virtue of His perfect life, death, resurrection, session, and mediatorial reign at the right hand of God, we are then able to announce the sober imperatives of the gospel: repent and believe, and you shall be saved! Paul said he testified repentance towards God and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ. (Acts 20:21.) Our vision for these days, brethren, is nothing short than that of a recovery of the biblical gospel, first of all in its essential, doctrinal contents.
Secondly, in its appointed means of communication. Again, we need a recovery of the biblical gospel, not only in terms of content, but the divinely appointed means of its communication. We live in the day of gospel-acting groups; gospel guitar-twanging, drum-banging groups; hear-splitting, mind-blowing rock gospel groups. We live in the day of gospel mime groups, gospel clown groups, gospel warbling groups, and gospel everything groups! It’s as though God has nothing to say about the means by which He has ordained that His glorious message be brought to impinge upon the consciousness of men! But He has an appointed means.
I direct you to passages you all know. If you’ve come for something new and profound you might as well leave while it’s early and get a good night’s sleep, because I have no novelties, my brethren. We read in the 10th chapter of Romans that marvelous, wonderful gospel promise. Romans 10:12-13, “For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek: for the same Lord is Lord of all, and is rich unto all that call upon him; for, whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Now, the great question: “How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed?” If there is no object to faith, how can there be the cry of faith? It was when blind Bartimaeus heard that Jesus of Nazareth passed by that he cried, “Son of David, have mercy upon me!” Though blind, he believed the report and he called, and was healed.
Paul says by inescapable, logical sequence, “Whoever calls will be saved, but how shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in him whom they have not heard?” Not of whom, but whom they have not heard. The one upon whom they call is the one whom they hear. “Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold, they shall hear My voice.” (John 10:16.) “How shall they call in him whom they have not heard?” How are they going to hear the Great Shepherd who is out in the earth, seeking His sheep? How shall they hear? It doesn’t say without a mime, an actor, a warbler, a drum-pounder, a guitar player! “How shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach [so as to truly be the voice of Jesus Christ] except they be sent?” That is, that they have a bonafide, scripturally-based call to proclaim the name and the message of the Saviour.
What is God’s appointed means of communicating this glorious gospel that has its focal points of imputed righteousness and reconciliation to God? The appointed means is proclamation by a duly-sent herald. That perfectly tallies with what we are told in 1 Corinthians chapter 1. The Apostle says in verse 21, “For seeing that in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom knew not God, it was God’s good pleasure through the foolishness of the preaching to save them that believe.” If you have the old American Standard you’ll notice the rendering is preaching, but with a marginal rendering Greek preach, and you see the translator’s hung up when he comes to kerygma, because the word brings together two inseparable realities. The kerygma is the thing that is the message with specific delineation of its contents. It is the thing preached, but it is also the preached thing. Kerygma brings into inseparable relationship the content of the biblical gospel, and the appointed means of its communication. That communication is proclamation; proclamation in the name of the Sovereign. It’s proclamation from the heart of one who says with Paul, “We preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord in ourselves, as servants for Jesus’ sake.” It’s proclamation in the spirit of the Apostle who said, “We were willing to impart unto you not the gospel of God only, but our own souls, because you were become dear to us.”
I am not in any way overlooking these dimensions of preaching that exists in the heart of the preacher, his spirit of servitude to those to whom he preaches. His deep, solicitous yearning that he says, “I was willing to impart my very soul unto you in preaching,” but at the end of the day we come back to the question: what is the appointed means of communicating this gospel in the purity of its content? It is proclamation in what God calls “vessels of clay.” We have the treasure in earthen vessels. It’s a message that men regard as utter folly. That’s what he means when he says, “God has been pleased by the foolishness of the thing preached, that which men regard as utter folly.” (1 Corinthians 1:21).
To say that in One who came out of Nazareth—expelled from the womb as any other child in its blood and mucus, with the cries and groans of His mother, raised in a humble home, pounding pegs in a carpenter’s shop with his father—that in that Person of such humble origins would claim to be God’s Messiah. Who’s death upon the cross is set forth as a death of nothing short of cosmic implications, reconciling to Himself things above the heavens and beneath the earth. Men look at that and say, “What a bunch of nonsense.” But wonder of wonders, when a vessel of clay proclaims Christ as the wisdom of God, Christ as the power of God, Christ crucified as the only hope of sinners, Christ raised and exalted as the object of the faith of sinners, Almighty God puts forth the arm of His power. Paul says to those who are called to Christ—in that message which men by nature regard as foolishness—that it becomes to them, “Wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.”
My brethren, our vision for these days is not only a recovery of the biblical gospel in its essential, doctrinal content, but in its appointed means of communication. That’s why we’re committed to the primacy of preaching. That’s why we’re committed to seeking, to excel—if we excel in nothing else—to excel in accurate, earnest preaching. We’re committed and we’re crying to God, and laboring that God would raise up preachers! If God gives us some authors who embalm their rich thoughts in printer’s ink, that’s good and well! If God gives us men who leave other legacies, that’s good and well! But, my brethren, face it. Face it, the labor of a preacher goes with him to his grave, but hallelujah, it will meet him in the Day of Judgement!
Are you willing to spend and be spent? Be consumed with a very fire of gospel passion until it takes you to your grave, believing that in so doing you’ve given yourself to that which God will make effectual? Give to our beloved Lord Jesus the fruit of His sufferings and of His death. That’s our vision. We’re not trying to mold cool communicators in this academy. You know, gospel chatters. “Hello folks. It’s so nice to see ya. It’s so good to have you here. Hope you all feel comfortable. I don’t want to offend anyone. We can assure you, whatever we’re going to tell you is going to make you feel so nice.” I tell you, my friends, that kind of gospel preaching is probably taking more people to hell than the heresy of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. They are men who can talk of sin and of the cross and of hell and of the open wounds of an incarnate God, immolated, dripping with men’s spittle, buried beneath the billows of divine wrath, and have no passion, no sense of reckless wonder! No wonder men don’t believe it. No wonder they don’t take the Saviour seriously. If the preacher doesn’t, why should they? I must hasten if I’m going to even get through our first head.
For we are committed, as our vision for these days, not only for a recovery of the gospel in its essential, doctrinal content, in its appointed means of communication, but O brethren, hear me carefully: in its efficacious power.
What is that efficacious power? I direct you to two texts of Scripture that are probably already coming to your minds. Turn one chapter over in 1 Corinthians. 1 Corinthians chapter 2, “And, I brethren, when I came unto you, did not come with excellency of speech or of wisdom.” That is, “I did not come speaking to you within the categories with which your local, official doctors of rhetoric would dictate.” That’s what he means when he says, “excellency of speech.” You see, Corinth was a center of learning. You have to at least give them credit that they did not regard a learned man who could not speak well. That shows how far we degenerated. There are men with PHDs that grunt and snort, and could hardly put sentences together. There at Corinth you weren’t considered a learned man unless you could speak well, but speaking well meant careful regard to all of their established laws of rhetoric. If they detected your familiarity with and submission to those canons of rhetorical excellence, then they would say, “You spoke with excellency of speech.”
Paul said, “I did not come with one eye on your canons of rhetoric to make sure that you ticked me off as a man who spoke with excellency of speech. I did not come in the capacity of an orator.” When he says, “I did not come to you with excellency of speech or of wisdom,” he was speaking of course, of the role of a philosopher. The philosopher who was going to bless the world with his almighty insights into reality. When you think of it, the most arrogant, proud people in all the world are philosophers. To think that with their little.. how many CC’s of grey matter does an average man have? Is Dr. Rome here? I don’t know how many, but imagine! A man sitting down with just about a cupful of grey matter has right—seeking to penetrate all realms of reality—to come up with an integrated system that explains it all. I mean, the arrogance to even attempt the task is unthinkable.
Paul says, “I didn’t come to you in the capacity of a rhetorician or of a philosopher. I didn’t come and stroke my beard to say, “Well, gentlemen, I have reflected, and it is my studied and settled perception that..” No. Look at the text. “Brethren, I came to you not in the role of a rhetorician or of a philosopher.” Now, look. “Proclaiming.” There it is! Proclamation! What was his proclamation? “The testimony of God,” and there is a problem with interpretation. Is that genitive there a genitive of origin? Is it the testimony of which God is the author? Is it the testimony of which God is the main subject? Well, it makes no difference, because both are true. It was the testimony of God! I stood there not as someone who had penetrated the mystery of the ages! I stood as a witness to that which I received as testimony from another!
“For I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” That doesn’t mean he just stood up and said, “Jesus. Jesus Jesus. Jesus. Love Him. Love Him. Love Him. Love Him.” Just read the book of Acts and you’ll know that Paul is not saying that. What he is saying is this: that the thing to which he drove in all of his preaching, even when he had to begin as he did in Acts 14 at Lystra, and in Acts 17 there among the Athenian philosophers.
Even though he had to begin with basic biblical theism, and moved by steps into the more central nerves of the gospel, he said, “Here was my passion: to know nothing among you ultimately, fundamentally, but bringing you to see that in Jesus Christ immolated and lying under the anathema of God, was the great answer to all of the mysteries that elude your philosophers. All of the aids and all of the unmet needs of the heart which the rhetorician may momentarily give some sense of satisfaction by the melodious sound of his words, but you go away as empty as when you came. I set forth Jesus Christ in the uniqueness of His Person. Jesus Christ as crucified, as the central, saving act of the Son of God. Here was my disposition.” Verse 3, “I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling.” He did not come with the slick-bearing of the average television preacher that’s got it all together, and if he happens to forget, he’s got his flashcards to catch out of his peripheral vision.
Paul said, “I was with you in weakness, I was with you in fear, and I was with you in much trembling.” You see, only a true preacher understands these words. Every time is like the first time. He knows that he comes with a message that he has no right to altar! He comes in a capacity, he has no right to change. He is a witness of God’s testimony about His Son! He comes as a proclaimer, and he knows—as Paul knew it—that there was in the hearts of men an inveterate prejudice against his message. Christ crucified was to the Greeks foolishness to the Jews. The scandalon, the great trapstick, the great stumbling block.
He said, “Realizing that I did not carry with me inherently the ability to break through that wall of naked, sinful prejudice and pride, that I did not have the power to tear down the baskins of carnal opposition.” You see, a sphere of trembling was rooted in the reality of his knowledge of the true state of man! He couldn’t argue them into the Kingdom. He couldn’t tickle their funny bones and get them giggling into the Kingdom. He couldn’t play upon their emotions and float them on their fears. He knew that Almighty God had to come and do a miracle of intrusive, sovereign grace. He said, “I didn’t carry the power of God in my pocket. Nor was it fused to my vocal chords.” “The wind blows where it wills.” Will God come? Will God attend my preaching? Will God come with a wind of Heaven, tilt the sails of my proclamation, and carry the ship of gospel preaching clean through that tremendously heaving sea of prejudice until it finds a quiet shole in a man’s conscience, and there takes anchor, because it’s the Son of God on the shore? That’s what happens when a sinner gets saved.
He said, “I didn’t have the power in myself, so I was with you in weakness, fear, much trembling,” but now look at verse 4. “And my speech,” or the thing preached, the kerygma, the message, content proclaimed. I think kerygma is logos in verse 4. “My word and then my preaching, [my kerygma], were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.” What is he saying? He is saying, “Though I came in that disposition of weakness as I preached, there was a present attendant power of the Spirit of God upon my ministry, so that your response was not response to my compelling logic. It was response to the power of God that you felt and knew in the very proclamation of that message.”
Brethren, in our recovery of the biblical gospel, if we only go as far as to see it recovered in its essential, doctrinal content, in its appointed means of communication, but stop short of recovering it in its efficacious power, God, have mercy on us. It is bad enough to have a generation sinking to hell with a watered-down gospel, it is worse yet to sink into hell with a straight, correct, Orthodox gospel that never grips, because it was never preached in the demonstration of the Spirit and of power.
The second text that affirms that this is indeed a conscious concern of the Apostle is 1 Thessalonians chapter 1. The Apostle says that he became privy to God’s secret decree of election with regard to the Thessalonians. Verse 4, “Knowing, brethren, beloved of God, your election.” How in the world did he discover their election? When he was caught up in the third Heaven and earth things that he was not lawful to speak? Did he also see things he was not lawful to see? Did God say, “My servant, come, let me show you the roll of my elect”? No. Read on. “Because our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Spirit, and in much assurance [or fullness, or conviction]; even as ye know what manner of men we showed ourselves toward you for your sake.”
Brethren, there is so much that is mysterious in the operations of the Holy Spirit in conjunction with preaching, and I know my Bible well enough to know that God will make the preaching of some men effectual to the salvation of others, who themselves were strangers to its power, as preachers. “Many will say unto me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not preached in your name?’” If God can take the mouth of an ass and make it an effectual means to turn aside a mad prophet, God can take the mouth of a fellow mortal preaching the gospel who is a charlatan, who is utterly devoid of grace, and hear me carefully: God can even make him an anointed preacher and send him to hell. But, as a general rule, as is the man, so is his unction. “Even as you know what manner of man we were on you.” There was an intimate conjunction between preaching not in word only but in power and the manner of their Christian manhood. That means, my brethren, that an anointed ministry can’t be brought in a one half-night prayer meeting. It can’t be bought in a tarrying meeting.
The price you pay is walking in utmost integrity before God day after day, keeping a conscience void of offense to God and man, determining to be one who frequences the secret place, pleading the promise, “If you who are evil know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Heavenly Father give the Spirit to those who ask?” By and large, as a general rule, a man whose ministry is marked by the indument of the Spirit is a man who walks with integrity before God. He is a man who knows what it is to wrestle in the secret place. He is a man who knows what it is to be weaned from all creature confidence. Hear me now: he is a man who runs from the first consciousness of the swellings of pride in his heart like we would run from a herd of cattle were they to appear before him.
The reason some men do not preach with the power of the Spirit of God is that God cannot entrust to them that measure of His Spirit that would make His ministry effectual, for He said, “Jehovah is my name. I will not give my glory to another, neither my praise unto graven images.”
Well, brethren, that’s our vision for these days, point 1. Maybe we’ll preach points 2 and 3 in the next year if the Lord spares us. That’s our vision. If God would write just that dimension on our hearts. Hopefully there will be ample opportunity to touch upon other aspects that I had hoped to touch upon, under the heads of a renewal of biblical holiness, and a return to biblical churchmanship. But I believe God has said to us what we needed to hear today.
I ask every man in this place who bears the name and title and office of the shepherd of Christ: is this your vision for these days? Is it this to which you are giving your life? Is it this concerning what you can say with Paul in Acts 20, “I’ve count not my life as of any account as dear to myself.” “My life is expendable, but one thing is not: that I may finish my course, that I may testify the gospel of the grace of God.”
One of the most liberating things of all the world is to be able to kneel in the presence of the God who knows our hearts, and say with all of my remaining sin, and all of the haunting memories of what I’ve done, and what I’ve not been. O God, Thou knowest if Thy gospel must consume me, and if I must be poured out as a drink offering in the proclamation and service of the gospel! O Lord, pour me out, that Your Son may have the reward of His sufferings! That’s what this generation needs more than anything else. His preachers who have, by the grace of God, a firm grasp upon the biblical gospel. In its essential, doctrinal content, in its appointed means of communication, and in its efficacious power. May God grant that such an army of preachers will be turned loose upon this generation, and it will do more in ten years to deal with the terrible scourges of society than Congress, with its legislation, could do in a millennium. May God bring it to pass for His glory. Let us pray.
O God, our Heavenly Father, when we gaze upon the grave realities that are not seen with these physical eyes, we are conscious that we are projected into a realm that is more than our frail humanity can bear. O Lord, our Lord whose name is excellent in all the earth, we worship You in all the glory, in all the wonder, in all the threateningness of Your majesty, of Your awesomeness, and of Your power. But we thank You that there is way for sinful men and women to draw near and to call You, “Abba Father.” Thank You, Lord Jesus, for coming to us in our need by way of Mary’s womb, taking to Yourself power, humanity in a weakened state. Thank You for bearing all that You bore for us. Thank You for rising from the dead, for sending the Holy Spirit, for suckering and nurturing us, ever pleading for us, ministering to us. O, our blessed Lord, we do long to see You loved and known by our generation, and yet, we confess that at times we feel so helpless. We feel, Lord, there’s no starting place. Have mercy upon us, and for Your glory send your Spirit upon us.
O God, from this very auditorium, raise up a host of men who will become mighty instruments in Your hands for the tearing down of the strongholds of the enemy. Hear then our cry. Receive our thanks for Your presence with us, and O God, in our days together help us, that we would not grieve Your Spirit. That what we have known of His presence today would be increased. We knows we’ve not exhausted the supplies of Your grace. Lord, you’ve not felt one bit any loss, even though You’ve given so freely. O, out of the fullness of Jesus, give us more of Yourself, more of Your grace, more of Your power, more light, more love, more holiness, more zeal, more sensitivity. O Lord, hear our cry, and may You be pleased to take each of us safely to our homes.
For those who may be sitting here who have never beheld the glory of Your Son, but sitting here tonight have known that there’s something more than people in this place, something more than a preacher, something more than words. Lord, they’ve tasted Your Spirit pressed to their consciousness, who You are in Your claims over them. O, may they not resist, may it not be said of them, “Ye stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart. You do always resist the Holy Ghost.” May they not resist His operations in the public means of grace, but O Father, we pray that may seek You while You may be found and call upon You while You’re near. Deal with the hearts of the unconverted, we pray.
Lord, accept our thanks for this blessed day in Your courts. Watch over the loved ones of the many who are have left wife and children behind. Protect them, keep them in Your love, and grant that these men may pillow their heads in the confidence that You are well able to care for those loved ones, though they are far from them. Awake us to the new day with an eagerness to seek You. Bring us together with an expectation to hear Your voice. Receive our thanks, and hear us in our petitions. We ask in the name and through the virtue of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
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