Christ’s Preaching and Our Duty
“And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him. And he opened his mouth, and taught them” (Matt 5:1-2).
The blessed evangelist Saint Matthew, who wrote this sacred history, began as a publican, or tax collector. Christ called him from the customs house and made him a collector of souls. In the first chapter, this holy man records Christ’s birth and genealogy. In the second, he records Christ’s dignity: a star leads the wise men to him, and they present him, as a king, with “Gold and Frankincense and Myrrh” (Matt 2:9, 11). The third chapter records his baptism; the fourth, his temptations; and the fifth, his preaching. This fifth chapter is like a rich mine: every vein contains some gold. Four things in it invite our attention: the preacher, the pulpit, the occasion, and the sermon.
1. The Preacher: Jesus Christ
Jesus Christ is the best of preachers. “He went up.” In him was a union of virtues, a constellation of beauties. His lips were not merely sweet as the honeycomb; they dripped like the honeycomb. His words were an oracle, his works a miracle, his life a pattern, and his death a sacrifice. He went up into a mountain and taught. Jesus Christ possessed every excellence and qualification for the work of ministry.
1. Christ was an understanding preacher. He had “the Spirit without measure” (John 3:34). He knew how to speak a word “in due season,” when to humble and when to comfort. We cannot even know all our hearers’ faces; Christ knew their hearts. He understood what teaching would best suit them, just as a farmer knows what kind of grain suits a particular soil.
2. Christ was a powerful preacher. “He spake with authority” (Matt 7:29). He could set people’s sins before them and show them their own hearts: “Come see a man which told me all things which ever I did” (John 4:29). The best mirror is not the one most richly set with pearls, but the one that shows the truest face. Christ preached to the conscience. His speech breathed as much zeal as eloquence, and he often touched the heartstrings. What is said of Luther applies more truly to Christ: he spoke “as if he had been within a man.” He could drive the wedge of his teaching into the knottiest wood. With his two-edged sword, he could pierce a heart of stone. “Never man spake like this man” (John 7:46).
3. Christ was a successful preacher. He knew how to convert souls. “Many believed on him” (John 10:42). Even people of rank and standing believed: “Among the chief Rulers many believed” (John 12:42). He who had “Grace poured into his lips” could pour grace into his hearers’ hearts (Ps 45:2). He held the Key of David in his hand. Whenever he pleased, he opened people’s hearts and made room for himself and his teaching to enter. If he blew the trumpet, even his enemies would come under his banner. At his summons, no one dared do anything but surrender.
4. Christ was a lawfully appointed preacher. His Father both anointed and sent him: “The Father that sent me” bears witness to him (John 8:18). Although every perfection was united in Christ, he would still be solemnly authorized and inaugurated into his ministerial office as well as his mediatorial office. If Jesus Christ would not begin the work of ministry without a commission, how outrageously presumptuous are those who dare enter this sacred office without any warrant! People must be lawfully admitted to the ministry. As Augustine says, “No one should preach publicly in the church unless duly called.” “No man taketh this honour to himself, but he that is called of God, as was Aaron” (Heb 5:4).
Our Lord Christ gave not only apostles and prophets, who were extraordinary ministers, but also pastors and teachers, who entered their office in an ordinary way (Eph 4:11). He intends the ministry to continue: “Lo I am with you alway even unto the end of the world” (Matt 28:20). Surely ordination is as necessary now as in Christ’s time and the apostles’ time, since the church then had extraordinary gifts that have now ceased.
Objection 1: Why should the ministry not be open to everyone? “Hath the Lord spoken only by Moses?” (Num 12:2). Why should one person not preach as well as another?
Answer: God, who is the God of order, has made the ministry a distinct office, separate from every other. In the human body, each part has its own function: the eye sees, and the hand works. You might as well ask why the hand should not see as well as the eye. God has made the distinction, giving sight to one and not the other. In the same way, he has distinguished the work of ministry from other work.
Question: Where do we find this distinction?
Answer: 1. Scripture distinguishes between pastor and people. “The Elders,” or ministers, “I exhort”; “Feed the flock of God which is among you” (1 Pet 5:1-2). If anyone may preach, then by the same rule everyone may preach. What then becomes of the apostle’s distinction? Where will God’s flock be if everyone is a pastor?
2. God has assigned the minister work that belongs specifically to him and to no one else. “Give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine,” and “give thy self wholly to them” (1 Tim 4:13, 15). The Greek says, “be thou wholly in them.” This charge belongs specifically to the minister, not to anyone else. The tradesman is not told to give himself wholly to teaching and exhortation; he must attend to his shop. The plowman is not told to give himself wholly to preaching; he must attend to his plow. This is the minister’s charge. The apostle speaks to Timothy and, through him, to the others on whom the elders had laid their hands.
Again, “Study to show thy self approved, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed,” and “rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Tim 2:15). This is addressed specifically to the minister. Not everyone who can read the Word rightly can divide it rightly. The ministry is therefore not open to everyone; it is a distinct, particular work. Just as only the priests might touch the ark, only those called to this sacred office may undertake it.
Objection 2: If a person has gifts, is that not enough?
Answer: No. Just as grace alone does not make a minister, neither do gifts. Scripture distinguishes between being gifted and being sent: “How shall they preach unless they be sent?” (Rom 10:15). If gifts were enough to make someone a minister, the apostle should have said, “How can they preach unless they are gifted?” Instead, he says, “Unless they be sent.”
It is the same in other callings. Gifts do not make a magistrate. The attorney arguing a case may have gifts as good as those of the judge on the bench, but he must receive a commission before he can sit as judge. If this is true in civil matters, how much more in church and sacred matters, which, as Bucer says, are “of the highest importance.” Those who seize the ministerial work without a particular designation and appointment show more pride than zeal. They act outside their proper sphere and are guilty of theft: they steal their way among a people. As they come without a call, so they remain without a blessing. “I sent them not,” and “therefore they shall not profit this people at all” (Jer 23:32). So much for the first subject, the preacher.
2. The Pulpit: A Mountain
Christ’s pulpit was a mountain: “He went up into a Mountain.” The law was first given on a mountain, and here Christ expounds it on a mountain. Jerome and other scholars suppose this was Mount Tabor. It was a convenient place to speak, both because he sat above the people and because such a great crowd had gathered to hear him.
3. The Occasion: A Waiting Crowd
The occasion for Christ’s ascent was his “seeing the multitude.” People crowded together to hear him, and he would not dismiss the congregation without a sermon. Seeing the multitude, he went up. Jesus Christ came from heaven as an agent trading for souls. He remained here for a time as heaven’s representative, and preaching was his business. The people could not be as eager to hear as he was to preach. He who had compassion on fainting bodies had much greater pity for dead souls (Matt 15:32). Doing his Father’s will was his food and drink (John 4:34). “And seeing the multitude,” he goes up into the mountain and preaches. He did this both to comfort his hearers and to give his ministers an example to follow.
Doctrine: Christ’s ministers must follow his example and embrace every opportunity to do good to souls. Praying, preaching, and studying must be our work. “Preach the Word, be instant in season, out of season” (2 Tim 4:2). That is, they must seize every opportunity to preach. Peter sees the multitude, lets down the net, and catches three thousand souls in one haul (Acts 2:41). How zealously God’s champions in former ages labored to fulfill their ministry! We read this of Chrysostom, Augustine, Basil the Great, Calvin, Bucer, and others who, for Christ’s work, “were nigh unto death.” Here are the reasons Christ’s ministers should follow his example and eagerly seek every opportunity to serve souls.
1. Their commission. God has entrusted them with the office of ambassadors (2 Cor 5:20). An ambassador waits for an audience. As soon as he is granted one, he faithfully and impartially delivers his prince’s message. In the same way, Christ’s ministers have a commission to act on behalf of souls. They should be glad whenever they have an audience, so that they may communicate Christ’s mind and will to his people.
2. Their titles. First, ministers are called God’s sowers (1 Cor 9:11). They must therefore scatter the blessed seed of the Word at every opportunity. The sower must go out and sow. Even when the seed falls on stones, as it usually does, we must scatter the seed of the Word on stony hearts, because “even of these stones God is able to raise up children” to himself.
Second, ministers are called stars. They must therefore shine through the Word and their teaching in the firmament of the church. Our Lord Christ gives them a pattern in this text: seeing the multitude, he went up into the mountain. Here was a light set on a hill, the bright Morning Star shining on everyone around him. Christ calls his ministers “the light of the World” (Matt 5:14). They must therefore keep shining. Their light must not go out until it has burned down to the socket, or until violent death snuffs it out.
3. Their work is to save souls. For that reason, Christ’s ministers must seize every opportunity to do good to others. What a precious thing a soul is! Macarius says, “The soul is a divine and wonderful work.” Christ takes, as it were, a pair of scales in his hands. He puts the world in one scale and the soul in the other, and the soul outweighs the world (Matt 16:26). The soul has a noble origin and acts with great speed. It is a flower of eternity, in bud here, but fully ripe and blooming in heaven.
The soul is one of the richest pieces of embroidery God ever made. The understanding is spangled with light; the will is clothed with liberty; the affections are like musical instruments tuned by the Holy Spirit’s finger. The soul is Christ’s partner and the angels’ companion. If human souls have such a noble origin and are capable of glory, how zealously Christ’s ministers should labor to save them! If Christ spent his blood for souls, we may well spend our sweat. Augustine prayed that, at his coming, Christ might find him “either praying or preaching.” What a sad sight to see precious souls, like so many pearls and diamonds, cast into the dead sea of hell!
4. Satan has so many agents lying in wait to destroy souls. For this reason, Christ’s ministers, seeing the multitude, must ascend the mountain. How the old serpent pours floods of water from his mouth after the woman to drown her! (Rev 12:15). Floods of heresy have poured through city and country, overflowing the banks not only of religion but also of civil society. Ignatius calls error “the invention of the devil,” and Bernard calls it “a sweet poison.” People’s ears, like sponges, have soaked up this poison.
Never have the devil’s goods sold more readily in England than now. A smooth tongue can sell bad merchandise. The Jesuit can silver over his lies and dress error in truth’s coat. A weak mind is soon intoxicated. When flattery and cunning meet the simple, they easily become prey. The Roman whore entices many to drink the poison of her idolatry and filthiness because it comes “in a golden Cup” (Rev 17:4). If everyone with this plague in the head were to die, the death toll would greatly increase.
With so many of Satan’s agents abroad, working to win converts to the church of Rome, how urgently those whom God has placed in the ministry must exert themselves! They must seize every opportunity to apply their spiritual antidotes, so that they may “convert sinners from the error of their way and save their souls from death!” (Jas 5:20). Ministers must be not only shepherds but fighters. In one hand they must hold the bread of life and “feed the Flock of God.” In the other they must hold the sword of the Spirit and fight against errors that bear damnation on their face.
5. So many hindrances obstruct the progress and success of preaching. Christ’s ministers must therefore watch for every opportunity to serve souls. The preaching of the Word has so many remora fish holding it back. No ship’s pilot ever met so many Euroclydon storms and contrary winds on a voyage as the spiritual pilots of God’s church encounter while carrying souls to heaven.
Hindrance 1: Some hearers have bad memories (Jas 1:25). Their memories are like leaking vessels: all the precious wine of holy teaching poured into them immediately runs out. Ministers cannot discover a truth by study as quickly as others can lose it. If food does not remain in the stomach, it can never nourish the blood. If a truth taught does not remain in the memory, we can never be, as the apostle says, “Nourished up in the words of faith” (1 Tim 4:6).
How often the devil, that bird of the air, picks up the good seed that has been sown! Through the devil’s theft, God’s Word slips out of the memory. When thieves steal people’s money, they tell everyone and complain that they have been robbed. Yet they fail to notice a worse thief. How many sermons has the devil stolen from them! How many truths have they lost that might have been comforts on their deathbeds! If the preached Word slips so quickly from the memory, ministers need to go up the preaching mountain more often, so that at last some truth may remain, like “a nail fastened by the Masters of Assemblies.”
Hindrance 2: Many of our hearers’ ears are stopped with earth. I mean that worldly cares keep the preached Word from entering. As the parable says, “Hearing they hear not” (Matt 13:13). We read that Saul’s eyes were open, yet “he saw no man” (Acts 9:8). What a strange paradox! Is it not just as strange that people’s ears should be open, yet they do not hear what they are hearing? Gain in money is the soul’s funeral. They do not attend to what is said: “They sit before thee as my people sitteth, but their heart goeth after their covetousness” (Ezek 33:31).
Many sit staring the minister in the face, yet scarcely know a word he says. They are thinking about their merchandise and drugs, and often calculating their accounts in church. If someone is in a mill, however loudly you speak, he cannot hear you over its noise. We preach to people about salvation, but the mill of worldly business makes such a noise that they cannot hear. Hearing, they do not hear. Ministers, who are called sons of thunder, must therefore often ascend the mountain and “lift up their voice like a Trumpet” (Isa 58:1). Then the deaf ear may be flushed clear and unstopped, so that it can hear “what the Spirit saith to the Churches” (Rev 2:7).
Hindrance 3: Others have not only earth in their ears but a stone in their hearts. “They made their hearts as an Adamant stone, lest they should hear the Law” (Zech 7:12). Christ’s ministers must therefore keep wielding the sword of the Spirit and striking at people’s sins, so that, if possible, they may at last pierce the heart of stone. When the sun scorches the earth, it becomes so hard and crusted that one shower cannot soften it. Shower after shower must fall before it becomes moist or fruitful. The human heart is naturally just as hard. Lust has scorched and stiffened it so much that it needs “Precept upon precept” (Isa 28:10). Our teaching must “distill as the dew, as the small rain on the tender herb, and the showers upon the grass” (Deut 32:2).
6. Ministers must seek opportunities for God’s glory and for their own comfort. Following their Lord and Master, Christ’s ministers should take every opportunity to do good. What triumph and gladness when a minister can say on his deathbed, “Lord, I have done the work you gave me to do. I have been trading for souls!” When a minister reaches the mountain of glory, the heavenly mountain, he will find great comfort in having so often been on the preaching mountain.
If the angels in heaven rejoice at a sinner’s conversion, how that minister will rejoice in heaven over every soul he helped to convert! (Luke 15). Every convert gained adds both a member to Christ’s body and a jewel to the minister’s crown. “They that are wise,” or, as the original language expresses it, “They that are Teachers shall shine,” not like lamps or candles, but “as Stars” (Dan 12:3). They will shine not like planets, but like fixed stars in the firmament of glory “for ever.”
Though “Israel be not gathered,” God’s ministers will still “be glorious in the eyes of the Lord” (Isa 49:5). God will reward them according to their diligence, not their success. Chrysostom says, “Your reward for your contribution is reserved with God.” When they are “a savour of death” to people, they are still “a sweet savour” to God. In an orchard, the worker who fells a tree is paid just as the one who plants it. The surgeon’s bill is paid even if the patient dies.
Application 1: A Word to Ministers
First, allow me to speak to the Elishas, my reverend and honored brothers in the ministry. You are engaged in a glorious service. God has given you great honor, entrusting you with two of his most precious jewels: his truths and his people’s souls. No angel was ever given this honor of converting souls. What royal dignity can equal it? The pulpit is higher than the throne, for a duly appointed minister represents God himself. “As though God did beseech you by us, we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God” (2 Cor 5:20). Allow me to say with the apostle, “I magnify my Office” (Rom 11:13).
Whatever we may be personally, the office is sacred. The ministry is the world’s most honorable employment. Jesus Christ honored this calling by entering it himself. Other people work at their trades; ministers work with God. “We are labourers together with God” (1 Cor 3:9). What a high honor! God and his ministers share one work: they both work on behalf of souls. Let the sons of the prophets wear this as their crown and diadem. But while I remind you of your dignity, do not forget your duty.
Imitate the blessed example in the text, the Lord Jesus, who saw the multitudes, went up, and taught. He took every opportunity to preach. Sometimes he taught in the temple (Mark 14:49), sometimes in a boat (Mark 4:1), and here on the mountain. His lips were a tree of life that fed many. How often he neglected his food so that he could feast others with his teaching!
Let all Christ’s ministers walk in his steps. Make Christ your pattern as well as your Savior. Let no opportunity slip by when you might help another person’s soul. Do not be content to go to heaven yourselves, but be like the outermost moving sphere that draws the other spheres along with it. Be such shining lamps that you may light others to heaven with you. I will conclude with the apostle’s words: “Therefore my Beloved Brethren, be ye steadfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as you know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord” (1 Cor 15:58).
Application 2: A Word to God’s Flock
Second, let me turn to God’s flock.
1. Take every opportunity to hear. If ministers must take every opportunity to preach, you must take every opportunity to hear. If a fixed sum of money were distributed to everyone who came, two or three times a week, people would gather there. Think this way when God’s Word is preached: the bread of life is being distributed, and it is more precious “than thousands of gold and silver” (Ps 119:72). In the preached Word, heaven and salvation are offered to you. In this field the pearl of great price is hidden. How you should flock like doves to the sanctuary’s windows! (Isa 60:8). We read that the temple gate was called Beautiful (Acts 3:2). The gate of God’s house is the beautiful gate. Wait at these posts of wisdom’s doors (Prov 8:34).
2. Encourage the ministers who preach. Do not merely hear the preached Word. Encourage its preachers in these ways.
Encouragement 1: Support them generously. I hope that all who have God’s Urim and Thummim written upon them can say with the apostle, “I seek not yours, but you” (2 Cor 12:14). Yet this Scripture is still canonical: “So hath the Lord ordained, that they which preach the Gospel should live of the Gospel” (1 Cor 9:14). Peter Martyr asks, “Are not laborers in a vineyard maintained by their labors?” And the apostle asks, “Who plants a Vineyard and eateth not the fruit of it?” (1 Cor 9:7).
Hypocrites love a cheap religion. They like a gospel that costs them nothing. They are content to have wooden priests as long as they have golden purses. How many have saved their purses and lost their souls! Julian the Apostate robbed the ministers while claiming to act from conscience. I need not tell you how vengeance pursued him. Is it not a pity that the fire on God’s altar should go out for lack of a little golden oil? David would not offer God something that “cost him nothing” (2 Sam 24:24).
Encouragement 2: Encourage God’s ministers by bearing fruit under their labors. When ministers are on the mountain, do not leave them stranded on the rocks. What expense God has lavished on this city! I believe that, since the apostles’ time, there has never been a more learned, orthodox, powerful ministry than we have now. God’s ministers are called stars (Rev 1:20). In this city a star appears every morning, besides the bright constellation on the Lord’s Day. You who feed in the green pastures of God’s appointed worship, grow fat and fruitful! You who are planted in God’s courts, “flourish in the Courts of God” (Ps 92:13).
How sad the condition of people who go to hell loaded with gospel blessings! The best way to encourage your ministers is to let them see, in your new birth, the fruit of their souls’ labor pains. It is a great comfort when a minister not only woos souls but wins them. “He that winneth souls is wise” (Prov 11:30). This is a minister’s glory: “For what is our joy, or crown of rejoicing? are not even ye?” (1 Thess 2:19). A successful preacher wears two crowns: a crown of righteousness in heaven and a crown of rejoicing here on earth. Are you not our crown?
Encouragement 3: Encourage your ministers by praying for them. Their work is great. It occupies both head and heart, and even that is scarcely enough. It is work more suited to angels than to human beings. Erasmus calls it “a work formidable even to angels’ shoulders.” “Who is sufficient for these things?” (2 Cor 2:16). Pray for them! When Christ ascended the mountain to preach, he needed none of the people’s prayers for himself. He had an ample supply in his divine nature. But all the subordinate officers in his ministry need prayer. If Saint Paul, who abounded in the Spirit’s graces and in supernatural revelations, begged for prayer, surely other ministers need it, though they claim no such revelations (1 Thess 5:25). Pray for your ministers in these ways.
Prayer 1: Pray that God will direct them in what to preach. Ask him to assign their work to them: “Go preach the preaching that I bid thee” (Jonah 3:2). It is a great matter to preach truths suited to the hearers. These are “acceptable words” (Eccl 12:10).
Prayer 2: Pray that God will accompany their labors. Otherwise they toil and catch nothing. God’s Spirit must fill the sails of our ministry. Augustine says, “He who teaches hearts on earth has his teaching chair in heaven.” It is not the hand scattering the seed that makes it spring up, but heaven’s dew and influence. Likewise, it is not our preaching but the Spirit’s divine influence that makes grace grow in people’s hearts.
We are only pipes and organs. God’s Spirit blowing through us makes the preaching of the Word draw souls to Christ with a divine enchantment. Ministers are only stars to light your way to Christ; the Spirit is the magnet that draws you. All the good done through our ministry comes, as Bucer says, “through the Lord’s power and effective working.”
Then pray for us, that God will prosper his work in our hands. This may be one reason preaching does so little good: people pray so little. Perhaps you complain that the tool is dull, that the minister is lifeless and cold. You should have whetted and sharpened him with your prayers. If you want the door of blessing opened to you through our ministry, you must unlock it with the key of prayer.
