Simplicity_12s_SavingSouls

2Co 11:3 But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve in his craftiness, your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity and the purity that is toward Christ. [asv]

Mat 16:18 And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

Ephesians 5:25-29 (nkjv)

25 . . . just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, 26 that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, 27 that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish. . . . 29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church. 30 For we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones.

I have stated a number of times that I am very concerned about reaching the lost souls in our community. Assuming that we who claim to be servants of the Savior practice what we preach, the lost will be taught by us or they will not be taught at all. However, they are not coming into our buildings, and apparently we are not doing a brag-worthy job of going out to them.

Several years ago a religious publishing house interviewed eight of the most successful denominational preachers in our land. They offered tapes of these interviews and I bought them. I wanted to learn, if it were possible, what these preachers were doing to bring in the large numbers being reported. To listen to these was to weep -- for -- if what these men were doing was right, and was New Covenant soul saving religion, I had to rethink much of what I had come to believe about simple Christianity, and especially the work and purpose of the saints in a located congregation. And, especially we preachers.

In one instance where growth had been somewhat phenomenal, the good pastor had established a virtual welfare system. He had paid counselors, lawyers, and social services, all at government expense of course. He had a job placement service, a hospital, a legal service, a job-discrimination service, and so on. No wonder that large numbers had "joined" his Church. Was there any salvation in this "Church?" Only the Lord knows for sure.

In another instance the pastor tells a story of how he had come into the community to "build" his Church. All except one of the eight had "built" his own Church, was the absolute ruler of it, and although some had Boards of Directors, it was certain that the enterprise was built around and dependent upon this one man. A good example was (and still is) the ministry of Robert Schuller of Garden City, California. He told on the interview where he tried visiting in the community, offering to teach the Bible. He then experimented with direct mail, offering to teach. He then tried phone solicitation, offering to teach. He concluded that he was offending the community.

So, with these failures behind him, he decided to offer social services to the people, services of virtually every description. In listening to him tell his story, I could not keep from thinking of the YMCA back home. Robert Schuller offered training and job placement for the performing arts (acting, singing and dancing, etc.) and childcare for working mothers, even for known prostitutes.

Another Church builder focused on hospital service; another on childcare and academic education. And, on and on. But, they all were “successful,” and as such were the subjects of this publication.

A notable exception to this philosophy was that of W. A. Criswell, of the huge (possibly the largest in the world) First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas. I learned to respect this man when I lived in Dallas some years ago, for his conservative views of the Bible, and his courage in fighting the liberal minded ones of his denomination. His views about what was going on was brought out in the interview. We share some of this now, and compare with what seems to be going on in our “Church building” today:

Question?: "Preaching today, Dr. Criswell, is a long way from what it was when you came to this Church. How do you make the comparison?"

Answer: "It is more difficult today, because (in years back) when you thought about "church" you thought about preaching. You thought about the preacher. You thought about the pulpit. Today -- they - and I mean by "they" the great flow, the great mass, the great channel of theological thinking; today it seems to me they are trying to get us to think of the Church as a service club. It's a service ministry; it's a good place for a fellow to try to do his civic work in an exalted atmosphere."

Question?: "Would you like to see us go back to the day when if a man did not preach for several hours the people were disappointed?"

Answer: "Well, I still admire -- and if I had my way about it, I still would follow the pattern of those preachers of the days and the centuries ago. I have a feeling that we actually play -- we toy with -- the Truth of God. We are busy about other things, not the Truth of the Lord. Our hearts are not really in it. We give lip service to the Truth of God. Now that's my impression of this modern day. It is cheap. It has a veneer that is very thin. I think the drift of the pulpit of the church is away from the great fundamentals of the Truth of God. I think the church is increasingly turning into a service organization, like a club, you know; a civic club; a philanthropic organization. The church is beginning to die because that's not the great primary mission of the Church. Those are by-products of the church. The great fundamental, primary, mandate of the church of the Bible is to proclaim Christ, His saving grace, His atoning blood, His salvation, our hope in Him."

Question? "You know you are known particularly as a Bible preacher; as one who preaches simply the Word of God. Is that something you have always done?"

Answer: "I pastored quarter-time and half-time Churches while I went to School -- both College and Seminary. And when I got out of the Seminary and my full-time ministry began, my preaching in those days was topical. I preached about . . . and then just named some subject. I did "subject" preaching. After I was out of the Seminary for about four years, for some reason, I began to preach the Bible -- just the Word of God. So, after I came to Dallas, and was here at this Church about a year, I announced to the people that I was going to preach through the Bible. All the way through it. Starting with Genesis 1 and preaching through the last verse in the 22nd chapter of Revelation.

"When I made that announcement, you would have thought that I was proposing to bury the Church. Well, I had it in my soul; I had it in my heart. So I started out. I preached for seventeen years, eight months, through the Word of God. Where I left off on Sunday morning, I started on Sunday night; where I left off Sunday night I started the following Sunday morning. I did that for seventeen years and eight months.

"The people said that I would have a problem with it and I did. My problem was: I did not know what to do with the people who tried to crowd into that building. Our Church has one of the largest auditoriums in the country. You couldn't get in it. Now that is the pattern of my ministry for all of the years. When I got through preaching through the Bible I found that there were Books that I wanted to return to, to go into it with greater depth, and that's what I have been doing ever since for the last several years.

"Many times I will say to a young minister, if I had my life to live over again, back to the time when I was seventeen years of age, I would preach the Bible. If I couldn't get a message out of the first chapter of John, I would take the first two chapters of John. If I couldn't get a message out of the first two chapters of John, I would take the first three chapters. If I couldn't get a message out of three chapters of John, I would take the whole Book, but I would preach the Bible. I would open the Book and just tell the people: "This is what God says!" I would not preach topically. I would not preach subject sermons. Only as a necessity arises, such as a great mission emphasis, and you might prepare a message on missions, or some special occasion like that.

"If a man will preach the Bible he will grow himself, personally. He will be a new man. He will be a changed man. And, of course, his people will grow.

Answer: "I don't know whether you could say that the preaching of the Bible is -- as we think of preaching today -- an exposition. But I think the preaching, the proclamation, the announcement, the heralding of the Good News of Christ -- is the same through all the centuries. It may take a different form somewhat, in the days of the Apostles for example. Not having the written New Testament, they preached from their actual experience with Jesus. Or, as the author of Hebrews said, ‘From those who knew the Lord.’ But when it was written down, we have the same thing that they used except they had it by word of mouth. We have it by divinely inspired written word. But the message is still the same. A man stands up and proclaims the Gospel of Christ, the Good News of the Lord."

(Note: there was much more to the Criswell interview than just this introduction. Perhaps in later articles we’ll share more. I have known many preachers in my 60 plus years, a few that I would call “great” ones. It was not always the oratorical skill, but with me it was the content, given with apparent sincerity. But, I am offended today when I hear the negative comments about “the day of Gospel preaching is past!” I resent this, and would only urge those who are privileged to stand before others to proclaim the Truth of Christ to do their very best. Today we need PREACHING, not talking. We need SERMONS, not sermonettes! We need men of God to take support from brethren for Preaching to give preaching their main interest. In the next chapter or two we will address this subject. If there is merit in the articles, accept it. If truth is taught, accept it. If error or unkindness is taught, please help me to correct. O. K.? / HT)

Talking is not preaching. There is a place for talking and there is a place for preaching. Even if at times there seems to be a similarity in presentation, there must never be confusion as to purpose. The purpose of preaching is uniquely different from the purposes of talking. If this purpose is not always made clear, it probably means that the pulpit has been taken down and the speaker's rostrum has taken its place.

Socrates was not satisfied to be just a talker. He wanted to be more than a talker. He had his mind set on being a preacher. If he had been contented to be a talker he would have been allowed to live. But as he insisted on preaching, the Athenians withdrew from him and gave him hemlock tea.

Aristotle was not satisfied to be a talker. He, too, wanted to be more than a talker and to preach. If he had been contented to just give talks he might have remained at Athens, but as he insisted on preaching, although he was not executed as Socrates was, he found it convenient to move away from Athens.

Preaching has always been a dangerous profession. John the Baptist survived as a preacher for a time, and with some degree of popularity. But, in one indiscreet moment, he delivered a short discourse that was evidently more applicable than usual, and he lost not only his pulpit but his head. That might have occurred before if the community to which he preached had had the same power over life and death that was possessed by the king who executed him.

Jesus never could be accused of being just a talker. What he said, so far as it has been preserved to us, was distinctly preaching. His career as a preacher lasted just three years. His preaching was often irritating. He was crucified for being a preaching nuisance. There are "ministers" in many of our cities who have given talks ten times as many years as Christ preached in Judea, Samaria and Galilee, and yet few (maybe a few) desired that he be crucified.

Not long after, Stephen, the first martyr, was stoned. His preaching career was very brief. So far as we are informed, he preached but once; but it was preaching. The earlier part of the discourse included some talking about the history of the Jews. Because they were fond of their own history they were courteous enough to listen. But when the hearers began to sense the drift of the preaching, they had heard enough. Fifty verses out of the fifty-six were spent in lifting the hammer before bringing it down on to the nail, but when it reached the nail there was howling and teeth-gnashing, and the only reply they could make was to throw stones at him, till, as the record says, "he fell asleep."

It is an interesting part of the scene that Saul was there. He heard the preaching; probably he saw the hammer, the nail, the stones and the blood. Without that preaching there might never have been a Paul. Preaching that has hammer and nails in it and that hurts was, at least in that time, the kind of preaching that preachers preached. A man who is in a dead spiritual sleep cannot be awakened by FM 104 with quadrasonic sound.

Then as to the Twelve Apostles, tradition has it that all of them but one died a violent death. That was because they did not attempt to discharge their apostolic duties by talking, but by preaching. They went about it affectionately, as did Stephen. No man ever preached with a tenderer, sweeter spirit than did Stephen. His last words were, "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge," gentle and forgiving even in death. And yet, he worked with hammer and nail.

But what makes preaching preaching? How is preaching different from talking? Well, if a righteous man (preachers must first of all strive to be righteous. God chose to reveal His Word to Holy men; why would He not want Holy men to preach it.) feels the need to address his fellowman on moral subjects, he does not dwell in vague and trivial generalities. Good preaching can be compared to a discharge of moral electricity designed to arouse sleepers. He is not so much interested in inquiring into the nature of virtue in order to know what virtue is, although this is a part of teaching, but to solemnly warn his hearers that they must be virtuous. He knows the tendencies of his fellows to stand and debate understandings, even when the solution to the problem obviously demands action. Subtleties of any kind are not suitable for preaching morals. Preaching ethics refer as distinctly to deeds as a sword refers to a cut. Preaching is not preaching if questions of morals do not bear on some practical result. Talkers talk for the sake of talking. They argue for the sake of arguing. And, when they are through talking and arguing, things are just where they were before. Their audiences are unchanged. They themselves are in no danger whatever of crucifixion, for nothing has occurred either to stimulate particularly the intelligence of the hearers, or, which is more important, to touch or irritate their consciences.

John the Baptist's preaching to the multitudes that gathered in the wilderness directed instructions to what he knew to be their need. He made no apologies for the directness of his preaching. There was no attempt to win them to himself, but only to point out to them the path of personal and individual duty to God, and to insist on their walking in it. His preaching indicated no disposition to make the truth acceptable to his hearers or duty easy for them. Instead of making light of their offenses and lowering the standard of righteousness to their level of life they were leading, he aimed only to elevate them to the higher level of the life they were not leading.

John worked for results. There was no dramatic appeal for what men in general ought to be, but an unvarnished demand for what the men in front of him ought to be. We can depend upon it that when his hearers went back to their respective businesses, they did not go congratulating themselves on the enjoyable presentation of truth to which it had been their great pleasure to listen. Very likely it had not been to them altogether a pleasure.

All of that which we have been remarking of John the Baptist is equally true, perhaps more so, of the preaching of the Lord. We tend to dwell on the gentleness in which Christ dealt with his audience that perhaps was not characteristic of the Baptist. But even so, the larger part of what is preserved to us is very much the nature of a surgical operation. His surgery was ordinarily - not always - exceedingly courteous and considerate, but it was surgery. He stripped off the cuticle and operated among the nerves, and that hurts. When he said unto them, "Woe unto you, scribes, pharisees, hypocrites," the operation was not only a surgical one, but one that was untempered by tenderness of method. It is not easy to understand exactly what is meant by people who dwell comfortably upon the winsomeness of the lessons that are taught in the gospels and reject the appeals that are made through them.

Take, as an example, the Sermon on the Mount, and its conclusion. Nothing approaches it in the severity of its demands. The commandments of the Law put before men an ideal of what they should do; the Sermon on the Mount an ideal of what they should be. There is a difference in the two. Anybody can do right if he tries hard, but he has to try a great deal harder in order to be right. We do not have to exert ourselves in order to abstain from killing our neighbor, but how about loving that same neighbor. Not simply loving James, whom it may be easy to be fond of, but loving William - despicable, ugly, dirty William?

There is, to be sure, a great deal of love taught by Jesus, and the slopes of the Sermon on the Mount are covered with flowers. But at the same time, one can pick flowers and smell their fragrance without taking account of the blunt rock that lies underneath. Misapprehension of the real situation grows out of this fact that the beauty of Christ's life has been interpreted in a way to exempt from the duty of obeying Christ's law. Stars are beautiful when seen at a distance, but the heat that is in them would make it uncomfortable to live there. So Christ, viewed at the distance of twenty centuries, is attractive. We are impressed by his gentleness, his loving kindness, sympathy and patient service rendered to all kinds of need and destitution. But were He to come among us today he would be just as unpopular as he was twenty centuries ago.

An ideal expressed in words is very winsome, but an ideal dressed in flesh and standing at our elbow in silent denunciation of our own moral and spiritual paltriness would be just what the Bible calls it, "a consuming fire." We would become like Peter who "fell down at Jesus' feet saying, Depart from me for I am a sinful man."

That was the secret of Christ's loneliness when upon earth. He wanted people, but they did not want him. When it came evening, as we are once told, all the people scattered to their homes. He had no home, and no one cared to entertain him for the night, and so he went forth and passed the night among the hills and under the stars. He would be treated here just as he was in Jerusalem and be called an impossible. Things have not changed that much in the course of two thousand years.

Perfect holiness is the same as it was in Jerusalem and sin is the same. And the two are as far apart. And sin hates holiness as it did at the moment when the nails were being driven into Christ's body preparatory to crucifixion. I have read that long before Christ came it was declared by a certain Greek that if perfect holiness should appear on earth it would be crucified. Perhaps that is only a story. It may be true. It could easily be. They will not come to the light, said Jesus, because their deeds are evil. It is not so much hearing about goodness, having it described, etc., that is disquieting. On the contrary, it is rather soothing, caressing. It is only when it comes so close as to be exacting, menacing, that it begins to ruffle us. It is pleasant to sit before an open wood fire and see the play of the flames and think long thoughts and see visions in the tongues of fire, but if the heat begins to become more than just so intense we say that it is getting too warm and we move back. Flame is pretty, wondrously fascinating, till it approaches contact with us, then it is horrible.

It is strange that a thing can be at once so charming and so repulsive; that Truth can be so beautiful to look upon at a distance and so excruciating to live in. It is the weakness of the pulpit that its portrayal of holiness and sin impresses people neither with the beauty of the one nor with the hatefulness of the other. Preaching - real preaching - draws the contrast between them.

That is why we preachers get along so well with many of our people and not well at all with others. It was said by one former preacher of a very prominent group that if he preached the whole truth and brought that truth close to the consciences of his congregation, he would not be allowed to remain long in the pulpit at that place. That might have seemed to be an exaggeration. You can form your own opinion of it. He chose to do so and has since left that pulpit and is pursuing a course of instruction less distinctly religious.

Sin is not a frequent topic for preaching these days. Much less so than formerly. More is done to bring Christ down to the level of men than to bring men up to the level of Christ. The preference of people is to be let alone. No one objects to having truth dramatized, but to have truth preached is different; that is, if it is preached in the spirit of the text, "If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them."

There is willingness enough on the part of people to have truth represented in a way to stimulate the intellect and to warm the heart, but not to prick into the conscience. We like as much goodness as we have, but are not ambitious to be better than we are. We are more disposed to accept Christ as one who will save us in our sins than as one who will save us from our sins. Which means, if frankly expressed, that Christ is mostly unnecessary; that it is not really true that we need any saving. What Christianity really amounts to, to far too many, is that it is a Divine arrangement by which, out of the abundance of God's love and consideration for human fallibility, and the difficulty involved in getting rid of sin, we can be reckoned as good when we are not. This is the basis of today's misconception of grace. Cheap grace is not grace at all. It is a lie.

And, because sin is not dealt with as sin by the modern pulpit, there has come a corresponding decline in emphasis upon the redemptive power of the Life of Christ and the death of the cross. It goes without saying that a sense of sin and a sense of moral helplessness go together. The intensity of the one comes and goes with the intensity of the other. Only the invalid who realizes the seriousness of his invalidism is moved to seek the services of a physician. The soul can be made a plaything and the slave of the body. "When evil desire hath conceived it bringeth forth sin; and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death." And until that preacher arises who can make his hearers realize that enslavement, there will be no compelling consciousness of the need of an Emancipator.

It is the duty of preaching to change minds and subsequently to change lives. Holding the intellectual attention and enlightening hearers is of only partial value. It is only a means to a more valuable end. To say of one that he is an interesting preacher, or even that he is an instructive preacher, may mean much, and may mean nothing at all. "He came that they might have life," says John. Light is not life, not necessarily. Mere illumination will not make a plant grow, nor restrain the leaves on the trees from decaying and falling to earth.

Furthermore, a highly educated congregation is not to be dealt with in a manner different from that of an uneducated one, except in manner of address. Matters of truth and the end of truth cannot be changed to suit the degree of education. Educated audiences demand educated preaching, and the difficulty arises that often preaching that satisfies their desire for intellectual challenge will be construed as spiritual enjoyment.

Very often that is all that a person means when he says of his minister that he likes his preaching - the discourse has satisfied his intellectual curiosity. He likes the way his preacher puts things. He is entertained by the preacher's intellectual agility. The same thing is true of audiences at a concert, who come away from the performance charmed and captivated by the performer's expertness. This is somewhat different from the method of Paul who said, "And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's 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" (1 Cor. 2:1-5).

By making the pulpit the medium for dealing directly with sinners who recognize that they have a sin-problem, and with a view to promoting their more and more complete emancipation from sin and sin's power, and by giving it to be definitely understood that that is the pulpit's prime mission, the pulpit has secured to it a character that differentiates it from every other agency working for the rehabilitation of mankind.

In so doing its rightful work, it stands on its own merits, and justifies it place and support among right-thinking people. In that field of consistently and pronouncedly working for the emancipation of men individually and collectively from the power of sin, the pulpit stands practically alone. The various media, the politicians, nor the educators could have edited the Letter to the Romans, nor will they preach it. Modern day TV religious programing and slick paper religious journals have about as much secularism as they do religion, and contribute little to the evangelism of the world, and could well hinder it. Many survive for purposes of making money for their promoters. God surely has a program worked out for all those who merchandise the Gospel and live in fine houses.

No one will deny the literary, intellectual and ethical claims of our best Gospel papers. But even so, they are not intended to accomplish what is properly the prime purpose of preaching. Real preaching, and that alone, is capable of keeping the soul focused upon God and delivering it out of the power of the devil and into a growing experience of Divine Sonship. It has been said that, second only to the lusts of the flesh, religious journalism and electronic ministry, and the automobile, are the worst enemies of the pulpit. It may well be true.

The preacher of today has to address himself to people affected by stress and anxiety. The pressures of modern living are tremendous. It is obvious that when one speaks into a storm his voice will not carry.

Audiences of soul-weary people are not intellectual or emotional dummies. Preachers must not presume to do the thinking for these, as if they could. Neither are they to strive to become lords over another's faith. They are to help them to think for themselves, and to think correctly. This requires great skill. It also requires, in addition to understanding of truth and the purposes of truth, great courage. Ah, yes indeed! No preacher can survive without courage.

The preacher is both the prosecuting attorney for Truth and Righteousness and the defense attorney against Satan's charges against the same. The preacher's audience sits as the jury. Because he loved them Paul said, "I beseech you." And then he tells them to turn their bodies and their minds over to God. This is the end of preaching.

Our ultra-conservative brethren have accused the mainstream of our brotherhood of being "liberal," and name specifically many of the things that Dr. Criswell lists among his "country club" indictment of modern Churches. And, no doubt, among many of our brethren there have been remarkable changes in the last few years. Things are being offered members that a few years ago would have been totally unacceptable by most if not all of our brotherhood. The competition for "church members," coupled with the natural human desire of the average Christian to be pleased, has caused great numbers of congregations to become much different in character from their predecessors. Are these "things" -- these innovations -- wrong within themselves? I don't think so. There is much individual liberty in Christ and in the voluntary association of Christians which we refer to as the "local church." A group of saints can do together most anything that is not wrong within itself, but the great harm comes when carnal and material things become more important than the spiritual. Often the rationalism that is offered by leaders is that these physical matters are indeed spiritual, or at least, contribute to spiritual growth. This relieves the guilt attached to these things. (But, as an example, musical groups are not made "spiritual" simply because they feature "gospel" songs.)

The Scriptures clearly teach that it is the spirit of man that must be converted, and the converted man will then serve the Lord in spiritual ways. This is plain and simple doctrine, but does not always satisfy the carnal longings of carnal man. I have much to question about what the Robert Schullers, Oral Roberts, and Jim Bakkers (and dozens like them) are doing, as they manipulate innocent and ignorant humanity, offering them physical health and material wealth in return for their financial support. I seriously question the salvation of souls in their brand of Christianity.

I honestly believe that if Jesus were to be resurrected today and walk upon the earth, He would not even recognize much of what is called "Christian," the great religious buildings, or the grand "Church" organizations. If the New Testament portrays the truth about Jesus, and the kingdom of God He came to bring to the world, He would have little to do with many of these things that are offered as "religion" today.

As stated previously, as denominational preachers go, I had more respect for W. A. Criswell than for probably any other at the time. I respected his stance on the inspiration of the Scriptures, the work of the Holy Spirit, morality, and other things that stamped him as a most honorable man, with extraordinary ability as a preacher. His views on preachers and preaching are worth considering, and we would do well, it seems to me, to hear what he is saying. I don’t think that the need for strong Bible preaching and teaching has changed, or ever will.