Pride in the Pulpit

Let us listen to the warnings heralded by John Angell James back in 1828.

Whatever leads us to think highly of ourselves in matters of religion, and to despise others, whether it be the distinctions of earthly greatness, the practice of religious duties, or the independence of our mode of thinking—is opposed to the spirit of Christian love.

 Superior LIGHT on the subject of revealed truth is no unusual occasion of pride. We are all susceptible to it:  The Arminian pharisee dwells with fondness on the goodness of his heart; the Antinomian, with equal haughtiness, values himself on the clearness of his head; and the Socinian, as far from humility as either of them, is inflated with a conceit of the strength of his reason, and its elevation above vulgar prejudices—while not a few moderate Calvinists regard with complacency their sagacity in discovering the happy medium.

As men are more proud of their understanding than of their disposition, it is very probable that religious opinions are more frequently the cause of conceit and self-importance, than anything else which could be mentioned. "It is knowledge," says the apostle, "that puffs up." "We are the men and wisdom will die with us"—is the temper of multitudes.

Religious giftedness is sometimes the ground of self-admiration. Fluency and fervor in public prayer, ability to converse on doctrinal subjects, especially if accompanied by a ready utterance in public, have all through the influence of Satan and the depravity of our nature, led to the vile pride which we are now condemning.

None are in more danger of this than the ministers of religion—it is the besetting sin of their office. There is no one gift which offers so strong a temptation both to vanity and to pride—as that of public speaking. If the orator really excels, and is successful, he is the immediate spectator of his success, and has not even to wait until he has finished his discourse; for although the decorum of public worship will not allow of audible tokens of applause, it does of visible ones—the look of interest, the tear of penitence or of sympathy, the smile of joy, the deep impression on the mind, the death-like stillness, cannot be concealed—all seem like a tribute of admiration to the presiding spirit of the scene; and then the compliments which are conveyed to his ear, after all the silent plaudits which have reached his eye—are equally calculated to puff him up with pride. No men are more in danger of this sin than the ministers of the Gospel; none should watch more sleeplessly against it.

Are you proud of the brilliancy of your genius, the extent of your learning, the acuteness of your understanding, your power to argue or speak publicly?

Do any of these things form the object of self-esteem and the reasons of that disdain which you may pour upon all who you feel are inferior to yourself in mental endowments?

Do you believe that those who differ from you on non-essential doctrines are confused; that you have cornered the market on all truths?

Do you admire yourself as a member of the only true church, and as the covenant people of God?

Do you fancy yourself able to discern who are members of the true church and who are not simply based upon whether they agree with you and hold your convictions regarding secondary doctrines.

Do you boast inwardly of belonging to the true church and look with contempt on all who belong to a different ecclesiastical order or denomination?

Do you pride yourself on the greater purity of your ecclesiastical order?

I see some of these characteristics taking hold and growing over the past 15 years in some of the most highly respected and gifted men of our time and it concerns me. When I attempt to sound a warning call, I am told things like, "You should not criticize him. God is using him to help and encourage many".  Perhaps it is because no one cares enough about these men to exhort them, that the weeds of pride have almost consumed them.   Or is it more the case that people are more concerned about what others might say if they dare to question the great Dr. so-and-so?

Again I will say, this attitude of defending a man against criticism, is dangerous and actually feeds the pride that so easily besets those who have gained highly respected positions in the ministry.

(Reposted from 2010)

"...sensed that God was saying to him, “Preach on, great preacher, without me.”

“Preach on, great preacher, without me.”

The task of true biblical preaching is not essentially intellectual or psychological or rhetorical; it is essentially spiritual. I have followed the preaching ministry of more men than I can count and have discovered that many fall into a great trap. I was truly blessed to discover that my concerns are shared with many others and have been so wonderfully articulated in this excerpt from "What is Biblical Preaching" by Eric J. Alexander, P&R, 2008:

"Left to ourselves, we may do many things with a congregation. We may move them emotionally. We may attract them to ourselves personally, producing great loyalty. We may persuade them intellectually. We may educate them in a broad spectrum of Christian truth. But the one thing we can never do, left to ourselves, is to regenerate them spiritually and change them into the image of Jesus Christ, to bear his moral glory in their character. While that is the great calling of the church of Christ, it is essentially God’s work and not ours.

So it is possible to be homiletically brilliant, verbally fluent, theologically profound, biblically accurate and orthodox, and spiritually useless. That frightens me. I hope it frightens you, too. I think it is of this that Paul is speaking when he says, “I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow” (I Cor. 3:6-7). It is very possible for us to be deeply concerned about homiletical ability and fluency and theological profundity and biblical orthodoxy, but to know nothing of the life – giving power of God with the burning anointing of the Holy Spirit upon our ministry. Campbell Morgan (Lloyd-Jones’s predecessor at the Westminster Chapel) divulged that at one crucial stage in his ministry he was in precisely this position, and sensed that God was saying to him, “Preach on, great preacher, without me.” Alan Redpath used to say that the most penetrating question you could ask about any church situation was, “What is happening in this place that cannot be explained in merely human terms?”

So there is a world of difference between true biblical preaching and an academic lecture or a rhetorical performance. We are utterly dependent on the grace and power of the Holy Spirit. Thank God, he uses the weak things of this world to confound the mighty, and the things that are not to bring to nothing the things that are (1 Cor. 1 :2,8). This is why it is absolutely essential to marry prayer to the ministry of the Word. In our ministries prayer is not supplemental; it is fundamental. Of course we subscribe to the principal that “this work is God’s work, not ours.” We subscribe to that because we are biblical Evangelicals, but the logical corollary of that statement is that prayer is a fundamental issue in the ministry of the Word, as in every part of our labor, and not, as we tend to make it, a supplemental matter."

The Power of Preaching

Understanding the source of the power

In Preaching and Preachers, Martyn Lloyd-Jones also speaks of what he calls "the romance of preaching." In this he uses a definition of the word "romance" that is not often employed today, but is still in the dictionary. He refers by that term to the exciting and mysterious quality of preaching, the unpredictability of it. The preacher should never think he knows what is going to happen when he enters the pulpit, he says. He never knows how the act of preaching and the content of the message will affect the preacher himself, or affect his hearers. And, the preacher should never attempt to control things to the extent that preaching becomes a sterile and clinical exercise. The preacher never knows exactly who is listening, or how they are listening. He never knows how God may use even just one particular phrase out of an entire sermon to meet a particular heart's need.

During his decades of ministry, Martyn Lloyd-Jones typically met privately for counseling with a thousand or more individuals each year. But he said that he firmly believed that God the Holy Spirit could do more in the hearts and lives of his congregation through the preaching of the Word in one service, than he could in all of those counseling sessions in an entire year.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones concludes the book with a chapter titled "'Demonstration of the Spirit and of the Power". Here he calls attention once again to "the greatest essential in connection with preaching, and that is the unction and the anointing of the Holy Spirit."

He uses the illustration of Elijah at Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18). The right way to look at the unction of the Spirit, he says, "is to think of it as that which comes upon the preparation...We are told that Elijah built an altar, then cut wood and put it upon the altar, and that then he killed a bullock and cut it in pieces and put the pieces upon the wood. Then, having done all that, he prayed for the fire to descend; and the fire fell. That is the order."

He goes on: "We all tend to go to extremes; some rely only on their own preparation and look for nothing more; others, as I say, tend to despise preparation and trust to the unction, the anointing and the inspiration of the Spirit alone. But there must be no 'either/or' here; it is always 'both/and'. These two things must go together." He concludes with this exhortation to the preacher and the congregation:

What then are we to do about this? There is only one obvious conclusion. Seek Him! Seek Him! What can we do without Him?...But go beyond seeking Him; expect Him...Are you expecting [this week's preaching] to be the turning point in someone's life? Are you expecting anyone to have a climactic experience? That is what preaching is meant to do. That is what you find in the Bible and in the subsequent history of the church. Seek this power, expect this power, yearn for this power; and when the power comes, yield to Him. Do not resist. Forget all about your sermon if necessary. Let Him loose you, let Him manifest His power in you and through you...He is still able to do "exceeding abundantly above all that we can ask or think."

 

References:

The material in this article is escerpts from:  Preaching and Preachers (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1971),  D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The First Forty Years (Banner of Truth, 1982).