Paul termed it "My gospel;" not that he had degraded it by his personal eccentricities or diverted it by selfish appropriation, but the gospel was put into the heart and lifeblood of the man Paul, as a personal trust to be executed by his Pauline traits, to be set aflame and empowered by the fiery energy of his fiery soul. Paul's sermons -- what were they?
Where are they? Skeletons, scattered fragments, afloat on the sea of inspiration!
But the man Paul, greater than his sermons, lives forever, in full form, feature and stature, with his molding hand on the Church.
The preaching is but a voice.
The voice in silence dies, the text is forgotten, the sermon fades from memory; the preacher lives.
The sermon cannot rise in its life-giving forces above the man.
Dead men give out dead sermons, and dead sermons kill.
Everything depends on the spiritual character of the preacher. Under the Jewish dispensation the high priest had inscribed in jeweled letters on a golden frontlet: "Holiness to the Lord." So every preacher in Christ's ministry must be molded into and mastered by this same holy motto.
It is a crying shame for the Christian ministry to fall lower in holiness of character and holiness of aim than the Jewish priesthood.
Jonathan Edwards said: "I went on with my eager pursuit after more holiness and conformity to Christ. The heaven I desired was a heaven of holiness." The gospel of Christ does not move by popular waves.
It has no self-propagating power. It moves as the men who have charge of it move.
The preacher must impersonate the gospel.
Its divine, most distinctive features must be embodied in him. The constraining power of love must be in the preacher as a projecting, eccentric, an all-commanding, self-oblivious force.
The energy of self-denial must be his being, his heart and blood and bones. He must go forth as a man among men, clothed with humility, abiding in meekness, wise as a serpent, harmless as a dove; the bonds of a servant with the spirit of a king, a king in high, royal, in dependent bearing, with the simplicity and sweetness of a child.
The preacher must throw himself, with all the abandon of a perfect, self-emptying faith and a self-consuming zeal, into his work for the salvation of men.
Hearty, heroic, compassionate, fearless martyrs must the men be who take hold of and shape a generation for God.
If they be timid time servers, place seekers, if they be men pleasers or men fearers, if their faith has a weak hold on God or his Word, if their denial be broken by any phase of self or the world, they cannot take hold of the Church nor the world for God.
The preacher's sharpest and strongest preaching should be to himself. His most difficult, delicate, laborious, and thorough work must be with himself.
The training of the twelve was the great, difficult, and enduring work of Christ. Preachers are not sermon makers, but men makers and saint makers, and he only is well-trained for this business who has made himself a man and a saint.
It is not great talents nor great learning nor great preachers that God needs, but men great in holiness, great in faith, great in love, great in fidelity, great for God -- men always preaching by holy sermons in the pulpit, by holy lives out of it.
These can mold a generation for God.
After this order, the early Christians were formed.
Men they were of solid mold, preachers after the heavenly type -- heroic, stalwart, soldierly, saintly. Preaching with them meant self-denying, self-crucifying, serious, toilsome, martyr business.
They applied themselves to it in a way that told on their generation, and formed in its womb a generation yet unborn for God.
The preaching man is to be the praying man.
Prayer is the preacher's mightiest weapon.
An almighty force in itself, it gives life and force to all.
The real sermon is made in the closet. The man -- God's man -- is made in the closet. His life and his profoundest convictions were born in his secret communion with God.
The burdened and tearful agony of his spirit, his weightiest and sweetest messages were got when alone with God.
Prayer makes the man; prayer makes the preacher; prayer makes the pastor.
The pulpit of this day is weak in praying.
The pride of learning is against the dependent humility of prayer.
Prayer is with the pulpit too often only official -- a performance for the routine of service. Prayer is not to the modern pulpit the mighty force it was in Paul's life or Paul's ministry.
Every preacher who does not make prayer a mighty factor in his own life and ministry is weak as a factor in God's work and is powerless to project God's cause in this world.