Training Men to Lead

“I will therefore that men (Gk. aner – male in distinction to female) pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands (hands unstained – a holy walk) without wrath and doubting (anger and disputing).” (I Tim. 2:8)

Pastors who seldom call others to lead in prayer are missing a tremendous opportunity to disciple men in the assembly. Others should be called upon, not only in Sunday school classes and other weekly Bible studies, but also in the morning worship service. I am not alone in thinking this. Warren Wiersbe, in his little book titled, In Praise of Plodders, says, “Some ministers pray too often in the Sunday service and they ought to invite others to share in this ministry.” Of course if this has not been his custom, he may have to orient the men of the congregation by informing them ahead of time that he would like for them to lead in prayer at the opening or closing of the service.

If the leader would call upon others to pray, he would find that they would begin to develop in the area of leadership. He should call upon men in general and not only those who are aspiring to lead. Of course, there will be occasions when the pastor may need to open or close the service in prayer, but he should not reserve that place entirely for himself.

Don’t be hesitant to call upon men to lead in prayer. It will stretch them. It will help them learn to pray aloud – to pray in public. It will encourage them to lead their own family in prayer before meals and at family devotions. They will become leaders in their families.

If pastors and elders would call upon other men to lead in prayer, the people would be taught that not only the trained clergy is able to address God in prayer in the worship service, but all spiritual men may do so. And visitors would see that the pastor is not the only spiritual man in the congregation.

Quotes on Humor in Preaching

While preaching is a serious business - it is God’s means of saving lost sinners (I Cor. 1:21), a good case can be made for the use of humor in preaching. Jesus had a sense of humor, and He often used humor in His preaching. The book of Ecclesiastes says, “There is a time to laugh and a time to cry” (3:4). I have at least two books in my library on the humor of Jesus, one by David Redding and the other by Elton Trueblood. Dr. Larry Michael has a chapter on laughter in his book titled Spurgeon on Leadership.

Our Puritan forefathers were rather stern when it came to preaching, but C.H. Spurgeon, who has been called “the last Puritan,” was known to have had a great sense of humor which he often used in his preaching. A lady once complained to Spurgeon that he used too much humor in his sermons. Spurgeon replied, “Well madam, you may very well be right; but if you knew the number of jokes I do not tell you, and the number of things that I refrain from saying you would give me credit.”

The great evangelist George Whitfield never used humor. John Piper seems to have this view, yet he often injects humor into his sermons. Martyn Lloyd Jones had a similar view of humor in preaching. Others make a great use of humor; Charles Swindoll is a good example as are also Alistar Begg and David Jeremiah. Both Swindoll and Jeremiah offer recordings of excerpts from their sermons of their humor. A humorous story can bring light on a major point. The trick is to keep humor and gravity in balance. Humor should seldom be used for sake of humor, I think.

The great reformer Martin Luther gave nine properties and virtues of a good preacher. First, [he said] he should, “…teach systematically…[and] have a ready wit…”etc.

In his book, Lectures on Preaching, Phillips Brooks called humor one of the most helpful qualities that the preacher can possess.

John Stott, who went to be with the Lord in 2011, said, “We should press [humor] gladly into service in the cause of the gospel.”

John Ortberg believes “…humor must always be the servant of the message. If humor does nothing to forward that purpose, then the preacher must willingly jettison it from the sermon.”

Even Lloyd Jones said, “I would not dare to say that there is no place for humor in preaching, but I do suggest that it should not be a very big place because of the nature of the work and because of the character of this truth with which we are dealing.”

I think that Haddon Robbinson gives the proper balance on the subject of humor in preaching in his book, Biblical Preaching when he writes, “…the cardinal rule of humor is [that] it must serve the truth.”

The Men of the Titanic

On the night of April 14, 1912, one of the worst maritime disasters in history occurred. The British luxury liner, Titanic, a 46,000 ton ship on her maiden voyage from Liverpool, England, to New York City, struck an iceberg about 95 miles south of the Grand Banks of New Foundland The ship that had been hailed unsinkable, because of its sixteen water – tight compartments, sank in just three hours. The iceberg had penetrated five of the compartments—one more than was considered possible in any single accident.

The captain of the ship had boasted that not even God could sink the ship. Because of the overconfidence of her builder, lifeboats had been provided for only a fraction of the passengers and crew. Some 2,220 persons were on board the giant ship; of these 1,513 lost their lives.

But as tragic as the disaster was, it has left us one of the greatest illustrations of sacrificial love in history. We are told that while the ship’s orchestra played “Nearer My God to Thee,” 1,513 brave souls, mostly men who had given up their places in the life boats for the women and children, gave their lives in the freezing waters of the North Atlantic. It was reported that some 600 widows of the Titanic disaster were left in Liverpool alone!

Recent investigations have shown that the metal of the Titanic was inferior. The mettle of the men of the Titanic was not!

Someone has reported that a recent survey asked the question, “Would you have given up your right to a seat in a lifeboat if you had been on the Titanic?” Forty-eight percent responded “No.” It would seem that this was a much safer place for women to live in, during the days when the Judeao-Christian ethic (or chivalry) was still alive.

How heroic these men of the Titanic were! But what they did was only what God’s Word demands of every Christian Husband. In Ephesians 5:25 we read, “Husbands, love your wives,as Christ loved the Church and gave himself for it.” So, the Christian husband is to demonstrate sacrificial love for his wife just as those men of the Titanic demonstrated their unselfish love for the women and children of the ill-fated ship, by giving their lives for them.

February has just passed. It is the month when we think a lot about the real meaning of love. So let me pose this question, “How much do you love your wife.” How have you demonstrated sacrificial love for her? Let me suggest some tangible ways that you can show her you love her. Think for a moment about some things that you are quite sure irritate you wife most and give them up. It may be a habit that annoys her, it may be a hobby that keeps you away too much, or it may be something else. Give it up if you love her. Make it your goal to change these things in order to demonstrate the reality of your love.

On the positive side, do something tangible for her. Send her flowers, open the car door for her, tell her that you love her, take her out to dinner—just the two of you, not just on Valentine’s Day, but all through the year.

Be like the men of the Titanic in demonstrating your love. Better still be Christ-like in your love for your wife. Christ proved His love for the church by paying the supreme sacrifice. How have you demonstrated your love for your wife?

Quotable Spurgeon

Quotes from The Quotable Spurgeon

Harold Publishing Company

From the introduction:

“The great German theologian and pastor Helmut Thielicke stated,” ‘Sell all the books you have…and buy Spurgeon.’”

“At the age of six…being already well able to read…[he] picked up a copy of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress.  It fascinated him—actually, he read it over one hundred times during his life.”

“He said, ‘the revealed word awakened me; but it was the preached word that saved me; I now think I am bound never to preach a sermon without preaching to sinners.”

“Spurgeon was also tremendously sensitive to the absolute necessity of the work of the Holy Spirit in his pulpit style and ministry.”

“Many things could be said about Spurgeon’s preaching style, but perhaps central to it all was the fact that he was absolutely committed to the full authority of the Scriptures.”

“…for three years there were over one thousand people every Sunday turned away from the ten-thousand-seat-capacity Surrey Gardens Music Hall, where he preached to a packed building before the construction of the Metropolitan Tabernacle building.”

From the section titled “Preaching the Word.” pp. 207 – 232 (other sections include:  Evangelism, Prayer, His Holy Word, Living Faith, God’s Grace, Affliction, Sinful Nature, etc.)

“However learned, godly, and eloquent a minister may be, he is nothing without the Holy Spirit.”

“…men love spiritual warmth.  Cold truth, even cold gospel truth, is never attractive.  Ministers must be fervent, their spirits earnest, and their style energetic, or many will not come to them.  Religion is a dish to be served hot; once it becomes lukewarm it is sickening.  Our baptism must be with the Holy Spirit and with fire if we would win the masses to hear the gospel.”

“Let the preacher give his people food, and they will flock around him, even if the sounding brass of rhetoric and the tinkling cymbals of oratory are silent.”

“The best teachers are those who have labored to be understood by the dullest capacities.  Preachers who all along have aimed to suit the educated never become so simple or efficient as those who have made a point of explaining even the elements [basics] of faith to the ignorant.”

“The church has never had worse enemies than false teachers.  Infidels and persecutors do but mild injury to her, but her heretical preachers have been as evening wolves.”

Quotes on Preaching from Gathered Gold by John Blanchard

“If you shoot over the heads of your congregation, you don’t prove anything except that you don’t know how to shoot.”  - James Denney

“If it is bad to preach over people’s heads, not to preach to their heads at all is worse.”

-          James S. Stewart

“The Christian ministry exists for the promotion of holiness.” – Donald MacLeod

“My grand point in preaching is to break hard hearts, and to heal the broken one.” 

-           John Newton

“If we can teach Christ to our people, we teach them all.” – Richard Baxter

“There are three particular temptations that assail Christian leaders:  the temptation to shine, the temptation to whine and the temptation to recline.” – Anon

“A pleasing preacher is too often an appeasing preacher.” – Anon

“A self-serving minister is one of the most loathsome sights in all the world.”  

-          Walter J. Chantry”

“It has always been the mark of false prophets and preachers that they preached what people wanted to hear.”  - Peter DeJong

“I had rather be fully understood by ten than admired by ten thousand.” – Jonathan Edwards

“Popularity has killed more prophets than persecution.” – Vance Havner

“No man ought to be in a Christian pulpit who fears man more than God.” – William Still

“A man cannot really preach until preach he must.  If he can do something else, he probably should!” – Vance Havner

                 

“A man should only enter the Christian ministry if he cannot stay out of it.”

-          D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

“I cannot recall, in any of my reading, a single instance of a prophet who applied for the job.”

-          A. W. Tozer

“Error in the pulpit is like fire in the hayloft.”  - Anon

“Preaching is truth through personality.” – Phillips Brooks

“I preached as never sure to preach again, and as a dying man to dying men.” - Richard Baxter

“I go out to preach with two propositions in mind.  First, every person ought to give his life to Christ.  Second, whether or not anyone else gives him his life, I will give him mine.” 

-          Jonathan Edwards

“A minister without boldness is like a smooth file.” – William Gurnall

“A minister should go to every service as though it were the first, as though it could be the best, and as though it might be the last.” – Vance Havner

“I preach as though Christ was crucified yesterday, rose from the dead today and was coming back tomorrow.” – Martin Luther

“To me, the work of preaching is the highest and greatest and the most glorious calling to which anyone can be called.” – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

“No man who is full of himself can ever truly preach the Christ who emptied himself.”

-          J. Sidlow Baxter

“No man can give at once the impressions that he himself is clever and that Jesus Christ is mighty to save.” – James Denney

“Make sure it is God’s trumpet you are blowing….” - W. Ian Thomas

“We must study as hard how to live well as how to preach well.” – Richard Baxter

“He will make the best divine that studies on his knees.” – John Flavel

“We should begin to pray before we kneel down and we should not cease when we rise up.”

-          C. H. Spurgeon

“A preacher should have the mind of a scholar, the heart of a child and the hide of a rhinoceros.  His biggest problem is how to toughen his hide without hardening his heart.” – Vance Havner

“If any minister can be satisfied without conversions, he shall have no conversions.”

-          C. H. Spurgeon

The Da Vinci Code & Biblical Christology

In 1982 the book Holy Blood and the Holy Grail caused a stir by asserting that Jesus fathered a child.  The book postulates the following hypotheses:

1.       Jesus married Mary Magdalene and had at least one child by her.

2.      He and His sympathizers staged His crucifixion and resurrection. 

3.      Mary Magdalene and her offspring made their way to Southern France to escape the Disciples of Jesus 

      who refused to recognize Mary as the designated leader.

4.      Jesus’ bloodline mixed with the noble families of the Franks and became the basis for the Merovingian 

      Dynasty of the Early Middle Ages.

5.      The Merovingian line extends into the modern noble line of Europe so that Jesus’ descendents are alive 

      today.

6.      The bottom line is that Jesus was just a man, no more, no less.  As in the song of Mary Magdalene in Andrew Lloyd Webber's blasphemous "rock-opera" Jesus Christ Superstar, “He’s just a man, and I’ve known so many men before.  In very many ways he's just one more.” 

The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown is more of the same.  Built on the same Gnostic foundation, it portrays Jesus as a mere man.  Because of this Gnostic teaching, the biblical doctrine of Christology becomes crucial for believers to understand.  Who was Jesus Christ?  Was He a liar,  lunatic, or Lord of all? 

The doctrine of the deity of Christ, that He was God, has been a foundation for Christian orthodoxy from the very beginning of Christian history.  The evidence for the deity of Christ is overwhelming.  B. B. Warfield has written, “You cannot read the New Testament without seeing on almost every page the fact of the deity of Christ, that is, that Jesus Christ was God.  He was not a part of God, not a manifestation of God, He was God.”

Quotes from Spurgeon on Depression

Spurgeon lived with depression most of his adult life.  Early in his ministry, Asiatic cholera swept through the tenement section of London around New Park Street church.  Young Spurgeon , seeing friends fall one by one, was seized with despair until he saw a note in a shop window that read, “Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the Most High, thy habitation, there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.” 

As crowds grew at New Park Street Chapel, the congregation was forced to larger and larger facilities to accommodate them.  On one occasion, when ten thousand people had gathered to hear him preach, someone suddenly cried “Fire!”  A terrible panic followed in which seven were killed and scores injured.  It is said that Spurgeon’s depression deepened and that he never fully recovered.

Spurgeon wrote, “The tongue of the taught belongs only to those who also are men of sorrows and acquainted with grief.”

“In the days of his greatest preaching in the Tabernacle, Spurgeon was often in despair and even thought of quitting, for he felt that his illness kept him too often from the pulpit.”

Spurgeon lists several causes for depression.  He wrote, “The times most favorable to fits of depression, I have experienced, may be summed up in a brief catalogue. “

      “First among them I mention the hour of great success.  When at last a long-cherished desire is fulfilled, when God has been glorified greatly by our means, a great triumph achieved, then we are apt to faint….”

      Second, “In the midst of a long stretch of unbroken labour, the same affliction may be looked for.  The bow cannot be always bent without fear of breaking.  Repose is as needful to the mind as sleep to the body….”

     Third, “Before any great achievement, some measure of the same depression is very usual.  Surveying the difficulties before us, our hearts sink within us….  This depression comes over me whenever the Lord is preparing a larger blessing for my ministry.”

     Fourth, “This evil will also come upon us, we know not why, and then it is all the more difficult to drive it away.  Causeless depression is not to be reasoned with….  If these who laugh at such melancholy did but feel the grief of it for one hour, their laughter would be sobered into compassion.”

Speaking of human pride and suffering Spurgeon said, “Our wine must needs be mixed with water, lest it turn our brains.   My witness is, that those who are honored by their Lord in public have usually to endure a secret chastening, or to carry a secret chastening…lest by any means they exalt themselves….”  And again, “By all the castings down of His servants God is glorified….”

“The refiner is never far from the mouth of the furnace when the gold is in that fire, and the Son of God is always walking in the midst of the flames when His holy children are cast into them.”

“…it is only felt affliction which can become blest affliction.  If we are carried over every stream, where would be the trial and where the experience, which trouble is meant to teach us?”

“The Lord frequently appears to save His heaviest blows for His best-loved ones…the Gardener prunes his best roses with most care.”

“Discipline is sent to keep successful saints humble, to make them tender towards others, and to enable them to bear the high honours which their heavenly Friend puts upon them.”

“There is always a merciful limit to the [disciplining] of the sons of God.  Forty stripes save one were all that an Israelite might receive….”

“If the Christian did not sometime suffer heaviness he would begin to grow too proud, and think too much of himself, and become too great in his own esteem.”

“Another reason for this discipline is, I think, that in heaviness we often learn lessons that we never could attain elsewhere.”

“Men will never become great in divinity until they become great in suffering.  ‘Ah!’ said Luther, ‘affliction is the best book in my library,’ and let me add, the best leaf in the book of affliction is that blackest of all the leaves, the leaf called heaviness, when the spirit sinks within us, and we cannot endure as we could wish.”

“And yet again; this heaviness is of essential use to a Christian, if he would do good to others.”

“There are none so tender as those who have been skinned themselves.  Those who have been in the chamber of affliction know how to comfort those who are there.”

“He may make His sons of thunder anywhere; but His sons of consolation He must make in the fire, and there alone.”

Depression often results from too much study and too little exercise.  Spurgeon said, “I confess that I frequently sit hour after hour praying and waiting for a subject, and that is the main part of my study.  Almost every Sunday of my life I prepare enough outlines of sermons to last me for a month.”

Jesus said to His weary disciples, “Let us go into the desert and rest awhile.”  Spurgeon said, “…The Lord Jesus knows better.  He will not exhaust the strength of His servants prematurely and quench the light of Israel.  Rest time is not waste.  It is economy to gather fresh strength.”

“…infirmities may be no detriment to a man’s career of special usefulness; they may even have been imposed upon him by divine wisdom as necessary qualifications for his peculiar course of service.  Some plants owe their medicinal qualities to the marsh in which they grow….”

“Pain has, probably, in some cases developed genius, hunting out the soul which otherwise might have slept like a lion in its den.”

“How low the spirits of good and brave men will sometimes sink…but the [pain] is as real as a gaping wound, and all the more hard to bear because it lies so much in the region of the soul that to the inexperienced it appears to be a mere matter of fancy and imagination.  Reader, never ridicule the nervous and hypochondriacal, their pain is real—it is not imaginary….The mind can descend far lower than the body…flesh can bear only a certain number of wounds and no more, but the soul can bleed in ten thousand ways and die over and over again each hour.” 

It is said that many times Spurgeon came home from meetings at the great tabernacle exhausted and in great depression.  Then Susanna, Spurgeon’s wife, would read to him from Baxter’s Reformed Pastor, at which he would weep and she would weep with him.  (Richard Day, The Shadow of the Broad Brim, p.p.  113, 114)