Bible Commentaries

Exciting Sermons

Luke 4:28-29

Are there any such perorations in connection with the pulpit eloquence of this day? The preacher retires amid thunders of applause, or amid tepid compliments, or without recognition, or with more or less of well-calculated or ill-calculated criticism. But when does a congregation ever rise up, and, filled with wrath, seize the minister, lead him to the brow of the hill, and threaten to cast him headlong from the eminences of the city? Never! We have fallen upon other times. Hear the trumpery criticism of this day:—The sermon was so quiet, so delightfully quiet; the preacher was so pleasant, so tranquil, so composed; he never betrayed the faintest excitement. Or, hear it again in another form:—The sermon was so comforting, soothing, healing; there was balm in it; the preacher was a son of consolation: how richly he dwelt upon the divine promises! how aptly and happily he applied them to human necessity! There is room for all that kind of preaching. It is not a kind of preaching in either case to be despised or held in light esteem. Sometimes we need quietness, oftentimes we need healing. The brokenhearted are the majority in every congregation, if they knew themselves. We need the balm that is in Gilead, and we need no other physician but the One that is there. All that is true; create space for such ministry, for we need it all.

But where is the other kind of eloquence? It must be the right kind in some instances, at least, because it is associated in this text with the name of Jesus Christ. This was not some wandering speaker who had gone forth without licence or authority, or without adequate cause, and had aroused popular passions, or excited religious hatred. The speaker was the Son of God, he who spake as never man spake: and yet when he had uttered a few words, to us apparently so simple and so inoffensive, the whole congregation rose up in a mass, being filled with wrath, and led him forth to the brow of the hill on which their city was built, that they might cast him down headlong.

There should be room for that ministry as well as the other. We do not like it. Therefore, perhaps, we need it the more. We would rather not be disturbed. We have disturbance enough in business and in politics. When we go to the sanctuary we want to hear something to soothe us, and lull us, and comfort us. That is bad reasoning. When we go to the sanctuary we should go for truth. Sometimes truth will be like a child-angel, so sweet, so tender, so familiar, so domestic, so necessary to the completeness of the household; sometimes it will be as the voice of the lute, just what we need; and sometimes it will rage and storm and judge the world and thunder against its iniquities and corruptions: we need it all. Christ's was the perfect ministry, and in Christ we find all this kind of preaching. And only that ministry is right, four-square to the edge, that can be both tender and judicial, comforting and critical, sympathetic and damnatory.

Nor must the preacher be afraid of the people or of his own income. That is the great curse of every age of the pulpit, that a man should think whether he is diminishing his own resources when he declares this or that part of the counsel of God. Those who do not like it must go, and take their gold with them. It will buy them nothing. For such metal there is no exchange with God. It will be a mistake to upbraid the ministry of the time for self-consideration to that degree. The preaching of this day is as fearless as it has been in any other day. Not, perhaps, so fearless in every church; but wherever there is fearless preaching there is a congregation rising to thrust the preacher out of existence. The fearless, all-truth-speaking preacher is hated everywhere. He is not and cannot be a popular man. He can have no sympathy with the majority of his race. He must be prepared for consequences.

What a wondrous ministry was Christ"s! In verse twenty-two we read, in the same chapter, "And all bare him witness, and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth." A few verses after, the whole of the people in the synagogue "rose up," "being filled with wrath." What a change he wrought! What a wizard he was! Now look at the people. How beaming, how radiant, how benignant! they say. Did charmer ever charm like this? Hear that music, and say, was the like ever heard in Israel? In five minutes more, by historical allusions which the people alone could understand, the same people rose up, being filled with wrath, and would have killed the very charmer whose entrancing power they had just acknowledged.

Was there ever any exciting preaching in the Church? Read: "And as they spake unto the people, the priests, and the captain of the temple, and the Sadducees, came upon them, being grieved that they taught the people, and they laid hands on them, and put them in hold." They do the same to-day. If you were to preach apostolically you would be put in prison. The magistrate before whom you would be tried would not understand the case. What case is there that a magistrate really and thoroughly understands all round and round where the gospel is concerned, where high moral impulses are involved, and where the real good of the people is the question of the hour? The magistrates have never been on the side of apostolical preachers. The magistrates have always suggested prison as the best treatment for men who preach the gospel. It looks energetic; if a magistrate were to sympathise with the preacher it would look sentimental. A magistrate seems to be doing something for his dignity when he puts somebody in prison. Read the life of George Fox; read the Life and Journals of John Wesley; study the biography of George Whitefield; read the present-day records of the Salvation Army, and say when were apostolical preachers otherwise treated than Christ himself was treated in the very instance before us.

Understand that we are not saying a word against this same popular quiet preaching, in which a man speaks for an hour, and says nothing that can at all offend or exasperate his audience. We are not undervaluing healing preaching. God forbid. For we all need it; if not to-day, yesterday; it not yesterday, tomorrow we shall need it. But we want to point out that the counsel of God is full-orbed, now soft as when Zephyrus on Flora breathes, and now a wind that silences Euroclydon.

But the times have changed! Have they? Who changed them? Is the devil changed? Has that miracle at last been wrought? Has evil washed its hands and come out of the process pure and stainless? What has changed? Is the thief honest? Why, that is a paradox, a contradiction in terms. Are there no thieves to-day? Is the miser generous? When did he convert himself? If he is generous he is not a miser; if he is a miser he is not generous. The times have changed! When? Services may have changed, transient relations may have been transformed and modified, but the times have not changed in the sense of making sin less sinful, dishonesty less thievish, miserliness less avaricious. We find these great radical principles and policies abiding now in the deepest sense. What if we should be the real thieves? That is a harrowing suggestion. But what if the magistrate should be the real thief, and the little boy who took the pocket-handkerchief should be honest in his soul and only thievish in his fingers, because of some impulsion or compulsion not easily understood by those who are outside the circle and atmosphere within which he lives? What if the man with the fine clothing and the gold ring and the high position be the real thief?—not a vulgar, common, street thief, that is the very poorest kind of felon; but a calculating, long-headed, nimble-fingered gentleman, who writes well and reads much, and talks fluently, and has his turns of piety—what if he in the soul of him and in the whole trick of his policy be the real thief?

Have the times changed? In that direction they may have changed. Refined sin may have displaced rough criminality, but the devil is inconvertible, and will be the same when the hour of doom has struck. Do not misunderstand things, and do not be such wonderful optimists and poets as to see improvements where there really are none at all. If there are improvements prove them, recognise them, be thankful for them; but understand that the devil cannot change. If he is dead the times may have changed. If we have any reason to believe that he is still hidden in some corner of God's universe, he is as fruitful of poison and iniquity as he ever was. What if we be the misers? That is an exasperating suggestion. The man who makes it ought to be led out, and cast down from the top of the highest hill that is accessible. What if we be the misers? Ay, that! You who gave a hundred pounds all at once may be the miser. Why did you give it? In what atmosphere did you act? What was your regnant motive? Go into your soul, and ask your soul torturing questions until you get at the truth. If you gave it honestly, lovingly, gratefully, you will be blessed; you shall have it tenfold back again. The question Luke 4:28. Filled with wrath.—They were indignant at his rejection of his countrymen which he points by citing the examples of the two great prophets. They may also have understood him to hint that he had a mission even to the heathen.

Luke 4:29. Thrust him out.—Drove him out with violence.

The brow.—Or a brow, according to a great preponderance of authority. Two natural features, in the neighbourhood of Nazareth, may still be identified.... "The second is indicated in the Gospel history by one of those slight touches which serve as a testimony to the truth of the description, by nearly approaching, but yet not crossing, the verge of inaccuracy. "They rose," it is said of the infuriated inhabitants, and cast him out of the city, and brought him to a brow of the mountain.... on which the city was built, so as to cast him down the cliff."... Most readers probably from these words imagine a town built on the summit of a mountain, from which summit the intended precipitation was to take place. This, as I have said, is not the situation of Nazareth. Yet its position is still in accordance with the narrative. It is built "upon," that is, on the side of, "a mountain," but the "brow" is not beneath, but over the town, and such a cliff... as is here implied is to be found, as all modern travellers describe, in the abrupt face of the limestone rock, about thirty or forty feet high, overhanging the Maronite convent at the south-west corner of the town, and another at a little further distance." (Stanley, "Sinai and Palestine," ch10.) One such cliff, about two miles from Nazareth, is shown as the "Mount of Precipitation."

That they might cast, etc.—Read, so as to cast.

Prayer

Blessed Jesus, thou knowest all things; thou readest every heart; thou needest not that any should testify of man, for thou knowest what is in man. Truly we bear the image and likeness of God, and thou, being in the bosom of the Father, knowest all things that are in our nature. We can hide nothing from thee; but, blessed be thy name, thine eyes are not eyes of justice only, they are eyes of love, compassion, tenderness; they see us as we are, they see us as we might be, they see us in the purpose of God. Behold, we come to thee; to thee all men must come; thou canst find the piece we have lost; thou canst bring back our whole being, our highest quality, our truest character; thou canst restore us to our standing in the household of God. Blessed One, we love thee; we do not only revere thee and admire thee, and offer the homage due to great power; but we love thee, we yearn towards thee, we struggle after thee, we struggle after thee in the crowd, knowing that if we can but touch the hem of thy garment we shall lose all our disease. O thou Great Speaker, Great Healer, Friend of the broken heart, and Helper of the helpless, come to us day by day, bringing the daily bread we need for the body, and the bread of life we need for the soul. We have read thy life—we have sat down with thee, we have looked at thee; we have been with thee when we thought no eye could see us, when hardly thine own vision could detect us, so deep was the darkness and so complete our concealment; and after all we have heard and seen and known and felt of thee we love thee all the more. Lord, abide with us, for it is towards evening, and the day is far spent with many: break bread to us with thine own dear hands, and when we begin to touch what thou hast blessed we shall see thee, a vanishing glory, but a light to come again. Amen.