When You Preach

When you enter the pulpit make no apologies. You may not be a big preacher but you have just as big a Gospel to preach as any preacher who ever lived.

If you have a God-given message, deliver it. If you do not, the spiritual people will soon discover that you are firing only a dud. No matter how well you clothe a sermon with golden rhetoric and fine sentences, it is not a golden tongue that counts but a tongue of fire.

Leave self out of the pulpit but take Christ in. Do not waste time with a long preface or introduction but reach the truths of your sermon as early as possible. Do not keep on talking after you have finished your sermon. It is better to keep the people longing than to send them away loathing.

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A Father's Resolve

1663-1728

Editors comments:
Cotton Mather belonged to a Boston Puritan family. His father was Increase Mather, president of Harvard College and the foremost New England minister of his day. When Cotton entered Harvard at twelve, he could already read Greek, Latin, and Hebrew and had mastered most of the Greek New Testament. But because of a bad stammer he felt unsuited for the ministry and instead studied medicine. However, by 1680 he had overcome the stammer and began a ministry of preaching. Unfortunately, Cotton Mather became very involved in the Salem witch trials of 1692. However, later in his life, he changed many of these views. He wrote over 400 books, many of which had to do with the raising of children and education. Taken from The Puritans: A Sourcebook of Their Writings (edited by Perry Miller and Thomas H. Johnson), the following is quoting Cotton Mather’s writing entitled “Some Special Points Relating to the Raising of My Children.”

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05. Divorce and also Remarriage in the Early Church

Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage (part 5)

After the death of the apostles, Christianity continued to grow and flourish, even though it was beset by poverty and persecution. When we read the writings of the early Church, we enter a world that is in some ways very different than ours. Persecution and ridicule he lped to keep the Church free of converts who would come merely to seek worldly advantage. Closeness to the apostles was strength. Some churches could even speak of the times when the apostles actually sat in their midst and explained the ways of Christ.

Language was also an advantage. Their faith was one that was “handed down,” more than one that was determined merely by studying ancient languages and trying to guess the root meanings of words. I find it kind of funny when I read of some university professor today, claiming that the ancient Greek plainly—and—emphatically says something, and then find out that the very people who lived in ancient Greece said just the opposite. With this advantage, the early Church often cuts through many of our longstanding facades and institutional excuses.

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