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TEXT: Luke 4:32. “And they were as
tonished at his preaching for his word was
with power.”
N our Sunday morning studies in
the life of Christ we have consid
ered Jesus in His childhood, Jesus
in His baptism, and Jesus in His
temptation, and this morning we
come to consider Jesus as a
preacher. I think that I can state
without fear of any sort of intel
ligent contradiction that Jesus of
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Nazareth was the world’s most popular
preacher. He was the most popular preach
er when He lived among men, and He is to
day in history the world’s most popular
preacher. Ido not mean to be understood as
saying that He was the world’s most popular
man. He was not the world’s most popular
man. Indeed He was not popular in that
sense at all. A popular man generally is a
man who does not run contrary to popular
thought and popular life. Jesus was not
such a man. Jesus began contrary to pop
ular thought and popular conduct, and He
was a constant contradiction to all popular
forms of life from the day that He first
opened his mouth as a public man until His
return to Heaven. But Jesus was a popular
preacher because great crowds of people,
even from the ranks of his enemies flocked
to hear him wherever He went. They flock
ed to the temple, when He was there; they
flocked to the synagogue when it was known
that He was to preach there; they flocked to
the street corner when it was known that He
would preach there; and to the mountains
where He went oftentimes for the purpose
of rest and quiet; they followed Him, break
ing up His rest time, giving him no ease or
quiet whatever, because they desired to hear
His words.
And I may say also, I am sure, that Jesus
was the world’s most wonderful preacher.
The wonderfulness of the preaching of Jesus
is seen most in the results that follow His
ministry. Os course, his manner of preach
ing was wonderful, but the most wonderful
feature connected with the preaching of Je
sus was the results that came out. When He
walked along by the lake shores of Galilee
and preached, sturdy, hardworking fisher
men turned their backs upon their nets and
followed Him, without knowing where they
were going or how they were to get their
support. Matthew, sitting in the seat of cus
tom with a fat and remunerative job, hear
ing Jesus speak, resigned his position as the
collector of customs and went after Jesus
without knowing where and into what He
would lead him, and how he would get his
support. A poor demoniac man living out
there among the tombs, cutting and gashing
himself with the stones, hearing Jesus speak,
rushed and fell at His feet, clothed and in his
right mind, and immediately desii>ed to fol
low Him, though he knew nothing of what
the issue in the following of Jesus would in
volve. And a poor woman living in adultery
hearing Jesus speak out by the well repented
of her sin and became, under the inspiration
of Jesus, one of His most successful evange
lists. And so all along through the ministry
of Jesus, His preaching fell with such power
upon the ears of people as that no man could
resist Him save by fleeing from His pres
ence.
His enemies, after they had done their best
to get some sort of complaint that they could
lodge against Him, going from one of his
public addresses, reported to their fellows,
“Never man spake like this man.” As we
come, my brethren, to look at the wonderful
ness and the popularity of the preaching of
Jesus Christ, we ourselves are led to wonder
JESUS AS A PREACHER
Tabernacle Sermon by Rev. Len G. Broughton, D.D.
Stenographically reported for The Golden Age.—Copyright applied for.
The Golden Age for June 15,1911.
as to the source of all this popularity and
power. For we must remember in this series
we are largely considering Jesus as a man,
always conscious of the fact that Jesus was
also God. We are largely viewing Him as
such with the purpose of getting suggestive
lessons that we ourselves may appropriate to
the betterment of our service for the Master,
and for the creation of the higher degree of
spiritual activity amongst us.
The source of this popularity and power of
Jesus—whence is it? We have already seen
that Jesus did not get any of his power from
heredity for He was born of a woman of the
peasant class, and had no special advantages;
His reputed father was likewise a peasant,
and was one of the humblest and in many
respects one of the weakest of men; a man of
no special strength and no standing of any
importance. So that He did not get His
power as a public speaker from his parents.
And we have seen also that Jesus could not
have obtained any of His power from His en
vironment, for He was not environed with
any sort of atmosphere that would make of
Him a great and popular preacher. His en
vironment was of the humblest and of the
most illiterate. So far as the record goes
Jesus never came in contact with any man of
any superior quality whatever; certainly
never of a many of any oratorical or popular
speaking gifts. He lived with His parents
the obscure life of the peasant of the time,
and toiled with His father up until the time
He was thirty years of age, when He entered
upon his public ministry. We have seen also
that there could not have been anything in
His education that accounted for His wonder
ful gifts, for He had no education as we to
day regard education. Being a child of a
peasant He only had the education of His
class which was simply a most rudimentary
form of training. He never went to school
after He was ten years of age, and when He
was in school He was only taught reading,
unless He was the one unique exception in all
that community, and there is certainly no
record of it, for they did not dream who He
was; and He suffered Himself to be limited
in order that He might know exactly and
feel the throb of the heart of the man of His
time. So that the only education He
had was what the schools furnished, hence
He could not have got His power of speech
from His education.
Whence then is the source of this marvel
ous power and popularity of Jesus as an ora
tor, as a public speaker, as a preacher? For
we must remember, my brethren, that Jesus
in public addresses commanded the attention
and respect and the regard of every class of
people with whom He came in contact; the
most learned, the most ignorant, the richest
and the poorest; they were all impressed and
gripped and held by the power of speech of
Jesus Christ. How are we going to account
for it?
Let me say that there are three elements
that enter into the making of a great address
or a great sermon. First, a great occasion;
second, a great theme, and third, a great per
sonality. We have some illustrations in his
tory of the blending of these three qualities.
Take, for example, the case of Daniel Web
ster. He, doubtless, was the greatest orator
that this country ever had. In 1830 Daniel
Webster was a member of the United States
Senate. At that time the great slave ques
tion had lifted its head with such defiance as
that the integrity of the nation was seriously
threatened. Hayne, in the United States
Senate, had made his speech in advocacy of
slavery, and Daniel Webster arose in that
body and delivered that address of his which
from the moment of its delivery was immor
tal; it will never die; that address in which
he argued for the unity of the nation and the
freedom of the slave. It was a reply to the
address of Hayne in advocacy of slavery. And
history records that never in all the history
of the United States Senate was there known
to be such a spell, such a power, such awe as
fell upon that body at the close of that great
address. In that address there was the blend
ing of those three elements: a great occasion;
the nation was about to be disrupted and
pulled to pieces. Slavery was lifting its
shackled and manacled hands. A great
theme; unity, and freedom. A great and
wonderful personality such as Daniel Web
ster possessed.
Then, twenty years after that the same
question was up in the United States Senate,
and the nation was again being threatend and
slavery was again being agitated; the free
dom of the slaves, and the integrity of the
nation was the topic uppermost in the
thought of the senate, Daniel Webster arose
and made a second speech, but it fell flat. No
man today reads it, while almost every col
lege boy has either recited or heard recited
part or all of that wonderful speech of 1830.
What is the difference between the effect of
those two great speeches ? For they were both
great from the standpoint of literature. In
the second, there was the great occasion,
there was a great personality; Daniel Web
ster was the same Daniel Webster that he
was twenty years ago, but there was lacking
the other element, a great theme. He advo
cated a compromise, and no man ever yet
made a great address or preached a great
sermon advocating the slightest element of
compromise.
Then we have a still more modern example
of the blending of these three great elements
in the making of a great address. I thought
this morning as I passed the monument of
Henry W. Grady of the glory of that life.
This nation was still apart though living un
der one flag. Henry W. Grady was invited
to Boston to make an address, and in that
address, which will live in sentiment and song
and poetry and history as long as this coun
try stands, in that wonderful address Henry
W. Grady seized upon a great occasion, which
was the blending of these two great coun
tries together under one great flag, by one
great people, to accomplish one great destiny.
He advocated the cessation of the bloody
shirt waving of the North; he desired that
the people of the South should lay aside their
dusty habilaments of war and meet their fel
lows of the North and shake hands across
that line in imagination known as Mason and
Dixon’s line; and with hand and heart to
gether make of this nation what under God
it was possible for it to be. He died soon
after that, and from one side of this country
to another, it is said that “he died literally
loving a nation back to peace.” A great oc
casion, a great theme, and a great person
ality.
I am thinking of another illustration of the
blending of these three elements. Many
years ago, when the Southern Baptist Con
vention was in session in Raleigh, there was
a great discussion going on all over the coun
try about the resurrection of the dead, the
skeptics vowing their disbelief. Richard Ful
ler was to preach the Convention sermon Sun
day morning at eleven o’clock, from the pul
pit of the First Baptist Church of that city.
Os course, it was a great occasion from the
standpoint of the great crowd packed and
thronged and jammed in the building. It
was a great occasion, too, because this great
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