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JESUS AS PREACHER AND TEACHER
TEXT—And they were astonished at His
teaching: for His word was with authority.
Luke IV :32.
Y FRIENDS, I take it for granted
that the majority of us present, to
say the least of it, are either min
isters or teachers in some branch
of the Church. And since it is my
privilege to speak the opening
word at this Conference, I desire to
speak to you of Jesus as a Preach
er and Teacher. 1 think we will
J
all be agreed that Jesus was the most wondei
ful Preacher and Teacher that this world has
ever seen. I think sceptics and infidels alike
would agree with us in that statement, lie
was not always popular. He was not always
unpopular. It is not necessary that one should
always be popular in order to be great. It
is not necessary that one should be unpopular
in order to be powerful. Some people, 11 ear,
have made the mistake of fancying that in ol
der for them to be powerful they must be
freakish and unpopular. I had a man in my
Church of that character. I pray God never
to give me another! And yet he was a great
blessing to me, because he taught me patience
I remember once he introduced a resolution in
Church meeting, and he was so surprised to
find that everybody was on his side, and voted
for his resolution, that he fancied that there was
something wrong about it, and came to me three
days after and asked me to please allow him
the privilege of changing his vote, and putting
it on the other side. If ever there was a man
born in the objective case, and who lived ac
cording to his birth, it was that man. And
he was honest about it! He could not for his
life see how the popular crowd could ever be
right.
Now, Jesus, I repeat, was not always popular,
nor was He always unpopular. He was both.
But, my brethren and friends, whether He was
popular or unpopular, He was always powerful,
wonderful, irresistible. He was so great in
His power as a Preacher, and so winsome, that
a band of rugged fishermen, hearing Him speak,
left their nets and followed Him. He was so
convincing in His preaching that Matthew, sit
ting at the receipt of custom, holding the posi
tion of the collector of customs, when He heard
Him preach, resigned his position and followed
Him. He was so tender and compassionate,
and full of sympathy that a poor crimson har
lot, when she heard Him, was converted, and
went back to her town, and led in a mighty
revival movement. He was so dynamic in His
message that a poor demoniac possessed with
demons, when he heard Him, was clothed, put
in his right mind, and desired to follow Him.
He was so mysterious and wonderful in all that
He said and* in all that He did that His ene
mies, when they failed to get enough against
Him to put Him to death, and heard Him speak,
went back and made report, “Never man spoke
like this man.”
And as we read these things about Jesus we
naturally wonder why was He a Man of such
power? You must understand that we are now
looking at Him more from the human stand
point than the Divine. We are trying, if we
can, to analyze and find out the secret of the
success of Jesus as a Preacher and a Teacher.
There are three ways usually of accounting for
a great character —heredity, environment and
education. Now we cannot in any way ac
count for the greatness of Jesus by his hered
ity. He was born a peasant child. We can
not account for His greatness by His environ
ment. He was environed by nothing that
could contribute to making a man great, ex
cept the privilege of living for most of Ilis life
in the open air. He never, so far as we know,
Opening Address of Dr. Len G. Broughton, D.D., at Westminster Bible Conference, Mundesley
The Golden Age for December 5, 1912.
Reported for The Golden Age by M. I. H. —Copyright Applied for.
heard the great preachers and teachers of His
day. He was thirty years of age before he
ever delivered a public address. We cannot ac
count for His greatness by His education, for
so far as we know He never enjoyed the priv
ileges of a school. Doubtless He went to
school, as most boys of His class went to
school, until they were about ten or twelve
years of age, and then left it. We can infer
that Jesus went to school as the other boys
around Him did, but certainly He had no great
advantages in schooling.
How then are we to account for the great
ness of Jesus as a Preacher and a Teacher?
There are three elements, we are told, that
enter into the making of a great address: a
great occasion, a great theme, and a great per
sonality. I want to give you a bit of history,
that you may; see the working of these three
elements combined. It was in 1830 that Dan
iel Webster, a member of the United States
Senate, stood facing that great company of
orators, and delivered the most wonderful ora
tion that has ever been delivered in the history
of that people. The occasion was that of the
supposed disruption of the nation over the ques
tion of slavery. Daniel Webster stood before
that body of men and argued for the freedom
of the slaves, and the record says that never in
the history of the Senate were men so tremen
dously swept as on that occasion; and all the
people of the nation were stirred by the might
of that man’s eloquence.
But follow Daniel Webster just twenty years
after that. Again the nation is threatened
with dissolution, again the question of slavery
is before the people, again every eye is turned
upon Webster, the great orator, and he again
rises in the Senate and delivers an oration, but
this time it fell perfectly flat, so flat that it is
never referred to in that country. Why this
difference? He had the same great occasion—
the nation was about to go to pieces; he had
the same great personality that he possessed on
the former occasion, a personality the like of
which no other American statesman has ever
approximated to; but he did not have the same
great theme. This time Daniel Webster’s theme
was one of compromise, and compromise is ever
the signal of failure; and Webster went down
with his address, and never again was able to
come before the people with the same power
that he had had before.
Now, my brethren, looking at the life of
Jesus, we find that from the very beginning He
had all these three elements combined. To
begin with, Jesus from the beginning had a
great occasion. He had a great occasion, doc
trinally, or theologically. At the time there
were three great schools of thought that faced
Him: the school of the Pharisees, the bigots
the school of the Sadducees, the sceptics; the
school of the Essenes, the ascetics. Every
where Jesus went He had to face these three
schools of thought. It is exceedingly interest
ing for us as preachers and teachers, certainly
it is to me, to see how Jesus answered these
different schools of thought. He never en
gaged in any controversy with them. In all
Ilis preaching it was His method simply to de
clare the gospel that He had come to preach,
and never once did He enter into any spirited
controversy concerning their belief. My breth
ren, let me step aside far enough here to say
this: 1 speak of it as I feel it. Ido not be
lieve that the Church of Christ will ever con
vert the world of sceptics by any other meth
od than the method that Jesus himself follow
ed. When John sent to Jesus and asked the
question, “Art Thou He that cometh, or look
we for another?” Jesus said, “Go . . . and
tell John the things which ye do hear and see.”
And the answer of the Church to the world to
day that is criticising Jesus is not to be an ar-
gument of word, but of life. While they crit
icise let us live; and as we live what He taught,
we shall disprove what they say.
And then He had a great occasion socially.
At that time the world was perhaps at its
worst. On every hand sin was seen, poverty
stalked up and down the land in the midst of
plenty. There had not been the voice of a
prophet heard for four hundred years. The
priest had taken the place of the prophet, and
he was corrupt; and consequently all religious
life under him was corrupt. Men of money
were frightened out of their wits to keep what
they had. They had to hide it in the caves
and dens of the earth. Sickness and sorrow
and poverty were everywhere to be observed,
and nobody was lifting a hand, or crying out
for help. Jesus came and faced this situation
of the world. Could a true reformer want a
greater occasion? Could a true preacher of
righteousness and justice and equity desire any
thing greater to call from him every vestige
of his manhood and his power?
But Jesus had more than a great occasion, He
had also a great theme; and if you would find
what His theme was, come back into Isaiah, the
sixtymrst chapter, verses one to three inclusive,
and find it stated by the prophet. Jesus in this
fourth chapter of Luke refers to it: “The
Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the
Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings
unto the meek; He hath sent me to bind up the
broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the cap
tives, and the opening of the prison to them
that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year
of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our
God to comfort all that mourn, to appoint
unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto
them a garland for ashes, the oil of joy for
mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit
of heaviness; that they might be called trees
of righteousness, the planting of Jehovah, that
He might be glorified.”
Now, studying these words we find that Jesus
had for His theme seven great essential things.
First, to preach good tidings unto the meek;
second, to bind up the broken hearted; third,
to proclaim liberty to the captives; fourth, to
proclaim the year of Jehovah’s favor; fifth, to
comfort all that mourn; sixth, to give unto
them that mourn a garland for ashes, the oil
of joy for mourning, the garment of praise
for the spirit of heaviness; seventh, that they
may be called trees of righteousness, the plant
ing of Jehovah, that He may be glorified.
My brethren, when I stand and face these
things, and when I see how perfectly Jesus
preached them and acted upon them, I do not
not wonder that He was a Man of irresistible
power.
But Jesus had more than a great occasion,
and He had more than a great theme; He had
a great personality. Here we are staggered,
for no man can analyze the personality of Jesus.
He was different from all men that ever had
lived. He never resorted to any of the tricks of
the orator. He was never known, so far as
we know, to make a gesture. He never used
any superfluous words. He never resorted to
any of the rounded periods of the rhetorician.
And yet His sentences were always without
fault. He never resorted to logic. That won
derful lecturer in America, George R. Wend
ling, in that marvellous, masterful lecture of
his on “The Man of Galilee,” says, “in all
the four gospels there is not to be found enough
constructive logic to make one syllogism.” A
marvellous statement if true; and there must
be some truth in it, or else a man of his standing
would never have said it. Jesus was never
known, in all of His public addresses, and in
His teaching, to be impatient; and yet He was
never known to lose a single opportunity. He
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