Exhortation to ministers in discharge of their duty as ambassadors of the King of kings 1/2

Exhortation 2. To the ministers of the gospel. You see, brethren, your calling; let it be your care to comport with this your honourable employment.  Let us set forth a few directions.

(1.) Stain not the dignity of your office by any base unworthy practices.  Dignitas in indigno, saith Salvian, is ornamentum in luto—O lay not the dig­nity of your function in the dirt by any sordid unholy actions!  Paul magnified his office; do not you do that which should make others vilify and debase it.  That which makes others bad will make you worse.  ‘Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil?’ John 6:70.  You are called angels, but if wicked, you become devils.  We have read of ‘a prophet’s reward,’ Matt. 10:41, which a­mounts to more than a private dis­ciple’s; and do you not think there will be a prophet’s punishment in hell, as well as reward in heaven? One saith, ‘If any were born without original sin, it should be the minister; if any could live without actual sin it should be the minister; if there were such a thing a venial sin, it should not be in ministers.  They are more the servants of God than others; should not they then be more holy than others?’  Art thou fit to be an ambassador, who art not a good subject? to be a minister, that art not a good Christian?

(2.) Keep close to thy instructions.  Ambassadors are bound up by their commission what they are to say; be sure therefore to take thy errand right, before thou ascendest the pulpit to deliver it.  ‘I have re­ceived of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you,’ I Cor. 11:23.  God bids the prophet, Eze. 3:17, ‘Hear the word at my mouth, and give them warning from me.’   It must be from him, or it is not right.  O take heed thou dost not set the royal stamp upon thy own base metal!  Come not to the people with, ‘Thus saith the Lord,’ when it is the divination of thy own brain.  No such loud lie as that which is told in the pulpit.  And, as thou must not speak what he never gave thee in commission, so not conceal what thou hast in command to deliver.  It is as dangerous to blot out, as put in, anything to our message.  Job com­forted himself with this, that he had ‘not concealed the words of the Holy One,’ Job 6:10.  And Paul, from this, washeth his hands of the blood of souls, ‘I am pure from the blood of all men.  For I have not shun­ned to declare unto you all the counsel of God,’ Acts 20:26, 27.  Pray, observe, he doth not say he hath de­clared all the counsel of God.  No; who can, but God himself?  The same apostle saith, ‘We prophesy but in part.’ There is a terra incognita—unknown land, in the Scriptures, mysteries that yet were never fully discovered.  We cannot declare all that know not all. But he saith, ‘He shunned not to declare all.’  When he met a truth, he did not step back to shun it; as when we see a man in the street with whom we have no mind to speak, we step into some house or shop till he be past.  The holy apostle was not afraid to speak what he knew to be the mind of God; as he had it from God, so should they from him.  He did not balk in his preaching what was profitable for them to know.  Caleb, one of the spies sent to Canaan, could not give them a full account of every particular place in the land, but he made the best observation he could, and then brings Moses word again—‘As it was,’ saith he, ‘in mine heart,’ Joshua 14:7; while others basely concealed what they knew, because they had no mind to the journey; and this gained him the testi­mony from God’s own mouth to be a man that ‘followed him fully,’ Num. 14:23.  So he that doth his utmost to search the Scriptures, and then brings word to the people as it is in his heart, preaching what he hath learned from it, without garbling his conscience and detaining what he knows for fear or favour, this is the man that fulfills his ministry, and shall have the euge—well done! of a faithful servant.