The minister’s duty to make known the gospel 2/2

 Second.  The gospel itself saves not, except it be made known.  ‘If our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost,’ II Cor. 4:3.  Where God sends no light, he intends no love.  In bodily sickness a physician may make a cure, though his patient knows not what the medicine is that he useth.  But the soul must know its remedy before he can have any healing benefit from it.  John is sent ‘to give knowledge of salvation unto his people by the remission of their sins,’ Luke 1:77.  No knowledge, no remission.  Christ must be lift up on the pole of the gospel, as well as on the tree of the cross, that by an eye of faith we may look on him, and so be healed, John 3:14. ‘Look unto me, and be ye saved,’ Isa. 45:22.  A man that sees may lead another that is bodily blind to the place he would go.  But he that would go to heaven must have an eye in his own head to see his way, or else he will never come there.  ‘The just shall live by his faith,’ Hab. 2:4, not by another’s.  A proxy faith is bootless.  Now saving faith is a grace that sees her object; it is ‘the evidence of things not seen,’ Heb. 11:1; that is, which are not seen by sense.  ‘I know,’ saith Paul, ‘whom I have believed,’ II Tim. 1:12.  Therefore faith is oft set out by knowledge: ‘And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent,’ John 17:3.  Now, how can they know Christ and life eternal, till the gospel be made known, which bringeth him and life by him to light? II Tim. 1:10.  And by whom shall the gospel be made known if not by the ministers of it?  Thus far the apostle drives it: ‘How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?’ Rom. 10:14. So that this great work lies at the minister’s door.  He is to ‘make known the mystery of the gospel.’

           Objection.  But what need now of preaching? this was the work of those that were to plant a church.  Now the church is planted and the gospel made known, this labour may be spared.

           Answer.  The ministry of the gospel was not in­tended only to plant a church, but to carry on its growth also.  What Paul plants, Apollos comes after and waters with his ministry, I Cor. 3:6.  When the foundation is laid, must not the house be built?  And this Christ gave ministers to his church for, ‘For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ,’ Eph. 4:12.  The scaffold is not taken down till the building be finished, but rather to raised higher and higher as the fabric goes up.  Thus Paul went on in his ministry from lower points to higher, from foundation to su­perstructory truths, Heb 6:1.  A famous church was planted at Thessalonica, but there was something ‘lacking in their faith,’ which Paul longed to come and carry on to further perfection I Thes. 3:10.  Surely they that think there is so little need of preaching, forget that the gospel is a mystery—such a mystery as can never be fully taught by the minister or learned by the people; neither do they consider how many engineers Satan hath at work continually to undermine the gos­pel, both as it is a mystery of faith and godliness also. Hath not he his seedsmen that are always scattering corrupt doctrine?  Surely then the faithful minister had need obviate their designs by making known the truth, that his people may not want an antidote to fortify them against their poison.  Are their not corruptions in the bosoms of the best, and daily temptations from Satan and the world to draw these forth, whereby they are always in danger, and oft sadly foiled?  In a word, is not grace planted in a cold soil, that needs cherishing from a gospel ministry?  Do we not see, that what is got in one Sabbath by the preaching of the word, is, if not lost, yet much im­paired, by the next?  Truly our hearts are like lean ground, that needs ever and anon a shower or else the corn on it withers and changeth its hue.  O what barren heaths would the most flourishing churches soon prove if these clouds did not drop upon them! The Christians to whom Peter wrote were of a high form, no novices, but well grounded and rooted in the faith; yet this did not spare the apostle his further pains: ‘I will not be negligent to put you always in remembrance of these things, though ye know them, and be established in the present truth,’ II Peter 1:12.

The minister’s duty to make known the gospel 1/2

           Second Observable.  Wherein lies the work of a gospel minister—‘to make known the mystery of the gospel.’ You have had the sublime nature of the gos­pel set forth: it is a mystery.  Here the minister’s work is laid out; he is with all possible clearness and perspicuity to open this mystery and expose it to the view of the people.  Mark, ‘the gospel’ is his subject, and ‘to make it known’ is his duty.  So runs the min­ister’s commission for his office, ‘Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature,’ Mark 16:15.  We hear people sometimes saying, The preacher is beside his text; but he is never beside his errand so long as it is the gospel he makes known. Whatever is his text, this is to be his design. His commission is to make known the gospel; to deliver that therefore which is not reductive to this is beside his instructions.  Nothing but the preaching of the gospel can reach the end for which the gospel min­istry was appointed, and that is the salvation of souls, ‘After that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe,’ I Cor. 1:21.  The great book of the creation had lain long enough open before the world’s eyes, yet could they never come to the saving knowledge of God, by all that divine wisdom which is written with the finger of God in every page thereof.  Therefore it pleased God to send his servants, that by preaching the gospel, poor souls might believe on Christ, and believing might be saved. No doctrine but the gospel can save a soul; nor the gospel itself, except it be made known.

The gospel alone can save a soul, and this only when known

           First.  No doctrine but the gospel can save a soul.  Galen may learn you to save your health if you will follow his rules. Littleton and other law-books will teach you how to save your estates.  Plato and other philosophers will learn you how to save your credits among men, by an outward just inoffensive life.  Their doctrine will be a means to save you from many nasty and gross sins, by which you may be ap­plauded by your neighbours on earth, and perhaps less tormented in hell, where Fabricius finds a cooler place than Cataline.  But it is the gospel alone where­by you can be taught how to save your souls from hell and bring them to heaven.  But what do I speak of these?  It is not God’s own law—the moral, I mean—that is now able to save you.  God would never have been at such a vast expense—in the bloodshed of his Son—to erect another law, viz. the law of faith, if that would have served for this purpose; Gal. 2:21, ‘for if righteousness come’—yea, or could come—‘by the law, then Christ is dead in vain.’

           Question.  Why then do ministers preach the law?

           Answer.  They preach it as they should, they preach it in subserviency to the gospel, not in opposition.  Qui scit benè distinguere inter legem et evangelium, Deo gratias agat, et sciat se esse theo­logum—he that knows how to distinguish well be­tween the law and the gospel, let him bless God, and know that he then deserves the name of a divine.  We must preach it as a rule, not as a covenant, of life. Holiness, as to the matter and substance of it, is the same that ever it was.  The gospel destroys not the law in this sense, but adds a strong enforcement to all its commands.

           Again, we may and must preach the law as the necessary means to drive souls out of themselves to Christ in the gospel.  The gospel is the net with which we should catch souls and draw them out of their sinning sinking state.  But how shall we ever get them to come into it?  Truly never.  Except we first beat the river with the law’s clubs—threatenings, I mean—sin­ners lie in their lusts, as fish in the mud, out of which there is no getting them but by laying hard upon their consciences with the threatenings of the law.  ‘Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound,’ Rom. 5:20; that is, in the con­science by con­viction, not in life by commission and practice.  The law shows both what is sin, and also what sin is.  I mean it tells when we commit a sin, and what a hateful and dangerous thing we do in committing of it—how we alarm God, and bring him with all his strength into the field against us.  Now this is neces­sary to prepare a way for the sinner’s entertaining the gospel.  The needle must enter before the thread with which the cloth is sewed.  The sharp point of the law must prick the conscience before the creature can by the promises of the gospel be drawn to Christ.  The field is not fit for the seed to be cast into it till the plough hath broken it up.  Nor is the soul prepared to receive the mercy of the gospel till bro­ken with the terrors of the law.