I read a quote awhile back that really struck me. I can’t remember where I found it, though I’ve a suspicion that its from one of the Puritans.
“We all, one day, will hear our last sermon”.
I also remember that the Puritan, Jeremiah Burroughs, was fond of saying that folks listening to his sermon were either nearer or further from hell upon their response to the Word of God.
This preaching—and listening to the preached Word—isn’t a trifling thing. Our task, as Richard Baxter so aptly put it, is “to preach as a dying man to dying men.” It’s true that we will all, one day, hear our last sermon—and its also true that we will one day preach our last sermon.
This sobering truth was brought to my mind again a couple weeks ago in the aftermath of the Robert Dear incident at Planned Parenthood. One of the police officers that was murdered by Dear was a pro-life pastor who had stormed into Planned Parenthood to protect the employees. The Sunday before he had closed out his last sermon with these words:
Lord, You are tremendously patient with us, and in that patience we can become inattentive, thinking that somehow your grace, patience and mercy is something for us to consider, as a default position where there is not judgment or punishment for sin. Lord, let us view grace as what it truly is: a costly tremendous gift that cost You everything, that we might be in relationship with You. And because of the high price of that gift, that we might make You and the Gospel the forefront of our minds as the most valuable thing we possess, as we sang this morning, “You can have all this world but give me Jesus!” Give us You! So Lord as we sing I ask that our hearts would be attentive towards You, that we would consider You and what You’ve done, and that we wouldn’t just leave it here, but as we go about the day…that this would be the conversation that’s on our lips. that this would be what we post on Facebook, that this would be at the forefront of our Bible studies, that we would read attentively recognizing what a precious gift You are! In Jesus name, Amen. (You can see notes and a link to the whole sermon here)
As he stepped down from the pulpit I doubt he figured it was his last sermon. I just finished preaching yesterday and I’m already preparing for this next Sunday’s sermon. That’s just the routine of things. But as I’m doing that I’m also praying that each week won’t be routine. I want to preach each Sunday as if it could be the last sermon I preach or the last sermon that some folks might hear.
This means that we preachers mustn’t make the applause of men even a bit of our aim. I’m reminded of the words of another Puritan, Thomas Boston, when he said this:
And when the applause is obtained, what do you have? –A vain empty puff of wind. They think much of you, you think much of yourself and in the meantime God thinks nothing of You.
I want to, then, preach every sermon as if it is my last and measure it based upon whether or not I’d be found faithful if I stood before God the second I descended from the pulpit. Likewise, when I come to hear sermons I want to weigh them and apply them in such a way that if this were my last sermon I heard it’d be pleasing to the Lord in the way that I applied it to my life.
What you do on Sunday morning at church, as you sit under the Word (or bring the Word) isn’t a small thing. It could be your last meal. May we live and preach with this blood-earnestness.
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Photo source: here
