Sometimes a preacher will say, ‘The thing I love doing most is preaching. I love to preach the word.’ I don’t understand that, I can’t identify with that. How can we say, ‘I love preaching the word; it is wonderful. It gives me such a feeling. It’s so enjoyable’, when the Scripture says, ‘It shall make thy belly bitter, but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as honey’? That’s a better of saying it. Of course it is wonderful to speak of Christ and his kindness and his power and conversion, if only we repent and believe in him and Calvary, and yield our lives to him. But it is also bitter to the stomach, because every time you speak of Christ you see people who are perishing, people who are dying eternally, people who are just lost in condemnation and sin. Some of them outwardly are nice people, but inwardly, and before God they are under condemnation. So because you see that, as a preacher you work at it. When Sunday approaches – the weekend, Saturday, Sunday – you have to preach an evangelistic message. It requires all your concentration and your thought. It has to have something in it for the people of God. It has to be in some way compelling and interesting. It can’t be exactly the same words every week, and yet it’s got to have exactly the same gospel in it. This is work; it isn’t easy. I am going to preach it, and after I have preached it, I am going have a post-mortem. Why didn’t I mention this, and this, and the other? Why did I go so over time, so that the people would switch off? It’s the Holy Spirit’s work – of course it is – but it’s also as if you’ve got to cut the chains off the prisoners, and operate the tools that set them free. It is work, and it is prayer, and it is concern and anxiety, even though there are elements of that message that are so sweet to the taste.
The Scriptures are an open book. It is true that the minds of those who are perishing are blinded and therefore they are prevented from understanding it. But the god of this world has done this; it has nothing to do with the Scriptures themselves. The Scriptures are an open revelation. We speak of the perspicuity of Scripture. It is not a book given in code that is impossible to understand, having some key which we lack. If we do not understand it, it is because of the darkness of our minds which hides its message from us. It is our love of sin and wilful refusal to do what Scripture commands. All that we need to understand it has already been given to us, apart from a mind enlightened by the Spirit. But we are responsible for the darkness of our minds, for we love that darkness and will not come into the light.