Untitled Sermon (14)

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Hosea 11:1–2 ESV

1 When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. 2 The more they were called, the more they went away; they kept sacrificing to the Baals and burning offerings to idols.

Matthew 2:13–15 ESV

13 Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” 14 And he rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt 15 and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, “Out of Egypt I called my son.”

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In a sermon on 1 Peter 2:7, entitled “Christ Precious to Believers,” Spurgeon attributed this story to a Welsh preacher: A young preacher had preached in the presence of a respected older pastor. Afterward, he asked what the old minister thought of his sermon. The old preacher said that it was “a very poor sermon indeed.” The young man had worked a long time on the sermon and was shocked to be told that it was so poor. Perhaps a little defensively, he asked where the problem lay: Did he not explain the text well? Yes, said the seasoned pastor, his explanation was “very good indeed.” Weren’t his metaphors appropriate and his arguments conclusive? They, too, were “very good as far as that goes,” but still it was “a very poor sermon.” Finally the young man asked what the defect was that made his sermon so poor, and the answer came back: “There was no Christ in it.” 

Now the young man began to defend himself, objecting, “Well, Christ was not in the text; we are not to be preaching Christalways, we must preach what is in the text.” In response, the older pastor drew this analogy: “Don’t you know, young man, that from every town, and every village, and every little hamlet in England, wherever it may be, there is a road to London?” 

“Yes,” said the young man. 

“Ah!” said the old divine, “and so from every text in Scripture, there is a road to the metropolis of the Scriptures, that is Christ. And my dear brother, your business is when you get to a text, to say, ‘Now what is the road to Christ?’ and then preach a sermon, running along the road towards the great metropolis—Christ. And,” said he, “I have never yet found a text that had not got a road to Christ in it, and if I ever do find one that has not a road to Christ in it, I will make one; I will go over hedge and ditch but I would get at my Master, for the sermon cannot do any good unless there be a savour of Christ in it.”1 

Often when Spurgeon’s story is retold, attention is drawn to the statement about going “over hedge and ditch” to reach Christ, whatever it takes to get there. Those who have read Spurgeon’s sermons might even think to themselves that they have seen him climbing hedges and fording ditches, sometimes overlooking the meaning of a passage in its original context, in order to make some sort of connection between the biblical text he was expounding, on the one hand, and the person and redeeming work of Jesus, on the other. When we sense that some interpreter’s clever ingenuity has “blazed the trail” from an Old Testament passage to Christ, we get suspicious of the idea that we can find a route to Christ from passages written centuries before his birth in Bethlehem.

John 1:43–51 ESV

43 The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.” 44 Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. 45 Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” 46 Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” 47 Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit!” 48 Nathanael said to him, “How do you know me?” Jesus answered him, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.” 49 Nathanael answered him, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” 50 Jesus answered him, “Because I said to you, ‘I saw you under the fig tree,’ do you believe? You will see greater things than these.” 51 And he said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”