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With experience in ministry I am learning the wisdom of talking less. As is says in Proverbs 10:19, “When words are many, transgression is not lacking, but whoever restrains his lips is prudent.” At the same time, we sometimes fall into the opposite trap of saying too little. For the Christian leader this is equally dangerous. About this truth, Ambrose, Bishop of Milan (c. 339 – 397) has a brief and poignant word for us.

Ambrose, Bishop of Milan between 374 and 397, has long been recognized as one of the great early Christian thinkers. He was no ivory tower academic however, and he regularly addressed emperors and others in authority on their public and moral duty. On one occasion, he confronted the Roman Emperor Theodosius who had just ordered a massacre in Thessalonica, in retaliation for an act of insurrection. The most probable date for his book, On the Duties of the Clergy, is 391, the year after he rebuked Emperor Theodosius. In an earlier passage from that book, he has been warning pastors against hasty and thoughtless speech. Here, though, he warns pastors that if they fail to speak out, they will have to give an account to God for their silence.

“What then? Ought we to be dumb? Certainly not. For: “there is a time to keep silence and a time to speak.”1 If, then, we are to give account for an idle word, let us take care that we do not have to give it also for an idle silence.”2

Footnotes

1 Ecclesiastes 3:7

2 Ambrose, “Duties of the Clergy,” Some Principle Works of St. Ambrose, in A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, vol. 10 (Oxford,: James Parker and Company, 1896), 2. In other translations see: Book 1, Chapter 3, Section 9.

The theological writings of the Puritans may not be considered politically correct by our standards. Nevertheless, I submit to you that they are good for our souls. Take for instance the following extract from Jonathon Edwards. I can’t imagine preachers using his exact language today; and yet, Edwards makes a point that we who are parents must seriously consider.

In 1738, Jonathan Edwards (1703 – 1758) published Discourses on Various Important Subjects, a collection of the sermons he preached during the Connecticut River Valley Awakening. One of these discourses, “The Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners,” was described by Edwards as the most successful evangelistic sermon he ever preached.1 The sermon is startling in the preciseness of the preacher’s examination of human sin; he does not offer vague generalities but rather heart-piercing application. When he turns to parents the modern reader should still appreciate his solemn explanation of the dangers of parental neglect in spiritual matters.

“Consider how you have promoted others’ damnation. Many of you by the bad examples you have set, by corrupting the minds of others, by your sinful conversation, by leading them into sin, or strengthening them in sin, and by the mischief you have done in humane society other ways that might be mentioned, have been guilty of those things that have tended to others’ damnation. You have heretofore appeared on the side of sin and Satan . . .

There are many that contribute to their own children’s damnation, by neglecting their education and setting them bad examples, and bringing them up in sinful ways: they take care of their bodies, but take but little care of their poor souls; they provide for them bread to eat, but deny them the bread of life that their famishing souls stand in need of. And are there no such parents here that have thus treated their children? If their children be not gone to hell, ’tis no thanks to them; ’tis not because they have not done what has tended to their destruction. Seeing therefore you have had no more regard to others’ salvation, and have promoted their damnation, how justly might God leave you to perish yourself?”2

Footnotes

1 Edwards’ A Faithful Narrative is his account of the evangelical awakening in thirty-three communities along the Connecticut River Valley in 1734-1735. He wrote of this sermon that “I never found so much immediate saving fruit, in any measure, of any discourses I have offered to my congregation. . .” See A Faithful Narrative, in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 4, The Great Awakening, ed. C.C. Goen (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972), 168.

2 “The Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners,” in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 19, Sermons and Discourses 1734-1738, ed. M.X. Lesser (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 370.

Jonathan Edwards (1703 – 1758) was a man of incredible industry and productivity. His written works are voluminous; he preached thousands of hours of sermons, read countless books—yet amidst it all did not neglect his wife or eleven children.

In 1734, the first waves of the Great Awakening began to break over Northampton, and Edwards sought to channel the great energy produced into diligent labor. In this extract from a sermon entitled The Preciousness of Time, Edwards links the idea of time’s value and man’s labor in a most striking manner. Since time is so precious and fleeting, its stewardship is essential.

“How little is the preciousness of time considered, and how little of a sense do the greater part of men seem to have of it, and how lavish are they of it. To how little good purpose do many spend their time. There is nothing more precious, and yet nothing that men are more wasteful of. Time is with many as silver was in the days of Solomon. ‘Tis as the stones of the street, and nothing accounted of, but not because ‘tis in great plenty, as silver then was.1 Mankind act as if time was a thing that they had in greatest plenty, and as if they had a great deal more than they needed, and knew not what to do with it.

If men were as lavish of their money as they are of their time, and it was as common a thing for them to throw away their money as ‘tis for men to throw away their time, we think [them] persons beside themselves. And yet time is a thousand times more precious than money, and is what can’t be purchased for money. When it is gone, money won’t redeem it. There are several sorts of persons that are reproved by this doctrine that I shall particularly mention.

Those that spend a great deal of their time in idleness or doing nothing: in following no business at all, neither of their general nor particular calling; doing nothing that shall turn to any account, either for the good of their souls or bodies; nothing either for their own benefit, nor of the benefit of their neighbors, nor of the family, nor of public society.

There are some persons that time seems to lie heavy upon their hands. Instead of its being their concern to improve it as it passes, and seeing to it that it shall not pass without their making of it their own, they act as if it was rather their care to contrive ways how to waste and consume it; as though time, instead of being precious, was rather a mere encumbrance to them, that it was their contrivance to get rid of.”

Therefore, unlike the wandering ship which traverses the sea without direction, let us be kingdom minded, “making the best use of the time, because the days are evil” (Ephesians 5:16).

Footnotes

1 2 Chronicles 1:15

2 Jonathan Edwards, “The Preciousness of Time,” Sermons and Discourses 1734-1738, in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 19 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 251-252.

Edward VI became King of England in 1547, following the death if his father, Henry VIII. Though only a young boy Edward would become a committed and determined evangelical. For the six years of his reign (1547-1553) the gospel advanced in England.

In 1547, Peter Martyr Vermigli (1499 – 1562), the Italian Reformer, was appointed Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford. He labored throughout Edward’s reign training young men for gospel ministry.1 In this excerpt from a sermon preached between 1548 and 1551, he insisted that the tools of Bible interpretation are of little use unless the minister is willing to dive deep and dig hard in his studies. About this Vermigli writes:

“It often happens that the obscurity of the Scriptures is attributable to our laziness and stupidity. Those who are looking for precious stones in the sea do not sit along the shore and trace drawings in the sand or count the waves and winds, but they dive right down to the bottom and bring back gems to achieve the fulfillment of their wish. Those who are prospecting for gold or silver in the veins of the earth do not dig lightly at the upper crust but somehow penetrate down to the bottom and the deepest parts of the abyss and finally from there collect some gold nuggets. If we were to apply this same diligence and watchfulness to the word of God, we would penetrate its obscure passages. Nothing is so hard as unremitting work does not make easy . . .2″

Footnotes

1 The death of Edward, the accession of Roman Catholic Queen Mary, meant certain peril. In 1553, Vermigli fled the country.

2 Peter Martyr Vermigli, “Exhortation for Youths to Study Scared Letters,” in Life, Letters, and Sermons, trans. and ed. John Patrick Donnelly, in The Peter Martyr Library, vol. 5 (Kirksville, MO: Thomas Jefferson University Press, 1999), 281-282.