Jeremy L. Berg

We’re honoring the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation at MainStreet this month by exploring some of the key figures. Last week we focused on Luther, and I preached a portion of a Luther sermon. This week we’re meeting John Calvin!

I can’t think of a better place to turn to learn about John Calvin and his preaching than Pastor John Piper. Here’s an excerpt from a message he gave at back in 1997 at a pastor’s conference. He gives an overview of Calvin’s preaching and makes a case for the power of an expository approach.

I must point out the conspicuous absence of preaching from Gospels to illuminate the earthly ministry of Jesus. While he left us his Harmony of the Gospels, these are not sermons. I was hoping to find a sermon on one of the parables, but I’m not sure Calvin left us any. Reformation thinkers have been accused of favoring Paul’s Epistles over Jesus and the Gospels, and I wonder how this emphasis ultimately shaped the tenor and tone of their theology and ministry. Well, with that minor aside, enjoy this introduction to Calvin’s preaching from John Piper:

Calvin’s preaching was of one kind from beginning to end: he preached steadily through book after book of the Bible. He never wavered from this approach to preaching for almost twenty-five years of ministry in St. Peter’s church of Geneva – with the exception of a few high festivals and special occasions. “On Sunday he took always the New Testament, except for a few Psalms on Sunday afternoons. During the week . . . it was always the Old Testament” (see note 47). The records show fewer than half a dozen exceptions for the sake of the Christian year. He almost entirely ignored Christmas and Easter in the selection of his text (see note 48).

To give you some idea of the scope of the Calvin’s pulpit, he began his series on the book of Acts on August 25, 1549, and ended it in March of 1554. After Acts he went on to the epistles to the Thessalonians (46 sermons), Corinthians (186 sermons), pastorals (86 sermons), Galatians (43 sermons), Ephesians (48 sermons) – till May 1558. Then there is a gap when he is ill. In the spring of 1559 he began the Harmony of the Gospels and was not finished when he died in May, 1564. During the week of that season he preached 159 sermons on Job, 200 on Deuteronomy, 353 on Isaiah, 123 on Genesis and so on (see note 49).

One of the clearest illustrations that this was a self-conscious choice on Calvin’s part was the fact that on Easter Day, 1538, after preaching, he left the pulpit of St. Peter’s, banished by the City Council. He returned September 13, 1541 — over three years later — and picked up the exposition in the next verse (see note 50).

Why this remarkable commitment to the centrality of sequential expository preaching? I will mention three reasons. They are just as valid today as they were in the sixteenth century.

First, Calvin believed that the Word of God was a lamp that had been taken away from the churches. He said in his own personal testimony, “Thy word, which ought to have shone on all thy people like a lamp, was taken away, or at least suppressed as to us. . . . And now, O Lord, what remains to a wretch like me, but . . . earnestly to supplicate thee not to judge according to [my] deserts that fearful abandonment of thy word from which, in thy wondrous goodness thou hast at last delivered me” (see note 51). Calvin reckoned that the continuous exposition of books of the Bible was the best way to overcome the “fearful abandonment of [God’s] Word.”

Second, Parker says that Calvin had a horror of those who preached their own ideas in the pulpit. He said, “When we enter the pulpit, it is not so that we may bring our own dreams and fancies with us” (see note 52). He believed that by expounding Scripture as a whole, he would be forced to deal with all that God wanted to say, not just what he might want to say.

Third – and this brings us full circle to the beginning, where Calvin saw the majesty of God in his word – he believed with all his heart that the Word of God was indeed the Word of God, and that all of it was inspired and profitable and radiant with the light of the glory of God. In Sermon number 61 on Deuteronomy he challenged us:

Let the pastors boldly dare all things by the word of God. . . . Let them constrain all the power, glory, and excellence of the world to give place to and to obey the divine majesty of this word. Let them enjoin everyone by it, from the highest to the lowest. Let them edify the body of Christ. Let them devastate Satan’s reign. Let them pasture the sheep, kill the wolves, instruct and exhort the rebellious. Let them bind and loose thunder and lightning, if necessary, but let them do all according to the word of God (see note 53).

The key phrase here is “the divine majesty of this word.” This was always the root issue for Calvin. How might he best show forth for all of Geneva and all of Europe and all of history the divine majesty? He answered with a life of continuous expository preaching. There would be no better way to manifest the full range of the glories of God and the majesty of his being than to spread out the full range of God’s Word in the context of the pastoral ministry of shepherding care.

My own conviction is that this is why preaching remains a central event in the life of the church even 500 years after the printing press and the arrival of radio and TV and cassettes and CD’s and computers. God’s word is mainly about the majesty of God and the glory of God. That is the main issue in ministry. And, even though the glory and majesty of God in his word can be known in the still small voice of whispered counsel by the bedside of a dying saint, there is something in it that cries out for expository exultation. This is why preaching will never die.

And radical, pervasive God-centeredness will always create a hunger for preaching in God’s people. If God is “I am who I am” – the great, absolute, sovereign, mysterious, all-glorious God of majesty whom Calvin saw in Scripture, there will always be preaching, because the more this God is known and the more this God is central, the more we will feel that he must not just be analyzed and explained, he must be acclaimed and heralded and magnified with expository exultation.

-From The Divine Majesty of the Word: John Calvin: The Man and His Preaching:

Notes:

47. T. H. L. Parker, Portrait of Calvin, p. 82.
48. John Calvin, The Deity of Christ and Other Sermons, trans. By Leroy Nixon, (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1950), p. 8.
49. For these statistics see T. H. L. Parker, Portrait of Calvin, p. 83, and W. de Greef, The Writings of John Calvin: An Introductory Guide, pp. 111-112.
50. T. H. L. Parker, Calvin’s Preaching, p. 60.
51. John Dillenberger, John Calvin, p. 115.
52. T. H. L. Parker, Portrait of Calvin, p. 83.
53. John Calvin, Sermons on the Epistle to the Ephesians, p. xii (emphasis added).