# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1862_S24
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

24

Excerpts as Contributions to Pastoral Casuistry.

On Personal Attacks from the Pulpit.

On this subject Luther writes in his exposition of the 8th Psalm (8:3): "It is not enough to teach the word of God, unless it also be taught purely and rightly; as St. Paul instructs his disciple Timothy that he rightly divide the word of truth, 2 Tim. 2:15. For there are many anxious and useless preachers who burn, who are hotheaded, and want to force their way through with their heads, not knowing that it is one thing to plant and to water, and another thing to give the increase, 1 Cor. 3:6 and 7. As soon as they have said something, they want it to be done at once — men to whom it is not so much a matter of desiring to be heard for the sake of speaking God's word, as of being regarded as speakers of the word; who thus want the instrument to be praised more than the one whose word they are supposed to preach purely, without any self-seeking. Of the same sort, too, are those who, with carefully chosen and well-considered words, set out to sting and bite now this one, now that one, and soon after to convert them — whereupon it happens, by God's wonderful counsel, that they accomplish and achieve nothing less than exactly what they had intended. For man feels by nature that the word is aimed and directed against him with cunning, and smeared with human filth, as Ezek. 4:12 says — that is, stained with human evil desire and inclination; therefore he has disgust and horror at it, and is embittered all the more, rather than being converted. But man is moved all the more when he hears preached, not the cunning of the preacher and teacher, but the word freely and honestly; for he wants the word to be preached freely and honestly to the crowd in the congregation, and to stir and strike those whom the preacher himself neither knows nor is acquainted with — as we read many examples of this here and there. Therefore it is our part only to lend our mouth to the word, while it belongs to God to grant the accomplishment and the increase. Thus did Christ, when he sent two of his disciples to fetch the donkey and the young colt, Matt. 21:2, 3, 6, 7; he told them beforehand that they would find them, animals which the disciples had not seen and knew nothing about, yet they went and were willing to bring the unknown animals back.

Therefore we ought to lay aside this foolish confidence, as though we ourselves could accomplish something in the hearers through the word; rather, we ought to devote ourselves all the more to prayer, that God alone, without us, may make his word powerful and effective in the hearers — the word that he speaks in and through the preacher and teacher. For it is he who speaks, Matt. 10:20; it is he who hears, and who works all in all, 1 Cor. 12:6; we are his vessels and instruments, which have power neither to take nor to give, except that he give and take. Therefore he speaks a well-considered word, Ps. 68:19: Thou hast ascended on high