# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1859_S208
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

208                                    On Bible-Sermons.

teachers, one never heard an exhortation to diligent reading of the
Bible; indeed, on the contrary, they lied to the confirmed youth,
telling them that they had now gathered as much religious knowledge as
they would need for their whole life. If, nevertheless, one or another
of them at some point took the Bible in hand and leafed through it, so
much that was unintelligible and displeasing met him that he soon laid
it aside again. — How, then, does it stand with regard to acquaintance
with the Bible in our congregations? If we, as servants of God, from
time to time made inquiry, first among the heads of households and
then among the unmarried, whether and how often, in what manner, and
to what benefit they read the Bible, we would, for the sake of many, be
filled with sorrow — indeed with horror — and would not delay a moment
in addressing this state of need, which is indeed the root of all other
evils, above all by the public reading and exposition of biblical
books. For diligence with the Bible in the church awakens and nourishes
diligence with the Bible in the homes, and in turn the most diligent
readers of the Bible would also be the most diligent hearers of
Bible-sermons, according to the excellent saying: Whoever eats of me
will always hunger after me, and whoever drinks of me will always
thirst after me. Sirach 24:28–29. This alone should stir us to devote
all possible diligence to such sermons, to which the following is
added besides. They lead the hearers to the knowledge of all the
revelations of the Triune God in words and works; they show them
countless examples of those who either accepted these revelations in
faith or rejected them in unbelief, and how God fulfilled his promises
toward the former but his threats toward the latter; they give them
light concerning a multitude of particulars in doctrine and history,
concerning the force and emphasis of individual words and turns of
phrase; they open to them living wells of divine comfort in all
temptations; they show them the wonderful coherence and the single
ultimate purpose of the whole of Holy Scripture, which is Christ our
Lord; they make them ever richer in spiritual experience, just as the
preaching of Christ did for the two disciples who confessed: Did not
our heart burn within us? and as the preaching of Philip did for the
eunuch out of Ethiopia, who, assured of his eternal salvation, went on
his way rejoicing, Luke 24:27ff.; Acts 8:30ff. — and who could recount
all the use and fruit of such sermons? We preachers should be the first
to enjoy such fruits (2 Timothy 2:6), and this alone should be, for our
own persons, a new and constant incentive also to pursue this labor
diligently; for the more we, both in our hearers and in ourselves,
experience the rich blessing of such sermons, the dearer, indeed the
more indispensable, they will become to us. They should be for us a
welcome opportunity to study whole books of Holy Scripture, to which we
would not otherwise so easily come; and as we distribute to others the
bread of life, the gift of exposition increases within us — for
whoever has, to him more will be given, that he may have abundance.
Matthew 13:12.

At this point, many a one will think: All this is no doubt true, and it
would indeed be very much to be wished that among us too such
Bible-sermons might always become more general