Reading, hearing, and expositing Scripture is part and parcel of biblical religion, which is why our Islamic friends call us “the people of the book.” God did not say, through Moses, “See, O Israel,” or “View, O Israel;” he said, “Hear, O Israel.” Further, God expressly and comprehensively6 prohibited the religious use of images. Generations later, the apostle Paul also affirmed the importance of oral language for our faith, when he asked, rhetorically, “How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?” (Rom. 10:14).

Contemporary Judaism, like love, is a many-splendored thing. For our own convenience, we often refer to three types of Judaism: Reformed, Conservative, and Orthodox, but there are many variations even within these three. Nonetheless, practicing Jews of any brand have a common liturgical practice in both the morning and evening services, where they cite together (often in biblical Hebrew) the “Shema Israel,” from Deut. 6:4-5: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” It is a remarkably significant text that affirms monotheism in a polytheistic context, and that contains what Jesus regarded as the “great and first” commandment in the Hebrew Bible (Mat. 22:38). The affirmation of monotheism in the second millennium BC in a culture surrounded by polytheism, and the claim that the highest ethical pursuit was whole-personed love of the One true God were remarkable in their day (and in ours). It is entirely understandable, therefore, that a third reality—admittedly of lesser significance than the other two—is also contained in this significant text, and that its beginning is: “Hear, O Israel.” Indeed, our Jewish friends call it “The Shema,” calling attention to its opening demand that Israel hear and heed the call and command of the one true and living God.
One might be excused for dismissing this observation, and for suggesting that in the second millennium BC there was no other way than oral language to mediate religion. Such a dismissal should be dismissed. In fact, every other known religion in the second millennium BC had an alternative medium for conveying religion: graven/carved images, images that were not only forbidden in the decalogue recorded in the previous chapter of Deuteronomy, they were prohibited thrice in Deuteronomy 4, even before the decalogue was given (Deut. 4:16, 23, 25). Indeed, in the central one, in Deut. 4:23, the entirety of the covenant God was about to institute was at stake on this one point: “Take care, lest you forget the covenant of the LORD your God, which he made with you, and make a carved image…”
There was/is an important relationship between the prohibition of images and the command to “Hear, O Israel.” The one and only true and living God was, well, true and living. He was not the product of human imagination; he was the creator of the human, and of human imagination. This one-and-only God made the human to be his image; and prohibited the human from rejecting this great privilege/responsibility by assigning it to something the human had made. No material image/likeness could be made that would reflect anything genuinely true about a non-material Creator; and no lifeless image could possibly reflect the truth of a living God. To the contrary, an inanimate image would always be non-living, and therefore non-threatening, the very opposite of the actual reality that “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb. 10:31). Such a God could only be known via the medium of language; since, ontologically, he was entirely different from the so-called deities of the Ancient Near East, any medium that could convey those deities would not be able to convey the distinctiveness of the one, only, living and true God.
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As Spurgeon used all his experiences to shape himself and his preparation. All this was only possible as Spurgeon maintained his walk with the Lord, guarded his time, and made preaching part of his lifestyle. So it is today, as pastors face a busy schedule, we must prioritize the preaching of the Word and give ourselves to preaching excellent, earnest, faithful sermons. 

C.H. Spurgeon, maybe more than any pastor, knew how busy pastoral ministry can be. In addition to preaching four times a week, he led his elders and deacons in caring for a church of five thousand. Together, they visited members, interviewed membership applicants, led prayer meetings, chaired congregational meetings, pursued non-attenders, and much more. Additionally, Spurgeon published a weekly sermon, wrote numerous books, edited a monthly magazine, served as president of The Pastors’ College, oversaw two orphanages, corresponded with hundreds weekly, planted churches, supported denominational efforts, and the list goes on. The scale of Spurgeon’s ministry in the 19th century remains unmatched. But the essence of his work wasn’t all that different from any pastor today: caring for members, leading worship gatherings, training church leaders, overseeing benevolence and evangelistic efforts, engaging in church associations, and, as with Spurgeon, the list just keeps going. To some extent, these are the kinds of things that will fill up every pastor’s task list.
And yet Spurgeon would say that the most important thing to which he gave himself week after week was the preaching of the Word. Spurgeon once said to his students,
Brethren, you and I must, as preachers, be always earnest in reference to our pulpit work. Here we must labor to attain the very highest degree of excellence. Often have I said to my brethren that the pulpit is the Thermopylae of Christendom: there the fight will be lost or won. To us ministers the maintenance of our power in the pulpit should be our great concern, we must occupy that spiritual watch-tower with our hearts and minds awake and in full vigor. It will not avail us to be laborious pastors if we are not earnest preachers.[1]
Just as the future of Greece depended on King Leonidas’ stand against the Persians, so the future of the church depends on the faithful and earnest preaching of the Word of God.
In other words, Spurgeon believed that every other ministry in the church, as important as they were, existed downstream from the pulpit. Rather than all church ministries existing independently of one another, with the corporate gathering simply being one more silo, Spurgeon envisioned the corporate gathering as the central ministry of the church (the “Thermopylae,” if you will). And in that corporate gathering, it is the Word of God preached (and sung and read and prayed) that gives life to God’s people and energizes all the ministries of the church. This vision of the power of God’s Word to revive God’s people drove Spurgeon’s commitment to preaching. Amid the busyness of pastoral ministry, here was the one thing that could not fail. No matter the pressures and responsibilities, for the sake of his people, he had to give himself to preaching excellent sermons.
What advice would Spurgeon give to busy pastors today regarding their preaching? How can we be faithful in this primary responsibility without neglecting other ministerial duties? Here are three ideas.
This would likely be the most important advice Spurgeon would give:
Maintain your walk with the Lord.
This would likely be the most important advice Spurgeon would give:
Too many preachers forget to serve God when they are out of the pulpit, their lives are negatively inconsistent. Abhor, dear brethren, the thought of being clockwork ministers who are not alive by abiding grace within, but are wound up by temporary influences; men who are only ministers for the time being, under the stress of the hour of ministering, but cease to be ministers when they descend the pulpit stairs. True ministers are always ministers.[2]
In other words, don’t separate your devotional life from your ministerial duties. Instead, understand that the Holy Spirit must guide your life not only when you are “on the clock” but also in your private life.
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God’s promise is not that he will free us from what ails us—not yet, at least—, but that he will enable us to carry it for as long as he deems fit. God’s promise is not that he will remove that burden but that he will support us so that we have no need to fear that we will stumble or fall. With God’s support, we have no need to fear that we will undermine the work he intends to do or to fail to remain faithful to the end.

So much of what we experience in this life is so very heavy. So many of the burdens God calls us to carry are so tremendously weighty that they threaten to crush us to the dust. We bear the weight of our own sin and depravity, the shame of doing evil and the pain of failing to do good. We bear the weight of other people’s sin and depravity as they hurt and harm us, sometimes intentionally and sometimes purely inadvertently. We bear the weight of griefs and losses, of illnesses and sorrows, of unhealthy bodies and infirm minds, of broken relationships and shattered dreams. We all at times stagger under the weight of all we are made to bear upon our weak shoulders.
It is in such times that we turn to God for help, in such times that we call upon his precious promises to sustain and uplift us. Among the best of them is this: “Cast your burden on the LORD, and he will sustain you; he will never permit the righteous to be moved” (Psalm 55:22). When we are heavily burdened we are to take one specific action: cast. We are to throw or hurl or toss our burdens upon the Lord. We are to bring them to his attention and to plead with him for his help. And so we close our eyes and pray or we lift our eyes and cry out for his help, his assistance, his deliverance.
What we want, no doubt, is for God to take them from us.
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