Some Sermons of Warfield
What can sermons from over a century ago teach us today? Today, Stephen Nichols introduces The Savior of the World by B.B. Warfield, a collection of Christ-centered sermons that invite us to marvel at the good news of the gospel.
Welcome back to another episode of 5 Minutes In Church History. August is behind us and also Labor Day is behind us. And so many think the summer has passed. But why don't we hold on to it for one more week and talk about yet another good read for the beach. And this is a book of sermons. The book is titled The Savior of the World, and its author is Benjamin Breckenridge, Warfield, the Great Lion of Princeton Theological Seminary. And these sermons were all preached in the chapel on the campus of Princeton. This book was first published in 1916, and the edition I have has been published by Banner of Truth, and it's beautifully bound. And inside these covers, there are nine sermons on the person and work of Christ.
The very first one is on the parable of the Prodigal Son. And Warfield along the way mentions that sometimes repetition can dull our minds. Some Scripture passages are so familiar to us that we fail to just simply linger over them and marvel at them. Well, here is what Warfield tells us, “But even we, can we fail to be moved with wonder today at this great message that God in heaven rejoices, exalts in joy like this human father receiving back his son when sinners repent and turn to him?” He goes on to say, “We are sinners, and our only hope is in one who loves sinners and has come into the world to die for sinners. Marvel. Marvel beyond our conception, but blessed be God as true, as marvelous.” Warfield would often just in the middle of the lecture, pause, pull down his spectacles, put his elbows on the podium and lean in and tell the students, “Gentlemen, I love the supernatural.” And that's what we see here in this sermon and in this parable.
The eighth sermon, I believe, is entitled “The Gospel of the Covenant,” and it's on John chapter 6. And here in this sermon, Warfield tells us, “In the depths of eternity, our foreseen miseries were a cause of care to God, and that mysterious relationship between father and son, which is as eternal as the essence of the Godhead itself, we our state, our sin, our helplessness, the dreadfulness of our condition, we were a subject of consideration and solicitude. What a God this is, that is unveiled before us here.” He goes on to speak of what Christ did for us in the work of salvation. And he says, “All has been done by him. His saving work neither needs nor admits of supplementary addition by any needy child of man, even to the extent of an iota. When we look to him, we are raising grateful eyes, not to one who invites us to save ourselves, nor merely to one who has broken out a path, in which walking, we may attain to salvation. Nor yet merely to one who offers us a salvation wrought out by him as a condition, but to one who has saved us, who is at once the beginning and the middle and the end of our salvation, the author and finisher of our faith.” And then he puts this question before those students at Princeton Seminary, “What can we possibly need that we do not find provided in him?”
This is a wonderful book. I hope you get it. It's by Warfield. It's entitled The Savior of the World. I love to tell people who ask me, what should they read in church history? What books should they read? I tell them, go to sermons. First of all, they're short, and so they're very readable. But secondly, let these figures from church history speak directly to your soul and preach to you across the ages from the bounty and the truth of God's word. So I highly recommend this book in particular, Benjamin Breckenridge Warfield, The Savior of the World, a good book to finish off your summer reading.
Well, that's Warfield and his book. And I'm Steve Nichols and thanks for joining us for 5 Minutes in Church History.
