The Text
Scripture teaches us in Romans 13 to render honour to whom honour is due — and I for one owe so much to Pastor Henry Mahan for what he has done for me. The Lord used him to preach Christ to me, and because of that I believe you owe him much also. I believe Brother Henry was used more than any preacher in the 20th century. He had an ability that God gave him — eyes that God gave him — to see Christ in the Old Testament and to preach consistently and without ever mingling any works, law, or legalism in with it.
So I want to preach a sermon tonight in honour of my friend and my brother and my mentor, Pastor Henry Mahan — but I want to do it in the way he would want me to do it. I want to preach Christ. That is what he would want. Our text declares the gospel that Brother Henry preached over 54 years of ministry, summed up right here in verse 11: Christ is all. That was his message — not sometimes all, but all the time: Christ is all.
I want to give you three or four things I learned from this servant of the Lord.
I. Faithfulness: Preaching Christ Is All
The first thing I learned from Brother Henry is faithfulness. He taught me what it is for a preacher to be faithful, and he taught me that by preaching Christ is all every time he stood in the pulpit. That is faithfulness — to preach Christ is all every time you stand up. I hear men talk about having a Christ-centred ministry — but that is not what is meant by Christ is all. Christ is the gospel. Christ is all. If he is a part of the sermon, that means something else is being preached too. Christ at all means he is all from the very first message.
Let me give a few examples of how a faithful servant preaches Christ is all.
When preaching election. The faithful servant is not simply trying to get sinners to believe a doctrine. He preaches Christ who is the preeminent elect of God.
Before God chose his people in Christ to be saved, he chose Christ who would do the saving. Christ is his elect. You can believe the doctrine of election and die in your sins — that will not save you. We are trying to shut sinners up to Christ himself — in whom all his people are chosen.
When preaching the covenant. The faithful servant preaches Christ who is himself the covenant.
Before God made anything that was created, he chose his Son, and Christ entered into covenant with the Father to give the law everything the law demands for his elect people. He is the surety of the covenant, the mediator of the covenant. Only he who is both God and man could stand between an offended God and his offending elect, and by his shed blood reconcile us together in peace and harmony. Christ is the covenant. All the promises of God in him are yes and amen — God is not trying to save anybody; Christ already saved them. He is just calling out his people now. The covenant is not one where God is looking to you and me to fulfil our part — it is fulfilled by Christ for us.
When preaching righteousness. The faithful servant preaches Christ who is the Lord our righteousness.
The gospel is concerning how God can be just and justify hell-deserving sinners like you and me. Can the Ethiopian change his skin? Can the leopard change his spots? That is the day you and I can do anything God will accept. We cannot do it. We have got to give the law perfect obedience — and we come forth guilty from our mother's womb. We have got to give the law death — for the wages of sin is death. How are we going to die yet live? This amazing God sent his only begotten Son to give the law everything it demands for abominable, filthy sinners like you and me. He hath made him sin for us — him who knew no sin — that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. Christ gave the law perfection, so that his people owe the law nothing. As Brother Henry used to say: Since Christ paid all that we owe to the law, we don't owe the law anything. If you tried to give the law something you would only mess up what Christ already did.
The faithful servant does not just preach a doctrine of righteousness — he preaches righteousness as a person: the Lord Jesus Christ. We do not come preaching some intellectual theology system to get you to learn a doctrine of election — we come preaching Christ the elect. That is the difference. That is faithfulness. That is declaring Christ is all.
And not only did Brother Henry teach me faithfulness by preaching Christ is all — he taught me faithfulness in a believer assembling to hear the preaching of Christ is all. There is nothing more important that we will ever do than assemble together with brethren to hear Christ preached. And after 54 years, when he got so many infirmities that he could no longer preach — he taught it to me by doing it himself. Every single time I ever preached in Rocky Mount, infirmities and all, he was sitting right there in the second or third pew on the left, listening. He always came up afterwards with an encouraging word. He showed up right up to the Sunday before he failed. He preached this faithfulness to me, and then he showed it to me by doing what he preached.
II. Love: The Constraint of Christ
The second thing Brother Mahan taught me is the importance of love. On my first trip up to visit, the last thing he said to me before I left was: Love them to Christ. On another occasion when I preached in Rocky Mount on Ephesians 4 — about how Christ assembles his people together through the preaching of the gospel and grows his body in love — Brother Henry met me right after the message and said in that whisper of his, loud enough for the back row to hear: That's the best subject to preach on right there — the love of Christ for his people.
Where does a servant of God get a heart of love? It is the gift of God. The fruit of the Spirit is love.
The love of Christ constrains us — it compels us, grips us, holds us, moves us. And Paul says: Henceforth know we no man after the flesh. We do not know any brother or sister as a Jew or Gentile, rich or poor — and we especially do not condemn our brethren when they sin in the cause of their flesh. Why? Because we know in Christ that old man already died. He has already been condemned and crucified under the justice of God. Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. God regards that brother as a new creation — and if Christ put his sin away, and God remembers that sin no more, how dare I point the finger and condemn him? We bear with one another's faults and shortcomings and sins. That is love. That is being constrained by the love of Christ to live unto Christ.
When I was nineteen, at Louisiana Tech, one night instead of studying for an exam, a buddy and I went up to a creek to put out crawfish traps. We built a fire, set the traps out, and I put my speakers on the toolbox of my truck and we started listening to Brother Henry preach the gospel. We ran traps in between messages — and we didn't study at all. But that was the night I first heard Brother Henry preach the sovereign, unchangeable love of God from Hosea — that beautiful picture of Hosea and Gomer showing Christ's love for his people. We were the bride, his elect — we played the harlot just like Gomer did against Hosea. And when nobody would redeem us, just like Gomer on that slave block that nobody wanted – Christ came forth and said I love her and he bought her and redeemed her and took her home. That was worth a whole lot more than studying for an exam. I had that on cassette tape and played it so many times the tape broke.
It was the love of Christ that compelled Brother Henry to preach the way he preached — in simplicity, glorifying Christ, because he had a love for perishing sinners. He wanted to see sinners brought to Christ and shut up to Christ. He preached with repetition — he would make a point and repeat it, repeat it, repeat it, not taking for granted that somebody got it the first time. He preached with urgency for a verdict, wanting to compel sinners to cast all their care on Christ, because sinners are perishing and this might be the last time they hear the gospel.
III. Christ Is All: The Most Important Thing
The most important thing I learned from Brother Henry is this: Christ is all. That day in Fairmont, in addition to saying love them to Christ, he said: Remember — Christ is all. He's all.
Just consider some of the titles of Christ from the Scripture. He is the Last Adam — our representative. He is our Advocate with the Father. He is the Alpha and Omega. He is the Almighty. He is the Amen, the faithful and true witness. He is the Apostle of our profession, the Arm of the Lord, the Author and Finisher of our faith, the Author of eternal salvation. He is the Beloved Son in whom the Father is well pleased. He is the Bread of Life, the Captain of our salvation, the Chief Shepherd, the Chief Cornerstone, the Christ of God. He is the Consolation of Israel, our Counsellor, the Creator, the Dayspring, the Deliverer, the Desire of all nations, the Door. He is the Everlasting Father, the Forerunner, the Glory of the Lord. He is God — God blessed forever. He is the Good Shepherd, the Governor, the Great High Priest, the Head of the Church, the Heir of all things, the Holy One, the Horn of salvation, the great I Am, the Image of God, Emmanuel, Jehovah. He is Jesus — for he shall save his people from their sins. He is our Prophet, our King, the King of kings and Lord of lords, the Light, the Master and Lord of the believer. He is our Sun, our Shield, our Strength, our Song, our Passover, our Peace, our Propitiation, our Portion, our Pearl of great price. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. He is the Resurrection. And that is just to name a few.
And men want to preach something else? You could spend the rest of your life preaching just the titles of Christ and never exhaust the subject. Christ is all.
As fully as Christ is all the fulness of the Godhead — that is how fully you are complete in him. He has made us accepted in the Beloved. The question is not, do you accept Jesus? The question is, does God accept you? And it is only in Christ.
He is the one thing needful. That is what I learned from Brother Henry. I am very thankful to God for him.