INTRODUCTION
The life and ministry of Dr. John Reed Miller is one that goes high and deep. Though he was not a native “Southerner” per se, it was in the South and Southeast United States where Dr. Miller’s ministry flourished, and where he was most well-known and beloved. His preaching and teaching made a lasting impact on countless people, not just in the congregations where he ministered, but also in the communities where he lived. To this day, Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi holds their annual “John Reed Miller” Lectures, due in large part to Dr. Miller’s longtime faithful ministry at First Presbyterian Church in Jackson (1952-1968), and his foundational impact on the Seminary. The Lectures are held every fall in order to “honor and promote the biblical theology and practice of Reformed Preaching and Pastoral Ministry that [Dr. Miller] embodied in his own life and work.”[1]
His Life
Dr. Miller was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of an elder in one of the old United Presbyterian churches in that city. His father had descended from Presbyterians who had originally come from Scotland. He received his Bachelor's and Master's degrees from the University of Pittsburgh. He continued further graduate study after he became an ordained minister. Early in his higher education Dr. Miller came to the conviction that some of the most serious challenges to the Christian faith have their origin in contrary systems of thought. Therefore, he made philosophy his major study at the university both in his undergraduate years and in graduate school. In 1936 he received his divinity degree from old Pittsburgh-Xenia Theological Seminary, the first Presbyterian seminary in the United States. His pastorates were in Ohio, West Virginia, Tennessee and Mississippi. He also served as president of a missionary college in Tennessee. Two-thirds of his ministry were in the Presbyterian Church in the United States (Southern), and for seventeen years he was pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Jackson, Mississippi. Before his retirement he served the Macon Presbyterian Church of Macon, Mississippi, for four years.
A Preface to His Written Sermons
The purpose of this article is not only to introduce the man, Dr. John Reed Miller, but also to introduce his sermons, which were originally printed in 1979 by a small publisher in Jackson, MS, and only in limited quantity. They have since gone out of print. Few people posses his three-volume selected sermons, and I do not feel that it is right to keep his sermons to myself. It is my plan to re-publish them as articles over time.
The aim of The Heritage Presbyterian is to retrieve the best of the Southern Presbyterian tradition, and Dr. Miller ought to be included in that tradition. His sermons represent biblical fidelity, confessional orthodoxy, and experiential piety. It is my sincere hope that these sermons will be a blessing to all who read them, beginning with the sermon below, entitled, “How is Your Hearing?” (Alternatively titled, “Our Participation in Preaching”) from the second volume (of three) in his selected sermons.
Dr. Miller’s Theology of Preaching
Dr. Miller was a mighty preacher of the Bible. There have always been preachers— for preachers come and go. But not all preachers are biblical preachers. Dr. Miller was no ordinary preacher, it is obvious that he was “a thoroughly biblical preacher.”[2] His theology of preaching began with his firm belief and confidence in the infallible and authoritative word of God. He was also a balanced preacher, who believed in the power of God’s word over both the head and heart. In the preface to his sermons, it is noted that,
“In the best tradition of Presbyterian preaching, derived from English Puritans, Dr. Miller believed that God’s Word comes first to the mind and then to the conscience.”[3]
It was the intent of Dr. Miller, as is evident in reading his sermons, that the provocation of truth which first penetrates the mind, stirring the Christian to think rightly about God and himself, ought to also transform the heart and lead to spiritual progress. Certainly, this is consistent with the author of Hebrews, who after telling his hearers, “Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts,” (4:7) goes on to describe the power of God’s word: “For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” (4:12). Therefore, in keeping with Dr. Miller’s sermon below, his aim in preaching was to cultivate true hearers of God’s word. He “intended to persuade his hearers to act upon the truth of God.”[4] This passionate desire came from an impression that was made on the young Dr. Miller by the British Congregationalist Preacher John Daniel Jones (1865–1942), who pastored Richmond Hill Church, Bournemouth.
Jones said, “As I prepare my sermons, I ask myself three questions: (1) What am I saying, (2) To whom am I speaking, (3) What do I expect them to do about it?”[5]
Dr. Miller took these words and put them into practice in his own pulpit ministry.
Dr. Miller’s Method of Preaching
In the Reformed tradition, we rightly prioritize Lectio continua method in preaching. Pastors are to read and preach the whole counsel of God, expositing the truth of God’s word chapter by chapter, and verse by verse. Dr. Miller was certainly an expository preacher; but though this was his usual method, he was not limited to this method. He often preached topical sermons as well. Though “topical sermons” have been (unfairly) criticized in Reformed circles, there is power in the occasional topical sermon or sermon series, so long as it expounds the truth of God’s word faithfully.
For Dr. Miller,
“…when he preached topically, the content of his message was Biblical. Whatever he had gleaned from other reading was made subordinate to the insights of God’s Word. For he believed that God alone has fully diagnosed our human needs and can bring the remedy.”[6]
One of the ways in which Dr. Miller brought God’s word to bear on the human heart, even in a passage that might be limited to a verse or two, is by what the English Congregationalist Pastor, Jospeh Parker (1830–1902), referred to as “the inverted pyramid” method,[7] or in more Reformed and theological terms, this is the application or implementation of the analogia scripturae (the analogy of Scripture).
That is,
“the interpretation of unclear, difficult, or ambiguous passages of Scripture by comparison with a collation, or gathering, of clear and unambiguous passages or “places” (loci) that refer to the same teaching or event.”[8]
The Westminster Confession of Faith uses this “inverted pyramid” in Chapter I.IX,
“The infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture is the Scripture itself: and therefore, when there is a question about the true and full sense of any Scripture (which is not manifold, but one), it must be searched and known by other places that speak more clearly.”
Dr. Miller’s use of the analogia scripturae in his topical preaching is one showing of his confessional orthodoxy both in theology and practice. Young preachers ought to heed his example and in so doing, show their hearers the unity of scriptures.
It is my prayer for those who read the sermon below, in keeping with Dr. John Reed Miller’s desire before he ascended the pulpit Lord’s Day after Lord’s Day, that you would come to experience God’s word in your mind, and conscience, and so live in renewed obedience to Jesus Christ in dependence upon his Spirit.
“How is Your Hearing?”[9]
A Sermon by Dr. John Reed Miller
"Take heed, therefore, how ye hear." Luke 8:18
On a very hot day in a northern city a minister was preaching. He was the guest preacher on Missions Sunday. His theme was "The Sleeping Church in a Storm-tossed World". He was in dead earnest. His message was a call to Christians to throw off their drowsiness and be awake to their missionary opportunity. It was urgent.
But the earnestness of the preacher that day was not matched by serious interest on the part of some of his hearers. He was soon aware that some of the people in the pews were not even attentive. When he was less than five minutes into his message a man near the back of the church was already lost to anything the preacher might say. The man had gone asleep, his head resting on the back of the pew. This interesting and well-prepared preacher soon realized that others also were giving in to drowsiness. He had that helpless feeling which comes over a preacher in such a situation. He knows that God wants the people to get the message; but he is grappling with an inattention over which he has no control.
All at once hope was born in this preacher's mind. It dawned on him that he could certainly waken his indifferent listeners, especially the man who was already fast asleep. What brought assurance of victory to the preacher was something in the scripture itself. For the passage from which he was preaching was in the first chapter of Jonah.
The preacher pictured the prophet Jonah in his disobedience to God. Jonah was running away from the commission God had given him. He was on a ship at sea. A fearful storm had arisen. Waves were breaking over the little ship with frightening force. It was in danger of being broken to pieces. The pagan sailors in their frenzied fear had resorted to prayers—each to his own god.
Shipwreck seemed imminent, and all hands on deck had done all they could do to avert disaster. Suddenly the captain discovered that Jonah was lazily lying in the hold, below the deck, and he was sound asleep. Our preacher well knew what that ship's captain had cried out to Jonah; and he determined to make the most of it. He cupped his hands to his mouth and leaned over the pulpit. With all the dramatic emphasis he could command he shouted the words of that sea-captain to God's disobedient servant, "What meanest thou, O sleeper?" The response was immediate—beyond all the preacher's expectation. The man who was asleep in church suddenly responded. He leaped to his feet and seized a hymn-book. Then, when he saw that he was standing alone—and in the middle of the sermon—he sheepishly sat down. He did not go asleep again. And the preacher reports that for the rest of the message he listened—and everyone else did, too!
Well, that really happened; and it points up the need for alertness in God's house. We are not here to be listless, but to listen! The high point of all Protestant worship is the preaching of the Word of God. The preacher's part is solemn and humbling. He is a herald of God. He is a "workman" handling the Word of truth; and he must show the greatest diligence to rightly divide it.
But the part of the worshippers in waiting before God to hear his Word is equally solemn. There is to be an expectancy, an openness, a readiness to regard this part of the service as the precious privilege which it is.
Anything less dishonors God. God's servant is speaking God's truth; and the hearing of it is as solemn a responsibility as the preaching of it.
Our text was the aftermath of a parable. It grew out of a simple story which our Lord told. "A sower went forth to sow." Although readers of the Bible have usually called it "the parable of the sower", it is actually a story about soils: hard soil, shallow soil, weedy soil, good soil.
What happened to the seed that was sown is the main point.
Our Lord himself interpreted this parable. He said that these four types of soil represent four types of people. God is in the business of sowing the seed of his Word, his truth. But some people's minds and hearts are hardened against it. God's Word does not get into them at all. Others hear it after a fashion; but their reception of it is not deep enough to do much. Their minds attend to it, but it never penetrates far enough to influence their wills.
Still others are so immersed in competing interests that, although they readily listen to God's truth and take it in, it gets choked out later on. Their lives are like fields fouled with weeds. Business and social interests and attachment to their pleasures suffocate the spiritual interest they have had, and the devotion to God they intended never really gets to grow. Competition crowds it out.
A final type of people is like good soil. The truth is received, absorbed and obeyed. God really "gets a hearing" in them. They want God's Word; and they are corrected by it, instructed by it and directed by what it says to them. They depart to do what they have heard.
Right on the heels of that solemn sermon the great Teacher and Son of God said: "Take heed therefore how you hear!"
The reason is that God is looking for a result.
The Lord of this human harvest wants a harvest of conviction and correction and conversion from us. His seed is too precious to be wasted on us. His truth deserves to be listened to—and with more than just our physical ears. God's purpose in the preached Word is that we accept it not as a human message but, as it truly is, a message from God. Listlessness in us is out of order.
Half-attention is dishonoring to God. The Word of the Sovereign God is "perfect, restoring the soul". His words are living and true. "Moreover by them are God's people warned; and in the keeping of them there is great reward."
We get down to cases when we realize how directly this parable (of the soils) speaks to each one of us. Four kinds of persons sit in the pews. The Lord of life is planting his seeds of truth. But some never even begin to get it. They may be listening, but only with their ears.
And all the time God and his Word want to reach the inner person.
Others are here with some measure of expectation.
Something is being said by God through his Word; and they know that what God has to say is important. It may therefore move them in some measure. But they are not hearing with their hearts; and there is no penetration into the will.
Still others are deeper in desire. The preaching penetrates. Decisions germinate. Their minds are changed, and new purposes spring up. But the soil of their souls is growing too many counter desires; and after the preaching, the things of the world crowd out the godlier life that might have been. These, too, have allowed the Word of truth to be wasted.
But thank God some souls are ready and open—opened deeply. These are faithful hearers—waiting, wanting God's Word. They want it that they may obey it.
And God's Word reaches in. It molds them, challenges them, corrects them. And they go forth from the preaching to bear the fruit of the glory of God. "Take heed how ye hear", our Lord said.
Christians should understand clearly the part which belongs to the congregation in "preaching". If the preacher were simply a speaker or a rhetorician, then the listeners would be an audience and no more. Even then we would need to be attentive, interested listeners. But there is a very true sense in which both the preacher and the members of the congregation are "hearers". Both are in the presence of God to understand what the will of the Lord is, as it is given in his written Word. The preacher is not only standing before the people as one who "tells", but as one who transmits. God is the One who is actually speaking. Therefore the congregation, though silent, are actually participating in receiving what God has to say.
This is the correct conception of what preaching is. The preacher is the one who proclaims. The message is from God! The preacher has been solemnly ordained and commissioned to expound, to explain, to illuminate and apply what God's Spirit has inspired and wants to convey to God's people. The man who stands in the pulpit—if he has any conception of the dimensions of his task—knows he is there to lead sinners to the fountain of cleansing, to bring the bound out into the freedom of God's will, to help the heavy-hearted to heaven's healing powers, to lead the young to see the glory of God's goals for their lives, to startle the careless, to instruct the saints, to cut consciences with the "sword of the spirit" and to lead mortal men to link their lives to purposes which lead to true peace and joy, both in this world and in the world which is to come. What a responsibility! And preachers will answer for their faithfulness to this trust.
But throughout the Bible the responsibility which God puts upon the people to attend to what is preached is just as great. The pages of the prophets are punctuated with this sentence: "Hear the word of the Lord." That means pay attention to it, take it in, listen in order that you may learn. Then live by it.
So often these spokesmen of God were met with inattentiveness or a lack of earnest desire on the part of the people to know what God said. Too often their minds were encased in prejudices against what the Lord was saying. In the book of Ezekiel, God takes account of what People were saying about God's announcements of judgment in the days of that preacher. "Behold, they of the house of Israel say, the vision that he (Ezekiel) sees is for the distant future; he is prophesying times far off," (Ezek. 12:27). So sermons which might have brought them to repentance and salvation failed to penetrate. Like so many people who sit in churches today, they persuaded themselves that the great issues were remote and distant. They were not of immediate importance.
The needed hearing involves careful attention. We cannot hear if we do not listen. Good listening is not always easy—especially in this particular time.
There are so many sounds and sayings and noises in our modern world that many people have conditioned themselves against hearing them. Music that is being broadcast almost every place we go may do something to relax tension, fill a void, or establish a rhythm of work, but in the process we have had to develop a habit of half-hearing. Some students study to the accompaniment of radio music to which they are not listening. And who knows but what these half-hearing habits sometimes carry over into the sanctuary where presumably we have come to hear God speak through his Word?
One of our Christian magazines carried an article with the caption "What did the preacher say?" Under that heading, in large print, were these words: "Ten minutes after the sermon, your mind is a blank, you could take a rest cure or a memory course." The writer started the article with the assumption that most of his readers would probably "like to get more out of going to church on Sunday". So he suggested some steps to help the worshipper. "First", he said, "arrive at church rested and on time. A good night's rest on Saturday night is important if you're going to have an alert mind the next morning.…Second, sit as close to the pulpit as possible.... The opportunities for distraction are not as great .... Expect to learn something. You will get something for your own soul if you go expecting something.... Prepare for the message. Singing the hymns is part of the preparation.. Sing with the understanding .... It will help you get ready."
Hymns can soften the soil of the soul. Then, follow the text or the passage in your Bible as though you are expecting God to speak in it. Then, be a good listener. Look at the speaker, think with the speaker. Pray for him and for yourself. Ask the Lord to give power to the preacher and ask him to give you something for your own needs. Then, since you owe it to yourself, get the message!
We profess to believe that the Bible is a "rule" both of faith and practice. It teaches what we are to know concerning God and what duties God requires of us [WSC Q. 3). Let us listen then in accordance with that conviction. Listen as though our life depended upon our getting what God has to say; for in fact it does! Listen for the meaning the messages have for us, not only on Sunday but on Monday and every day of theweek. As you listen, ask yourself, "what does God want me to do about this in my own life, in my home, in my business, in my association with others? Let us listen as though it makes a tremendous difference whether or not we lay hold of what God has to say to us—for it does make a tremendous difference. Listening is the least we can do; for certainly God deserves a hearing!
The needed "hearing" of the Word of God is also characterized by our being receptive. The Book of Acts records the admirable attitude which was in the people of Berea, in ancient Greece. When the missionaries Paul and Silas preached the gospel to them, they drank it in.
The scripture commends them with this unusual statement, "these were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word of God with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily."
Two things are prominent there. They were open to the message. They really heard and got hold of what was preached. They demonstrated the fact that just as the condition of the soil is more important than the skill of the sower, so more depends on a receptive attitude on the part of the hearers than on any ability of the preacher.
The other part of the "noble" spirit of these people was that they followed the careful listening to God's truth with examining the scriptures for themselves day after day. What they heard with such readiness started them on a personal search. We might call them the "first Protestants". They went into the writings of God for themselves. The word "searched" indicates that they "poured over" the writings. They read and re-read them. They wanted to check out the truths for themselves. Like men "tracking down" something, they were bent upon getting hold of what these truths meant for their own lives. And it is this "nobility" of readiness to receive and earnest, personal searching out that God wants in all of us. Preaching is not oration! It is a proclamation of truth. God is speaking! The preacher is just a messenger. God wants of us a hearing and an obedience to what he says.
How God must look with pleasure upon us when we enter his house of worship with thankful hearts, when we direct heart-felt praise to him, and when we have the attitude at the time of the message which was in that Roman officer, Cornelius, who said: "Now are we all here present before God to hear everything he has to say" (Acts. 10:33).
O that this may be our attitude as we assemble each Lord's Day in his holy presence!
[1] See “About the Lectures” on the RTS website here: https://rts.edu/campuses/jackson/community/john-reed-miller-lectures/
[2] Disciples in Disguise: Sermons by John Reed Miller, Volume II. (Jackson, MS: Evangelical Pulpit Publications, 1979), 5.
[3] Disciples in Disguise, 5.
[4] Disciples in Disguise, 5.
[5] Disciples in Disguise, 5.
[6] Disciples in Disguise, 6.
[7] Disciples in Disguise, 6.
[8] Richard Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms: Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2017), 25.
[9] Disciples in Disguise, 291-98.