The Uplifted Christ

And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me. JOHN 12:32

Torrey’s books on doctrine and devotion were written for Christians. His sermons were preached, most of them, to people who were not. The fourteen in the Ochorus library come largely from his great missions, several of them preached in London, and they show the evangelist at work. They are plain, direct, often stern, and always aimed at a decision. This chapter looks at what he preached when he stood before the crowds.

What drew them

In The Great Attraction: The Uplifted Christ, Torrey told of a church advertisement he had seen offering a film, a popular pianist and an opera singer as attractions for a Sunday evening service. It startled him that anyone should think the gospel needed propping up. “There is nothing else that draws like the uplifted Christ,” he said.

He spoke from experience. In London he had seen the Royal Albert Hall filled afternoon and evening for two months. A London reporter had told him no one had ever tried to hold two weeks of meetings there, and that not even Gladstone could have filled it for two weeks. The preacher, Torrey said of himself, was no remarkable orator, and the newspapers kept saying so. What filled the hall was Christ, preached and sung in the power of the Spirit, in answer to the prayers of many thousands of people around the world.

God is love

The sermon The Greatest Sentence That Was Ever Written opened one of his missions. Its text is three short words.

He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. 1 JOHN 4:8

This, said Torrey, sums up the whole Bible. “The Bible is simply God’s love story, the story of the love of a holy God to a sinful world.” He told how Moody had the text written in gas jets above the pulpit of the Chicago church, and of a half-drunk man who pushed open the door on a stormy night, saw the words blazing, and walked away muttering that God could not love a wretch like him — and then came back, and was found at the end of the meeting weeping like a child.

But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. ROMANS 5:8

It is worth remembering this sermon when reading Torrey’s sterner ones. His warnings were the warnings of a man who believed that God is love.

What shall I do with Jesus

Many of his sermons turn on a single question. The Most Important Question takes Pilate’s words.

Pilate saith unto them, What shall I do then with Jesus which is called Christ? They all say unto him, Let him be crucified. MATTHEW 27:22

It is the most important question anyone ever asked or answered, Torrey said, because everything worth having depends on the answer — acceptance with God, peace, power, eternal life. And no one can avoid answering it. To do nothing with Christ is itself an answer.

The Way of Salvation Made Plain takes the Philippian jailer’s question and gives Paul’s answer without embellishment.

And brought them out, and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house. ACTS 16:30–31

Excuses and refuges

Torrey was relentless in stripping away the reasons people give for not coming to Christ. In Excuses, from the parable of the great supper, he pointed out that the excuses in Jesus’ story are absurd, and that this is the point. Who buys a field without seeing it, or oxen without trying them? No one would refuse an invitation to a royal banquet. Yet when God spreads His table, people hunt for reasons not to come.

And they all with one consent began to make excuse. The first said unto him, I have bought a piece of ground, and I must needs go and see it: I pray thee have me excused. LUKE 14:18

In Refuges of Lies he observed that the trouble with most people is not that they have no refuge but that they have a false one — morality, indifference, a vague trust in God’s kindness. He offered tests of a true refuge: does it satisfy the highest demands of your own conscience? Is it making you a better person? And he warned that the hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies.

Judgment also will I lay to the line, and righteousness to the plummet: and the hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters shall overflow the hiding place. ISAIAH 28:17

And in Every Man’s Need of a Refuge he found the true refuge foretold in Isaiah: a man who would be a hiding place from the wind, a covert from the tempest, the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.

Today

The note on which nearly every one of these sermons ends is urgency. The Day of Golden Opportunity takes its text from the Holy Spirit’s word, To day.

Wherefore (as the Holy Ghost saith, To day if ye will hear his voice, Harden not your hearts. HEBREWS 3:7–8

Torrey told of a man who came to his office ruined by drink, agreed that he must turn to Christ, and when asked whether he would do it now, hung his head and said, not now, tomorrow. “Tomorrow is the devil’s day and the fool’s day,” Torrey said. “Today is God’s day, and the wise man’s day.”

Weighing it

These sermons are not subtle, and they were not meant to be. They use the illustrations and assumptions of their day — the coronation of King Edward, the dangers of the ballroom, the young man ruined by his first glass of wine — and a modern reader may smile. Some of their appeals press hard on fear.

But they have two great virtues. They are about Christ, and they ask for an answer. A great deal of preaching since has been more thoughtful and less clear. Torrey would have said that the business of the evangelist is to lift up Christ plainly and ask people what they will do with Him. The Holy Spirit does the drawing.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Ask whether you, or your church, have been tempted to make the gospel attractive by adding things to it rather than by lifting up Christ.

2. Answer Pilate’s question for yourself today: what have I done with Jesus?

3. Examine your own refuge. Is your hope before God resting on anything other than Christ?

4. Is there something God has been asking of you that you keep putting off until tomorrow? Do it today.

5. Read one of Torrey’s sermons in the Ochorus library, such as The Greatest Sentence That Was Ever Written, and let it speak to you as if you were in the hall.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus, You said that if You were lifted up You would draw all men to Yourself. Draw me again today.

Thank You that God is love, and that You proved it by dying for me while I was yet a sinner.

Sweep away every false refuge I have trusted, and be my hiding place from the wind and my covert from the tempest.

Keep me from saying tomorrow when You say today, and give me courage to lift You up plainly before others. Amen.