The Mighty Weakness of John Knox
From the recent book by Douglas Bond, pp. 51-53.
Knox reluctantly began his preaching ministry when he was pressed int service as a chaplain during the siege of the Castle of St. Andrews. By popular demand, the private tutorials he prepared for his “bairns” developed into public exhortations from the Word of God. As we have seen, he was, in his flesh, a timid, fearing man; “I quake, I fear, I tremble,” he said. But when he opened his mouth to preach, all timidity vanished.
The year before Knox died, James Melville, a student at St. Andrews, described what happened when the feeble old man began to preach. Knox, he wrote, was “lifted up to the pulpit, where he behovit to lean at his first entry, but ere he had done with his sermon, he was so active and vigorous, that he was likely to ding the pulpit in pieces and fly out of it.” Melville admitted that Knox’s preaching made him “so to quake and tremble that I could not hold pen to write.”
Knox knew that many took offense at his preaching and that they attributed his vigor to hatred of his enemies instead of zeal for the gospel. In one of his sermons before Mary, Queen of Scots, he offered an explanation: “Without the preaching place, I think few would have occasion to be offended at me; and there I am not master of myself, but must obey him who commands me to speak plain and to flatter no flesh on the face of the earth.” Still, there is a sense in which Knox’s preaching was motivated by hatred. As Iain Murray has it: “He passionately hated that which destroys souls. He hated the system which had blinded people to the necessity of faith and salvation by the blood of Jesus Christ.”
An ardent man, Knox was on fire when he preached, and it seemed never to occur to him to alter his message or tone when he stood before the rich and powerful in the realm:
My words are sharp, but consider, my Lords, that they are not mine but they are the threatening of the Omnipotent … The sword of God’s wrath is already drawn, which of necessity must needs strike when grace offered is obstinately refused. You have been long in bondage to the Devil, blindness, error and idolatry prevailing against the simple truth of God in your realm, in which God has made you princes and rulers. But now doth God, of His great mercy, call you to repentance before he pour forth the uttermost of His vengeance.
As sheep heed the voice of their shepherd, people from all walks of life flocked to hear this message. After his release from the French galleys, Knox was called on to preach almost daily, “if the wicked carcass would permit.” This was no small feat for a man whose health was nearly destroyed. “The pain of my head and stomach troubles me greatly; daily I find my body decay,” he wrote. “Unless my pain cease, I will become unprofitable. Your messenger found me in bed, after a sore trouble[d] and dolorous night.” In this condition, as minister of St. Giles Edinburgh, he preached sermons three or four times a week, each of which lasted up to three hours.
There was nothing shallow or therapeutic in these sermons. There was nothing manipulative to evoke an emotional response. Knox understood the condition of his hearers because he understood the condition of his own heart: “For we are so dead, so blind, and so perverse, that neither can be feel when we are pricked, see the light when it shines, nor assent to the will of God when it is revealed.” Hence, for Knox no gimmicks were needed. For his hearers to respond to the gospel in faith, they needed the transforming power of God’s sovereign grace alone. And since the Spirit of God had chosen preaching as the means for the conversion of sinners, Knox preached.
