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We must not talk to our congregations as if we were half asleep. Our preaching must not be articulate snoring. There must be power, life, energy, vigour. We must throw our whole selves into it, and show that the zeal of God's house has eaten us up.Lectures to my Students
Hard words, if they be true, are better than soft words, if they be false. 63 Volume Sermon Set - 1940.34
No man preaches a sermon well to others who does not first preach it to his own heart.
You are required to believe, to preach, and to teach what the Bible says is true, not what you want the Bible to say is true. Chosen by God, p. 12
If God then withdraws Himself, if in the soul of men He bear no more witness to the truth of His Word, men can no longer believe, and no apologetics, however brilliant, will ever be able to restore the blessing of faith in the ScripturePrinciples of Sacred Theology, 366
The proclamation of new discoveries is not always a proof of devotion to the truth, it is sometimes a tribute to self-esteem.Sacred Theology, 577
the Holy Spirit, who gave the Scriptures, is Himself the perpetual author (auctor perpetuus) of all appropriations of their contents by and of all application to the individual. It is the Holy Spirit who, by illumination, enables the human consciousness to take up into itself the substance of the Scripture; in the course of ages leads our human consciousness to ever richer insights into its contentPrinciples of Sacred Theology, 402
The dominating principles [of the Reformation] was not, soteriologically, justification by faith, but in the widest sense cosmologically, the sovereignty of the Triune God over the whole cosmos, in all its spheres and kingdoms, visible and invisible.
Let us beware of despising preaching. In every age of the Church, it has been God's principal instrument for the awakening of sinners and the edifying of saints. The days when there has been little or no preaching have been days when there has been little or no good done in the Church. Let us hear sermons in a prayerful and reverent frame of mind, and remember that they are the principal engines which Christ Himself employed when He was upon earth. Not least, let us pray daily for a continual supply of faithful preachers of God's Word. According to the state of the pulpit will always be the state of a congregation and of a Church.Expository Thoughts on the Gospels: Luke volume 1, (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1986) 128, 129
And as the Christian knights were inspired to high exploits by crusade upon crusade undertaken against Islam, the sight of this glittering arsenal in the writings of Aristotle made the scholars of those days quickly cast aside the sling and stone and immediately arm themselves with the lances of Aristotle's categories and with the armor of his distinctions, and so to gain trophies for their Christian faith. At the outset they foresaw none of the danger this implied. As yet they perceived nothing of what was to come to light in Abelard, in the Nominalists, and presently in the Humanists. They did not surmise that the Greek-Roman tradition held a spirit peculiar to itself, and that when once called out from its grave this spirit would soon prove able to enlist once more the sympathies of thinking minds, and for a second time let loose against the Church the old enemy which had spoken in Celsus and Porphyry. They thought they were simply dealing with the armor of a buried hero, and that they had a perfect right to appropriate this armor to themselves.Sacred Theology, 655
In order to get attention, the first golden rule is, always say something worth hearing.Lectures to my Students
Preachers should not give sinners what they desire; but give them True Food until, by the Spirit, they taste and see that the Lord is good!
Saying, 'Preach the gospel daily, use words if necessary', is like saying, 'Feed the hungry, use food if necessary.'
it is common for modern preachers to use the proverbial "we" in an effort to place themselves, humbly it is thought, within the mass of those needing the same message. Although there is a nugget of truth to this modern approach, it nevertheless undermines the basic essence of preaching--the prophetic.Deep Discipleship, 24
Ministers must not flatter, preach pleasing things, sow pillows under people's elbows, or throw sugar on them, when salt is necessary.
for the Jerusalem dialect has this one distinguishing mark, that it is a man's own mode of speech, and it is the same out of the pulpit as it is in it.Lectures to My Students, 113
I wonder how long we might beat our brains before we could plainly put into words what is meant by preaching with unction; yet he who preaches knows its presence, and he who hears soon detects its absence;Lectures to My Students (p. 50).
Abhor, dear brethren, the thought of being clockwork ministers who are not alive by abiding grace within, but are wound up by temporary influences; men who are only ministers for the time being, under the stress of the hour of ministering, but cease to be ministers when they descend the pulpit stairs. True ministers are always ministers.Lectures to My Students (Kindle Locations 256-259). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.
we read in Acts viii.29: "And the Spirit said unto Philip, GO near, and join thyself to this chariot." It does not say that this thought arose in him, but that a speaking took placePrinciples of Sacred Theology, 442
I'll tell you a story. The Archbishop of Canterbury in the year 1675 was acquainted with Mr. Butterton the [actor]. One day the Archbishop . . . said to Butterton . . . 'pray inform me Mr. Butterton, what is the reason you actors on stage can affect your congregations with speaking of things imaginary, as if they were real, while we in church speak of things real, which our congregations only receive as if they were imaginary?' 'Why my Lord,' says Butterton, 'the reason is very plain. We actors on stage speak of things imaginary, as if they were real and you in the pulpit speak of things real as if they were imaginary.' Stout, Divine Dramatist (239-240)
the crucial way to fight against false teaching is to preach the gospel of Christ well. Good News for Anxious Christians (190)
To be burning at the lip and freezing at the soul is a mark of reprobation. God deliver us from being superfine and superficial: may we never be the butterflies of the garden of God.Lectures to my Students
There are preachers who in their sermons seem to take their hearers one by one by the button-hole, and drive the truth right into their souls, while others generalise so much, and are so cold withal, that one would think they were speaking of dwellers in some remote planet, whose affairs did not much concern them. Learn the art of pleading with men.Lectures to my Students
A very useful help in securing attention is a pause. Pull up short every now and then, and the passengers on your coach will wake up. The miller goes to sleep while the mill wheels revolve; but if by some means or other the grinding ceases, the good man starts and cries, "What now?" On a sultry summer's day, if nothing will keep off the drowsy feeling, be very short, sing more than usual, or call on a brother or two to pray. A minister who saw that the people would sleep, sat down and observed, "I saw you were all resting, and I thought I would rest too."Lectures to my Students
He who has ceased to learn has ceased to teach. He who no longer sows in the study will no more reap in the pulpit.
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