Tag Archives: Preaching
Preaching Is Worship
Preaching does not come after worship in the order of the service. Preaching is worship.
Truth Divides People
The truth divides people. The more fundamental the truth, the deeper and wider the division. The goal of Christian preaching — the goal of presenting the Gospel, the goal of the church — is not just to open the door so wide that we suck everybody in and make them feel comfortable. The goal is to preach the truth to as many people as possible, so that we can sort out the true from the false.
The Preacher’s Prayer
Always respond to every impulse to pray. The impulse to pray may come when you are reading or when you are battling with a text. I would make an absolute law of this – always obey such an impulse. Where does it come from? It is the work of the Holy Spirit; it is a part of the meaning of ‘Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure’ (Phil 2:12-13). This often leads to some of the most remarkable experiences in the life of the minister. So never resist, never postpone it, never push it aside because you are busy. Give yourself to it, yield to it; and you will find not only that you have not been wasting time with respect to the matter with which you are dealing but that actually it has helped you greatly in that respect. You will experience an ease and a facility in understanding what you were reading, in thinking, in ordering matter for a sermon, in writing, in everything which is quite astonishing. Such a call to prayer must never be regarded as a distraction; always respond to it immediately, and thank God if it happens to you frequently.
Living What You Preach
The Christian’s life should put his minister’s sermon in print.
Boring Preaching
I would say that a ‘dull preacher’ is a contradiction in terms; if he is dull he is not a preacher. He may stand in a pulpit and talk, but he is certainly not a preacher.
Preaching Is Worship
The sermon is a present-day revelation of God’s holy will, leading to the searching of the hearer’s soul, and then to the acceptance of the newly revealed truth as it bears on his life among men. Thus the sermon is an act of worship, an act which means that the light of God is shining out today through the pulpit.
Expositional Preaching
Sound, expositional preaching is often the fountain head of true growth in a church.
Mark Dever, What Is a Healthy Church?, p. 67
The Questions Preaching Must Address
Intoxicated as men are with the secularities of this world, they know, deep down, that they belong to another, and, interesting as the knowledge of this world is, the questions about the other world will always be more fascinating to the spirit of man. Whence am I? What am I? Whither am I going? Unless preaching can answer these questions, we may shut our churches.
The Preacher’s Task and the Stone of Stumbling
The preacher’s task is to leave that stone in their path. Never mind if they pick it up, look at it, and throw it away: they cannot keep on throwing it away forever. It is the cornerstone of their lives and finally they must reckon with it. The only obedience that God asks of the preacher is that he does not attempt to change the shape of that stone in order to make it fit more easily into some other place in the building. That stone is meant for judgment as well as for fulfillment. It is uncut by human hand. The preacher is as bound by its nature and its function as are those to whom he preaches. Jesus Christ is both the preacher’s message and his limitation.
D. T. Niles, The Preachers’ Task and the Stone of Stumbling, p. 15
Life Is Worship 