Tag Archives: Preaching

The Echo of the Snore from the Pulpit

Posted on by under Frederick R. Wynne

A blunt sword will not cut; a dull sermon will not reach the conscience. The sword must be sharpened, and the sermon must be sharpened too. The preacher’s laziness or half-heartedness, want of earnest faith in Christ and earnest love to men, blunts the edge of his sermons. Ah! he needs to be sharpened himself; stirred up continually to fresh energy and communion with his Savior, and affectionate interest for his fellow-men. Nothing prevents dulness so effectually as energy and zeal. The snore from the pew is often only the echo of the snore from the pulpit.

Frederick R. Wynne, The Joy of the Ministry

Preach to Yourself

Posted on by under D. Martin Lloyd-Jones

Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them, but they start talking to you, they bring back the problems of yesterday, etc.

Somebody is talking. Who is talking? Your self is talking to you. Now this man’s treatment was this; instead of allowing this self to talk to him, he starts talking to himself. “Why art thou cast down, O my soul?” he asks. His soul had been depressing him, crushing him. So he stands up and says: “Self, listen for a moment, I will speak to you.”. . . .

The main art in the matter of spiritual living is to know how to handle yourself. You have to take yourself in hand, you have to address yourself, preach to yourself, question yourself. You must say to your soul: “Why art thou cast down” – what business have you to be disquieted?

You must turn on yourself, upbraid yourself, condemn yourself, exhort yourself, and say to yourself: “Hope thou in God” – instead of muttering in this depressed, unhappy way. And then you must go on to remind yourself of God, Who God is, and what God is and what God has done, and what God has pledged Himself to do.

Then having done that, end on this great note: defy yourself, and defy other people, and defy the devil and the whole world, and say with this man: “I shall yet praise Him for the help of His countenance, who is also the health of my countenance and my God.”

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Its Cure (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965/2002), 20-1.

Remembering That Minister Means Nothing but Servant

Posted on by under R.B. Kuiper

The minister must always remember that the dignity of his office adheres not in his person but in his office itself. He is not at all important, but his office is extremely important. Therefore he should take his work most seriously without taking himself seriously. He should preach the Word in season and out of season in forgetfulness of self. He should ever have an eye single to the glory of Christ, whom he preaches, and count himself out. It should be his constant aim that Christ, whom he represents, may increase while he himself decreases. Remembering that minister means nothing but servant, he should humbly, yet passionately, serve the Lord Christ and His church.

R.B. Kuiper, The Glorious Body of Christ (Banner of Truth, 1966), 140-42.

Preacher, Are You Moved by the Sermons You Preach?

Posted on by under D. Martin Lloyd-Jones

If you yourself as a preacher cannot still be moved by a sermon which just deals with the facts and details of the death of our blessed Lord on the Cross on Calvary’s hill, if you do not feel as if you had never preached it before, and if you are not as moved by it as you have ever been, I say again that you had better examine your foundations.

D. Martin Lloyd-Jones (1899-1981)

HT: @theoldguys_