I had heard great things about this book. It's a classic and must-read for all preachers. I must confirm, these things are true. If you ever preach, you must read this book. It truly does whet your appetite to bring the Word of God to people.Lloyd-Jones writes about the priority of preaching, the content and form of the sermon, the delivery of the sermon, the preacher, the congregation, just to name a few topics. Here are some gems:
- Great preaching always depends upon great themes. Great themes always produce great speaking in any realm, and this is particularly true, of course, in the realm of the Church. While men believed in the Scriptures as the authoritative Word of God and spoke on the basis of that authority, you had great preaching. But once that went, and men began to speculate, and to theorise, and to put up hypotheses and so on, the eloquence and the greatness of the spoken word inevitably declined and began to wane.
- I am not saying that the preacher should never do any personal work; far from it. But I do contend that preaching must always come first, and that it must not be replaced by anything else.
- My contention, then, is that personal counselling and all these other activities are meant to supplement the preaching, not supplant it; that they are the 'carrying on', 'follow up' work if you like, but must never be thought of as the primary work.
- Someone may say, 'Have not times changed?'...What is the answer to that? It is quite simple. God has not changed, and man has not changed. I know that there are superficial changes - we may dress differently, we may travel at four hundred miles an hour instead of four mile an hour - but man as man has not changed at all, and man's needs are exactly and precisely what they have always been.
- There is nothing new about this condition of ours; one of the central fallacies of today is to think that because we are living in the mid-twentieth century we have an entirely new problem...It is just nonsense; it is not new at all. God does not change...And man does not change; he is exactly what he has always been ever since he fell and has the same problems.
- He [the preacher] is not there merely to talk to them, he is not there to entertain them. He is there - and I want to emphasise this - to do something to those people; he is there to produce results of various kind...He is there to deal with the whole person; and his preaching is meant to affect the whole person at the very centre of life. Preaching should make such a difference to a man who is listening that he is never the same again.
- The preparation of sermons involves sweat and labour. It can be extremely difficult at times to get all this matter that you have found in the Scriptures into this particular form...you have to keep on putting the material into the fire and on to the anvil and hit it again and again with the hammer. Each time it is a bit better, but not quite right; so you put it back again and again until you are satisfied with it or can do no better. This is the most gruelling part of the preparation of the sermon; but at the same time it is the most fascinating and most glorious occupation. It can be at times most difficult, most exhausting, most trying. But at the same time I can assure you that when you have finally succeeded you will experience one of the most glorious feelings that ever comes to a man on the face of this earth.
- The whole personality of the preacher must be involved...'truth mediated through personality.' I believe that is right, that in preaching all of one's faculties should be engaged, the whole man should be involved.
- The second element I would emphasize is a sense of authority and control over the congregation and proceedings. The preacher should never be apologetic, he should never give the impression that he is speaking by their leave as it were; he should not be tentatively putting forward certain suggestions and ideas. That is not to be his attitude at all. He is a man, who is there to 'declare' certain things; he is a man under commission and under authority.
- 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. With the grand theme and message of the Bible, dullness is impossible. This is the most interesting, the most thrilling, the most absorbing subject in the universe.
- When I say zeal, I mean that a preacher much always convey the impression that he himself has been gripped by what he is saying. If he has not been gripped, nobody else will be...He is so moved and thrilled by it himself that he wants everybody to share in this. He is concerned about them; that is why he is preaching to them. He is anxious about them; anxious to help them, anxious to tell them the truth of God. So he does it with energy, with zeal, and with obvious concern for people.
- Where is the passion in preaching that has always characterised great preaching in the past? Why are not modern preachers moved and carried away as the great preachers of the past so often were? The Truth has not changed. Do we believe it, have we been gripped and humbled by it, and then exalted until we are 'lost in wonder love and praise'?
- What is preaching? Logic on fire! Eloquent reason!...It is theology on fire!...Preaching is theology coming through a man who is on fire.
- What is the chief end of preaching? I like to think it is this. It is to give men and women a sense of God and His presence.
- It was Mr. Spurgeon, I believe, who used to say to young men - 'If you can do anything else, do it. If you can stay out of the ministry, stay out of the ministry.' I would certainly say that without hesitation whatsoever. I would say that the only man who is called to preach is the man who cannot do anything else, in the sense that he is not satisfied with anything else. This call to preach is so put upon him, and such pressure comes to bear upon him that he says, 'I can do nothing else, I must preach.'
- This idea that because people are members of the church and attend regularly that they must be Christian is one of the most fatal assumptions, and I suggest that it mainly accounts for the state of the Church today.
- The same thing applies to, and the same wrong assumption tends to be made by, the listeners. Because such people assume that they are Christians they tend to resent preaching which assumes that they are not Christian, though it is what they need most of all.
- 'This man preaches to us as if we were sinners.' That is terrible! She was made to feel uncomfortable and forced to examine herself and to see herself truly; and she did not like it. She had been attending that church for nearly thirty years; but she showed that she was antagonistic to the Truth when really faced with it in a direct, personal way. She liked general expositions of Scripture, and sermons based on the Scriptures for believers; they did not hurt her, they did not trouble her, they did not examine her, they did not convict her. She revelled in that but she did not like preaching when it became personal and direct.
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