Excerpts from ‘Preaching and Preachers’
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
Extracted from Ordained Servant vol. 9, no. 2 (April 2000), pp. 28-29
“What is it that always heralds the dawn of a Reformation or of a Revival? It is renewed preaching. Not only a new interest in preaching but a new kind of preaching. A revival of true preaching has always heralded these great movements in the history of the Church.”
“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. This creeps even into the life and the thinking of the Church with all the talk about post-war world, scientific age, atomic age, post-Christian era, etc. It is just nonsense; it is not new at all. God does not change. As someone put it, ‘Time writes no wrinkle on the brow of the Eternal.’ And man does not change; he is exactly what he has always been ever since he fell and has the same problems. Indeed I would go so far as to say that never has there been a greater opportunity for preaching than there is today, because we are living in an age of disillusionment.”
“Preaching should always be a transaction between preacher and listener with something vital and living taking place. It is not the mere imparting of knowledge, there is something much bigger involved... Preaching is that which deals with the total person, the hearer becomes involved and knows that he has been dealt with and addressed by God through this preacher.”
“Something has taken place in him and in his experience, and it is going to affect the whole of his life.”
“There is something radically wrong with dull and boring preachers. How can a man be dull when he is handling such themes? 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 theology coming through a man who is on fire.”
“What then is the chief thing? I say, none of these mechanics except the love of souls, a knowledge of the Truth, and the Holy Spirit within you. These are the things that make the preacher.”
“I would say that all preachers should read through the whole Bible in its entirety at least once every year. That should be the very minimum of the preacher’s Bible reading.”
“The help that I derived in my early years in the ministry from reading the sermons of Jonathan Edwards was immeasurable.”
“There is no greater mistake than to think that you finish with theology when you leave a seminary. The preacher should continue to read theology as long as he is alive. Keep on reading; and read the big works.”
“Nothing is needed more urgently than an analysis of the innovations in the realm of religious worship in the nineteenth century—to me in this respect a devastating century. The sooner we forget the nineteenth century and go back to the eighteenth, and even further to the seventeenth and sixteenth, the better. The nineteenth century and its mentality and outlook is responsible for most of our troubles and problems today.”
“The romance of preaching! There is nothing like it. It is the greatest work in the world, the most thrilling, the most exciting, the most rewarding, and the most wonderful. I know of nothing comparable to the feeling one has as one walks up the steps of one’s pulpit with a fresh sermon on a Sunday morning or a Sunday evening, especially when you feel that you have a message from God and are longing to give it to the people. This is something that one cannot describe. Repeating your best sermon elsewhere never quite gives you that. That is why I am such an advocate of a regular and longish ministry in the same place. That is something, I fear, I shall never know again, having retired from the pastoral ministry. But there is nothing to equal that.”
“There is nothing more important for preaching, than the reading of Church history and biographies .... Read sermons. But be sure that they were published before 1900! Read the sermons of Spurgeon and Whitefield and Edwards and all the giants. Those men themselves read the Puritans and were greatly helped by them.”
“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. As I have said already, during this last year I have been ill, and so have had the opportunity, and the privilege, of listening to others, instead of preaching myself. As I have listened in physical weakness this is the thing I have looked for and longed for and desired. I can forgive a man for a bad sermon, I can forgive the preacher almost anything if he gives me a sense of God, if he gives me something for my soul, if he gives me the sense that, though he is inadequate himself, he is handling something which is very great and very glorious, if he gives me some dim glimpse of the majesty and the glory of God, the love of Christ my Saviour, and the magnificence of the Gospel. If he does that I am his debtor, and I am profoundly grateful to him. Preaching is the most amazing, and the most thrilling activity that one can ever be engaged in, because of all that it holds out for all of us in the present, and because of the glorious endless possibilities in an eternal future.”
These quotations appeared in the November 1971 issue of The Banner of Truth, and were taken from lectures originally delivered at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia in 1969.