Preachers on Preaching

Here are ten reminders for those who preach and teach the Word of God … as confirmed by some of history’s greatest preachers.

1. Effective ministry consists not of fads or gimicks, but of faithfully preaching the truth.

Charles Spurgeon: Ah, my dear friends, we want nothing in these times for revival in the world but the simple preaching of the gospel. This is the great battering ram that shall dash down the bulwarks of iniquity. This is the great light that shall scatter the darkness. We need not that men should be adopting new schemes and new plans. We are glad of the agencies and assistances which are continually arising; but after all, the true Jerusalem blade, the sword that can cut to the piercing asunder of the joints and marrow, is preaching the Word of God. We must never neglect it, never despise it. The age in which the pulpit it despised, will be an age in which gospel truth will cease to be honored. . . . God forbid that we should begin to depreciate preaching. Let us still honor it; let us look to it as God’s ordained instrumentality, and we shall yet see in the world a repetition of great wonders wrought by the preaching in the name of Jesus Christ.

Source: Charles Spurgeon, “Preaching! Man’s Privilege and God’s Power,” Sermon (Nov. 25, 1860).

2. Preaching is a far more serious task than most preachers realize.

Richard Baxter: And for myself, as I am ashamed of my dull and careless heart, and of my slow and unprofitable course of life, so, the Lord knows, I am ashamed of every sermon I preach; when I think what I have been speaking of, and who sent me, and that men’s salvation or damnation is so much concerned in it, I am ready to tremble lest God should judge me as a slighter of His truths and the souls of men, and lest in the best sermon I should be guilty of their blood. Me thinks we should not speak a word to men in matters of such consequence without tears, or the greatest earnestness that possibly we can; were not we too much guilty of the sin which we reprove, it would be so.

Source: Richard Baxter, “The Need for Personal Revival.” Cited from Historical Collections Relating to Remarkable Periods of the Success of the Gospel, ed. John Gillies (Kelso: John Rutherfurd, 1845), 147.  Continue at Nathan Busenitz

Forerunner of the Charismatic Movement

These few words of biography hardly do justice to the man and to his impact both short-term and long-term. Arnold Dallimore’s Forerunner of the Charismatic Movement: The Life of Edward Irving does a far better job. Dallimore describes the man in all his highs and lows, in all his strengths and weaknesses. I found it a particularly helpful book in that most of the biographies I read are of “good guys” or “bad guys.” Most of them are black or white, easy to understand. But when it comes to Irving there are such strange goods and bads that I hardly know how or if to categorize the man. His spiritual strengths shine through and I was left with a picture of a man who genuinely loved the Lord. And yet he had some horrible blind spots, some aspects of his ministry that were terribly unbiblical. This biography, more than any other I’ve read, bends the mind and presents a figure who was at times brilliant and at times hopeless. Read it all HERE