Quote 713

We must not talk to our congregations as if we were half asleep. Our preaching must not be articulate snoring. There must be power, life, energy, vigour. We must throw our whole selves into it, and show that the zeal of God's house has eaten us up.

Lectures to my Students

No man preaches a sermon well to others who does not first preach it to his own heart.

John Owen

there is something far more dreadful than physical calamity and suffering, namely, moral delinquency and spiritual apostasy. Alas, that this is so rarely perceived today!

The Life of Elijah. Chapel Library.

Suffering Sin

You are required to believe, to preach, and to teach what the Bible says is true, not what you want the Bible to say is true.

Chosen by God, p. 12

R.C. Sproul

Almost all doctrinal error is really truth perverted. Truth wrongly divided. Truth disproportionately held and taught.

https://www.monergism.com/sovereignty-god-unabridged

Truth Error

Here then is the design of prayer: not that God's will may be altered, but that it may be accomplished in His own good time and way. It is because God has promised certain things that we can ask for them with the full assurance of faith.

Prayer God's Sovereignty

How many a young man, never called of God, has been pressed into the ministry by well-meaning friends who had more zeal than knowledge. None may rightly count upon the divine blessing in the service of Christ unless he has been expressly set apart thereto by the Holy Spirit (Ac 13:2)

Gleanings from Elisha (18)

Calling

Let us beware of despising preaching. In every age of the Church, it has been God's principal instrument for the awakening of sinners and the edifying of saints. The days when there has been little or no preaching have been days when there has been little or no good done in the Church. Let us hear sermons in a prayerful and reverent frame of mind, and remember that they are the principal engines which Christ Himself employed when He was upon earth. Not least, let us pray daily for a continual supply of faithful preachers of God's Word. According to the state of the pulpit will always be the state of a congregation and of a Church.

Expository Thoughts on the Gospels: Luke volume 1, (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1986) 128, 129

J.C. Ryle

Everything about God is great, vast, incomparable. He never forgets, never fails, never falters, never forfeits His word.

Knowing God

Preachers should not give sinners what they desire; but give them True Food until, by the Spirit, they taste and see that the Lord is good!

Paul Washer

https://www.monergism.com/ten-commandments-ebook-1

the very manner of their publication plainly showed that God Himself assigned to the Decalogue peculiar importance. The Ten Commandments were uttered by God in an audible voice, with the fearful adjuncts of clouds and darkness, thunders and lightnings and the sound of a trumpet, and they were the only parts of Divine Revelation so spoken—none of the ceremonial or civil precepts were thus distinguished. Those Ten Words, and they alone, were written by the finger of God upon tables of stone, and they alone were deposited in the holy ark for safekeeping. Thus, in the unique honor conferred upon the Decalogue, we may perceive its paramount importance in the divine government.

Ten Commandments The Law

In order to get attention, the first golden rule is, always say something worth hearing.

Lectures to my Students

False theology makes God's foreknowledge of our believing the cause of His election to salvation; whereas, God's election is the cause, and our believing in Christ is the effect

https://www.monergism.com/ten-commandments-ebook-1

Foreknowledge Election

the perpetuity of the Law appears in God's writing it in the hearts of His people at their new birth ( Jeremiah 31:33; Ezekiel 36:26,27).

Ten Commandments The Law

Saying, 'Preach the gospel daily, use words if necessary', is like saying, 'Feed the hungry, use food if necessary.'

Ligon Duncan

it is common for modern preachers to use the proverbial "we" in an effort to place themselves, humbly it is thought, within the mass of those needing the same message. Although there is a nugget of truth to this modern approach, it nevertheless undermines the basic essence of preaching--the prophetic.

Deep Discipleship, 24

Paul Dirks

https://www.monergism.com/ten-commandments-ebook-1

the character of God Himself must change before the Law (the rule of His government) can be revoked.

Ten Commandments The Law

Salvation is a free gift, but an empty hand must receive it, and not a hand which still tightly grasps the world.

Salvation

Ministers must not flatter, preach pleasing things, sow pillows under people's elbows, or throw sugar on them, when salt is necessary.

John Jackson

https://twitter.com/Brian_Sauve/status/1744192523592196597

I am very glad to see pastors wake up to the antinomian overcorrections of the "gospel-centered" movement. Every sermon had to be: The Bible says to do X. You can't do X. Jesus did X for you. End of sermon. But you don't believe the Gospel rightly until you obey Jesus.

Brian Sauve

for the Jerusalem dialect has this one distinguishing mark, that it is a man's own mode of speech, and it is the same out of the pulpit as it is in it.

Lectures to My Students, 113

I wonder how long we might beat our brains before we could plainly put into words what is meant by preaching with unction; yet he who preaches knows its presence, and he who hears soon detects its absence;

Lectures to My Students (p. 50).

Abhor, dear brethren, the thought of being clockwork ministers who are not alive by abiding grace within, but are wound up by temporary influences; men who are only ministers for the time being, under the stress of the hour of ministering, but cease to be ministers when they descend the pulpit stairs. True ministers are always ministers.

Lectures to My Students (Kindle Locations 256-259). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

He is your friend who pushes you nearer to God.

Abraham Kuyper