Preaching and Preachers Quotes

“To love to preach is one thing, to love those to whom we preach quite another.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers

“[The] term ‘decide’ has always seemed to me to be quite wrong…A sinner does not ‘decide’ for Christ; the sinner ‘flies’ to Christ in utter helplessness and despair saying —
Foul, I to the fountain fly,
Wash me, Saviour, or I die.
No man truly comes to Christ unless he flies to Him as his only refuge and hope, his only way of escape from the accusations of conscience and the condemnation of God’s holy law. Nothing else is satisfactory. If a man says that having thought about the matter and having considered all sides he has on the whole decided for Christ, and if he has done so without any emotion or feeling, I cannot regard him as a man who has been regenerated. The convicted sinner no more ‘decides’ for Christ than the poor drowning man ‘decides’ to take hold of that rope that is thrown to him and suddenly provides him with the only means of escape. The term is entirely inappropriate.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers

“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.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers

“The preacher must be a serious man; he must never give the impression that preaching is something light or superficial or trivial.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers

“A man who imagines that because he has a head full of knowledge that he is sufficient for these things had better start learning again. ‘Who is sufficient for these things?’ What are you doing? You are not simply imparting information, you are dealing with souls, you are dealing with pilgrims on the way to eternity, you are dealing with matters not only of life and death in this world, but with eternal destiny.”
― David Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers

“The trouble with some of us is that we love preaching, but we are not always careful to make sure that we love the people to whom we are actually preaching. If you lack this element of compassion for the people you will also lack the pathos which is a very vital element in all true preaching. Our Lord looked out upon the multitude and ‘saw them as sheep without a shepherd’, and was ‘filled with compassion’. And if you know nothing of this you should not be in a pulpit, for this is certain to come out in your preaching.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers

“The primary task of the Church and of the Christian minister is the preaching of the Word of God.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers

“The Church has been trying to preach morality and ethics without the Gospel as a basis; it has been preaching morality without godliness; and it simply does not work. It never has done, and it never will. And the result is that the Church, having abandoned her real task, has left humanity more or less to its own devices.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers

“There is nothing more hateful than a man who deliberately tries to play on the surface and superficial emotions of people. I have no interest in that except to denounce it.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers

“In a sense one should not go to books for ideas; the business of books is to make one think. We are not gramophone records, we are to think originally. What we preach is to be the result of our own thought. We do not merely transmit ideas. The preacher is not meant to be a mere channel through which water flows; he is to be more like a well. So the function of reading is to stimulate us in general, to stimulate us to think, to think for ourselves. Take all you read and masticate it thoroughly. Do not just repeat it as you have received it; deliver it in your own way, let it emerge as a part of yourself, with your stamp upon it.”
― David Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers

“Any true definition of preaching must say that that man is there to deliver the message of God, a message from God to those people. If you prefer the language of Paul, he is 'an ambassador for Christ'. That is what he is. He has been sent, he is a commissioned person, and he is standing there as the mouthpiece of God and of Christ to address these people. In other words he is not there merely to talk to them, he is not there to entertain them. He is there - and I want to emphasize this - to do something to those people; he is there to produce results of various kinds, he is there to influence people. He is not merely to influence a part of them; he is not only to influence their minds, not only their emotions, or merely to bring pressure to bear upon their wills and to induce them to some kind of activity. 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. Preaching, in other words, is a transaction between the preacher and the listener. It does something for the soul of man, for the whole of the person, the entire man; it deals with him in a vital and radical manner.

I remember a remark made to me a few years back about some studies of mine on “The Sermon on the Mount.” I had deliberately published them in sermonic form. There were many who advised me not to do that on the grounds that people no longer like sermons. The days for sermons, I was told, were past, and I was pressed to turn my sermons into essays and to give them a different form. I was most interested therefore when this man to whom I was talking, and he is a very well-known Christian layman in Britain, said, "I like these studies of yours on “The Sermon on the Mount” because they speak to me.” Then he went on to say, “I have been recommended many books by learned preachers and professors but,” he said, “what I feel about those books is that it always seems to be professors writing to professors; they do not speak to me. But,” he said, “your stuff speaks to me.” Now he was an able man, and a man in a prominent position, but that is how he put it. I think there is a great deal of truth in this. He felt that so much that he had been recommended to read was very learned and very clever and scholarly, but as he put it, it was “professors writing to professors.” This is, I believe, is a most important point for us to bear in mind when we read sermons. I have referred already to the danger of giving the literary style too much prominence. I remember reading an article in a literary journal some five or six years ago which I thought was most illuminating because the writer was making the selfsame point in his own field. His case was that the trouble today is that far too often instead of getting true literature we tend to get “reviewers writing books for reviewers.” These men review one another's books, with the result that when they write, what they have in their mind too often is the reviewer and not the reading public to whom the book should be addressed, at any rate in the first instance. The same thing tends to happen in connection with preaching. This ruins preaching, which 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. The total person is engaged on both sides; and if we fail to realize this our preaching will be a failure.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers

“The Gospel edifies and evangelizes at the same time.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers

“No man can tell what he will feel like tomorrow morning; you do not control that. Our business is to do something about these changing moods and not to allow ourselves to become victims of them.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers

“When you are reading your Scriptures in this way—it matters not whether you have read little or much—if a verse stands out and hits you and arrests you, do not go on reading. Stop immediately, and listen to it. It is speaking to you, so listen to it and speak to it. Stop reading at once, and work on this statement that has struck you in this way.”
― David Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers

“The chief thing is the love of God, the love of souls, a knowledge of the Truth, and the Holy Spirit within you.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers

“What is preaching? Logic on fire! Eloquent reason! Are these contradictions? Of course they are not. Reason concerning this Truth ought to be mightily eloquent, as you see it in the case of the Apostle Paul and others. It is theology on fire. And a theology which does not take fire, I maintain, is a defective theology; or at least the man’s understanding of it is defective. Preaching is theology coming through a man who is on fire. A true understanding and experience of the Truth must lead to this. I say again that a man who can speak about these things dispassionately has no right whatsoever to be in a pulpit; and should never be allowed to enter one.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers

“I preached as never sure to preach again And as a dying man to dying men.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers

“There is nothing to add to that. Any man who has had some glimpse of what it is to preach will inevitably feel that he has never preached. But he will go on trying, hoping that by the grace of God one day he may truly preach.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers

“we have to emphasise this point because the preparation is not finished just when a man has finished his preparation of the sermon. One of the remarkable things about preaching is that often one finds that the best things one says are things that have not been premeditated, and were not even thought of in the preparation of the sermon, but are given while one is actually speaking and preaching. Another”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers

“There are so many people trying to diagnose the human situation; and they come to the conclusion that man is sick, man is unhappy, man is the victim of circumstances. They believe therefore that his primary need is to have these things dealt with, that he must be delivered from them. But I suggest that that is too superficial a diagnosis of the condition of man, and that man’s real trouble is that he is a rebel against God and consequently under the wrath of God.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers

“man’s real trouble is that he is a rebel against God and consequently under the wrath of God. Now”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers

“Great preaching always depends upon great themes.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers

“That, surely, gives us a picture of a great deal that is happening at the present time. This is one of the problems confronting the Christian Church today. This ‘affluent society’ in which we are living is drugging people and making them feel that all is well with them. They have better wages, better houses, better cars, every gadget desirable in the home; life is satisfactory and all seems to be well; and because of that people have ceased to think and to face the real problems. They are content with this superficial ease and satisfaction, and that militates against a true and a radical understanding of their actual condition. And, of course, this is aggravated at the present time by many other agencies. There is the pleasure mania, and television and radio bringing their influence right into the home. All these things persuade man that all is well; they give him temporary feelings of happiness; and so he assumes that all is well and stops thinking. The result is that he does not realise his true position and then face it.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers

“If I am reading the stiffer and the more difficult books, or the more directly theological books in the morning, I read the other types at night. It is good that the mind should not be too much exercised or stimulated before you go to bed, if you want to avoid the problem of insomnia.”
― David Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers

“So I would lay it down as a basic proposition that the primary task of the Church is not to educate man, is not to heal him physically or psychologically, it is not to make him happy. I will go further; it is not even to make him good.

These are things that accompany salvation; and when the Church performs her true task she does incidentally educate men and give them knowledge and information, she does bring them happiness, she does make them good and better than they were.

But my point is that those are not her primary objectives.

Her primary purpose is not any of these; it is rather to put man into the right relationship with God, to reconcile man to God….

My whole case is that to do that is just to palliate the symptoms, to give temporary ease, and that it does not get beyond that…. It can become harmful in this way, that by palliating the symptoms you can conceal the real disease.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers

“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.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers

“To love to preach is one thing, to love those to whom we preach quite another.’ The trouble with some of us is that we love preaching, but we are not always careful to make sure that we love the people to whom we are actually preaching. If you lack this element of compassion for the people you will also lack the pathos which is a very vital element in all true preaching. Our Lord looked out upon the multitude and ‘saw them as sheep without a shepherd’, and was ‘filled with compassion’. And if you know nothing of this you should not be in a pulpit, for this is certain to come out in your preaching.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers

“Any true definition of preaching must say that that man is there to deliver the message of God, a message from God to those people.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers

“want to support this contention by certain other statements. Here for instance is one, which, to me, has an almost amusing aspect to it. These proposals that we should preach less, and do various other things more, are of course not new at all. People seem to think that all this is quite new, and that it is the hallmark of modernity to decry or to depreciate preaching, and to put your emphasis on these other things. The simple answer to that is that there is nothing new about it. The actual form may be new, but the principle is certainly not a new one at all; indeed it has been the particular emphasis of this present century. Take all this new interest in the social application of the Gospel, and the idea of going to live amongst the people and to talk politics and to enter into their social affairs and so on. The simple answer to that is that until the First World War in this present century that was the real vogue in most Western countries. It was then called the ‘social gospel’, but it was precisely the same thing. The argument was that the old evangelical preaching of the Gospel was too personal, too simple, that it did not deal with the social problems and conditions. It was a part, of course, of the liberal, modernist, higher-critical view of the Scriptures and of our Lord. He was just a perfect man and a great teacher, a political agitator and reformer, and the great exemplar. He had come to do good, and the Sermon on the Mount was something that you could put into Acts of Parliament and turn into legislation. So you were going to make a perfect world. That was the old liberalism of the pre–1914 period. The very thing that is regarded as so new today, and what is regarded as the primary task of the Church, is something that has already been tried, and tried with great thoroughness in the early part of this century.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers

“It is inconceivable to me that a man who is a true believer can listen to a presentation of the exceeding sinfulness of sin and the glory of the Gospel, without being moved in two ways. One is to feel for a while, in view of what he knows about the plague of his own heart, that perhaps he is not a Christian at all; and, then, to rejoice in the glorious Gospel remedy which gives him deliverance. Many”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers