It is a poor sermon that gives no offense; that neither makes the hearer displeased with himself nor with the preacher.
The test of a preacher is that his congregation goes away saying, not "What a lovely sermon!" but "I will do something."
He preaches well that lives well
Go into the street, and give one man a lecture on morality, and another a shilling, and see which will respect you most.
Preaching is the expression of moral sentiments applied to the duties of life.
A man who is good enough to go to heaven is good enough to be a clergyman.
People are stumbling over the simplest things. Take, for instance, that word believeth. You would think that was plain enough for anybody, but all my life I have heard people say, 'I have always believed, and yet I am not saved.' It does not say, 'Whosoever believeth the Bible, or creeds, or even the gospel story,' but it does say, 'Whosoever believeth in him.' What is it to believe in Him? It means to put your soul's confidence in Him, to trust in Him, God's blessed Son.
Godliness has 'promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come.' But the only way one can enter into godliness is by turning to God as a repentant sinner and receiving the Saviour He has provided in the Gospel. Therefore the crying need of our degenerate times is for a revival of true old-fashioned, Christ- centered, Bible preaching that will call upon all men everywhere to repent in view of that coming day when God will judge the world in righteousness by His Risen Son.
I preached as never sure to preach again, And as a dying man to dying men.
You have to want to succeed as bad as you want to breathe!
Nothing can touch the Word of God. Not all the powers of earth and hell, men and devils combined, can ever move the Word of God. There it stands, in its own moral glory, spite of all the assaults of the enemy, from age to age. 'For ever, 0 Lord, Thy Word is settled in heaven.'
Prayer is the highest intelligence, the profoundest wisdom, the most vital, the most joyous, the most efficacious, the most powerful of all vocations.
People are so prone to lean upon gifted men. And if they cannot have such, they get discouraged and scattered, instead of getting lovingly together and helping one another by their mutual faith.
May we all be in such a condition of soul, such an attitude of heart as will fit us for any little work in which our gracious Lord may be pleased to use us- not seeking a place for ourselves, but lovingly serving all. The Lord, in His great mercy, grant that thus it may be, with all His beloved people!
Faith is to rest, not in the best of God's servants, but in His unchanging Word.
Man is the same today that he has always been. He is a rebel against God. He may, in some generations, hide his rebellion a little more carefully than at other times, but there is no change in his heart. The men who builded the city against God back in the days of Babylon had the same hatred as that which possessed the men who nailed the Lord Jesus Christ to the cross.
Great truths that are stumbling blocks to the natural man are nevertheless the very foundations upon which the confidence of the spiritual man is built.
When the Lord Jesus Christ became my surety . . . He went to Calvary's cross, and all my guilt was charged against Him. He settled for everything, and then He cried, 'It is finished.' And on the basis of that finished work, God can freely forgive, and justify completely, every poor sinner who trusts in the Lord Jesus Christ.
...You cannot live by sight and by faith, neither can you live by fear and by faith. It either has to be by faith or by fear, by faith or by sight. Which way are you living? Faith takes out the anxiety It takes out the fear. Faith leans heavy on the Lord. It knows that the Bible is so and can be trusted and that we can live by it and all of our needs will be supplied.
To the lover of the Lord Jesus Christ there can be nothing legal about baptism. It is simply the glad expression of a grateful heart recognizing its identity with Christ in death, burial, and resurrection. Many of us look back to the moment when we were thus baptized as one of the most precious experiences we have ever known.
or simply: