What then is preaching? Well, the "Doctor" once gave a lecture on "What is Preaching." As usual, on this subject he starts with his own inadequacies and then deals with the negatives before the positives.
Well, to me preaching is a great mystery; it is one of the most mysterious things of all, and that is why I find it eludes any kind of analysis. I do not know what your experience is but, personally, I find that I never know what is going to happen when I enter a pulpit. I am constantly being surprised- sometimes in the sense of being disappointed, but at other times surprised at the amazing grace of God. Sometimes when I go into a pulpit, thinking I am going to preach in a wonderful way, it is disastrous. Other times, when I go with inadequate preparation because I have been travelling, am doing too much, and really feeling that I have no right to be in the pulpit at all, I find ease and facility and am aware of power. That is my difficulty. There is this mysterious element in preaching that makes it well nigh impossible for one to speak about it.*
I say that I have been wrestling with this subject for forty years and more and I have had two experiences which I shall never forget. I have a feeling that I have only really preached twice in my life, and on both occasions I was dreaming.*
...a man who does not know something about his unworthiness has no right to enter the pulpit at all.*
Again there was a term used which I abominate, the term 'pulpiteer'. You had great pulpiteers, the Henry Ward Beechers and people like that, who did infinite harm to preaching. These were great masters of assembly, bombastic men who reigned mid and late Victorian era.*
What is the difference between preaching and delivering a lecture? I think this is most important. I think I have detected the tendency for people to imagine that giving a lecture from a pulpit it becomes preaching. But it does not...I say that is not preaching. There is a place for lecturing. Lecturing is essential and there must be teaching in the church. But all I am concerned to say is that is not preaching.*
Some people seem to think that preaching consists of a running commentary on a passage of Scripture. I am not saying this does not have its place and function. You take a paragraph and make a comment on every single verse as a kind of running commentary. That is not preaching.*
The preparation goes on inside one's mind and heart and spirit. I do not know how it happens at all...*
What is this point, then, about preaching? Well, it is the extraordinary situation in which something is happening between the man who is speaking and the congregation that is listening... Here are spiritually minded people they have come prepared and they are under the influence of the Spirit, and so these two things are blended together. There is a unity between preacher and hearers and there is a transaction backwards and forwards. That, to me, is true preaching... When there is true preaching you cannot do that (put a book down), you are gripped, you are taken up, you are mastered. And I argue that is an essential and a vital part of preaching.*
If a man reads a manuscript in the pulpit it is destructive of true preaching. I query even the rightness of writing a sermon out in full and committing it to memory.*
A sermon which is perfect in form, its diction, and in everything else, is one that militates against preaching. You know the apostle Paul in his writings suddenly forgets, as it were, what he had set out to say. Sometimes he interrupts his own thought; he does not complete his own sentences and he never ends them. How do we explain these breaks, these anacolutha, as they call them? Well, this is the freedom of the Spirit. Paul is taken up; he mentions the name of the Lord and off he goes to some great apostrophe. Then he may never return.*Now here is an example of his own preaching taken from one of his sermons preached in his first ministry at Aberavon:
The more I think about it, the less surprised I am at the apparent and increasing failure of organised Christianity to appeal to the masses in these days; for the plain and obvious fact is that we, who still continue to attend our places of worship, have more or less 'sold the pass' and have neglected or given that vital principle which ever was and always will be the true heritage of the church of Christ on earth. For it appears, on looking into it, that the church has always triumphed and had her greatest successes when she has preached the two-fold message of the depravity of human nature and the absolute necessity of the direct intervention of God for its final salvation, or, in the words of Peter, that 'there is no other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.' A church which preaches that, either attracts or repels, you either join her or hate her and persecute her,- one thing is for certain, you cannot ignore her, for her message will not ignore you; it hurts, it upbraids, it condemns, it infuriates, or else it draws you. You are either right in, or definitely outside. If you feel you can save yourself, then this message annoys you, you resent the impertinence and the interference with your life; but if you are lost and helpless you run into her open arms for release and salvation.*Soli Deo Gloria!
For His Glory,
Fernando
* Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Knowing the Times (Edingburgh: Banner of Truth, 1989), quotes taken from chapter titled "What is Preaching", p. 258-278
* Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Evangelistic Sermons at Aberavon ( Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1983), pp. 1-2
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