From the pen of Herman Hoeksema:
You go to church not to hear a "nice sermon," not to be entertained by splendid oratory, not to discover the opinion of a certain learned man on a subject, but to hear the Word of Christ addressed to you by Him. And that is a matter of life and death. For this is the essential thing in true preaching from mere lecturing: that Christ Himself speaks to you through the word of him that officiates as a preacher. If Christ does not speak then there is no preaching. All the wisdom of the world , all the glittering oratory of a wonderfully fluent and attractive speaker, all the sentimentalism of a modern revivalist, all the touching stories he may be able to tell, all his emotional begging and pleading, are in vain. What matters, as you and I listen to the preaching of the Word, is that we hear the voice of Jesus say,"come unto me, and rest"; that we hear Him call, "Repent and believe"; that we hear Him assure us, "Thy sins are forgiven thee; go in peace." Unto this end preaching is a means.
...A preacher has no message of his own to deliver. He is an ambassador of Christ, and as an ambassador he must deliver the message with which he is charged by Him that sent him. One who occupies the place of a preacher and pretends to be a minister of the Word, but who disregards this mandate and delivers his own philosophy on various topics pertaining to this world, is a false prophet. The church that is unfaithful to her calling, and instead of preaching the pure Word of God according to the Scriptures, presses the pulpit into the service of the world and its humanistic philosophy, is an abomination to Jehovah. She is like the Jerusalem of old that killed the prophets.*Soli Deo Gloria!
*Herman Hoeksema, Whosoever Will (Grandvill, MI: 2nd Edition Reformed Free Publishing Association, 2002), p. 91-92
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