Clever Sermons Can Hide the Gospel

“Hear the Gospel, only mind that what you hear is the Gospel. You can hear some very smart sermons and very clever sermons and, as a rule, I may say that the cleverer they are, the worse they are! Where you see so much of the man, you will see very little of His Master.”

– Charles H. Spurgeon, quoted on Pure Church by Thabiti Anyabwile

The Priority of Preaching Christ

Martin Luther: "I preach as though Christ was crucified yesterday, rose from the dead today, and is coming back tomorrow."

Richard Baxter: "If we can but teach Christ to our people, we teach them all."

Charles Spurgeon: "A sermon without Christ as its beginning, middle, and end is a mistake in conception and a crime in execution.... When we preach Jesus Christ, then we are not putting out the plates, and the knives, and the forks, for the feast, but we are handing out the bread itself.... [Let us] preach Christ to sinners if we cannot preach sinners to Christ.... I wish that our ministry--and mine especially--might be tied and tethered to the cross."

-- Quoted by Joel Beeke in "God-Centered Theology in the Ministry of the Word," The Puritan Reformed Journal. Mentioned by Pure Church on 08/20/2009

Nothing In Us

There is nothing in us or done by us, at any stage of our earthly development, because of which we are acceptable to God. We must always be accepted for Christ's sake, or we cannot ever be accepted at all. This is not true of us only when we believe. It is just as true after we have believed. It will continue to be true as long as we live. Our need of Christ does not cease with our believing; nor does the nature of our relation to Him or to God through Him ever alter, no matter what our attainments in Christian graces or our achievements in behavior may be. It is always on His "blood and righteousness" alone that we can rest.

-- B. B. Warfield, quoted by Jerry Bridges in The Gospel for Real Life, p. 102

Living with Thankfulness

The historic Heidelberg Catechism asks one of the most honest questions in all theological discourse about the nature of obedience: “Since we are redeemed from our sin and its consequences by grace through Christ without any merit of our own, why must we do good works?” The paraphrase is simply, “If salvation is because of grace, why be good?” The answer is: “So that with our whole life we may show ourselves grateful to God for his goodness and that he may be glorified through us.” We offer service to God not to gain his affection but in loving thankfulness for his affection. The rewards that he grants—and that we may properly desire—in response to our obedience do not annul our chief desire to please him in response to his mercy. Such blessing would actually be empty of true satisfaction for Christians if the main purpose of their pursuit were pleasure. The Spirit makes our greatest pleasure what delights the Lord we love, and we cannot find deep joy in what fails to put his honor and glory first (Pss. 1:2; 37:4; 43:4; 119:35).

Bryan Chapell, Christ-Centered Preaching, p.314

All Roads Lead to Christ

"I believe that those sermons which are fullest of Christ are the most likely to be blessed to the conversion of the hearers. Let your sermons be full of Christ, from beginning to end crammed full of the gospel. As for myself, brethren, I cannot preach anything else but Christ and His cross, for I know nothing else, and long ago, like the apostle Paul, I determined not to know anything else save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. People have often asked me, "What is the secret of your success?" I always answer that I have no other secret but this, that I have preached the gospel,—not about the gospel, but the gospel,—the full, free, glorious gospel of the living Christ who is the incarnation of the good news. Preach Jesus Christ, brethren, always and everywhere; and every time you preach be sure to have much of Jesus Christ in the sermon. You remember the story of the old minister who heard a sermon by a young man, and when he was asked by the preacher what he thought of it he was rather slow to answer, but at last he said, "If I must tell you, I did not like it at all; there was no Christ in your sermon." "No," answered the young man, "because I did not see that Christ was in the text." "Oh!" said the old minister, "but do you not know that from every little town and village and tiny hamlet in England there is a road leading to London? Whenever I get hold of a text, I say to myself, 'There is a road from here to Jesus Christ, and I mean to keep on His track till I get to Him.'" "Well," said the young man, "but suppose you are preaching from a text that says nothing about Christ?" "Then I will go over hedge and ditch but what I will get at Him." So must we do, brethren; we must have Christ in all our discourses, whatever else is in or not in them. There ought to be enough of the gospel in every sermon to save a soul. Take care that it is so when you are called to preach before Her Majesty the Queen, and if you have to preach to chairwomen or chairmen, still always take care that there is the real gospel in every sermon."

-- C.H. Spurgeon, The Soul Winner, from Kaleo blog

Luther on Gospel Preaching

The chief and fundamental thing in the Gospel is this, that before you take Christ as your example, you recognize and accept Him as God's gift to you; so that when you see or hear Him in any of His work or suffering, you do not doubt but believe that He, Christ Himself, with such work or suffering of His, is most truly your own. ...See, this is to understand aright the Gospel, that is, the infinite grace of God. ...This is the mighty fire of God's love toward us whereby He makes the conscience confident, joyful, and content. This is to preach the Christian faith.

-- Martin Luther, quoted by Sidney Greidanus, Preaching Christ from the Old Testament, p.119