The preaching of Christ is the whip that flogs the devil. The preaching of Christ is the thunderbolt, the sound of which makes all hell shake.

I am convinced that many men who preach the gospel and love the Lord are really misunderstood. People make a "profession," but because they haven't understood the message, they are not really saved. They feel a psychological need and they want psychological relief, but they don't understand that the Christian message is not talking only about psychological relief (though it includes that) but is talking about true moral guilt in the presence of a holy God who exists. The real need is salvation from true moral guilt, not just relief from guilt feelings. And I am certain many men who make a profession go away still unsaved, having not heard one word of the real gospel because they have filtered the message through their own thought forms and their own intellectual framework in which the word "guilt" equals "guilt feelings." Death in the City (Downers Grove, InterVarsity Press: 1969) 93

When we listen to the religion that is largely preached in our generation, we hear the same thing the unbelieving philosophers and sociologists are saying. The only difference is that theological language is used. But, God says, "It will not do. This brings you under my judgment. Death in the City (Downers Grove, InterVarsity Press: 1969) 53

Preach as never sure to preach again, And as a dying man to dying men.

Give me one hundred preachers who fear nothing but sin and desire nothing but God, and I care not a straw whether they be clergymen or laymen; such alone will shake the gates of hell and set up the kingdom of heaven on earth. God does nothing but in answer to prayer.

A crucified style best suits the preachers of a crucified Christ.

I like to hear a man dwell much on the same essentials of Christianity. For we have but one God, and one Christ, and one faith to preach; and I will not preach another Gospel to please men with variety, as if our Saviour and our Gospel were grown stale.

If we preach the whole counsel of God, we shall be accused of extremism, not only by the world but also by a professing church that cannot endure sound doctrine.

I get tired of being asked why I don't just preach the "simple gospel." You have to preach the simple gospel so that it is simple to the person to whom you are talking, or it is no longer simple.

Some people do not like to hear much of repentance; but I think it is so necessary that if I should die in the pulpit, I would desire to die preaching repentance, and if out of the pulpit I would desire to die practicing it.

A good sermon is never the worse for being preached in a house; and the visits of our friends should be so managed as to make them turn to a spiritual advantage.

A man preacheth that sermon only well unto others which preacheth itself in his own soul.

I have observed that God seldom blesseth any man's work so much as his, whose heart is set upon the success of it....let all who preach for Christ and men's salvation, be unsatisfied till they have the thing they preach for.

Gospel truth seeks no corners, because it fears no trials.

It is either all of Christ or none of Christ! I believe we need to preach again a whole Christ to the world--a Christ who does not need our apologies, a Christ who will not be divided, a Christ who will either be Lord of all or will not be Lord at all!

A sermon wept over is more acceptable with God than one gloried over.

There is no real preaching of the Christian gospel except in the light of the fact that man is under the wrath of God -- the moral wrath of God. Death in the City (Downers Grove, InterVarsity Press: 1969) 93

It is imperative that preachers of today learn how to declare the spiritual law of God; for, until we learn how to wound consciences, we shall have no wounds to bind with Gospel bandages.

Of all the preaching in the world, (that speaks not stark lies) I hate that preaching which tends to make the hearers laugh, or move their minds with tickling levity, and effect them as stage-plays used to do, instead of affecting them with a holy reverence of the name of God.

There can be no revival when Mr. Amen and Mr. Wet-Eyes are not found in the audience.

We have suffered from the preaching of cheap grace. Grace is free, but it is not cheap. People will take anything that is free, but they are not interested in discipleship. They will take Christ as Savior but not as Lord.

The half-baked sermon causes spiritual indigestion.

It were better for him to break his neck going up into the pulpit, if he does not take pains to be the first to follow God.

If we had more hell in the pulpit, we would have less hell in the pew.

Every time we look upon our congregations, let us believingly remember that they are the purchase of Christ's blood, and therfore should be regarded by us with the deepest interest and the most tender affection.

Religion is a dish to be served hot; once it becomes lukewarm it is sickening. Our baptism must be with the Holy Ghost and with fire if we would win the masses to hear the gospel.

A sermon that has more head infused into it than heart will not come home with efficacy to the hearers.

We complain today that ministers do not know how to preach; but is it not equally true that our congregations do not know how to hear?

Many have the flower of utterance that have not the root of knowledge, and their converse is barren. Many have the treasure of knowledge, and want utterance to employ it for the good of others, and then it is in a manner wrapped up in a napkin. But, where God gives both, A man is qualified for eminent usefullness.

A little love has made me willingly study, preach, write, and even suffer...

The Bible in the pulpit must never supercede the Bible at home.

The task of the preacher is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

I read of the revivals of the past, great sweeping revivals where thousands of men were swept into the Kingdom of God. I read about Charles G. Finney winning his thousands and his hundreds of thousands of souls to Christ. Then I picked up a book and read the messages of Charles G. Finney and the message of Jonathan Edwards on 'Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,' and I said, 'No wonder men trembled; no wonder they fell in the altars and cried out in repentance and sobbed their way to the throne of grace!'

Much of modern preaching is anaemic, with the life-blood of God's nature absent from the message. Evangelists centre their message upon man...Christ's Gospel sends men to beg pardon of the Holy One.

It is a palpable error of some ministers, who make such a disproportion between their preaching and their living; who study hard to preach exactly, and study little or not at all to live exactly.

If sinners be dammed, at least let them leap to Hell over our bodies. If they will perish, let them perish with our arms about their knees. Let no one go there unwarned and unprayed for.

The aim of preaching is not the elucidation of a subject, but the transformation of a person.

Give me one hundred preachers who fear nothing but sin and desire nothing but God, and I care not whether they be clergymen or laymen, they alone will shake the gates of Hell and set up the kingdom of Heaven upon Earth.

The Ministerial work must be managed purely for God and the salvation of people, and not for any private ends of our own...Hard studies, much knowledge, and excellent preaching, is but more glorious hypocritical sinning, if the ends be not right.

The truth of God is so comely in itself that the trappings of oratory are far more likely to lessen its glory than to increase it.

Doctrinal preaching certainly bores the hypocrites; but it is only doctrinal preaching that will save Christ's sheep.

It must be serious Preaching, which must make Men serious in hearing and obeying it.

An old minister explained the blurs on his sermon outlines by saying they were caused by sweat and tears. And without those two marks, a sermon is not a sermon.

To love to preach is one thing - to love those to whom we preach , quite another.

A preacher should have the mind of a scholar, the heart of a child, and the hide of a rhinoceros. His problem is how to toughen his hide without hardening his heart.

...preach to yourselves the sermons which you study, before you preach them to others...

The Resurrection is the central theme in every Christian sermon reported in the Acts...The first fact in the history of Christendom is a number of people who say that they have seen the Resurrection.

If you preach as plainly as Jesus did, you are likely to find many "evangelicals" frowning at you.

...none are more liable to slanders and calumnies than godly teachers. Not only does it arise from the difficulties of their office, that sometimes they either sink under it, or stagger, or halt, or blunder, in consequence of which wicked men seize many occasions for finding fault with them; but there is this additional vexation, that, although they perform their duty correctly, so as not to commit any error whatever, they never escape a thousand censures. And this is the craftiness of Satan, to draw away the hearts of men from ministers, that instruction may gradually fall into contempt. Thus not only is wrong done to innocent persons, in having their reputation unjustly wounded, (which is exceedingly base in regard to those who hold so honourable a rank,) but the authority of the sacred doctrine of God is diminished...Not only so, but as soon as any charge against ministers of the word has gone abroad, it is believed as fully as if they were already convicted.

Teach in thy church, not to get the applause of the people, but to set in motion the groan; the tears of the hearers are thy praises.

How few ministers do preach with all their might, or speak about everlasting joys and everlasting torments in such a manner as may make men believe that they are in good earnest!...Alas! We speak so drowsily and so softly, that sleepy sinners cannot hear. The blow falls so light that hard-hearted sinners cannot feel.

The nature of Christ's salvation is woefully misrepresented by the present-day evangelist. He announces a Savior from hell rather than a Savior from sin. And that is why so many are fatally deceived, for there are multitudes who wish to escape the Lake of Fire who have no desire to be delivered from their carnality and worldliness.