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.
– John Wesley
Evangelism | Preaching
A popular evangelist reaches your emotions. A true prophet reaches your conscience.
– Leonard Ravenhill
Preaching | Conscience
But what is the use of preaching the Gospel to men whose whole attention is concentrated upon a mad, desperate struggle to keep themselves alive?
– William Booth
Preaching | The Gospel | Struggles
Other men may preach the gospel better than I, but no man can preach a better gospel.
– George Whitefield
Preaching | The Gospel
To love to preach is one thing to love those to whom we preach, quite another.
– Richard Cecil
Preaching | Love
Only once did God choose a completely sinless preacher.
– Alexander Whyte
Jesus | Preaching
A minister, without boldness, is like a smooth file, a knife without an edge, a sentinel that is afraid to let off his gun. If men will be bold in sin, ministers must be bold to reprove.
– William Gurnall
Preaching | Apathy
I have never once feared the devil, but I tremble every time I enter the pulpit.
– John Knox
Preaching | Fear
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.
– Charles Spurgeon
Preaching
When intimidated by who’s sitting in the audience, we should remember the King of Kings is also here, and it’s his message.
– Chuck Swindoll
Preaching
The three essentials for great preaching are: truth, clarity, and passion.
– G. Campbell Morgan
Preaching
Christ never preached any funeral sermons.
– Dwight L. Moody
Death | Preaching
If Jesus preached the same message minister’s preach today, He would have never been crucified.
– Leonard Ravenhill
Preaching
The task of the preacher is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.
– Vance Havner
Preaching | Comfort | Affliction
A holy minister is an awful weapon in the hand of God. A word spoken by you when your conscience is clear, and your heart full of God’s Spirit, is worth ten thousand words spoken in unbelief and sin.
– Robert Murray McCheyne
Preaching | The Holy Spirit
My grand point in preaching is to break the hard heart, and to heal the broken one.
– John Newton
Preaching | Brokenness | Healing
The preacher who will proclaim this glorious truth and magnify the cleansing power of the blood of Christ will find that his message of full deliverance touches life at every point. He is doing a disservice to his hearers and is dishonoring his God if he substitutes any other theme.
– Duncan Campbell
Preaching
I preached as never sure to preach again, and as a dying man to dying men.
– Richard Baxter
Preaching
I can forgive a man for a bad sermon, I can forgive the preacher almost anything if he gives me a sense of God, if he gives me something for my soul, if he gives me the sense that, though he is inadequate himself, he is handling something which is very great and very glorious, if he gives me some dim glimpse of the majesty and the glory of God, the love of Christ my Savior, and the magnificence of the Gospel. If he does that I am his debtor, and I am profoundly grateful to him.
– Martyn Lloyd-Jones
Preaching
I cannot preach on hell unless I preach with tears.
– Dwight L. Moody
Preaching | Hell
Christ in you, on the grounds of redemption this is the Gospel! To preach anything less than this must inevitably produce “Evan-jellyfish” folk with no spiritual vertebrae, whose faith does not “behave!”
– Major Ian Thomas
Preaching | Redemption | The Gospel
The reason why congregations have been so dead is because they have dead men preaching to them. How can dead men beget living children?
– George Whitefield
Preaching
There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by old-fashioned preaching.
– Jack Hyles
America | Preaching
Lord, help me to preach today as if it were the last sermon I would ever preach.
– Jack Hyles
Preaching
Many a preacher misses the mark because, though he knows books, he does not know men.
– James Stalker
Preaching | Books
One reason why women are forbidden to preach the gospel, is, that they would persuade without argument and reprove without giving offence.
– John Newton
Preaching | The Gospel
God has ordained that our preaching become deeper and more winsome as we are broken, humbled, and made low and desperately dependent on grace by the trials of our lives.
– John Piper
Preaching | Trials
Preaching is the moral conscience of a nation.
– Jack Hyles
Preaching
Hundreds of men are hoarse from continual speaking, and are wearied out with running here and running there. If things slow down, we evolve yet another type of meeting. And when this new and added wheel is spinning merrily with all the other wheels, there may be no spiritual outcome whatsoever, but there is a wind blowing in our faces; and we hot and sticky engineers have a comfortable feeling that something is going on.
– A.J. Gossip
Preaching
You preached well,” said a friend to John Bunyan one morning. “You are too late,” said honest John, “The devil told me that before I left the pulpit.
– Charles Spurgeon
Preaching
Preach from the rights of God rather than the needs of man.
– Winkie Pratney
Preaching
The sermon which does not lead to Christ, or of which Jesus Christ is not the top and the bottom, is a sort of sermon that will make the devils in hell laugh, but make the angels of God weep.
– Charles Spurgeon
Preaching
I want to assist churches and to assist pastors in training pastors. But, after fourteen years of service in this capacity, I am absolutely certain that the finest theological seminary on earth is absolutely incompetent at replicating the actual life of a Gospel congregation. I want to train a generation of pastors who will train pastors, and I want to help them in that task.
– Albert Mohler
Church | Preaching
To leave this matter of saving souls to preachers is not only heartless; it is inexcusably wicked.
– John R. Rice
Preaching | Evangelism
Mere heathen morality, and not Jesus Christ, is preached in most of our churches.
– George Whitefield
Preaching | Heresy
Whatever subject I preach, I do not stop until I reach the Savior, the Lord Jesus, for in Him are all things.
– Charles Spurgeon
Preaching | Jesus
No sort of defense is needed for preaching outdoors, but it would take a very strong argument to prove that a man who has never preached beyond the walls of his meetinghouse has done his duty. A defense is required for services within buildings rather than for worship outside of them.
– William Booth
Evangelism | Preaching
I believe I never was more acceptable to my Master than when I was standing to teach those hearers in the open fields now preach to ten times more people than I would if I had been confined to the churches.
– George Whitefield
Evangelism | Preaching
I am an old-fashioned preacher of the old-time religion, that has warmed this cold world’s heart for two thousand years.
– Billy Sunday
Preaching
Word and worship belong indissolubly to each other. All worship is an intelligent and loving response to the revelation of God, because it is the adoration of His name. Therefore, acceptable worship is impossible without preaching. For preaching is making known the name of the Lord, and worship is praising the name of the Lord made known.
– John Stott
Worship | Preaching
Genius is not essential to good preaching, but a live man is.
– Austin Phelps
Preaching
Many men affect to despise fear, and in preaching resent any appeal to it; but not to fear when there is occasion is as great a weakness as to fear unduly without reason. God implanted fear in the soul as truly as He implanted hope or courage.
– James H. Aughey
Fear | Preaching | Weakness
There was one thing I was never going to do–no way: preach at a crusade!
– Franklin Graham
Preaching
Humility is a virtue all preach, none practice, and yet everybody is content to hear. The master thinks it good doctrine for his servant, the laity for the clergy, and the clergy for the laity.
– John Selden
Virtue | Preaching
Now they always accuse me of carrying around a sledge hammer with which to pound the church members. Yes sir, I do pound them, every time I come down, I knock one of the halfway fellows out of the doorway, and every time I knock one out I get a sinner in.
– Mordecai Ham
Preaching
Preaching is teaching with a tear in the eye.
– Jack Hyles
Preaching
I would have every minister of the Gospel address his audience with the zeal of a friend, with the generous energy of a father, and with the exuberant affection of a mother.
– Francois Fenelon
Preaching | The Gospel
Once the necessity and the fruitfulness of the method is recognized, however, no worthy workman in the Word can refuse the effort it requires. He is called as a scribe of the kingdom to bring forth treasures new and old, and any labor that issues in a fuller preaching of Christ has its reward.
– Edmund Clowney
Preaching | Rewards
It was said of one who preached very well, and lived very ill, “that when he was out of the pulpit it was pity he should ever go into it; and when he was in the pulpit, it was pity he should ever come out of it.”
– Thomas Fuller
Preaching
Some preachers never appreciate the compliment given them when a saint disagrees with the pastor’s exposition of a text. At least the Christian under his care is devoted more to Scripture than to the man in the pulpit. Under his ministry the child of God has reached a maturity to think through issues for himself and has imbibed a Berean spirit (Acts 17:11).
– Walter J. Chantry
Preaching | Scripture
Preaching is sin’s greatest adversary.
– Jack Hyles
Preaching
A sermon is not like a Chinese firecracker to be fired off for the noise it makes. It is a hunter’s gun, and at every discharge he should look to see his game fall.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Preaching
I wonder what would happen if the preacher stopped in his sermon next Sunday morning and said, “Have you paid your debts this week?” “In what sort of a temper did you come down to breakfast this morning?
– Gipsy Smith
Preaching | Responsibility
Preaching is personal counseling on a group basis.
– Harry Emerson Fosdick
Preaching
If I had only one sermon to preach it would be a sermon against pride.
– G.K. Chesterton
Pride | Preaching
Only once did God choose a completely sinless preacher.
– Alexander Whyte
Jesus | Preaching
The great truths of revelation are neither able to preach nor defend themselves. They must have soldier preachers who proclaim and defend them. They have never conquered as silent force; they have never won as a reserve corps.
– E.M. Bounds
Preaching
If we don’t stir up people, move people, we have failed. If you can preach Sunday morning, Sunday night and Wednesday night, and no one is stirred to go out and do what God says, you haven’t done much.
– Lee Roberson
Preaching
Poesy and oratory omit things not essential, and insert little beautiful digressions, in order to place everything in the most effective light.
– Isaac Watts
Preaching
Preachers, we’d better quit this business of turning all our sick folks over to the doctors and hospitals and drugstores. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’d better find out. You’re going to give an account to God for letting your people die without praying for them and preaching the Book to them.
– Lester Roloff
Preaching | Evangelism
I always say to young fellows who consult me about the ministry, “Don’t be a minister if you can help it,” because if the man can help it, God never called him. But if he cannot help it, and he must preach or die, then he is the man.
– Charles Spurgeon
Preaching
The lives of ministers oftentimes convince more strongly than their words; their tongues may persuade, but their lives command.
– Thomas Brooks
Preaching | Examples | The Tongue
It is a poor sermon that gives no offense; that neither makes the hearer displeased with himself nor with the preacher.
– George Whitefield
Preaching | Repentance
Unfortunately, preachers who distort God’s Word are all too common today. Sometimes this springs from a sincere desire to soften hard hearts, but hearts aren’t changed by compromise.
– Alistair Begg
Preaching | Heresy
There’s a way to preach the Bible unbiblically…You can use the Bible as the springboard for all kinds of ideas, can’t you? Look around in here and find something that fits your fancy and then launch a rocket off it. People say, ‘That was amazing, wasn’t it? Remarkable what he got out of that.’ Well of course it is because he put it in before he got it out.
– Alistair Begg
Preaching | The Bible
Jesus’ teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious people of his day. However, in the main, our churches today do not have this effect. The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones. We tend to draw conservative, buttoned-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church. That can only mean one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did.
– Tim Keller
Jesus | preaching
Somebody once told John Bunyan that he had preached a delightful sermon. “You are too late,” said John, “the devil told me that before I left the pulpit.” Satan is adept in teaching us how to steal our Master’s glory.
– Charles Spurgeon
Preaching
The book of Acts is the best aid in approaching our work. We do not find there anyone consecrating himself as a preacher nor anyone deciding to do the Lord’s work by making himself a missionary or a pastor. What we do see is the Holy Spirit Himself appointing and sending men out to do the work.
– Watchman Nee
The Holy Spirit | Preaching | Missions
On all sides it is recognized that any who would take the New Testament seriously must be confronted by eschatology… Preaching that has lost urgency and passion reveals a loss of the eschatological perspective of the New Testament… He is not aware that he ministers in the time of the ascended Christ, the time of the fulfillment of all the prophets in his saving rule.
– Edmund Clowney
Preaching | Scripture
Paul never developed a negative attitude. He picked his bloody body up out of the dirt and went back into the city where he had almost been stoned to death, and he said, “Hey, about that sermon I didn’t finish preaching–here it is!
– John Hagee
Evangelism | Preaching | Attitude
A preacher should have the skill to teach the unlearned simply, roundly, and plainly; for teaching is of more importance than exhorting.
– Martin Luther
Preaching
The world is my parish.
– John Wesley
Preaching
The more fully that the gospel is preached, in the grand old apostolic way, the more likely is it to accomplish the results which it did in the apostolic days.
– Horatius Bonar
Preaching | The Gospel
I’d rather be able to pray than to be a great preacher; Jesus Christ never taught his disciples how to preach, but only how to pray.
– Dwight L. Moody
Prayer | Preaching
The world looks at preachers out of church to know what they mean in it.
– Richard Cecil
Preaching
It’s true that (many) are praying for a worldwide revival. But it would be more timely, and more scriptural, for prayer to be made to the Lord of the harvest, that He would raise up and thrust forth laborers who would fearlessly and faithfully preach those truths which are calculated to bring about a revival.
– A. W. Pink
Preaching | Revival
Preaching is too much avail, but practice is far more effective. A godly life is the strongest argument you can offer the skeptic.
– Hosea Ballou
Preaching | Examples
They that cry down moral honesty, cry down that which is a great part of my religion, my duty toward God, and my duty toward man. What care I to see a man run after a sermon, if he cozens and cheats as soon as he comes home. On the other side, morality must not be without religion; for if so, it may change, as I see convenience.
– John Selden
Preaching | Hypocrisy
A sermon is not made with an eye upon the sermon, but with both eyes upon the people and all the heart upon God.
– John Owen
Preaching
The most intelligent hearers are those who enjoy most heartily the simplest preaching. It is not they who clamor for superlatively intellectual or aesthetic sermons. Daniel Webster used to complain of some of the preaching to which he listened. “In the house of God” he wanted to meditate “upon the simple varieties, and the undoubted facts of religion;” not upon mysteries and abstractions.
– Austin Phelps
Preaching | Meditation
Preaching is fire in the pulpit that melts the ice in the pew.
– Jack Hyles
Preaching
Prayer must carry on our work as much as preaching; he preacheth not heartily to his people that will not pray for them.
– Richard Baxter
Prayer | Preaching
The man who cannot weep cannot preach. At least, if he never feels tears within, even if they do not show themselves without, he can scarcely be the man to handle such themes as those which God has committed to his people’s charge.
– Charles Spurgeon
Preaching
If any man will preach as he should preach, his work will take more out of him than any other labor under heaven.
– Charles Spurgeon
Preaching
I remain fascinated by the variety of approaches that preachers take in preparing their sermons. In our preparation, as well as in our delivery we must to our own selves be true.
– Alistair Begg
Preaching
Avoid cleverness and smartness. The people will detect this, and they will get the impression that you are more interested in yourself and your cleverness than in the truth of God and their souls.
– Martyn Lloyd-Jones
Preaching
Nothing is more needed among preachers today than that we should have the courage to shake ourselves free from the thousand and one trivialities in which we are asked to waste our time and strength, and resolutely return to the apostolic ideal which made necessary the office of the pastorate. (We must resolve that) we will continue steadfastly in prayer, and in the ministry of the Word.
– G. Campbell Morgan
Preaching
Hundreds of men are hoarse from continual speaking, and are wearied out with running here and running there. If things slow down, we evolve yet another type of meeting. And when this new and added wheel is spinning merrily with all the other wheels, there may be no spiritual outcome whatsoever, but there is a wind blowing in our faces; and we hot and sticky engineers have a comfortable feeling that something is going on.
– A. J. Gossip
Preaching
If preachers decide to preach about hope, let them preach out of what they themselves hope for.
– Frederick Buechner
Preaching | Hope
I cannot preach on hell unless I preach with tears.
– Dwight L. Moody
Preaching | Hell
You cannot preach conviction of sin unless you have suffered it. You cannot preach repentance unless you have practiced it. You cannot preach faith unless you have exercised it. True preaching is artesian; it wells up from the great depths of the soul. If Christ has not made a well within us, there will be no outflow from us.
– Charles Spurgeon
Preaching | Conviction
We preachers cannot expect to communicate verbally from the pulpit if we visually out of it contradict ourselves.
– John Stott
Preaching
It requires as much reflection and wisdom to know what is not to be put into a sermon, as what is.
– Richard Cecil
Preaching
A man preacheth that sermon only well unto others which preacheth itself in his own soul… If the word do not dwell with power in us, it will not pass with power from us.
– John Owen
Preaching
If I only had one more sermon to preach before I died, it would be about my Lord Jesus Christ. And I think that when we get to the end of our ministry, one of our regrets will be that we did not preach more of Him. I am sure no minister will ever repent of having preached Him too much.
– Charles Spurgeon
Preaching
But how much self-reliance obtains in Christian service. More effort is exerted in planning and arranging than in waiting upon the Lord. Double is the time expended on preparing the division and conclusion of a sermon than on receiving the power from on high because there is so much trust in the flesh.
– Watchman Nee
Preaching | Waiting | Power
A minister may fill his pews, his communion roll, the mouths of the public, but what that minister is on his knees in secret before God Almighty, that he is and no more.
– John Owen
Preaching | Prayer
If you want to be popular, preach happiness. If you want to be unpopular, preach holiness.
– Vance Havner
Preaching | Holiness
I am not the author of the plan of salvation, but I am responsible for the way I preach it.
– Billy Sunday
Preaching
It means to preach the Bible in such a way, that the meaning of the Bible passage is presented entirely and exactly as it was intended by God. That’s the challenge – the divine Word coming through the preacher.
– John MacArthur
Preaching