The best of lectures is very different to preaching. Very
different indeed! Nevertheless, in my experience, lecturing is
what much preaching seems to be these days – moralistic
lectures being the staple diet of most congregations. So
ingrained is the notion – that preaching is nothing but a
religious reprimand or lecture – that, in everyday life, to try
to avoid being lectured by a friend, many would say: ‘Stop
preaching to me! I don’t need a sermon!’ Lloyd- Jones put
his finger on the spot: ‘In a lecture, you know what is
happening, you are in control; but that is not the case when
you are preaching. Suddenly, unexpectedly, this other
element may break into a service – the touch of the power of
the Spirit of God’. So grievous did Philip Doddridge regard
the practice of lecturing instead of preaching that he vowed:
‘I shall never affect to speak of the glories of Christ, and of
the eternal interests of man, as coldly as if I were reading a
lecture on Mathematics, or relating an experiment in natural
philosophy!... I would speak and write of divine truths with a
holy fervency’. |
