preaching...

i am offering a challenge to all you preachers out there. please read the following and consider whether you are doing your job properly:

to preach a sermon, i think, is not the hardest part; and yet what skill is necessary to make the truth plain; to convince the hearers, to let irresistible light in to their consciences, and to keep it there, and drive all home; to screw the truth into their minds, and work Christ into their affections; to meet every objection, and clearly to resolve it; to drive sinners to a stand, and make them see that there is no hope, but that they must unavoidably either be converted or condemned - and to do all this as regards language and manner, as beseems our work, and yet as is most suitable to the capacities of our hearers. this, and a great deal more that should be done in every sermon, must surely require a great deal of holy skill. so great a God, whose message we deliver, should be honoured by our delivery of it. it is a lamentable case, that in a message from the God of heaven, of everlasting moment to the souls of men, we should behave oursevles so weakly, so unhandsomely, so imprudently, or so slightly, that the whole business should miscarry in our hands, and God should be dishonoured, and his work disgraced, and sinners rather hardened than converted; and all this through our weakness or neglect! how often have carnal hearers gone home jeering at the palpable and dishonourable failings of the preacher! how many sleep under us, because our hearts and tongues are sleepy, and we bring not with us so much skill and zeal as to awake them! richard baxter, the reformed pastor (pg70)

is it possible that we have made the message of life and hope boring and irrelevant? perhaps we have failed to preach "the message" at all in an effort to not offend, or to entertain, or to make God relevant. perhaps we should remember that we do not make God relevant... He makes us relevant. perhaps we should not take our work so lightly and come so causally before God Almighty...

cheers,
jw <><