“Never let men feel that you and your gospel would be satisfied with mere decency, with the putting down of all vicious life that left the vicious character still strong behind.”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 110
Which Is Estrangement from God
“So cordially put the spiritual processes of which you preach within the judgment of all men who know a good life from a bad one. And in the second place strike at the symptom always for the sake of the disease.”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 109
The Word Touches Down
“I believe no powerful pulpit ever held aloof from the moral life of the community it lived in, as the practice of many preachers, and the theory of some, would make our pulpit separate itself and confine its message to what are falsely discriminated as spiritual things.”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 108
Idols and Tyranny
Sermon Video Introduction: One of the reasons we have trouble dealing realistically with evil in this world is that we have drawn mental cartoons of the evil beforehand. When someone says “tyranny,” ...
The Spirit is Not Monochrome
“Only I beg you to remember in what different ways sermons may all be messages of the Lord. Let it save you from the monotonous narrowness of one eternally repeated sermon. And, what is far more important, let it keep you from ever daring to say with cruel flippancy of some brother who brings his message to another door of humanity from you, that he ‘does not preach Christ.’”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 107
Heat Lightning
“The preaching which is wholly exposition men are apt to find dull and pointless. It is heat lightning that quivers over many topics but strikes nowhere”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 104
Marc and Kitty
This is a wedding with two central purposes. Most weddings are focused on just one central thing, which is obviously the exchange of vows, and the consequent establishment of a marriage covenant. That is second of our purposes here today, and we will certainly get to that. But the first thing we want to do …
The Prophecy of Micah [4]
Sermon Video Introduction: We have now come to the conclusion of the first cycle of Micah’s prophecy. Here we find a brief word of consolation, which, given what has come before, stands out ...
All the Doctrine You Know
“The truth is, no preaching ever had any strong power that was not the preaching of doctrine. The preachers that have moved and held men have always preached doctrine. No exhortation to a good life that does not put behind it some truth as deep as eternity can seize and hold the conscience. Preach doctrine, preach all the doctrine that you know, and learn forever more and more; but preach it always not that men may believe it; but that men may be saved by believing it.”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 103
The Prophecy of Micah [3]
Sermon Video Introduction: Recall that there are three cycles of Micah’s word to the people, and each one of the three contains the elements of warning, judgment, and consolation. We are still ...