“If a thing be true, why confer with flesh and blood about it?” (Shedd, Homiletic and Pastoral Theology, p. 286).
Don’t Convolute It
“A reader of English can always help himself by looking back a few lines and refreshing his mind. A hearer of English hear once for all, and if he loses the thread of your sermon in a long involved sentence, he very likely never finds it again” (Ryle, Simplicity in Preaching, p. 13).
Preaching Clearly Means Seeing Clearly
“If I do not see my way through a text, I cannot preach on it, because I know I cannot be simple; and if I cannot be simple, I know I had better not preach at all” (Ryle, Simplicity in Preaching, p. 11).
A Rejoinder to Peter Leithart
Introduction: In a recent First Things article, Peter Leithart has continued to develop his recent emphasis on the “end of Protestantism.” He has a book coming out on the subject, and so this is not the first précis he has offered on the topic. The topic is on his mind, and that is why it …
Women: Themes in Proverbs III
Introduction: The image for wisdom in Proverbs is overwhelmingly feminine—but so is folly. The book of Proverbs is dedicated to teaching young men to walk up rightly, and this means taking women into account, women of both kinds. Women must learn from the book of Proverbs also, but need to do it in reverse. Don’t …
The Right Kind of Order
“All I say is, if we would be simple, there must be order in a sermon as there is in an army” (Ryle, Simplicity in Preaching, p. 9).
On Not Baffling the Flock
“But if, on examination, they can neither find the sermon in the text, nor the text in the sermon, their minds are perplexed, and they begin to think the Bible is a deep book which cannot be understood” (Ryle, Simplicity in Preaching, p. 8).
And Some Do It Without An Anesthetic
“I think a preacher should never take a text and extract from it, as a dentist would a tooth from the jaw, something which, however true in itself, is not the plain literal meaning of the inspired words” (Ryle, Simplicity in Preaching, p. 8).
Promoting the June Bugs
To be a Christian acid-washed by the bleach and pumice of modernity is to be a Christian conscripted by the regimented cool, and to be issued a washed-out denim uniform—one which might be considered appropriate camo-gear for that upscale coffee shop, the better to allow a demythologized and deracinated faith to blend right in—and so …
We Are Not Preaching Where It Is Not Needed
“For we are not treating of public religious address for the seraphim, but for the sinful children of men; and we shall commit a grave error, if we assume that the eternal and righteous truth of God, as a matter of course, must fall like blessed genial sun-light into the corrupt human heart, and make …