“The privilege is great, the responsibility heavy, the temptations many and the standards high.”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 101
Must Be Something Else
“Why is this power missing in our preaching? I strongly suspect that the main reason is our pride. In order to be filled with the Spirit, we must first acknowledge our own emptiness.”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 98
Elijah Built the Altar Before the Fire Fell
“They should not imagine that even God-given talents can bring people to Christ without the addition of God-given blessing.”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 98
That’s Actually Pretty Clever
“No man can bear witness to Christ and to himself at the same time. No man can give the impression that he himself is clever and that Christ is mighty to save.”
James Denney, as quoted in Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 96
With an Eye on the End of the Furrow
“Christians preachers are to be neither inventors of new doctrines nor editors who delete old doctrines. Rather, they are to be stewards, faithfully handing out scriptural truths to God’s household. Nothing more, nothing less, and nothing else”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 96
The Real Move
“The preacher with a humble mind will refuse to manipulate the biblical text in order to make it more acceptable to our day and age. Any attempt to make it more acceptable is really about making ourselves more acceptable or popular.”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 95
Pride as Pest
“In other preachers, however, pride is more indirect, more deceptive, and more troublesome. It is possible to seem humble while constantly longing for praise. At the very moment we are glorifying Christ, we can actually be looking for our own glory. When we are pleading with the congregation to praise God, or even leading them in praise, we can be secretly hoping that they will spare a bit of praise for us”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 94.
All Are Under Authority
“For the health of the church, which lives and grows through the word of God, and for the sake of the preacher who needs this discipline, we must return to systematic exposition.”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 93
Because the River of Exposition Has White Water
“Because it takes courage to deal with certain issues, I recommend systematic exposition, working steadily through a book of the Bible or a section of a book, verse by verse or paragraph by paragraph. This approach forces us to discuss passages that we might otherwise overlook, or even deliberately avoid.”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 92
So Make the Choice Prior to Ordination
“Preachers, like prophets, believe they bring a word from God, and are not free to change it. Therefore all preachers have at various times to choose between truth with unpopularity and falsehood with popularity.”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 90