“The preacher who can make doctrinal truth interesting as well as intelligible to his congregation, and gradually bring them to a good acquaintance with the doctrines of the Bible, is rendering them an inestimable service” (Broadus, Preparation and Delivery, p. 89).
The Chief Business
“Doctrine, i.e. teaching, is the preacher’s chief business. Truth is the life-blood of piety, without which we cannot maintain its vitality or support its activity” (Broadus, Preparation and Delivery, p. 88).
You Still Need a Point
“Even in text-sermons and expository sermons, as we shall see below, it is important to have unity of subject” (Broadus, Preparation and Delivery, p. 87).
Making Liturgy Do Hammerheads
In order to fulfill its appointed role, preaching needs to be lively (Acts 7:38), authoritative (Mark 1:22), engaging (Acts 14:1), helpful (2 Tim. 3:16), and bold (Eph. 6:19-20). But it does not do this in a vacuum. This kind of preaching needs to move people from one place to another, and in order to do …
Not to Be Done
“Preachers often lose sight of their fundamental and inexcusable error, of saying that a passage of God’s Word means what it does not mean” (Broadus, Preparation and Delivery, pp. 67-68).
A Car With Brakes
“And the allegorical, in the broad sense of that term, is very widely and variously employed in the Scriptures of truth . . . With such a foundation in the nature of things, and with so much support in the actual usage of the Bible, it is not strange that there has always been on …
What It Says and No More
“We must bring to bear upon men’s minds as a part of God’s Word, only what the text really means, as best we can ascertain it” (Broadus, Preparation and Delivery, p. 65).
Not Included in Plenary Inspiration
“The result has been to lead both preachers and hearers to think of every chapter and every verse as a sort of separate whole. It is curious to observe how rarely we hear read in public the latter part of one chapter and earlier part of the next, though the slightest care for the real …
We Don’t Do It Elsewhere
“No man of sense, in dealing with any other book, would think of interpreting a single sentence here or there, in disregard of its connection” (Broadus, Preparation and Delivery, p. 60).
Which Drives Some People Crazy
“The language of Scripture is, as a general thing, not philosophical but popular, not scientific but poetic, not so much an analytic language, fond of sharp discriminations and exact statements, as a synthetical language, abounding in concrete terms, the representatives not of abstractions, but of facts of actual existence and experience, and which in their …