The Point of Preaching

I have heard it said, "In preaching the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing."  The phrase is a bit simplistic, but few would argue against the truth it contains.  It is very easy in preaching to be swept up in current events or follow the tendency to often harp upon a single string of non-essential doctrine.  The imperative in preaching is to preach the Word as led by the Holy Spirit.  Paul writes in 2 Timothy 4:1-2, "I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom: ² preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching."  Those who are called to pulpit ministry are not called to invent new truths, but to be a heavenly reminder of God's truth as revealed in scripture.  Nehemiah 8:8 reveals the gist of what all preachers should strive for:  "So they read distinctly from the book, in the Law of God; and they gave the sense, and helped them to understand the reading."  The distinct truths of God's Word are to be rightly divided into portions easily partaken of and assimilated to mind, heart, and soul.  Sermons are vehicles to move people to look upon Jesus Christ in His glory.

I am no expert in the craft of preaching, and this only fuels my desire to become better.  C.H. Spurgeon is a preacher whose books have done me much good, especially Lectures to My Students.  The words may be ink printed on paper, but there is much gold in those pages.  Here is a final portion of a lecture titled "Sermons:  Their Matter" (pages 79-80):

Of all I would wish to say this is the sum; my brethren, preach CHRIST, always and evermore.  He is the whole gospel.  His person, offices, and work must be our one great, all-comprehending theme.  The world needs still to be told of its Saviour, and of the way to reach him.  Justification by faith should be far more than it is the daily testimony of Protestant pulpits; and if with this master-truth there should be more generally associated the other great doctrines of grace, the better for our churches and our age.  If with the zeal of Methodists we can preach the doctrine of Puritans a great future is before us.  The fire of Wesley, and the fuel of Whitfield, will cause a burning which shall set the forests of error on fire, and warm the very soul of this cold earth.  We are not called to proclaim philosophy and metaphysics, but the simple gospel.  Man's fall, his need for a new birth, forgiveness through an atonement, and salvation as the result of faith, these are our battle-axe and weapons of war.  We have enough to do to learn and teach these great truths, and accursed be that learning which shall divert us from our mission, or that willful ignorance which shall cripple us in its pursuit.  More and more am I jealous lest any views upon prophecy, church government, politics or even systematic theology, should withdraw one of us from glorying in the cross of Christ.  Salvation is a theme for which I would fain enlist every holy tongue.  I am greedy after witnesses for the glorious gospel of the blessed God.  O that Christ crucified were the universal burden of men of God.  Your guess at the number of the beast, your Napoleonic speculations, your conjectures concerning a personal Anti-christ - forgive me, I count them but mere bones for dogs; while men are dying, and hell is filling, it seems to me the veriest drivel to be muttering about an Armageddon at Sebastopol or Sadowa or Sedan, of Germany.  Blessed are they who read and hear the worlds of the prophecy of the Revelation, but the like blessing has evidently not fallen on those who pretend to expound it, for generation after generation of them have been proved to be in error by the mere lapse of time, and the present race will follow to the same inglorious sepulchre.  I would sooner pluck on single brand from the burning than explain all mysteries.  To win a soul from going down into the pit is a more glorious achievement than to be crowned in the arena of theological controversy as Doctor Sufficientissimus; to have faithfully unveiled the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ will be in the final judgment accounted worthier service than to have solved the problems of the religious Sphinx, or to have cut the Gordian knot of Apocalyptic difficulty.  Blessed is that ministry of which CHRIST IS ALL.

Couldn't have said it better, brother Spurgeon.  No really, I couldn't!  Though there is only one C.H. Spurgeon, and I am not him, we serve the same Saviour who through the Holy Spirit makes every believer useful in this life and in that which is to come.  In Christ we live and have our being.  If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.  May our preaching be an act of worship as we glorify Jesus Christ!