03-The Preacher Must Not Lecture

The best of lectures is very different to preaching. Very
different indeed! Nevertheless, in my experience, lecturing is
what much preaching seems to be these days – moralistic
lectures being the staple diet of most congregations. So
ingrained is the notion – that preaching is nothing but a
religious reprimand or lecture – that, in everyday life, to try
to avoid being lectured by a friend, many would say: ‘Stop
preaching to me! I don’t need a sermon!’ Lloyd- Jones put
his finger on the spot: ‘In a lecture, you know what is
happening, you are in control; but that is not the case when
you are preaching. Suddenly, unexpectedly, this other
element may break into a service – the touch of the power of
the Spirit of God’. So grievous did Philip Doddridge regard
the practice of lecturing instead of preaching that he vowed:
‘I shall never affect to speak of the glories of Christ, and of
the eternal interests of man, as coldly as if I were reading a
lecture on Mathematics, or relating an experiment in natural
philosophy!... I would speak and write of divine truths with a
holy fervency’.