I wonder how many sermons you have heard in your lifetime. I reckon I have heard at least 15,000. And just a few have left such an impression that years later I can tell you what was said, who preached them and where I was. Each of those were characterised by an earnestness and an expression of the heart of the preacher. They fed my soul, impacted my will, and exalted the Lord Jesus.
They were not what I call ‘Tyndale Commentary sermons’. Don’t misunderstand me: I value those and other commentaries to read, but the sermons that impacted me were not from a preacher seeking to merely transfer the information he had in his brain to download into my brain. They were not lectures. Neither were they simply read from a script. We certainly don’t want preachers ad-libbing or ‘winging it’, nor messages which are a series of anecdotes, but serious, well-prepared proclamation of God’s Word.
Each preacher was unique, they had different personalities, their intonations were not copies of their favourite preacher, and their passion was evident. Philips Brooks had it right when he defined preaching as ‘truth through personality’, as did Martyn Lloyd-Jones with his ‘logic on fire’.
