“Go to sleep” Says the Sermon
In his Lectures to My Students, Spurgeon has this little ditty which has always amused me:
It is an ill case when the preacher
“Leaves his hearers perplex’d —
Twixt the two to determine:
‘Watch and pray,’ says the text,
‘Go to sleep,’ says the sermon.
I couldn’t help but think of that as I was re-reading Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ great classic, Preaching & Preachers. He notes that a preacher who appears untouched by the truth he’s preaching is not really a preacher at all. He goes on:
I came across a notable example of what I am condemning recently when I was convalescing after an illness. I was staying in a village in a certain part of England and went to the local church just across the road from where I was staying. I found that the preacher was preaching that evening on the prophet Jeremiah. He told us that he was starting a series of sermons on the prophet. So he was starting with that great text where Jeremiah said he could not refrain any longer, but that the Word of God was like a fire in his bones. That was the text he took. What happened? I left the service feeling that I had witnessed something quite extraordinary, for the one big thing that was entirely missing in that service was ‘fire.’ The good man was talking about fire as if he were sitting on an iceberg. He was actually dealing with the theme of fire in a detached and cold manner; he was a living denial of the very thing that he was saying, or perhaps I should say a dead denial. It was a good sermon from the standpoint of construction and preparation. He had obviously taken considerable care over this, and had obviously written out every word, because he was reading it; but that one thing that was absent was fire. There was no zeal, no enthusiasm, no apparent concern for us as members of the congregation. His whole attitude seemed to be detached and academic and formal. (p.88)
Sad, no? It reminds me of a time I visited a Presbyterian church somewhere. This church had a seminary and their homiletics professor was on the pulpit that Sunday morning. The poor man had just flown in the day before and was dealing with a bad case of jet lag. He yawned his way through the whole sermon. Maybe it was just a bad day for that brother…
