Thursday, August 20, 2009

Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Sweetest Name I Know!


Here are a few quotes by Charles Spurgeon that I will be thinking about every time I preach from now on:

"The motto of a true servant of God must be, "We preach Christ; and Him crucified." A sermon without Christ in it is like a loaf of bread without any flour in it. No Christ in your sermon, sir? Then go home, and never preach again until you have something worth preaching."

"Leave Christ out? O my brethren, better leave the pulpit out altogether. If a man can preach one sermon without mentioning Christ's name in it, it ought to be his last, certainly the last that Christian ought to go to hear him preach."

"A sermon without Christ as it's beginning, middle, and end is a mistake in conception and crime in execution. However grand the language, it will be much ado about nothing if Christ be not there. And I mean by Christ not merely His example and the ethical precepts of His teaching, but His atoning blood, his wondrous satisfaction made for human sin, and the grand doctrine of "believe and live".

"Yes, it is Christ, Christ, Christ, whom we have to preach; and if we leave him out, we leave out the very soul of the Gospel. Christless sermons make merriment for Hell. Christless preachers, Christless Sunday school teachers, Christless class leaders, Christless tract distributors - what are all these doing? They are simply setting the mill to grind without putting any grist into the hopper, all their labor is in vain. If you leave Jesus Christ out, you are simply beating the air, or going to war without any weapon with which you can smite the foe."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great Post!

Kirsten T said...

This really is true. I think one reason we have seen many church's efforts and programs become ineffective for Salvation is because the focus is not on Jesus and His story (the gospel). They become powerless as soon as they take the focus off Jesus Christ, even if the effort is for "good". Romans 1:16 tells us it is the gospel that is the power of God for salvation. Nothing else.