mgpcpastor's blog

Exhorting preachers to ‘never let men feel that you would gospel would be satisfied with mere decency’, Phillips Brooks makes the point that when addressing the outworking of sin the preacher should never leave their hearer with the sense that all we desire is modified behaviour.
While challenging sinful behaviour, our true goal is to point each person to that which lies within, that which is there regardless of behaviour, that which needs to meet the healing power of the Christian gospel.

[the Christian preacher] is the messenger of Christ to the soul of man always. His sermon about temperance, or the late election, or the wickedness of oppression, is not an exception, an intrusion in the current of that preaching which is always testifying of the spiritual salvation. He is ready to speak on any topic of the day, but his sermon is not likely to be mistaken for an article from some daily newspaper. It looks at the topic from a loftier height, traces the trouble to a deeper source, and is not satisfied except with a more thorough cure.

Phillips Brooks, The Joy Of Preaching, Kregel Classics, 1989, pg. 110.

The ongoing unfolding of God’s word that takes place in the relationship of pastor and people is the essence of the sermon.
A sermon is not a sermon unless eternal truth is communicated with the purpose of God’s people responding to the call on their lives, and that those who are not God’s people can understand and heed that same call.

A sermon exists in and for its purpose. That purpose is the persuading and moving men’s souls. That purpose must never be lost sight of. If it ever is, the sermon flags. It is not always on the surface; not always impetuous and eager in the the discourses of the settled pastor as it is in the appeals of the evangelist who speaks this once and this once only to the men he sees before him. The sermon of the habitual preacher grows more sober, but it never can lose out of it this consciousness of a purpose; it never can justify itself in any self-indulgence that will hinder or delay that purpose. It always aimed at men. It is always looking in their faces to see how they are moved..

Phillips Brooks, The Joy Of Preaching, Kregel Classics, 1989, pg. 92.