Worthy Sayings of Great Christians

“Give me 100 preachers who fear nothing but sin and desire nothing but God; such alone will shake the gates of hell.” 
― John Wesley
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“The backslider likes the preaching that wouldn't hit the side of a house, while the real disciple is delighted when the truth brings him to his knees.” 
― Billy Sunday
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“I preached as never sure to preach again, and as a dying man to dying men.” 
― Richard Baxter
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“It does not answer the aim which God had in this institution, merely for men to have good commentaries and expositions on the Scripture, and other good books of divinity; because, although these may tend, as well as preaching, to give a good doctrinal or speculative understanding of the word of God, yet they have not an equal tendency to impress them on men's hearts and affections. God hath appointed a particular and lively application of his word, in the preaching of it, as a fit means to affect sinners with the importance of religion, their own misery, the necessity of a remedy, and the glory and sufficiency of a remedy provided; to stir up the pure minds of the saints, quicken their affections by often bringing the great things of religion in their remembrance, and setting them in their proper colours, though they know them, and have been fully instructed in them already. ” 
― Jonathan Edwards
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“Whenever a day comes when I can stand and preach God's Word without an agony of anxiety lest the people will not accept Christ; whenever a day comes when I can see men and women coming down the aisles without joy in my heart, I'll quit preaching.” 
― Billy Sunday
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“To preach Christ is to feed the soul, to justify it, to set it free, and to save it, if it believes the preaching.” 
― Martin Luther
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“A man who first tried to guess 'what the public wants,' and then preached that as Christianity because the public wants it, would be a pretty mixture of fool and knave” 
― C.S. Lewis
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“God’s strength is made perfect in weakness. The weaker I became, the more powerful became the preaching.” 
― Billy Graham
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“Preach with authority. The authority for us is the Word of God. Preach with simplicity . . . Preach with urgency . . . heaven and hell are at stake. Preach for a decision.” 
― Billy Graham
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“I have had the privilege of preaching the Gospel on every continent in most of the countries of the world, and I have found that when I present the simple message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, with authority, quoting from the very Word of God—He takes that message and drives it supernaturally into the human heart.” 
― Billy Graham
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“I must ask myself, “Billy Graham, are you prepared to meet the Master at any moment?” Yes, I am—but not because I have preached or tried to help people, but solely because I am trusting Christ as my Lord and Savior. Stop right now and ask yourself that question.” 
― Billy Graham
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“We preach Christ crucified. The cross is the focal point in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. It was no afterthought or emergency measure with God. Christ was “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” [Revelation 3:8 KJV].” 
― Billy Graham
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“When I preach—no matter where it is in the world—I can always count on five areas of human need that afflict all peoples. Emptiness, loneliness, guilt, fear of death, deep-seated insecurity.” 
― Billy Graham
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“I know that many of the things I have said from the Scriptures have offended some, but I cannot afford to tone down the message. As Paul said in 1 Corinthians 9:17, “I have a stewardship entrusted to me” (nasb), and that is to preach the pure and simple Gospel in whatever culture I am in.” 
― Billy Graham
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“When we preach or teach the Scriptures, we open the door for the Holy Spirit to do His work. God has not promised to bless oratory or clever preaching. He has promised to bless His Word.” 
― Billy Graham
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“Preach [and live] as if Jesus was crucified yesterday, rose from the dead today, and is returning tomorrow.” 
― Martin Luther
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“Here is where most preachers make their mistake. They are afraid that by preaching the gospel too clearly, it will be their fault if people lapse into sin. They imagine that the gospel is food for the carnal-minded. True enough, to many the gospel does become the smell of death unto death, but that is not the fault of the Gospel. That happens only because men do not accept -do not believe-the Gospel. Faith is not merely thinking, "I believe." Your whole heart must be seized by the gospel and come to rest in it. When that happens, you are transformed and cannot help but love and serve God.” 
― C.F.W. Walther
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“The high ground of Christ & Him crucified must be claimed in our preaching. Any other footing is a slippery slope that inevitably descends downward into vain rhetoric and mere words. To the contrary, every pulpit must present a towering vision of the unique person and saving work of Jesus Christ. All preaching must point to His sin-bearing, substitutionary death for sinners. All exposition must lift up this Sacrificial Lamb who became a sin-bearing Substitute for all who believe. Every message must exalt this Christ, who was raised from the dead, exalted to the right hand of God the Father, and entrusted with all authority in heaven and earth.” 
― Steven J. Lawson
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“Whatever you may know, you you cannot be truly efficient ministers if you are not "apt to teach." You know ministers who have mistaken their calling, and evidently have no gifts for it: make sure that none think the same of you. There are brethren in the ministry whose speech is intolerable; either they rouse you to wrath, or else they send you to sleep. No chloral can ever equal some discourses in sleep-giving properties; no human being, unless gifted with infinite patience, could long endure to listen to them, and nature does well to give the victim deliverance through sleep. I heard one say the other day that a certain preacher had no more gifts for the ministry than an oyster, and in my own judgment this was a slander on the oyster, for that worthy bivalve shows great discretion in his openings, and knows when to close. If some men were sentenced to hear their own sermons, it would be a righteous judgement upon them, and they would soon cry out with Cain, "My punishment is greater than I can bear." Let us not fall under the same condemnation.” 
― Charles Haddon Spurgeon
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“Any true definition of preaching must say that that man is there to deliver the message of God, a message from God to those people. If you prefer the language of Paul, he is 'an ambassador for Christ'. That is what he is. He has been sent, he is a commissioned person, and he is standing there as the mouthpiece of God and of Christ to address these people. In other words he is not there merely to talk to them, he is not there to entertain them. He is there - and I want to emphasize this - to do something to those people; he is there to produce results of various kinds, he is there to influence people. He is not merely to influence a part of them; he is not only to influence their minds, not only their emotions, or merely to bring pressure to bear upon their wills and to induce them to some kind of activity. He is there to deal with the whole person; and his preaching is meant to affect the whole person at the very centre of life. Preaching should make such a difference to a man who is listening that he is never the same again. Preaching, in other words, is a transaction between the preacher and the listener. It does something for the soul of man, for the whole of the person, the entire man; it deals with him in a vital and radical manner.

I remember a remark made to me a few years back about some studies of mine on “The Sermon on the Mount.” I had deliberately published them in sermonic form. There were many who advised me not to do that on the grounds that people no longer like sermons. The days for sermons, I was told, were past, and I was pressed to turn my sermons into essays and to give them a different form. I was most interested therefore when this man to whom I was talking, and he is a very well-known Christian layman in Britain, said, "I like these studies of yours on “The Sermon on the Mount” because they speak to me.” Then he went on to say, “I have been recommended many books by learned preachers and professors but,” he said, “what I feel about those books is that it always seems to be professors writing to professors; they do not speak to me. But,” he said, “your stuff speaks to me.” Now he was an able man, and a man in a prominent position, but that is how he put it. I think there is a great deal of truth in this. He felt that so much that he had been recommended to read was very learned and very clever and scholarly, but as he put it, it was “professors writing to professors.” This is, I believe, is a most important point for us to bear in mind when we read sermons. I have referred already to the danger of giving the literary style too much prominence. I remember reading an article in a literary journal some five or six years ago which I thought was most illuminating because the writer was making the selfsame point in his own field. His case was that the trouble today is that far too often instead of getting true literature we tend to get “reviewers writing books for reviewers.” These men review one another's books, with the result that when they write, what they have in their mind too often is the reviewer and not the reading public to whom the book should be addressed, at any rate in the first instance. The same thing tends to happen in connection with preaching. This ruins preaching, which should always be a transaction between preacher and listener with something vital and living taking place. It is not the mere imparting of knowledge, there is something much bigger involved. The total person is engaged on both sides; and if we fail to realize this our preaching will be a failure.” 
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones