PREACHING, CONTENT OF

A preacher once confided to his head deacon that he was troubled by how few of the church members showed up for any given service. The deacon, a faithful farmhand who never missed a service, reflected on the years he had listened to his preacher’s long-winded sermons and then replied: “Well, Preacher, if you pour only water into the feeding trough, the hogs don’t come around to feed too often.”1064

“If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the word of God except precisely that little point which the world and the Devil are at that point attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is tested. To be steady in all the battlefields besides is mere flight and disgrace, if the soldier flinches at that one point” (Martin Luther).1065