In the true sermon there must always be passion. Our Lord’s testimony concerning John, His forerunner, was this: "He was a burning and a shining light" (John 5:35). It is one thing to shine; it is quite another to burn as well.
Half the sermons today--may I be forgiven if I am cruel--are failing because they lack the note of passion.
There is a tale told of that great English actor, Macready. An eminent preacher once said to him: "I wish you would explain something to me.
"What is it? I don’t know if I can explain anything to a preacher."
"What is the reason for the difference between you and me? You are appearing before crowds night after night with fiction, and the crowds come wherever you go. I am preaching the essential and unchangeable truth, and I am not getting any crowd at all."
Macready’s answer was this: "That is quite simple. I can tell you the difference between us. I present the fiction as though it were fact; you present the fact as though it were fiction."
I leave that story right at this point. Of course the question comes, whether a man can preach these things without passion if they are truth to him. I don’t know; I must not sit in judgment on other men. But our theme as preachers of the Word has to do with the glory of life--with the tragedy of sin, and its remedy; I cannot see how anyone can really handle these things until he is handled by them.
A man was formerly said to "handle his text." If he handles his text he cannot preach at all. But when his text handles him, when it grips and masters and possesses him, and in experience he is responsive to the thing he is declaring, having conviction of the supremacy of truth and experience of the power of truth, I think that must create passion.
I am not arguing for mere excitement. Painted fire never burns, and an imitated enthusiasm is the most empty thing that can possibly exist in a preacher. Given the preacher with a message from the whole Bible, seeing its bearing on life at any point, I cannot personally understand that man not being swept sometimes right out of himself by the fire and the force and the fervor of his work.
Citadel of the Will
The preacher should never address a crowd without remembering his ultimate citadel is the citadel of the human will. He may travel along the line of emotions, but he is after the will. He may approach along the line of intellect, but he is after the will. When preaching becomes merely discussion in the realm of the intellect, or--forgive my use of the word--fooling in the realm of the emotions, and when preaching ends in the intellectual or emotional, it fails. It is successful only when it is able to storm the will, under the will of God.
The preacher comes with good news; but he does not come with something to be trifled with. His message has an insistent demand, because he comes on behalf of a King.
The Price of Passion
During the great Welsh Revival, it is said, a certain minister was marvelously successful in his preaching. He had but one sermon, but under it hundreds of men were saved. Far away from where he lived in a lonely valley, news of this wonderful success reached a brother preacher. Forthwith he became anxious to find out the secret of his success. At length, reaching the humble cottage where the good man lived, he said, "Brother, where did you get that sermon?"
He was taken into a poorly furnished room and pointed to a spot where the carpet was worn shabby and bare, near a window that looked out toward the mountains. The minister said, "Brother, that’s where I got that sermon. My heart was heavy for men. One evening I knelt there and cried for power to preach as I had never preached before.
"The hours passed until the midnight struck, and the stars looked down on the sleeping valley and silent hills; but the answer came not. So I prayed until at length I saw a faint gray shoot up in the east. Presently it became silver, and I watched and prayed until the silver became purple and gold, and on all the mountain crests blazed the altar fires of the new day; and then the sermon came, and the power came.
"I lay down and slept, and arose and preached, and scores fell down before the fire of God. That is where I got that sermon."
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G. Campbell Morgan (1863 - 1945)
Was a British evangelist, preacher and a leading Bible scholar. A contemporary of Rodney "Gipsy" Smith, Morgan was the pastor of Westminster Chapel in London from 1904 to 1919, and from 1933 to 1943.In 1896 D. L. Moody invited him to lecture to the students at the Moody Bible Institute. This was the first of his 54 crossings of the Atlantic to preach and teach. After the death of Moody in 1899 Morgan assumed the position of director of the Northfield Bible Conference. He was ordained by the Congregationalists in London, and given a Doctor of Divinity degree by the Chicago Theological Seminary in 1902.[1] After five successful years in this capacity, he returned to England in 1904 and became pastor of Westminster Chapel in London. During two years of this ministry he was President of Cheshunt College in Cambridge.[2] His preaching and weekly Friday night Bible classes were attended by thousands. In 1910 Morgan contributed an essay entitled The Purposes of the Incarnation to the first volume of The Fundamentals, 90 essays which are widely considered to be the foundation of the modern Fundamentalist movement. Leaving Westminster Chapel in 1919, he once again returned to the United States, where he conducted an itinerant preaching/teaching ministry for 14 years. Finally, in 1933, he returned to England, where he again became pastor of Westminster Chapel and remained there until his retirement in 1943. He was instrumental in bringing Martyn Lloyd-Jones to Westminster in 1939 to share the pulpit and become his successor. Morgan was a friend of F. B. Meyer, Charles Spurgeon, and many other great preachers of his day.
George Campbell Morgan was born in Tetbury, England, the son of a Baptist minister. His home was one of such genuine piety that in later years he wrote: "While my father could not compel me to be a Christian, I had no choice because of what he did for me and what I saw in him."
When Campbell was 10 years old, D.L. Moody came to England for the first time, and the effect of his ministry, combined with the dedication of his parents, made such an impression on the life of young Morgan, that at the age of 13, he preached his first sermon. Two years later, he was preaching regularly in country chapels during his Sundays and holidays.
In 1886, at the age of 23, he left the teaching profession, for which he had been trained, and began devoting his full time to the ministry of the Word of God. He was ordained to the Congregational ministry in 1890, having been rejected by the Wesleyan Methodists two years before. His reputation as preacher and Bible expositor soon encompassed England and spread to the United States.
After the death of Moody in 1899, Morgan assumed the position of director of the Northfield Bible Conference. After five very successful years there, he returned to England in 1904 and became pastor of Westminster Chapel of London. His preaching and his weekly Friday night Bible classes were attended by thousands. During two years of this ministry, he was president of Cheshunt College in Cambridge.
Leaving Westminster Chapel in 1919, he once again returned to the United States, where he conducted an itinerant ministry for 14 years. Many thousands of people heard him preach in nearly every state and also in Canada. Finally, in 1933, he returned to England, where he became pastor of Westminster Chapel again and remained there until his retirement in 1943.
The most outstanding preacher that this country has heard during the past thirty years"-this was Dr. James M. Gray's estimate of Dr. G. Campbell Morgan whose ministry spanned the Atlantic and reached from the days of D. L. Moody to the era of World War II.
Born on a farm in England in 1863, he was brought up in a strict Puritanical home where he amused himself by preaching to his sisters' dolls. Although his first sermon before a responsive audience was delivered in a Wesleyan schoolroom at the age of thirteen, he was engulfed in doubt and confusion concerning his faith after preparing for the ministry.
Remembering those two chaotic years, Dr. Morgan later wrote, "The only hope for me was the Bible....I stopped reading books about the Bible and began to read the Bible itself. I saw the light and was back on the path." For seven years thereafter, his reading concerning the things of God was confined to the Word of God itself.
Ordained a minister of the Congregational Church in 1889, the young man became the leading preacher in England, holding several pastorates. Later he became widely known in the United States and Canada as a Bible conference speaker, lecturer, pastor and teacher before returning to England in 1935 to become the pastor of Westminster Congregational Church in London.
Dr. Morgan was a prolific but profound writer of books, booklets, tracts and articles. Among his best-known books are Parables of the Kingdom; the eleven volumes of the Westminster Pulpit; The Crises of the Christ; the ten-volume work, The Analysed Bible; the Triumphs of Faith series; and An Exposition of the Whole Bible.
His earthly life of testimony and ministry came to a close in May, 1945.