Jeremiah 23:29; Ecclesiastes 12:11
Is not my word like as a fire? saith the LORD; and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?
The words of the wise are as goads, and as nails fastened by the masters of assemblies, which are given from one shepherd.
WILLIAM GURNALL (1617-1679): The Word is a hammer, but it breaks not the flinty heart when lightly laid on.
WILLIAM S. PLUMER (1802-1880): The truth must be preached boldly.
C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): Let us be bold and outspoken, and never address our hearers as if we were asking a favour of them, or as if they would oblige the Redeemer by allowing Him to save them.
MARTYN LLOYD-JONES (1899-1981): The preacher should never be apologetic, he should never give the impression that he is speaking by their leave as it were; he should not be tentatively putting forward certain suggestions and ideas. That is not to be his attitude at all.
C. H. SPURGEON: Sometimes godly men rap hard; they do not merely hint at evil, but hammer at it…Martin Luther was wont to smite with his fist at such a rate that they show, at Eisenach, a board—I think a three-inch board—which he broke while hammering at a text. John Knox seemed as though he would “ding the pulpit in blads” which, being interpreted, means in English that he would knock it into slivers. That was evidently the style of the period when Protestants were fighting for their very existence, and the Pope and his priests and the devil and his angels were aroused to special fury: yet I do not suppose that Melancthon thought it needful to be quite so tremendous, nor did Calvin hammer and slash in a like manner.
MARTIN LUTHER (1483-1546): I preach as though Christ was crucified yesterday; rose again from the dead today; and is coming back to earth tomorrow.
WILLIAM GURNALL: King James said of a minister in his time, he preached as if death was at his back. Ministers should set forth judgment as if it were at the sinner’s back, ready to take hold of him. Cold reproofs or threatenings, they are like the rumblings of thunder afar off, which affright not as a clap over our head doth.
JOHN CALVIN (1509-1564): There are always wanton persons who, while they fearlessly despise God, treat with ridicule all threatenings of His judgment, and at the same time hold in derision all injunctions as to a holy and pious life. Such persons must not be taught, but must be beaten with severe reproofs as with the stroke of a hammer.
C. H. SPURGEON: A hard, unfeeling mode of speech is also to be avoided; want of tenderness is a sad lack, and repels rather than attracts. The spirit of Elijah may startle, and where it is exceedingly intense it may go far to prepare for the reception of the gospel; but for actual conversion more of John is needed,—love is the winning force. We must love men to Jesus. Great hearts are the main qualifications for great preachers, and we must cultivate our affections to that end. At the same time our manner must not degenerate into the soft and saccharine cant which some men affect who are for ever dearing everybody, and fawning upon people as if they hoped to soft-sawder them into godliness.
GEORGE SWINNOCK (1627-1673): The hammer of the law may break the icy heart of man with terrors and horrors, and yet it may remain ice still, unchanged; but when the fire of love kindly thaweth its ice, it is changed and dissolved into water―it is no longer ice, but of another nature.
WILLIAM GURNALL: Let the reproof be as sharp as thou wilt, but thy spirit must be meek. Passion raiseth the blood of him that is reproved, but compassion turns his bowels. The oil in which the nail is dipped makes it drive the easier, which otherwise have split the board. We must not denounce wrath in wrath, lest sinners think we wish their misery; but rather with such tenderness, that they may see it is no pleasing work to us to rake in their wounds, but do it that we might not by a cruel silence and foolish pity be accessory to their ruin, which we cordially desire to prevent…Dip the nail in oil, reprove in love―but strike the nail home.
JOHN GILL (1697-1771): Sometimes it is necessary to say and write the same things over and over again, partly that they may be the better understood, and partly that they may be more strongly fixed in the memory; as also, that the saints may be the more established in the present truth.
WILLIAM GURNALL: Indeed he is the better workman, who drives one nail home with reiterated blows, than he which covets to enter many, but fastens none. Such preachers are not likely to reach the conscience, who hop from one truth to another, but dwell on none. Every hearer is not so quick as the preacher, to take a notion as it is first darted forth.
MARTYN LLOYD-JONES: The great art of teaching is the art of repetition; the true teacher always knows that it is not enough to say a thing once, but that it needs to be repeated…There never was a Teacher in this world like the Lord Jesus Christ! His method is particularly interesting and fascinating―you find Him repeating “Seek ye first the kingdom of God,” Matthew 6:33. That is just another way of saying that you must have the single eye, and serve God and not mammon, verse 24. At all costs we must do this. He therefore puts it three times over, introducing it by means of the word “therefore.”―Verse 25: “Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?” Then in verse 31, He says it again, “Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?” Then in verse 34, He says it again finally: “Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” So He says it three times, but each time in a slightly different form.
C. H. SPURGEON: Some repetitions are not vain. The reduplication here used is like the repeated blow of a hammer.
E. PAXTON HOOD (1820-1885): Some preachers expect too much of their hearers; they take a number of truths into the pulpit as a man might carry up a box of nails; and then, supposing the congregation to be posts, they take out a nail, and expect it to get into the post by itself. Now that is not the way to do it. You must take your nail, hold it up against the post, hammer it in, and then clinch it on the other side.
C. H. SPURGEON: Our esteemed brother D. L. Moody has a lively, telling style, and he thinks it wise frequently to fasten a nail with the hammer of an anecdote.
JOHN TRAPP (1601-1699): Men are dull to conceive, hard to believe, apt to forget, and slow to practise heavenly truths, and had therefore great need to have them much pressed, and often inculcated―a nail, the further it is driven in, with the greater difficulty it is pulled out.
ADAM CLARKE (1760-1832): Surely the hammer cannot break the rock in pieces, unless wielded by an able workman―and it is God’s Spirit alone that can thus apply it.
MARTYN LLOYD-JONES: The prime and greatest need in the pulpit is spiritual authority…There is but one thing that gives a preacher authority, and that is that he be “filled with the Holy Spirit.”
