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I came across this fascinating story as I was reading today in Preaching and Preachers by the late Martyn Lloyd-Jones who pastored Westminister Chapel in London from 1943-1968. He writes:

“I was staying in a village in a certain part of England and went to the local church across the road from where I was staying. I found that the preacher was preaching that evening on the prophet Jeremiah. He told us that he was starting a series of sermons on the prophet.

So he was starting with that great text where Jeremiah said he could not refrain any longer, but that the Word of God was like a fire in his bones. That was the text he took. What happened? I left the service feeling that I had witnessed something quite extraordinary, for the one big thing that was entirely missing in that service was ‘fire’. The good man was talking about fire as if he were sitting on an iceberg. He was actually dealing with the theme of fire in a detached and cold manner; he was a living denial of the very thing that he was saying, or perhaps I should say a dead denial.

It was a good sermon from the standpoint of construction and preparation. He had obviously taken considerable care over this, and had obviously written it out every word, because he was reading it; but that one thing that was absent was fire. There was no zeal, no enthusiasm, no apparent concern for us as members of the congregation. His whole attitude seemed to be detached and academic and formal.” (emphasis mine)

I found the following quotes to be extremely challenging and inspirational from a book I’m reading called Light and Heat: The Puritan View of the Pulpit.

“We must study as hard how to live well as how to preach well” – Richard Baxter

“He that is more frequent in his pulpit to his people than he is in his closet for his people is but a sorry watchman” – John Owen

“Believe it brethren, it is easier to declaim like an orator against a thousand sins of others than it is to mortify one sin like Christians in ourselves; to preach twenty sermons than one to our own hearts” – John Flavel

“Ministers knock at the door of men’s hearts, the Spirit comes with a key and opens the door” – Thomas Watson