Richard Baxter: Pleading, Levity In Preaching, and Commandment III

I love the Puritans. It is just exciting to me how often I find their works so relevant for today. In a culture of perpetual levity and joking, just as much so in preaching, this quote by Richard Baxter from The Reformed Pastor speaks volumes.

“Reverence is that affection of the soul which proceedeth from deep apprehensions of God and indicateth a mind that is much conversant with him. To manifest irreverence in the things of God is to manifest hypocrisy, and that the heart agreeth not with the tongue. I know not how it is with others, but the most reverent preacher, that speaks as if he saw the face of God, doth more affect my heart, though with common words than an irreverent man with the most exquisite preparations. Yea, though he bawl it out with never so much seeming earnestness, if reverence be not answerable to fervency, it worketh but little. Of all preaching in the world, (that speaks not stark lies) I hate that preaching which tends to make the hearers laugh, or to move their minds with tickling levity, and affect them as stage-plays used to do, instead of affecting them with a holy reverence of the name of God. Jerome says, 'Teach in thy church, not to get the applause of people, but to set in motion the groan; the tears of the hearers are they praises.' The more of God appeareth in our duties, the more authority will they have with men. We should as it were, suppose we saw the throne of God, and the millions of glorious angels attending him, that we may be awed with his majesty when we draw near to him in holy things, lest we profane them and take his name in vain.”

It is not necessarily that humor is in itself bad, but that in our own day it has become a huge hindrance to the work of preaching. And when one preaches on the most deep and weighty matters of God, and sin, and salvation, why would we want to destroy our work through laughter? It is uncomfortable at times to preach the sinfulness of sin and receive silence from the room, but we should not let that silence hinder us from preaching the weight of sin. How do we take the name of God for ourselves, and yet at the same time try to receive the applauding sound of laughter, as if the people should be there to hear the preacher speak more so than hear God speak?