Wise words from D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ Preaching & Preachers concerning pride and its antidote:
The sum total of all this is that the greatest of all the temptations that assail a preacher is pride. Pride, because he is set up there almost on a pedestal. He is standing in a pulpit, he is above the people, all of whom are looking at him. He has this leading place in the Church, in the community; and so his greatest temptation is that of pride. Pride is probably the deadliest and the most subtle of all sins, and it can assume many forms; but as long as one realises this all is well (256).
So what antidote does he offer to distinguish the temptations of pride?
The best way of checking any tendency to pride–pride in your preaching or in anything else that you may do or may be–is to read on Sunday nights the biography of some great saint. It does not matter which, or to which century or branch of the Church he belonged as long as he was a saint. If you are tempted to think that you have done unusually well, and that nobody ever preached like that before, well just dip into Whitefield’s Journals; and I guarantee that you will be cured in less than five minutes. Or take up a biography of David Brainerd or someone like that; and if that does not bring you to earth than I pronounce that you are just a professional and beyond hope. But that is the antidote; bring yourself down.
When we are tempted to think that we could not be more saturated with Scripture, we should consider John Bunyan of whom it was said, “Prick the man anywhere and he bleeds Bibline.” Or, if we are tempted to think that we could not be more devoted to the Lord by the way we spend our time during the day, Jonathan Edwards’ Resolutions will do the trick or Richard Baxter’s short article, How to Spend the Day With God, or even consider this brief biographical sketch of the Puritan Joseph Alleine provided by his wife:
He did rise constantly at or before four o’clock, and on the Sabbath sooner, if he did wake; he would be much troubled if he heard any smiths, or shoemakers, or such tradesmen, at work at their trades before he was in his duties with God; saying to me after, “O how this noise shames me! doth not my master deserve more than theirs?” From four till eight he spent in prayer, holy contemplations, and singing of psalms, which he much delighted in, and did daily practice alone, as well as in his family.
Ahh, yes. That will do. That will do.
