day no. 15,519: heralds are not at the behest of hearers

"If you are afraid of men and a slave to their opinion, go and do something else. Go and make shoes to fit them. Go even and paint pictures, which you know are bad, but which suit their bad taste. But do not keep on all your life preaching sermons which say not what God sent you to declare." -- Phillip Brooks

You would better be employed making bad sandwiches for those with bad taste than you be preaching bad sermons suited to the tastes of your hearers. If someone likes double onions and peanut butter, that's there business, but if they don't like double imputation, you have no business accommodating their fancies. Any sermon crafted according to the itches of its listeners is by nature bad. A good sermon ought to take its listeners bad taste into account, but not in order to cater to them, but to confront and correct them.

Sermons are not preached primarily because the people need to hear them. The heralds are not sent at the behest of the hearers.  Preachers speak because the great glory of God demands to be declared and the majesty of His Good News begs to be shared. If you do not want to do that, don't.

You can water down whiskey and still tend bar, but you cannot water down the Word and still tend flocks. 

Someone once asked Martin Luther, "How did you bring about the Reformation? How did you turn Europe upside down?"

He replied, "I simply taught, preached and wrote God's Word. Otherwise, I did nothing. When I slept, the Words so greatly weakened the papacy that never a prince or emperor inflicted so much damage upon it. I did nothing. The Word did it all."