Some years ago I remember someone (John Piper?) speaking on this subject at the EMA and they made a helpful comparison to music lessons. The aim of a music lesson is not that a week later you can remember you need to press this finger in order to get that note. You actually want the knowledge to have become internalised – you don’t remember the process of learning it necessarily, but you will forever know that pressing this finger has that result.

Of course, there is nothing new under the sun. I have just finished reading, and thoroughly enjoyed Marsden’s awesome biography of Jonathan Edwards. Edwards, famously, is known for the rigour and ruthless logic of his preaching. But here is one of his comments on the subject:

The main benefit that is obtained by preaching is by impression made upon the mind at the time of it, and not by the effect that arises afterwards by a remembrance of what was delivered.

As Marsden comments – “Preaching, in other words, must first of all touch the affections.”

We must never lose sight of the fact that more is going on when we preach than just the transfer of information. We trust and pray that God is at work, by His Holy Spirit, who will be at work in our mind, our hearts and our will.

“If there were a great treasure of gold and pearls accidentally found, and opened with such circumstances that all might have as much as they could gather; would not every one think it worth his while to make a business of gathering while it should last? But that treasure of divine knowledge, which is contained in the Scriptures, and is provided for every one to gather to himself as much of it as he can, is far more rich than any one of gold and pearls. How busy are all sorts of men, all over the world, in getting riches! But this knowledge is a far better kind of riches than that after which they so diligently and laboriously pursue.”

From Sermon 1 – Christian Knowledge.