preach to

preach to (one)

1. To deliver a sermon to one. The priest loved preaching to his congregation and sharing the word of God with them.
2. To deliver a firm moralistic lecture or discourse to one (about something). I wish you would stop preaching to me about my spending habits, Dad. The politician preached to his supporters of the need for new healthcare legislation.
See also: preach
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

preach to someone

to give a moral discourse to someone. Please don't preach to me. I know that I did wrong. When you preach to us like that, we don't pay any attention to you.
See also: preach
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs.
See also:
  • preach to (one)
  • preach at
  • preach at (one)
  • deliver of
  • deliver
  • deliver (someone or oneself) of (something)
  • throw a punch
  • deliver (someone) from (someone or something)
  • deliver from
  • come up with the goods
References in classic literature
I was a little girl and scarcely knew anything, and this old man seemed to me such a different sort of a man from anybody I had ever seen before that I thought he had perhaps come down from the sky to preach to us, and I said, 'Aunt, will he go back to the sky to-night, like the picture in the Bible?'
"Dear friends, come and take this blessedness; it is offered to you; it is the good news that Jesus came to preach to the poor.
"I have broken my engagement to preach to those poor drunken boobies at the fair--it is the first time I have played such a practical joke.
And in return you preach to your employers the brands of metaphysics that are especially acceptable to them; and the especially acceptable brands are acceptable because they do not menace the established order of society."
Jamie seems to be a good boy, but I shall preach to him if he isn't.
Rose-Milavec said FutureChurch launched Catholic Women Preach to give women a bigger voice within their current roles in the church because they are often times "misrepresented" and "left out." She also said the technological resources that Catholic Women Preach uses may also help people worldwide who are homebound in regions of world with no access to Mass or the Eucharist.
In preaching to millions, who in turn will preach to their off-spring, then Britain, already seriously deficient in respect (the worst of it being its knife culture), is surely standing on thin ice.
In the past, Hindu women had not tolerated Dalit women visiting their homes or even walking down their streets; however, women missionaries ambitiously employed Dalit women to accompany them and to preach to their Hindu counterparts.
He quickly learned that Hill is a Southern Baptist evangelist who unabashedly talks about the need to preach to public school students.
I'm a firm believer that only the full-time parish priest can really preach to his people with full effectiveness, because only he knows what's gone on in the parish for the past week.
Careful to add that he is "not here to preach to any other culture about what's right for it," he added, "I can help to hold up the mirror so that we can really look at ourselves.
28.19-20 to preach to all nations applied to him personally.
.preaching from the whole spectrum of theological education, something useful might be offered to the church and particularly to those called to preach to and for the church" (2).
Warren has been a pacesetter in ministry, preaching to people who are "unchurched." The primary question Warren asks as he prepares to preach to "seekers" is: "Would this message make sense to a totally unchurched person?" (13) What makes Warren's ideas about preaching important is that they are being adopted by significant numbers of preachers.
Unfortunately, with all the "wiggle room" removed from the canon laws governing preaching with the promulgation of this decree, only men will preach to the full assembly.