Having read dozens of books on preaching, I decided to compile a list of all the “musts” a preacher is told to consider and implement before delivering a sermon. Many of the books offer different ideas and concepts; and many other ideas and concepts are repeated in those books.
One thing I find more than interesting is the lack of commands in Scripture for how a message is to be delivered. Yet, every book on preaching gives commands for how to preach. It is also worth considering that every prophet, apostle and evangelist preached differently than every other one. Even Jesus did not necessarily fulfill the communicative styles of his day or preach in a manner that is anything like what preachers are supposed to do today. At the same time, the burden found in God’s Word is placed most heavily upon the listener to hear God speaking the Word through his messenger!
I am not saying that one who brings God’s Word to God’s people during formal worship services should not study ways to improve his style and method. As some have said, “It is a sin to bore God’s people into hell.” By all means, every preacher should make an effort to be more effective in the delivery.
By reading the list below, perhaps you might have a better sense of what many pastors struggle with when it comes to working on their weekly sermons.
Considerations for Preaching
1. Read the Scripture with expression
2. Read the Scripture with clarity
3. Give an introduction:
a. That engages and gets the attention of the audience
b. Lays the foundation for the sermon theme
c. Makes obvious the sermon theme
d. Arouses their interest
e. Touches upon a need directly or indirectly
f. Is it relevant?
g. Does it have a ministry sentence (summary and main point that includes what the expected response should be and an element of appeal or challenge).
4. Make sure this is expository preaching
Which is “Bible-centered preaching. That is, it is handling the text ‘in such a way that its real and essential meaning as it existed in the mind of the particular Biblical writer and as it exists in the light of the over-all context of Scripture is made plain and applied to the present-day needs of the hearers.’” (S. Greidanus)
5. Concentrate on the original message, but recognize the discontinuity of progressive revelation, kingdom history and culture.
6. Does the sermon recognize the overarching continuity?
a. One faithful God
b. One covenant people
7. Focus upon the goal of the text
8. “To understand a text is to understand the question behind the text, the question that called the text into being” (Richard Palmer)
a. Redefine the specific issue
b. Search for the underlying principle
9. The form of the sermon
a. The main point of the sermon is clearly derived from the main point of the text
b. “An oral topical sentence must do far more. It must state the idea clearly, tersely, descriptively and formulaically so that not only does the thought become memorable by being part of a larger pattern; it must also have an intrinsic memorable quality in its own right, such as sharply descriptive nouns and verbs that make the milestones of the speech’s progression stand out clearly.” (Wilbur Ellsworth)
c. The sub-points of the sermon flow naturally from the main point and coordinate with each other? Are the transitions fluid, clear, obvious and helpful?
d. The content of the sub-points are adequately developed?
e. The content includes:
i. The person and work of Jesus Christ
ii. Salvation by grace in Christ alone
iii. An appeal to the conscience about sin and guilt
iv. A focus upon eternity
v. Accountability to God
vi. A call for a specific response of repentance and faith
f. The biblical passage is explained adequately?
g. Is it obvious that good exegesis has taken place?
h. Are the big themes of the Bible (God’s rule, covenant, grace, people, plan of redemption, His glory and the fulfillment of all these in Jesus Christ) reflected upon or touched by the sermon?
i. Does the original message to the original audience inform our current circumstances?
j. Use illustrations that help the audience get the point
k. Don’t use illustrations that detract from the main point
l. Does the sermon reflect the dialogical nature between God and his people?
m. Does the sermon convey the sense that the audience is one with the original hearers of the Scripture passage?
n. Does it employ a gracious invitation?
o. Does is admonish with sober warnings?
p. Will it preach perseverance to believers?
10. Application
a. Is application spread throughout the text or is it placed at the end?
b. “What application does, then, is to “attach” to the simple interpretation of the passage the meaning for the congregation today in the context of their modern life situations…[w]hat this means is that not only must the preacher study the passage for its historical/grammatical meanings, but he also must:
i. Study the present situation(s) that the congregation faces,
ii. Study the various members of the congregation, who are facing it,
iii. Abstract the truth or principle that the Holy Spirit intended to teach from the passage,
iv. Discover how the writer applied this principle to his readers, and
v. Do the same today for his own congregation in their modern setting.” (Jay Adams)
c. Does the application flow from the text itself?
d. Does the application address people where they live?
i. Is it interesting?
ii. Is it for today?
iii. Does it address issues of the day?
e. Is the application evangelical (not moralistic), flowing from the grace of God in Christ?
f. Is the application specific, pointed and aimed at the conscience?
g. What difference will this sermon make?
h. Does it commend the Good News of God’s grace to the hearers?
i. Does the sermon take into consideration the various needs of the hearers in the congregation?
i. Unbelievers who are both ignorant and unteachable
ii. Some who are teachable, but yet ignorant
iii. Some who have knowledge, but are not as yet humbled…
iv. Some who are humbled
v. Some who believe…
vi. Some who have fallen…
vii. That the congregation is made up of mingled people (William Perkins in the Art of Prophecy)
j. Be careful not to communication that only the application of the text is relevant. “…[A]pplication is based on a proper comprehension of the passage’s meaning and they will probably not take the application to heart unless this is clear to them.” (Stuart)
11. The conclusion
a. Does it flow from the sermon?
b. Is it a well-rounded wrap-up of the sermon?
c. Is the purpose of the sermon obviously achieved?
d. Is the focus of the conclusion appropriate to the sermon?
e. Does it challenge the audience to think or do something specific?
12. Delivery and style:
a. Will it be effective (what is said and how it is said)
b. “Apart from life-related, biblical content we have nothing worth communicating; but without skillful delivery, we will not get our content across to the congregation. In order of significance the ingredients making up a sermon are thought, arrangement, language, voice and gesture. In priority of impressions, however, the order reverses.” (Haddon Robinson)
c. Preach in understandable vocabulary (be careful about using difficult theological terms unless you define them)
i. Is there varied and imaginative language?
ii. Is there sense appeal?
aa. Is it visually effective?
bb. Does it describe and employ the senses of taste,
smell, see, hear, or feel? (Jay Adams)
cc. Is there a vivid description?
dd. Does it paint a picture for them?
d. Are the verbs active or passive? Is there action?
e. Consider verbal aspects:
i. Use good voice inflection and clarity
ii. Make sure the volume is varied and appropriate
iii. Is the voice clear and easy to listen to?
iv. Are there fresh or abundant metaphors, similes or good use of pictorial language?
v. Is there unnecessary verbiage?
vi. Does it respect everyone in the congregation, all levels of physical, mental and spiritual maturity?
f. Announce your points in the sermon only if is will help the audience understand or more clearly remember the Holy Spirit’s purpose of the text (Jay. Adams).
g. Is the sermon animated conversation?
h. Use appropriate body language
i. Do not lean on the pulpit
ii. Do not use any habitual physical actions that can be distracting
i. Is the overall appearance attractive or distracting?
j. Use facial gestures and expressions that are appropriate
k. Have good eye contact with the audience
l. Have a commanding presence in the pulpit
m. Is the sermon oral English or written English? (re: Jay Adams)
i. Oral English is more concrete, looser, less grammatically exact, more repetitious, more limited in use of vocabulary – especially in terms or jargon. It must be comprehended at the speaker’s rate – the first time over.
ii. Written English can be more compressed and concise, more technical.
iii. Is the sermon going to be presented in oral English or bookish English?
n. Consider the length of sermon (25-35 minutes):
i. “The true way to shorten a sermon is to make it more interesting” (H. W. Beecher)
ii. “Brevity may be the soul of wit, but the preacher is not a wit. A Christianity of short sermons is a Christianity of short fibre.” (P. T. Forsyth)
o. Is it relevant? Is the congregation involved?
i. Address general needs
ii. Address the whole person
iii. Use dialogue
iv. Use concrete and vivid language
p. Is there a love and zeal for preaching that at times can be described as a mania? (Acts 26:24; Jn. 10:20; 2 Cor. 5:13)?
q. Are you being authentic or trying to mimic someone else?
r. Take into consideration the manner of power preaching (Acts 4:29; 20:31)
i. Submit to the Holy Spirit in prayer
ii. Be full of zeal, intensity and boldness
iii. Proclaim with fear toward God and fearlessness toward man
iv. Anticipate God’s protection in the midst of suffering and opposition to the Word
v. Expect the Word to grow by God’s sovereign appointment
vi. Preach with compassion and tears (Acts 20:19,31)
13. Effectiveness
a. Speak with confidence and boldness
b. Speak with fire, conviction and unction
c. Will the sermon move or persuade the audience?
d. Was the audience taken into consideration? Think analytically about the audience:
i. How much do they know about the message?
ii. What, if any, are some misconceptions and/or prejudices that they may hold?
iii. What are some of the obstacles that may intrude in:
1. Communicating the message,
2. Persuading people of its truth, and/or
3. Motivating them to act on it?
iv. Are there any reasons why I might turn them off?
v. What technical terms will I need to use and to explain?
vi. How would I best illustrate the truth to this group?
1. What are the best areas from which to draw illustrations?
2. What sort of language should I use with this group to make my illustrations clear?
vii. What do I need to say in order to demonstrate how to implement the action(s) required?
viii. Is the audience varied enough in the above matters that I shall have to approach the question from more than one angle?
ix. Given the general spiritual condition of the congregation, how much truth can I communicate, and to what depth?
x. Is my problem with this group fundamentally to give them information, to persuade them to believe or disbelieve something (or both), or to get them to do what they already know and believe? Or is it a combination of two or more of the above? (Jay Adams)
e. Does the sermon consider that the people might be expectantly waiting for God to speak to their problem from it, or does it merely analyze the scriptural passage? (Jay Adams)
f. Will the sermon teach anything?
i. It is good, solid doctrine?
ii. Does it touch the mind?
iii. What will they know they did not know before?
iv. Will their faith be challenged?
g. Will the sermon offer hope?
i. Will it touch their lives?
ii. Will the sermon awaken wonderment?
iii. Is the preaching fresh and in a surprising way?
iv. Does it underscore the victory of the Kingdom of grace in our moment of time?
v. Does it tell them what is expected of them?
h. What kind of emotional response might the sermon evoke?
i. Is it warm or cold?
ii. Is there a sense of trust, courage, peace or guilt?
iii. Does it convey trust, assurance, confidence and love?
iv. Does it convey a sense of intimacy?
v. Does it speak to their personal relationship with Jesus Christ?
vi. Is it moving?
i. Is this an oral speech, a sermon? Or is it reading literacy? “Orality requires more use of illustrations, comparison, contrast and figurative language to stir the imagination and set up mental pictures in order for the listening ear to take in and process what is being heard.” (Wilbur Ellsworth)
j. If after people have listened to the sermon, will they come away anxious about themselves or reflecting on themselves? (D.M. Lloyd-Jones)
k. Does the sermon address the total person, so that the hearer becomes involved and knows that he has been dealt with and addressed by God through the preacher? (D.M. Lloyd-Jones)
l. Will this sermon humble the sinner?
i. Will this sermon exalt the Savior?
ii. Will this sermon promote holiness?
iii. Does this sermon glorify God?
14. Other considerations:
a. Does this sermon have the three essentials of truth, clarity and passion? (Dr. G. Campbell Morgan)
b. Does the sermon do justice to and profitable for the whole counsel of God (Acts 20:20, 27)?
c. Be sure that in all the sermon, from Old Testament and from the New – Christ and His death and resurrection condition everything else that is said. (Jay Adams)
d. Is the sermon Spirit-guided? (Jer. 1:9, 17: 26:2)
e. Is the sermon faithful to God (“…let him who has my word speak my word faithfully” Jer. 23:16, 28; Ez. 13:2,3).
f. Does the sermon “disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed?” (Rev. Chad Walsh) or “break a hard heart and heal a broken heart?” (John Newton).
g. Does it add to God’s Word (like the Pharisees) or subtract from it (like the Sadducees)?
h. Is there exposition, application and exhortation in the sermon (ex: Deut. 31:30; 32:44; Deut. 1:5; 4:1; 5:1-21; 8:1; 10:12ff)?
i. Does the sermon aim for corporate edification, unity, maturity and growth (Eph. 4)?
“…the explanation and application of the Word to the congregation of Christ in order to produce corporate preparation for service, unity of faith, maturity, growth and upbuilding.” (Rev. Peter Adam; p. 83).
j. Is this sound preaching or sound doctrine? “To be sound is to be healthy; healthy doctrine is doctrine which is not only true but also productive of godliness. Sound doctrine is healthy teaching; that is, it changes people’s lives.” (Peter Adam, p. 84).
k. Will this sermon help people to understand and receive Jesus Christ and Him crucified?
l. Recall that preaching well is not the objective, but rather the means to the end.
m. Is it theologically weighty and also pastorally appropriate?
n. Is the sermon tied to literacy or orality? “…when a listener to a speech or sermon is compelled to take careful and copious notes to comprehend and retain what the speaker has said, the result, whether consciously or not, is to return communication from orality to literacy as quickly as possible.” (Wilbur Ellsworth)
o. Don’t make the mistake of preaching the Gospel and hardly anything else but the Gospel, nor preach the rest of the counsel of God as if it were unrelated to the Gospel (Jay Adams)
p. Don’t preach in a way that resembles the lecture format by which aspiring young theologs almost exclusively are trained in seminaries. It may be fine for theological halls (at times), but it is not fine for the pulpit – IT IS NOT PREACHING! (Jay Adams).
q. Be careful not to “inadvertently convey the impression that the key to understanding the mind of God is found in the acquisition of an arsenal of highly technical and scientific skills. Over time men may come to regard the scriptures the way a biology student regards his proverbial frog; as a thing to dissect, rather than a source from which to hear God’s voice.” (A. G. Azurdia III)
r. Has regard been given to the “three essential principles of apostolic ministry…: the message, method, and means for ministry ordained by Jesus Christ? The divine message? Jesus Christ. The divine method? Authoritative proclamation. The divine means? The power of the Spirit of God.” (A. G. Azurdia III)
s. Which style of preaching is this: Reformational or Puritanical?
i. “For the Reformers, the whole sermon was application; what was added, attached, or folded in was done naturally, organically, as an integral part of the whole. From start to finish, as they interpreted the Scriptures for the congregation, at the same time, they preached what the text had to say about the people sitting before them. Application was made all along.
ii. In contrast, the Puritans exposited the text…they tacked on at the end of the sermon various and sundry ‘uses’ or ‘improvements on the text’ by way of application.” (Jay Adams)
iii. The form of the Puritan sermon would be Declaration, the Explanation, and the Application. The first two divisions were to convince the reason, while the last division was aimed at warming the heart’s affections into accepting the doctrine of the first division… The preacher’s aim should be first to convince the understanding and then to engage the heart. Light first, then heat.” (R. Bruce Bickel)
t. What is the aim? “If the aim of Christian preaching is more than intellectual enlightenment and moral reformation, but is, instead, the thorough-going transformation of people dead in trespasses and sins, then Christian preachers must rest their dependence solely upon the Spirit of the living God because such a transformation requires a power of an altogether supernatural kind. Stated simply, the power of the Holy Spirit is the sine qua non of gospel preaching, the one thing without which nothing else matters.” (Azurdia III)
u. Is the sermon merely expounding the text or does it preach Jesus – a living person with a living voice? (Wilbur Ellsworth).
v. Is the sermon a dissected transcript of the Biblical text rearranged into a lawyer’s brief with propositional truths? If so, is this faithful to the Scripture? (Don Wardlaw)
i. “If the text ‘makes its point’ in story form then we ought to seriously consider constructing a sermon that is faithful to the content and the form of the biblical text…” (D. Wardlaw)
ii. “…the goal is to study carefully the form of the text and how it, in its literary context, plays its part in carrying the message to its intended effect with the hearers…the example of miracle stories which ‘were designed to evoke a wow! from listeners. The wise preacher will guess that a turgid apologetic for miracles or, worse, any rational explanation of miracles may scuttle the sense of wow and, therefore, be homiletically inappropriate. If a passage wants to provoke amazement, it would seem homiletically respectful to aim at the effect.” (David Buttrick)
w. Don’ts:
i. Allegorize – searching beneath the literal meaning of a passage for the ‘real’ meaning.
ii. Spiritualize – discarding the earthly, physical, historical reality the text speaks about and crosses the gap with a spiritual analogy of that historical reality.
iii. Imitating – seeing biblical figures as merely individuals whose qualities we are to shun or mimic. It “tends to transform the biblical author’s description into prescription for today.” (S. Greidanus)
iv. Moralizing – “…means drawing moral inferences, usually things to do or become.” (Keck)
v. Apply “[u]nless you are convinced that it is the intention of the Scripture that it be applied in a certain way, no suggestion as to application can be confidently advanced.” (Douglas Stuart)
15. Personal considerations
a. Do I, through this sermon, serve God in Christ and the people well?
b. Is there humility, recognizing that in myself I am unable to speak for God? (Ex. 4:10ff)
c. Am I serving biblically?
d. “The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word. Morning by morning he wakens, wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught.” (Isa. 50:4)
e. Am I aware that it is God who makes me competent and sufficient to the task (2 Cor. 2:16; 3:5-6; 4:7)
f. Do I recall that I am powerless and that it is the Spirit and the Word that is effective?
g. Is the sermon preached from the heart to hearts?
h. Am I preaching this sermon as never sure to preach again, and as a dying man to dying men? (Richard Baxter)
i. Remember that “every passion in the preacher does not constitute unction. While it does not expel intellectual activity, authority, and will, it superfuses these elements of force with the love, the pity, the tenderness, the pure zeal, the seriousness, which the topics of redemption should shed upon the soul of a ransomed and sanctified sinner.” (Dabney)
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