While I’ve not kept an actual record of the number of sermons I’ve preached, I’m confident it’s now more than one thousand. Many preaching experts say a preacher has to get at least three hundred sermons under his belt to become reasonably proficient. If in fact that is an accepted benchmark, I was gifted the opportunity to complete it in my first three years in ministry. That proved to be a deeply formative season of life: the demands of preaching nearly every Sunday (often twice) and on Wednesday nights as well was the kind of crucible that makes beginning preachers want to learn pretty quickly what the whole process is about.

I was merely twenty-four years old when my wife and I, along with our two young children, moved into a thatch-roofed cottage along the southeastern coast of Ireland to plant a church. While there had been a bit of orientation beforehand, there was no preparatory training.  I was commissioned to serve as a pastor in the church planting endeavor late in the process, as the organization had not yet found someone to fill that role.  Thus I started preaching on our second Sunday in the new church….and on Wednesdays.  It wasn’t long before I started to feel overwhelmed. 

Prior to this time, I was not without some public speaking experience. I led in devotionals and topics at my home church along with speaking at youth conferences and various seminars. Initially, I thought preaching would be just more of the same. The notable difference was that no one was assigning me a title, topic, or text. I was responsible for that every Sunday. Not long into my tenure, I found this to be the most challenging part of the endeavor. What was I to preach about this Sunday? How would I decide? How would I know? Should I pray until I get an answer? Suppose I don’t? It wasn’t long until Saturdays were spent in trying to figure this out. The clock was ticking and “Sunday’s a-coming!”

Several months later I was in a Christian bookstore in Dublin, perusing the shelves for any kind of help I might find. That’s when I came across Haddon W. Robinson’s book, Biblical Preaching: The Development and Delivery of Expository Messages. (If you’ve read this far, take note that I’m giving a hardcover copy of this book away as a prize for our trivia question. Click the link in the email and submit an answer for your chance to win!) This book was a pivot point in my preaching. While I won’t do a full-blown book review here, I want to note a few key concepts that have been foundational to my preaching ever since—and these are only from Chapter 1, “The Case for Expository Preaching.”

Robinson defines expository preaching as the following:

Expository preaching is the communication of a biblical concept, derived and transmitted through a historical, grammatical, and literary study of a passage in its context, which the Holy Spirit first applies to the personality and experience of the preacher, then through the preacher, applies to the hearers.

What first of all settled in as a conviction for me was that God had already spoken, and that His primary way of continuing to speak was through the canon of Scripture that He had already given to us. It was imperative that I as a preacher and teacher “stand under” the scriptures and allow them to inform and reshape my thinking, affections, and behaviors. As I allowed the Holy Spirit to do that in my study, I could then communicate that message to the congregation. The authority was not mine – I was young, inexperienced, and seriously lacking in wisdom about many things. Yet God could still speak through me as I submitted myself to Him in this process.  I could speak with authority only as what I said was explicitly derived from what He had already said!

Those were the most basic steps. The decision was simply what passage would be the text for the sermon. As I look back on my sermon notes from those years, I note that there were extended seasons in which I worked my way through a section or book of the Bible (such as the Sermon on the Mount, Joshua, James and Philippians).  Occasionally I focused on a particular character in the Bible, studying the passages that told us about that person and how God was at work in and through him. At times our small church community was discussing a particular issue, and I would search out a passage or passages that addressed the issue. What was always a constant – at least in aspiration – was the quest to unpack the biblical text historically, grammatically, and literarily; to understand the key ideas being communicated; and to let that, by the ministry of the Holy Spirit, first of all scrutinize my own thinking, affections, and actions. There were moments of wonder and worship as well as confession and repentance, but always fresh knowledge, faith, hope, and a growing realization of the love and grace of God that compels us to love and good works.

I began to realize that if the message of scripture did not first grip me, confront me, and renew and inspire me, there was little chance it would do so for anyone else. If I was not humbled by the message, invariably the sermon would take on a tone of judgment rather than gospel invitation.

Expository preaching allows the text to govern the sermon and frees the preacher from needing to be an authority in his own right. Exposition is primarily a philosophy by which we approach preaching rather than a method. It requires careful work to understand the text as well as we can in its context within the section, its book of the Bible, and the canon as a whole. The way in which we come to understand the passage also needs to be vetted in light of Christian understanding of that text throughout the past two thousand years. This is a critical part of arriving at an orthodox conclusion. We must engage in study alongside the theologians, scholars, and pastors of the previous generations.

The ideas that emerge during the course of study then give shape to the message we preach. These ideas must be carefully derived from the words of scripture, so that those listening can do the Berean work of searching the scriptures for themselves to verify the message. We must first take those ideas into our own lives, allowing them to examine us, probe our hearts and minds, confront our behaviors, and lift our vision to the life of faith, hope, and love God intends for his people. One reason this is so critical is that preaching is as Phillips Brooks states, “truth poured through personality.”  As preachers, we have a significant impact on the message, and it must obviously have engaged our hearts and minds deeply if it is to be used by God in the transformation of others.

Only at this point can we effectively begin to communicate the message of the text into words that engage, inform, and provide guidance for the congregation to whom we are preaching. It must be communicated in contemporary language—language that is common to the people in the pew—so that they can understand and apply the message of scripture to their thinking, affections, and behaviors. We must explain who God is, how He works with his people, what has gone wrong in the world, and how, through the death and resurrection of his Son Jesus, God is redeeming all things to Himself.

Sermons are one of the means God uses to invite people into His kingdom and align them with his redemptive purposes in Christ. Sunday by Sunday, we remind people of the story of God and urge them to grow in their knowledge of Him, their faith in Him, their love for Him, and inspire a renewed hope for the redemption of all things. It is from this posture that we return to our work in the world as ambassadors of Christ, fellow workers with Him who has equipped us to love lavishly in a broken world.

So help us God!