This is just a short paper I did on sermon preparation. I figure hey, you never know who might benefit from it, so here it is. Don't grade me! I already have a teacher for that!!
Sermons
are designed to change lives and to spark motivation in the sin sick soul to
give themselves over to the only one who can save, Jesus Christ. Sermons are
also designed to give strength to those in the Church of Jesus Christ who have
been wearied by life’s experiences and through the valleys they have been
through. With a few things said about
sermons if one word could sum that all up the word might very well be
“important.” With such importance being
laid on sermons by God the Father one must spend time developing their ability
to write one and construct one. It’s
been said that a sermon is only a sermon after it has been delivered and shared
with the audience in which it was supposed to be delivered. There are many
things to say about a sermon, but what about the preacher?
Before
one can preach one must be sent. The Bible tells us all about men and women of
God who were telling people the message of God, but first they encountered the
God of the message. God calls men and
women today to do the same thing, share His message of salvation to those
he/she encounters. God calls us as
preachers today to build up the Church of Jesus Christ and help all of those
around us through the gift of speaking. Ephesians 4:12-13 tells us the initial
purpose of the preaching and preacher: “For the perfecting of the saints, for
the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: Till we all
come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a
perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.” The
Minister must be well equipped to preach the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ
and Paul the Apostle put Timothy his son in the faith in great remembrance of
that many times. We as preachers of the
Gospel must first be right with God in order to get others to the right place
with God. Preachers usually can preach
their life stories along with their message and reach the audience, because we
are not that far apart, from the pulpit to the pews. Jonah preached repentance immediately after
he himself had to go and repent to God after rebelling against Gods plan and
purpose for his life. God uses the
preacher to preach, but God wants the preacher to be His kid, His child, His
blood bought saint and without that, preaching is in vain.
When
it comes to sermon choices, it’s easy for us to automatically pick something we
know of, something we are “more experienced” in, something that would make us
get rid of our notes, but God doesn’t always do what we want Him to do. It’s important to remember the scripture
found in Isaiah 55:8-9 even in preaching which reads “For my thoughts are not
your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the
heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my
thoughts than your thoughts.” For one to think they can just automatically pick
a sermon and write on it is preposterous.
The Lord sometimes will use a sermon text that you have little
“experience” in, in order to grab the attention of someone who has little
experience in Him. We cannot just stand
firm in our resolution to make our own sermon choices; we have to allow God
Himself the space in our heart to turn our hearts towards His Word and His own
choice for a sermon text. We can’t have
a clinched fist and closed heart when we desire to prepare a sermon, we must
give God the opportunity through prayer and personal study to direct, lead and
guide the preacher to the right preaching text by His Holy Spirit. Simply put James
Forbes says: “To be sure, we as preachers must enter a contract with the
Spirit. We have to agree to cooperate and allow ourselves to be used by the
Spirit.”[1]
When
it comes to sermon preparation, studying the Word of God is important. However, we can easily forget we need others
assistance as well. When we come into
the truth of God’s Word, God promised that He Himself personally sent teachers
to help equip us (preachers) to preach and teach the truth of God’s Word more
effectively. God uses people to help
people. God has anointed people to write
commentaries, without a few good commentaries the preaching we have may not be
as effective, we may be able to move a crowd, but God sees importance in
feeding the soul. Jesus told Peter to “feed the sheep” and that is indeed what
we must do “feed the sheep.”
Commentaries are great aids to help us in developing our own personal
life thus they will be of great need in our personal sermon preparation. I personally believe commentaries are the
most important part apart from personal prayer and study of the text yourself. Charles
Spurgeon says: “In order to be able to expound the Scriptures, and as an aid to
your pulpit studies, you will need to be familiar with the commentators: a
glorious army let me tell you, whose acquaintance will be your delight and
profit.”[2] Along
with commentaries we should grab hold of a good Bible dictionary as well, we
should delve at times into the Greek and Hebrew words to get a fuller and more
developed understanding of what was “really said” and “how it really was
supposed to be told.” God uses tools and
we today in 2013 have those tools readily available. There is something called “e-Sword” online
that will bless any student of the Bible and especially the preacher of the
Bible, it has tons of free downloads, commentaries, dictionaries, maps and
resources, within the vault of information found on e-Sword the preacher will
be blessed. We need tools and God has
given us those tools through the internet, through the local book store,
through the Pastors library and through us. What we know now, we must tell
someone soon. Paul said it best in 2 Timothy 2:15 “Study to shew thyself
approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing
the word of truth.” Study to give glory to God, rightly divide the truth and
preach the Gospel! Again Paul reminds us in 2 Timothy 4:2 “Preach the word; be
instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all
longsuffering and doctrine.”
Most
of the time preachers have one of two ways of developing sermons, topical or
expositional. Topical sermons are done
by “topics.” Expositional sermons are more intense and intrinsic towards the
Word of God. Topical sermons can be on
“what to do when you backslide,” “how to get from A to B with God,” “how to be
free from a sinful addiction,” “how to pray for people,” etc. etc. Expositional
sermons sometimes go into actually breaking down entire chapters verse by
verse. Expositional preaching a lot of
times is extremely similar to Bible study teaching. Expositional can take a long time, some
Pastors can expositionally preach through the entire Bible while other Pastors
topically preach every week and can have a sermon series, but it’s usually not
longer than 4-8 weeks. However, you can
incorporate expositional preaching and topical preaching at the same time. Expositional and topical sermons are great
ways to captivate the heart and mind of the hearer, but it’s also important to
remember, “Is it relevant?” Does the message really matter? Do people go
through “this” these days? It’s always important to get a good outlook of the
sermon, thinking about it in various ways, after-all you are the preacher, if
it doesn’t make sense to you, I doubt it will with anyone else.
Before
you read too far into the fundamentals of sermon preparation, it’s also
important to remember the most important thing, prayer. Before the preacher can preach the preacher
must first pray. Prayer is our
communication with God and it’s also Gods way of directing and communicating with
us. God can direct the preacher through
his personal prayer life. Preaching
isn’t preaching until serious intercessory prayer is on the line. Souls literally “hang in the balance” of
heaven and hell when a sermon is prepared and preached, it’s serious and the
most important thing we can do with something so serious is to “give it to God”
and we do that through prayer. God will
take our prayer time and use our devotional time as well. God wants the preacher to study for himself
not for others. Too often we get pulled
into the clutches of Ministry and only study the Bible to get a message or to
get a sermon or to have some great knowledge of the Bible in case someone asks
us a question, but God doesn’t desire that. God wants the preacher to learn
about Christ first and then go out and teach about Christ. We can’t forget about studying the Bible for
ourselves, we need that personal time with God where we are one on one with Him
and through that we will develop our messages, determine what illustrations we
use and see who our audience is.
There
are many other things that someone should be concerned about when preaching the
Gospel, but one is greatly important, illustrations! Without a good illustration the people may
forget what the purpose was. Ask The LORD to show you some way to visually
demonstrate what the sermon was about or how it can relate into the lives of
the Christian hearers. The truth is,
people want sermons that stick, ones that last, ones that are memorable and not
just to say “that was a great sermon” but “I learned how to apply Gods literal
word to my life today.” That’s what we need to bring to the people, life
application, that’s what is missing these days and that’s what illustrations
can do, they can bring life application to the mind of a person and make them
say “oh, that’s how that relates to my life.” Ask God for illustrations, find
out ways to make the prodigal son real, find ways to make fishing for men more
than just “you go share the Gospel with someone,” find ways to make Jonah’s
rebellion not just a big whale, tell others about your own rebellion and the
“whale” that you were in, be it financially, spiritually, emotionally, etc.
etc. God will use what you have been through to get to the minds of your
hearers, so don’t despise the days of small beginnings! Chuck Swindoll says “A
room full of seminary students will have different needs from a Sunday morning
congregation. A story that resonates with a group of single mothers would fall
flat when addressing a men’s group.”[3] In
short, it’s vitally important whenever we can to have something that will grasp
the ears of those who are hearing the sermon.
It’s one thing to be educated scripturally in the Bible, but it’s
another thing through pride of having to show that education in the
message. God wants His people to hear
the Gospel in simple terms; terms so simple that you could relate them like Him
“the birds of the air have nests…..”
When you are preparing your sermon, make sure you check the framework
and context of the message and say “if I was a new Christian or even an
experienced one, would I know what I just read and heard?”
When
it comes to qualifications to the Ministry, few people have them; actually we
don’t have qualifications! Nobody is qualified to preach or Pastor a Church! We
can’t be qualified because we would boast, we would glory in the sight of God
and God is completely against boasting. When we think of things that are needed
for sermon preparation and ministry, we need to remember that there is one
ingredient that will make the preaching all the more effective, inadequacy! If
we stand in a pulpit and people can see the pride on our faces and hearts it’s
a bad thing. Anytime we think “I can do this on my own” we are in quicksand and
don’t even know it. God uses those
people who have nothing to offer in order to through them offer hearers the
purpose of life, Jesus the Christ and the value/offer of Eternity, Heaven. God uses
people who are inadequate, so throughout all these ways and formulas we see
valuable insight, but the most valuable thing is your inability to do
something, we should shake at the thought of preaching anything about God. Most
of us can get a good conversation started and that’s great, but when it comes
to adding the Gospel to our lips we shouldn’t stand in full “reliance upon what
we already know” we need God, we need Jesus Christ, we need His Holy
Spirit. When we come into the agreement
with God that we are but dust and ashes and stand before God as broken vessels,
He will make the Ministry successful.
James Forbes says it like this “But the anointing of the Spirit undoubtedly
assists us and makes the difference in the overall preaching process.”[4] In
other words, when it’s time to preach, don’t just go preach, go pray, go study
your Bible, you go and worship God and let God direct you as you follow Him.
God Bless!
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Spurgeon,
Charles. Lectures to my Students.
Hendrickson Publishers Marketing. Peabody, MA. 2012. Print.
Forbes,
James. The Holy Spirit and Preaching.
Abingdon Press. Nashville, TN. 1989. Print.
Swindoll,
Charles. Touching Other with Your Words:
The Art and Practice of Successful Speaking. FaithWords. New York, NY.
2012. Print.
[1]
Forbes,
James. The Holy Spirit and Preaching.
Abingdon Press. Nashville, TN. 1989. Print. (p 83)
[2] Spurgeon,
Charles. Lectures to my Students.
Hendrickson Publishers Marketing. Peabody, MA. 2012. Print. (p. 563)
[3]
Swindoll,
Charles. Touching Other with Your Words:
The Art and Practice of Successful Speaking. FaithWords. New York, NY.
2012. Print. (p. 111)
[4] Forbes, James. The Holy Spirit and Preaching. Abingdon
Press. Nashville, TN. 1989. Print. (p. 76)
