D. Martyn Lloyd Jones said: “We all tend to go to extremes; some rely only on their own preparation and look for nothing more; others, as I say, tend to despise preparation and trust to the unction, the anointing and the inspiration of the Spirit alone. But there must be no “either/or” here; it is always “both/and.” These two things must go together.” In preaching, the need for preparation is very real. Foregoing diligent work ahead of the sermon and trusting in the unction of the Holy Spirit is a sure way to fail. Failure to prepare demonstrates not a total trust in the Holy Spirit, but a total disregard. Why should the Spirit bless that which is not worthy of our investment, or honor what we have not committed to? The necessity of preparation will become clearer as we examine what it entails. The first step in preparing a sermon is to purify the heart. We must have communion with God in order to understand the text, the audience, and ourselves. The planks of personal agendas, frustrations, fears, and sin must be removed from the preacher’s eyes so that he can clearly see the truth. The preacher must live Matthew 6:33 as well: “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”
Preparing to Preach
Preparing the heart is a work that never ends. We might imagine this all happens in some quiet place where the preacher can be alone with God. Some of the work is done in that secret place, but it also happens in noisy restaurants, and around conference tables, and at the family dinner table. Keeping the heart is a community project even, and especially, for preachers.
An isolated preacher is a liability that should not be allowed. Accountability with people who can be trusted to seek the best interest of the preacher’s soul is invaluable to good preaching. Above all, a preacher must have means of remaining humble, and for that there is nothing better than family and friends who see him outside the curated confines of ministry. We wish that more ministers could have the liberty to be themselves, to be weak, to be occasionally silly, and to be disappointingly normal.
It is when the weakness of the man is known that the power of God’s abiding grace is made perfectly evident in the ministry. To know that man in the pulpit could never be up there in his own power is a wonderful blessing. Of course, it is always true, and the more people who know the harder it is for the preacher to forget it.
- D. Martyn Lloyd Jones: “The greatest of all the temptations that assail a preacher is pride. Pride, because he is set up there almost on a pedestal. He is standing in a pulpit, he is above the people, all of whom are looking to him. He has this leading place in the Church, in the community; and so, his greatest temptation is that of pride. Pride is probably the deadliest and the most subtle of all sins, and it can assume many forms; but as long as one realizes this all is well.”
The great need in preparing to preach, and in the act of preaching, is a sure conviction of the glory of God, the truth of His Gospel of Grace, and the surpassing need of all people (including the man himself), and the power of the inspired Word through the working of the Holy Spirit. A preacher must be sure that His Lord will be there watching Him, and that someday he will answer for every word he speaks.
See James 3:1: “My brethren, be not many masters, knowing that we shall receive the greater condemnation.”
The pulpit is to be approached in reverential fear of God. Mingled with that fear should be a profound hope that the Holy Spirit will be working. Every week a preacher must know that God’s Word will never return to Him void. See Isaiah 55:11: “So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.”
Even if he serves the same five people each week for a decade without seeing any sign of improvement he should preach with conviction that there is divine power at work. Not because he relishes in that idea, or longs for miraculous results, or because it is expected of him. No, preachers preach because they are compelled to by a conviction that burns as fire in their bones that the Word of God is sorely needed.
See Acts 4:20: “For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.”
O, it is the keeping of that flame of conviction that is the most necessary. Do not let lusts pollute it, or worldly desires dilute it, or vein concerns snuff it out. Brothers, keep that flame alive by continually looking to God whose greatness, and steadfast loving kindness are our only inspiration. Do not lose heart and let the fire grow dim, but stoke it by remembering the power of the Gospel in your own life, in the history of the Church, and most especially in Scripture.
See Ezekiel 37:1-14 and Acts 2.
- R. C. Sproul: “The greatest awakening in the history of the church took place when…(preachers) were bold enough to proclaim the Word of God and saw their task to be presenting the unembellished, undiluted, unvarnished Word of God. That is why they pored over the texts of Scripture, being careful of their exegesis before they entered the pulpit. Because that was the center of their task, they were fearless. Their fearlessness, their boldness, their courage came from the conviction that what they were preaching and teaching was the Word of God.”
Dear brothers, it is not on you to preach a great sermon. There is nothing about you to make a sermon great. The greatness of every sermon is in the Good News which is proclaimed. There is no other message like it in the world, for there is no other message that saves sinners from eternal domination and leads them to eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
- Steven Lawson: “The greatness of the Gospel is not found in the messenger, but the message.”
It is this truth which compels us to do all in our power to be ready to preach. Though the needed element is already present, we work to remove any distractions from the vital message, to present it as clearly and plainly as we might: with a heart convicted and intent on seeking God.
The next step in preparation is to know (understand to such an extent that it fundamentally alters our being) the text. The idea of preaching is not simply to master the text, but to be mastered by it. The text must dictate the direction and contours of our sermon.
Many imagine that the bulk of sermon preparation is given over to reading commentaries, searching dictionaries and lexicons, and referencing theologies, but the truth is that time is best spent meditating on the Scripture itself. Praying over it, thinking it through, reading and rereading in different translations. Commentaries and other references have their place, but a good sermon comes first and foremost directly from the text operating upon a minister’s heart.
- Paul David Tripp: “Preaching is more than the regurgitation of your favorite exegetical commentary, or a rather transparent recast of the sermons of your favorite preachers, or a reshaping of notes from one of your favorite seminary classes. It is bringing the transforming truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ from a passage that has been properly understood, cogently and practically applied, and delivered with the engaging tenderness and passion of a person who has been broken and restored by the very truths he stands up to communicate. You simply cannot do that without proper preparation, meditation, confession, and worship.”
The third and final step of sermon preparation is to compile the message. Some pastors do this by writing out full manuscripts, others have notes, and some prefer to enter the pulpit armed only with the passage itself. Each approach has its advantages and disadvantages, but whether we are writing out the entire sermon or foregoing any writing at all, we need to rehearse the sermon before we deliver it.
We might go into the empty sanctuary and stand in the spot we will take on Sunday morning and deliver it, or we might sit in our office and preach it to ourselves in silence. I know one pastor preached his sermons to a herd of cattle, and it is said another preached to some trees. The important thing is that we hear the sermon ourselves.
- John Owen: “A man preacheth that sermon only well unto others which preacheth itself in his own soul… If the word do not dwell with power in us, it will not pass with power from us.”
As we rehearse what we will preach we should be thinking of the hearts that will hear it. We should be thinking of their struggles, of their victories, of their needs, and of their wants. We should think of how the sermon might live beyond its first delivery. Will people recall our main point, and is that point as transcendent as the Gospel? Are we bringing our people before an awesome God? Or are we simply telling them what they haven’t done, and need to do? If we shall break them with the law, are we equally ready to make them whole with grace? Does our tone match the text? Will our tone communicate the character of God?
There is so much to contemplate with great care. Souls for whom Christ died shall be under the power of our preaching, and we are responsible. We cannot think that we will be carried away as an excuse for carelessness.
See 1 Corinthians 14:32: “And the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets.”
There should be order in sermons as God is a God of order. An extemporaneous preacher (one who preaches without notes), needs to be extra careful. This point draws us back to our first, keep a close watch on your heart, preacher.
It is a good practice to record a rehearsal of the sermon if time permits. This allows one to hear the flow of the outline, and the tone of the delivery. Reading the sermon manuscript can help with both of these, but hearing is better in this writer’s opinion. Listening to oneself can be uncomfortable, but the discomfort will be worth it.
We might wonder how much time ought to be devoted to preparing sermons. Some would like to have thirty hours; some get by with as little as one. So, how many hours exactly? Dear reader, all of them. Before anyone objects that there are other needful activities in ministry let me explain this answer.
Everything a pastor does throughout his week is involved in the preparation of his heart to preach. Some of what he does will help him to understand the needs of his congregation, and some of what he experiences will add to his understanding of the text he will preach on. Time not directly spent in sermon prep may yet be preparing a man for the sermon.
However, the main reason for our argument is that Paul’s inspired admonition to the preacher is not, “Be prepared to preach on Sunday morning,” but, “Be ready to preach in season and out of season.” All preachers should be capable of extemporaneous preaching if needed. The only way to do this is to be always prepared. The preacher must be like the wise man of Psalm, planted near the stream of living waters. He must be the branch of John 15, always abiding in the life of the True Vine. He must head Paul’s earlier inspired admonition to preachers:
See 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.”
All of our personal and family devotion, all of our discipleship conversations, all of our reading and listening, and all of our praying is valuable to the pulpit ministry. The more of the Word we have in us, the more is there to inform our sermons. All of our counseling, teaching, visitation, meetings, and administration hone skills that we can use in the pulpit. As we live the Word we are preparing to preach it from experience.
The thing to remember is that a preacher must still know his text, and know it well enough that he can carry it with him wherever he goes. He must have it ready in heart and mind for meditation at any moment of opportunity. He must be applying it throughout his days as Sunday approaches.
- Paul Washer: “Study the Word to live the Word to preach the Word.”
- Richard Baxter: “Content not yourselves with being in a state of grace, but be also careful that your graces are kept in vigorous and lively exercise, and that you preach to yourselves the sermons which you study, before you preach them to others.”
- George Muller: “If the preacher strives to speak according to the rules of this world, he may please many, particularly those who have a literary taste. But he is less likely to become an instrument in the hands of God for the conversion of sinners or for the building up of the saints. Neither eloquence nor depth of thought makes a truly great preacher. Only a life of prayer and meditation will render him a vessel ready for the Master’s use and fit to be employed in the conversion of sinners and in the edification of the saints.”
There are a few more things to say about sermon prep. It is better to spend time editing out what is unnecessary than seeking out more to add. There are so many things we might say on any given Sunday, faithful, textually grounded things even; but who could bear them all?
- Martin Luther: “It is not necessary for a preacher to express all his thoughts in one sermon. A preacher should have three principles: first, to make a good beginning, and not spend time with many words before coming to the point; secondly, to say that which belongs to the subject in chief, and avoid strange and foreign thoughts; thirdly, to stop at the proper time.”
It is not the task of a preacher to display his own intellectual prowess or showcase his scholarship. Parsing Greek is not going to impress or help the majority of your congregants. Neither will many be impressed with the breadth of your reading. It is mere vanity to show off knowledge like this. This is not to say that knowledge in itself is a bad thing.
- Joel Beeke: “Head knowledge is not evil in and of itself. Most of our Reformed and Puritan forefathers were highly educated. The Reformers never tired of stressing the value of Christian education. But this education must be empowered by the Holy Spirit and applied to the heart. Head knowledge is insufficient without the Spirit’s application to the inward man.”
When we cite a source, introduce something of Greek or Hebrew, or recount an event from Church history, our aim must be to help the listeners understand the text and its application while directing them to other helpful and trustworthy sources of instruction. We are preaching for the people’s good and for God’s Glory.
Just as we might get caught up in our scholarship, we may also be enamored with the sermon itself. Ah, how clever it is, how well structured and thought-out. We admire the rhetorical devices and the illustrations and we think it is really something. We begin to think about what this sermon could accomplish, and how the people who hear it will respond, and…we have lost ourselves in idol worship.
- D. Martyn Lloyd Jones: “There is a very real danger of our putting our faith in our sermon rather than in the Spirit. Our faith should not be in the sermon, it should be in the Holy Spirit Himself.”
We should do our best work each week and we should submit it to God as the best of our efforts as a genuine offering to His Glory. We should then trust in what God can do with what we have given Him. We should worship God with our sermon in every phase from initial thoughts to final delivery. No sermon can save us.
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