That is what you must do with your sermons, make them red-hot; never mind if men do say you are too enthusiastic, or even too fanatical, give them red-hot shot. There is nothing else half as good for the purpose you have in view. We do not go out snow-balling on Sundays, we go fire-balling; we ought to hurl grenades into the enemy’s ranks.
—C.H. Spurgeon, The Soul Winner: How to Lead Sinners to the Saviour; Fleming H. Revel edition, 69.
Proclaiming the Word must always be accompanied with love. I can’t get around what 1 Corinthians 13:1-2 says. Angry, venomous, mean-spirited, vile preachers are not speaking as God would have them. You can mock the so-called “tone-police,” but the Word is clear—speak with the tongues of angels and men, speak with great prophetic revelation, speak with incredible faith, and even sacrifice to the point of destitution and even martyrdom—but if you don’t have love you are worse than ineffective—you are painful to your hearers and destructive to the church.
Read the rest of the post here: Preaching that Will Amount to Nothing
“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. ” (1 Cor. 13:1-6)
Proclaiming the Word must always be accompanied with love. I can’t get around what 1 Corinthians 13:1-2 says. Angry, venomous, mean-spirited, vile preachers are not speaking as God would have them. You can mock the so-called “tone-police,” but the Word is clear—speak with the tongues of angels and men, speak with great prophetic revelation, speak with incredible faith, and even sacrifice to the point of destitution and even martyrdom—but if you don’t have love you are worse than ineffective—you are painful to your hearers and destructive to the church.
And when I say that the Word must be accompanied with love, I don’t define love as “niceness” or “without controversy” because that isn’t the way God defines love. Love is clearly spoken of in this passage in both positive and negative attributes. Love is patient and kind. Impatient pastors are noisy gongs. Unkind pastors are clanging cymbals. Their ministries will amount to nothing in the long run because they do not minister the Word as the Chief Shepherd does.
Proclaiming the Word of God with love must also leave out certain things, including envy, boasting, arrogance, rudeness, self-seeking, or anger of different kinds (irritability, resentment, rejoicing in wrongdoing).
There are some men who step into the pulpit on Sundays whose sermons are peppered throughout with a mixture of truth and these vile sins that demonstrate a lack of love. These things should not be (James 3:9-12). But there is more to this.
Our pulpit speech and our conduct should be an overflow of our daily lives, which means that we must be men of true, biblical love—both in and out of the pulpit. We cannot be unloving (as defined by Scripture) in our daily lives with those around us, and then step into a pulpit on Sunday and proclaim the truth as if our preaching were disconnected from our daily living. To live like that is plain hypocrisy.
Our daily speech and actions must be marked by biblical love, so that we will not become noisy gongs and clanging cymbals in the pulpit, with our ministry amounting to nothing. Instead, may we work at growing in biblical love so that our speech is well-seasoned with grace and our hearts truly care for those in our charge.
Do not:
Do:
An important concept that cannot be ignored in sermon preparation is the fact that the sermon needs to have a purpose–a reason for existing. A meandering monologue that seems to wander to and fro can be muddy, disorganized, frustrating, and unprofitable to the listener.
Each of the biblical writers had a reason for why they wrote their biblical texts, so too the biblical expositor needs to have a purpose as well. He must enter into his sermon preparation with a clear understanding of what he is expecting his hearer to do when he has finished explaining, illustrating, and applying the biblical text.
Whether it is to glorify God, come to repentance, understand a theological concept more clearly, obey a command, or some other purpose, the sermon needs to have a clear purpose.
Can you imagine what it was like for the Israelites to wander in the wilderness for forty years? If you’ve ever sat in a sermon with no point, then you may have felt like an Israelite for 45 minutes, and it probably felt like you were suffering for over an hour!
One way to help yourself not be “that guy” is to think about your sermon as an apologetic argument. You are seeking to prove to your listener your main premise. Not every sermon will benefit from this idea, but there are some sermon texts that will be particularly suited for this concept. I have made a graphic to help explain the idea:
If you think about your sermon like an inverted funnel, with the premise to be proven in your introduction, each successive point will develop and build up to the conclusion. The conclusion should leave your hearer with the strong evidence that your premise is true. You want them to understand that they should either accept your biblical premise or they must deny the clear teaching of Scripture.
A simple example of this type of sermon outline is:
In this form of sermon organization, the conclusion is what you are seeking as your verdict. You state it, prove it, and then call your hearer to act. And this action may be simply a change of thinking as much as it could be a change of behavior.
This does not mean that your hearer will necessarily respond as you expect–heart change is the work of the Holy Spirit. But by organizing your message in this way you will make your expectations clear and prove your premise. Hopefully your making it irrefutable from Scripture.
The sinful heart may still reject the truth, but you will have accomplished your goal as an expositor to deliver the message faithfully and compellingly.
Always Reforming 