The (Extra)Ordinary Sermon

God spoke to me as a teenager as I sat in the pew of an old church in New Mexico. It was not a dramatic revelation. It was through ordinary, faithful preaching. The pastor was an ordinary man from Iowa. 

As he preached through the Minor Prophets, God confronted me in my sin and showed me the need for grace. He preached through Acts, and I saw the Risen Christ through the eyes of faith and hungered for the Spirit. He preached through the Pentateuch, and God’s promises for the nations and my need for atonement sent me to my knees. Then came Matthew followed by Joshua. Systematically, I was being shaped week after week through the preaching of the word.

Preaching is a mystery of grace. God is at work, bringing the great realities of salvation history into this moment through this preacher. God is transposing the grand symphony of his revelation in the Scriptures into a smaller scale. 

As a seminary professor, I do not preach week to week. But when I get the opportunity, it is one of the greatest joys of my life. Preaching is not easy. When it is done badly, it can bring much harm. But when it is carefully guarded and cultivated, it reaps eternal benefits (1 Tim. 4:16). Preaching is a gift to be stewarded. 

A sermon is a relational and communicative event. You are engaging with God, the text, and the hearers. When I get an opportunity to preach, I remind myself that a sermon is an act of exultation, exposition, and exhortation.

Engaging God (Exultation) 

Preaching is an event of worship, where the greatness of who God is and what he has done is celebrated. John Piper puts it this way, “the ultimate goal of preaching is… that God’s infinite worth and beauty would be exalted in everlasting, white-hot worship of the blood-bought bride of Christ from every people, language, tribe, and nation.” Excitement is contagious. Spirit-filled delight in Jesus is contagious. 

In the Gospel of John, people are invited “to come and see” the beauty and majesty of Jesus. This is what happens in preaching. As we sit at the feet of Christ worshipping him and adoring him, it will shape the thrust of the message. A sermon that is crafted in awe of Jesus will sound like an invitation to “come and see” him. The first step in the spiritual preparation of the preacher is to lose yourself in the wonder and beauty of God as he has revealed himself in the Bible. That wonder is then woven into the sermon as you show “the wonderful works of God” (Psalm 111:4).

Preaching is a display of a heart captured by the wonder of God as he has revealed himself in the Bible. The reason the Apostles were so powerful as preachers is that they knew and worshipped the crucified and resurrected Jesus. The preacher must know the power of the cross and resurrection in his own life. The gospel must be our life and breath.

Engaging the Text (Exposition)

Preaching involves good hermeneutics. John Stott once said that expositional preaching attempts to “bring out of the text what is there and expose it to view” (John Stott, Between Two Worlds: The Art of Preaching in the Twentieth Century, 125). Preaching is proclamatory exegesis. But engaging the text is more than just good hermeneutical principles. It's a posture of the heart. It is a posture of a heart that is “humble and contrite in spirit and trembles” at the word of God (Isa. 66:2). 

Our preaching is submitted to the text because our own selves are submitted to the text. The Bible becomes our delight, and that delight shines through our preaching. The moment we step into giving the message it should become clear that the Bible — even that particular text — shapes who we are. It should be clear that we are faithful to the text and that we are taking care to accurately represent its meaning and impress its fullness into people's lives. 

In engaging the text well, we respect the inspiration of Scripture. We honor the human author who penned the words and the divine author's message. We refuse to practice cunning with the text. That means that we refuse to be too clever and resist the impulse to use the word to puff ourselves up or simply entertain. We preach the word no matter how unpopular or difficult it may be. 

Engaging the Hearers (Exhortation) 

When we preach, we engage with real people, who are often walking through messy and difficult lives. The preaching event is a moment of worship, exegesis, but it also engages those in the pews. Preaching is both exhortation and encouragement. 

The goal of exhortation is to press the reality of God and the meaning of the text into the lives of these people. When I preach, I am no longer a seminary professor. I am not trying to show the intricacies of the outline or literary beauty of some passage. I am not trying to show some fascinating historical background. I am striving for my hearers to know Christ and grow in maturity. 

Preaching is an act of eschatological exhortation. We preach with the end in view. In preaching, I must remember that each person who hears me will stand before the judgment seat of Christ. C.S. Lewis once put it this way: 

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.

We never preached to a mere mortal. We preach on the brink of eternity. This means that we cultivate a love for those who hear us. We desperately want our hearers to know Christ, grow in maturity, and stand blameless in the gospel on the day of judgment.

I can think of many brothers and sisters who once sat in the pews that heard my preaching that have now passed into eternity. The preacher’s heart should be constantly gripped with the reality James spoke about: “The Judge is standing at the door” (James 5:9). The word preached is one of the means through which God saves people (1 Timothy 4:16). This reality generates an exhortative mode in the sermon that brings a natural intensity.

God’s Extraordinary Work 

The wonder of preaching is that God is at work. The Father has ordained this ordinary event to be the place where he meets his people. The Second Helvetic Confession emphasizes that the faithful preaching of the word of God is the word of God. 

Back when I was in high school, all that was seen was a small congregation in New Mexico listening to a man from Iowa. When someone preaches, all that is visibly seen is the preacher; all that is heard is his voice. But a deeper spiritual reality, one that goes back before the dawn of time, is at work. God uses the sermon to communicate his eternal glory through the gospel. 

The preacher can lean into God’s work through week-in and week-out faithful exultation, exegesis, and exhortation.