Your Sermon

Everything this track has taught comes down to a single act: a person stands before others and speaks the word of God. Before you begin the steps, look at why anyone should dare to. Paul writes to a church in the capital of the empire, a city that regarded a crucified Jew as a joke, and he says, 'I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.' The reason he gives is not that he is a good preacher; his opponents said he was not. It is that the gospel itself is the power of God. The word dynamis is the same word Paul uses for the Spirit's power in 1 Corinthians 2:4. The power is in the message, and behind it in God.

That is the foundation for your first sermon, and for your thousandth. You are not responsible for producing the power. You are responsible for handling the word faithfully, saying clearly what it says, and getting yourself out of the way. 'Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ' (Romans 10:17), and God's word 'will not return to Me empty' (Isaiah 55:11). Notice too that Paul is eager to preach the gospel to believers in Rome (Romans 1:15). Whatever passage you preach, and whoever is listening, the gospel is not a topic for some Sundays. It is what every sermon finally serves.

What follows is the whole process of this track, in order, as one path. Each step names the lesson where it was taught, so you can go back if a step is unclear. Beside your own passage, we will work one short passage the whole way through, so that you can see each step done: the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector in Luke 18:9-14. It is short, clear and much preached, which makes it a good model. It is not necessarily the best text for you; choose your own.

Step 1: choose and bound your text (Choosing and Bounding the Text). For a first sermon, choose a passage of one clear unit, a parable, a short narrative, a psalm, or a paragraph of a letter, that you can explain well in twenty to thirty minutes. Do not choose the hardest passage you know to prove you can. Check where your unit begins and ends by reading the chapter before and after, and look for the signs of a new unit: a change of place, time, speaker, subject or form. If your church follows a lectionary or a series, preach the appointed text. Otherwise, ask what your congregation needs, pray, and choose. Write the reference at the top of a fresh page in your notebook. For the worked example: Luke 18:9-14 is bounded by the parable of the persistent widow before it (18:1-8) and the little children being brought to Jesus after it (18:15-17). Verse 9 tells us exactly who the parable was told to, which is a gift to the preacher.

Step 2: study the passage with free tools (Exegesis for the Pulpit). Read the passage at least ten times across several days, at least once aloud. Write down everything you notice and every question you have, before you consult anything. Then read the whole book it comes from, or at least the surrounding chapters, and ask who wrote it, to whom, and why. Then use Blue Letter Bible or STEP Bible, both free on a phone, to check key words: tap a word to see the Greek or Hebrew behind it, its basic meaning, and where else it is used. Follow the cross-references for any Old Testament quotation or allusion. Write a simple outline of the passage in its own terms, following its flow. Only after all that, if you have a commentary or a study Bible, read it, and see what you missed. If you have none, do not despair: your careful reading of the text in its context is worth more than a commentary you read instead of the text.

In the worked example the study turns up several things. Verse 9 says the parable was told 'To some who trusted in their own righteousness and viewed others with contempt.' The Pharisee's prayer is a list of what he is not and what he does: he fasts twice a week, which went well beyond the one fast day the law required, the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16:29-31), and he tithes everything he acquires. The Greek behind he 'stood by himself' can also be read as he prayed to himself, and good translations differ; either way, the man is alone with his own goodness. The tax collector, a man who collected Rome's taxes from his own people and was widely despised as a collaborator and a cheat, stands at a distance and beats his breast, the gesture of grief that the crowd makes at the cross in Luke 23:48. His prayer, 'God, have mercy on me, a sinner!' (18:13), uses the verb hilaskomai, which belongs to the family of the Greek word for the mercy seat and for atoning sacrifice (Hebrews 9:5, Romans 3:25), and the Greek has the sinner, not a sinner. Jesus then says this man 'went home justified' (18:14). Each of those observations came from the text and the free tools.

Step 3: state the one main idea (One Main Idea). Ask, as Haddon Robinson taught, what the passage is talking about, the subject, and what it says about that, the complement. Write the exegetical idea in one sentence in the passage's own terms. Then write the homiletical idea, the same truth stated for your hearers, short, memorable and clear. Remember the critics' warning from that lesson too: some passages, especially poetry and narrative, resist being reduced to a sentence, and the sentence must serve the passage, not replace it. But if you cannot say in one sentence what your sermon is about, your hearers will not be able to either. In the worked example: the subject is who goes home right with God; the complement is not the one who trusts in his own righteousness and looks down on others, but the one who comes asking for mercy. The homiletical idea might be: God sends home justified the one who begs for mercy, not the one who lists his merits.

Step 3 is also where you check yourself against the genre of your text (Preaching What Kind of Text?). A parable is a story with a sting; it works by drawing the hearers in and turning on them. A psalm is a prayer, and should be preached in a way that helps people pray it. A letter argues, and a sermon on it should follow the argument. Write one line in your notebook: what kind of text this is, and what that means for how it should be preached. For Luke 18:9-14, the sting is that Jesus' first hearers would have expected the Pharisee to be the good man and the tax collector to be the villain, and the parable reverses them. A faithful sermon must find a way to let your hearers feel that reversal, not just be told about it.

Step 4: name the need the text meets (The Need the Text Meets). Every passage was written because people needed it; Romans 15:4 says it was written 'for our instruction, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures, we might have hope.' Ask what in the original hearers the text addressed, and what the same need looks like in your hearers. Bryan Chapell calls this the fallen condition focus: the aspect of our fallen condition that the passage addresses and that requires God's grace. Write it in one sentence. In the worked example, verse 9 names it for us: trusting in our own righteousness and viewing others with contempt. In your congregation that might be the faithful church member who quietly believes God must be pleased with him because he gives, attends and does not do what others do, and who looks down on the people who do. There is also a second need present in the parable, the person who has done real wrong and thinks God could never accept him. A good sermon on this text speaks to both.

Step 5: see Christ in the passage (Is Every Sermon About Christ? and Preaching the Old Testament). Module 3 set out a real disagreement, and you should preach your first sermon knowing where you stand on it, without pretending the other side does not exist. Those in the redemptive-historical tradition, with Edmund Clowney, Graeme Goldsworthy and Sidney Greidanus, will ask how your passage fits the whole story of God's saving work that culminates in Christ, and will want every sermon to show that connection explicitly, so that it never becomes a lesson in good behaviour. Those who share the concerns of Walter Kaiser and others will ask first what the human author meant in his own setting, and will want any connection to Christ to come from the text's own meaning and the way scripture itself develops it, not to be added by the preacher. Both want to avoid moralism and both want to avoid reading into the text what is not there. Whichever way you lean, ask: where does this passage stand in the story of salvation, and what does it show about who God is and what he has done in Christ?

In the worked example the question is easier than usual, since Jesus is the one telling the parable, and he speaks with the authority to say who is justified before God. A preacher in the redemptive-historical tradition would also show where the tax collector's prayer is finally answered: the mercy he asked for, using the verb from the family of the mercy seat, was secured when 'God presented Him as an atoning sacrifice in His blood' (Romans 3:25), and Christ is himself the one who 'humbled Himself' and whom 'God exalted' (Philippians 2:8-9), the pattern of Luke 18:14 lived out by the teller. A preacher more cautious about bringing in Paul would say that Luke's own context is enough: the same gospel has Jesus eating with tax collectors and sinners (Luke 5:30-32, 15:1-2) and declaring that the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost (19:10), so Christ is present as the one who welcomes exactly the kind of man the parable sends home justified. Both are preaching Christ; they differ over where to find him and how far to range.

Step 5 is also where application is shaped (Application Without Moralism, and Law and Gospel). The danger with this parable is to preach it as 'do not be like the Pharisee,' which is exactly the Pharisee's own prayer turned around, a hearer thanking God that he is not like that Pharisee. The application must flow from grace. The hearer is invited not to try harder at humility, but to stop trusting in his own record and to ask for mercy, and then to stop looking down on others because he has received what he did not deserve. Write down two or three concrete applications for real people in your congregation: what will a person who believes this sermon do differently on Monday?

Step 6: choose a shape (The Shape of a Sermon). A deductive sermon states the main idea early and then explains, proves and applies it. An inductive sermon moves toward the main idea, letting the hearers discover it. Eugene Lowry's homiletical plot moves from a tension or problem through complication to a turn, the gospel's answer, and then to its consequences. The Puritan plain style sets out the doctrine of the text, the reasons for it and its uses. Choose a shape that fits the text. A parable that works by surprise suits an inductive or plotted shape, because the sermon can do what the parable does. Write the movements of the sermon, three to five of them, each in one sentence, with the verses each one comes from. For the worked example: First, two men went up to pray, and everyone in Jesus' audience knew which one was the good man (18:9-10). Second, the Pharisee's prayer, in which he never asks God for anything (18:11-12). Third, the tax collector's prayer, in which he asks for only one thing (18:13). Fourth, the shock: 'this man, rather than the Pharisee, went home justified,' and where the mercy came from (18:14). Fifth, which prayer is yours this morning?

Step 7: write the introduction and the conclusion (Beginnings and Endings). Write them after the body, not before, because you cannot introduce what you have not yet decided. An introduction should earn a hearing in the first minute by raising the need the text meets, and then lead into the text. It should not be a long story that has nothing to do with the sermon, or an apology for your preaching. A conclusion should land the main idea one final time and call the hearers to respond. It should not introduce new material. For the worked example, the introduction might begin by asking the congregation to think, silently, of the person in their town they would be most surprised to meet in heaven, and then to read Luke 18:9 and notice who Jesus told this story to. The conclusion might end with the tax collector's prayer, and an invitation to pray it. Whether that invitation is a moment of silent prayer, a call to come forward, or a word to speak to the preacher afterwards depends on your tradition; that lesson laid out the case for and against the public invitation, and you should decide before Sunday what you will do and why.

Step 8: choose illustrations (Windows Into the Text). Ask where your hearers will need help seeing what you are saying, and find a window for that place, not a story you like and want to fit in. Usually the first help is the text's own world explained vividly: what a tax collector was, what it meant to beat your breast. Then perhaps one image or story from your hearers' world. In the worked example, you might describe, without naming anyone, the kind of person in your community who is treated the way tax collectors were, someone everyone assumes has sold out his own people. Remember the dangers that lesson named. Do not borrow another preacher's story and tell it as your own. Do not tell stories about your family without their permission. Do not make up a story and tell it as true. A composite example, honestly introduced as an example, is fine.

At this point, write the sermon down. Some preachers write a full manuscript and then reduce it to notes; some write detailed notes from the start. Either is fine, as the lesson Delivery explained. What matters is that you have, on paper, the main idea in one sentence, the need, the movements with their verses, the Christ connection, the applications, the introduction, the illustrations and the conclusion. If any of these is missing, you are not ready to preach.

Step 9: write for the ear (Words for the Ear). Read your manuscript or notes aloud and listen. Shorten long sentences. Replace abstract words with concrete ones. Repeat the main idea, in the same words, at least three times: in the introduction, at the turn, and in the conclusion. Make the transitions obvious: 'So the first man prays... Now look at the second man.' If you will preach in a second language, or through an interpreter, use the simplest words that are true, give the interpreter the main idea and the passage beforehand, and speak in shorter units.

Step 10: know who is listening (Knowing Who Is Listening). Picture the room. Who will be there? The old and the young, the grieving, the poor, the newly converted, the visitor who has never been in church, the children. What does your passage say to each? Is there anything in your sermon that will be misheard in your setting? In the worked example, if your community has recently suffered under corrupt officials, the tax collector will not seem sympathetic, and you must help them feel how shocking it was that he went home justified, without excusing what such men did. If many of your hearers are poor and despised, they may hear the parable as good news before you have said anything, and the preacher must make sure the Pharisees in the room, who are often the respectable and the leaders, hear it too.

Step 11: rehearse and deliver (Delivery). Reduce your sermon to one page of notes, or to the movements in your memory, with the main idea written in a full sentence at the top. Preach it aloud, standing, at full speed, at least twice before Sunday. Record it if you can. Time it. Mark the places where you lost your way, and fix them. Know your first two sentences by heart. On the day, arrive early, pray for the hearers and for yourself, and then stand up and preach, looking at the people, speaking to the back row, pausing after the main idea and after the questions. If you lose your place, stop, look at your notes, and go on; the congregation will hardly notice. Trust that the word will not return empty.

Step 12: afterwards, get feedback and grow (Feedback and Growth). Before you preach, ask two or three people to listen for the main point, the passage and what you asked them to do. Listen to your recording during the week. Write down what you will change next time. And keep a page in your notebook recording the date, the passage and the main idea, as the lesson Planning a Year of Preaching recommended, so that over the years you can see what your people have heard.

Copy what follows into the front of your notebook, or keep it on your phone, and use it every week. It is the whole track in twelve lines. If a line is missing when you reach Saturday, go back to it before you go on.

1. Text. I have chosen one unit of scripture, checked where it begins and ends, and written the reference at the top of my page.

2. Study. I have read the passage at least ten times, once aloud, read its context, checked its key words on Blue Letter Bible or STEP Bible, followed its cross-references, and written an outline of the passage in its own terms.

3. Kind of text. I know what kind of text this is, narrative, law, poetry, wisdom, prophecy, gospel, letter or apocalyptic, and how that should shape the sermon.

4. Main idea. I can state, in one sentence, what the passage is talking about and what it says about it, and I have turned that into one clear sentence for my hearers.

5. Need. I can say, in one sentence, what need in the original hearers this text met, and what that need looks like in my congregation this week.

6. Christ. I can say how this passage fits the story of God's saving work in Christ, and I have found that connection in the text and in how scripture develops it, not merely added it.

7. Application. I have written two or three concrete things a person who believes this sermon will do or stop doing, and each one flows from grace, not from mere effort.

8. Shape. I have chosen a shape that fits the text and written three to five movements, each in one sentence with its verses.

9. Beginning and end. My introduction raises the need and leads into the text within the first minutes. My conclusion lands the main idea once more and calls for a response, and I know what kind of response I will invite.

10. Windows. Every illustration I use helps the hearers see the text, is honest about whether it is a true story, and is mine to tell.

11. Ear and room. I have read the sermon aloud, shortened the sentences, repeated the main idea at least three times, and thought about each kind of person who will be listening.

12. Delivery and after. I have preached it aloud at least twice, I know my first two sentences by heart, I have asked two or three people to listen for the main point, and I will listen to the recording and write down one thing to change.

Your practical step now. Choose your passage today, if you have not already, and write it at the top of a fresh double page. Work through the twelve steps of this lesson over the coming week or two, writing your answer to each step in your notebook. By the end you will have a main idea, a need, a Christ connection, applications, a shape, an introduction, a conclusion, illustrations and a page of notes. Preach it aloud to yourself twice. Then ask your pastor or elders, if you are not the pastor, for an opportunity to preach it, whether at a main service, a home group, a youth meeting, a prayer meeting or a village outreach. Ask two or three people to listen with the three questions. After you preach, go back through the checklist and mark which steps you did well and which you will do better next time. That sermon is the fruit of this whole track. It will not be the best sermon you ever preach. It will be the first of many, and the gospel you preach in it is the power of God.