214WePreach JJones

We
Preach
We Preach Book.indb 1 8/23/16 1:35 PM

We
Preach
The Priority and Practice of

Apostolic Preaching
JERRY JONES

© 2016 by Jerry Jones
All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in an electronic system, or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording,
or otherwise, without the prior permission of Word Aflame Press.
Brief quotations may be used in literary reviews.
All Scripture quotations in this book are from the King James
Version of the Bible.
Printed in the United States of America
Cover design by Timothy Burk
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Jones, Jerry, 1952- author.

Title: We preach : the priority and practice of apostolic preaching / Jerry Jones.
Description: Hazelwood : Word Aflame Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical
references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016033490 (print) | LCCN 2016033959 (ebook) | ISBN
9780757750441 (alk. paper) | ISBN 9780757750458 (spanish : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9780757751974 () | ISBN 9780757751981 (Spanish)
Subjects: LCSH: Preaching.
Classification: LCC BV4211.3 .J656 2016 (print) | LCC BV4211.3 (ebook) | DDC
251--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016033490

In memory of my pastor,
A. E. Carney, and with thanks to all those who gave me
a chance to preach.

Contents
Foreword.......................................................... ix
Prologue........................................................... xi
Part One – We Preach........................................1
1. What Is Preaching?.....................................5
2. The Theology of Preaching .......................17
3. Saved by Preaching....................................37
Part Two – The Preacher..................................53
4. The Call to Preach.....................................57
5. The Preacher’s Qualifications....................67
6. Preach the Word........................................79
Part Three – The Sermon: Preparation.............93
7. The First Steps to Preparing a Sermon......95
8. What Type of Sermon Is It?.................... 117
9. Putting It All Together............................ 137
Part Four – In the Pulpit: Presentation.......... 191
10. Getting and Keeping Attention.............. 195
11. The Anointing........................................ 215
Epilogue......................................................... 231
Acknowledgments.......................................... 235
Bibliography.................................................. 237

Foreword
Once, when asked about writing, Saul Bellow said, “Well,

I don’t know exactly how it’s done. I let it alone a good deal.”
That’s how I feel about preaching. I learned to preach by
preaching. I let alone the theory behind it all. I learned what
worked and what didn’t by giving altar calls that brought
no one to the altar, and more times than I care to remember
watching people’s eyes glaze over while I preached. The
tradecraft of public speaking I learned by preaching revivals
to crowds of thirty people (or less), revivals that started on
Sunday night and went without break until the next Sunday
night (with Sunday morning thrown in), then started up again
the next Monday or Tuesday and went again until Sunday.
They were long weeks if you “didn’t connect.” I learned to
preach pastorally when I became a pastor and how to preach
ix

We Preach
conferences and camps when I began to be asked to preach

in those types of meetings.
I did not always understand the whys for things that
I just knew to be so. Rhythm, cadence, and gauging
the emotional impact of sermon points in order to find
the most effective way of presenting them, along with a
hundred other important things, were all more intuition
than training. It was the theory I was lacking.
Then I began to be asked to teach sessions on preaching
to aspiring preachers. For five years I taught a semester-
long class on preaching at Gateway College of Evangelism.
I discovered that people weren’t really content to know that
something is true just because I said it was. While they
respected my experience, they wanted to know why it was
so. I began to think about the mechanics of preaching. I
wanted to discover why some things work and some don’t.
I also began researching what other preachers had to say
about this calling and craft.
Now, I have written this book. In some ways it has been
a joy, in others it has been a real challenge, one that has
taken far too long to complete (just ask the editor). Part
of the struggle is that I am still very much just a student
of this fascinating collaboration between God and human
beings, and suspect I always will be. But mainly, it is that
the task of putting something you have learned by doing
into not just words, but understandable and thus teachable
words, has been a years-long commitment.
Now it’s done, and I sure hope it helps somebody.

Prologue
We cannot be certain where the valley of dry bones was

located, or what calamity had filled it with piles of human
remains. Was this the site of some battle, and the bones the
mingled remains of men who had once fought here? Or was
it the place where the ill-fated migration of an entire tribe
came to an end? We are given none of the details of how the
bones came to be in this place. Maybe the message is that it
doesn't matter: men and women arrive at the graveyards of
their hopes by any number of pathways.
Into this scene of ruin and despair, God called a man,
a human being, who by his own confession didn't have the
answer to this dilemma of death. “Can these bones live?”
was the question God asked this preacher. “Thou knowest,”
was the honest answer. Every preacher has been where this
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We Preach
preacher was, called to a place in which he or she simply

wasn’t sure if anything could live.
“Can they live?” He looked over the valley full of
scattered bones, nothing moving, the moan of the wind
through empty ribcages the only sound. “Thou knowest,”
was the only possible answer.
Then came the directive, “Preach to them.” It was a
command and a promise all at once.
The command should not have been unexpected.
After all, he was called to preach; it was his life’s mission.
Preaching is what preachers do. So he preached. “Oh, dry
bones, hear the word of the Lord!” His words echoed across
the silent valley as he preached to the dead. Probably at
first there was no response; had a traveler happened to pass
by he surely would have thought the preacher crazy. Nobody
is listening, nobody is responding.
Then the impossible happens: there is movement in the
valley. Of their own accord, bones begin to move almost as
if by an invisible hand. Not randomly, but purposefully, the
bones skitter across the desert floor, their mission at first
a mystery, but soon plain enough: they are seeking their
place, joining with bones from their former lives. Skeletons
begin to take shape. Order is emerging from chaos: fingers
to hands, hands to wrists, skulls to spines, until—under
the power of preaching—lying across the desert are the
outlines of human beings. Now sinew and flesh begin to
appear, muscle and skin form over the bones until men are
recognizable, until it seems they are almost alive.
Now the preacher falls silent. A miracle has occurred,
the evidence lying at his feet, filling the valley floor. But
xii

Prologue
what now? His preaching has effected a transformation

beyond imagining, what power can now bring these to the
next level? What can put breath into these lungs, life into
these bodies?
“Preach to the wind!” comes the command.
With less hesitation and more anticipation, the
preaching begins again: “Come from the four winds, oh
breath, and enter into them!” And the breath comes, and
those once dead, are made alive, and they rise to their feet.
And where once there was only the stillness of death, now
there is a mighty army, alive, strong, and ready to march.
Preaching still accomplishes miracles. Only preaching
empowers a human being with one hand to reach into the
world of human need and with the other into the world of
divine power, and to pull those two worlds together.
This book is about this unique partnership between
the human and the divine. It is not only a how-to book,
although I hope you will find instruction and some down-
to-earth help to improve your preaching, but it is more than
that. It will explore the deeper and broader aspects of this
incredible calling. We will not spend much time exploring
the various types of preaching, evangelistic, homiletic,
expository, and so forth, but will focus instead on techniques
and principles that will improve your mastery of any type
of preaching. We will linger on the three ingredients of
persuasive public speaking, which are absolutely vital to
understanding the human side of preaching. In doing so we
will discuss these timeless principles in an era which prides
itself in abandoning such principles, but is poor in offering
anything to take their place.
xiii

Part One
We Preach
For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek

after wisdom: But we preach . . .
Paul
No matter what our station, daily life in a fallen

world is a walk through a gauntlet of belittlement.
Those who attend our churches are daily
bombarded by false values and beliefs that cheapen
God’s creation, by personal slights and insults, by
Satan’s accusations. Their minds are assaulted by
scabrous images in the media and by profanity that
is objectionable to God precisely because it debases
the creation. They are subject to sins that mar God’s

We Preach
image within them. They suffer distorted images

of themselves that distort God’s truth.
After such a week, it’s a wonder that a person

can walk into church with any sense of worth. . . .
But then they hear anointed preaching, and

gravity reverses as people sense the upward pull of
heaven. The sermon reveals the character of God,
who infuses all life with meaning and majesty. The
sermon tells who we are in God’s sight: created
in the divine image, beloved beyond description,
destined for glory. The sermon uncovers sins—
then announces how to be redeemed. The sermon
honors the morality that exalts humankind.
The sermon assumes that people can think and
discern about life and the Book of Life. The
sermon appeals to the will, treating people as
responsible agents whose choices matter forever.
The sermon preaches Christ Immanuel, forever
hallowing human flesh, second Adam who will one
day resurrect believers in his likeness. A sermon is
the most intense dose of dignity any person can
receive.
Craig Bryan Larson

Part One
Before we get into how to preach better, let’s talk about

some of the fundamentals: What, exactly, is preaching?
Why do we do preaching the way we do? Is preaching as
we do it biblical, or is it just tradition? Does preaching have
anything to do with salvation, or is it just one of those
things we do to fill out a church service, no different from
congregational singing, receiving an offering, or having a
choir? It is important to answer these questions in order to
know the value of this remarkable event.

1
What is Preaching?
Preaching is the communication of divine truth

through human personality.
Phillips Brooks
A manifestation of the Incarnate Word, from the
written Word, by the spoken word.
Bernard Manning
What is preaching? Good question. Most of us have

witnessed preaching nearly every week for most of our lives
without giving much thought to what it really is. When we
try to define preaching, it is surprising just how difficult
it is to describe something so familiar. The definitions are
many and varied. John Stott writes, “To expound Scripture

We Preach
is to open up the inspired text with such faithfulness and

sensitivity that God’s voice is heard and his people obey
him.” Jay Kesler defines it: “Preaching is distinguished
from teaching in that it calls for commitment and attempts
to bring people to a point of action.” Andrew Blackwood
defined preaching as “the truth of God voiced by a chosen
personality to meet human needs.”
In a series of lectures on preaching delivered at Yale
University in 1877, Phillips Brooks gave what many
consider the classic definition: “Preaching,” he said in
effect, “is the communication of divine truth through
human personality.” This is perhaps the best definition of
preaching ever written because in a few words, it captures
the fundamental ingredients that makes preaching more
than simply public speaking. Here’s what it tells us:
Preaching must contain divine truth. Not the preacher's
opinions, the latest pop culture slogans, the headlines from
this morning’s paper; it must communicate the timeless
truth of God's Word. The preacher is not simply another
voice competing with ten thousand other voices for our
attention. It is not the entertainment value, the display
of one’s ability to persuade, or multimedia virtuosity that
makes a sermon more than a speech. It is the content.
Preaching deals in eternal truth.
Preaching must communicate truth. It must be presented
so that people from all walks of life, all education levels,
and all steps of spiritual development will grasp it and
believe it and act upon its promise. Truth has power within
itself. Nothing needs to be added to truth in order to set
men and women free, change people’s lives, or bring hope to

What is Preaching?
any situation. It need only be clearly communicated for this

power to be released into human lives.
And preaching must come through human beings.
Not angels, nor robots, nor the lofty mountains or still
afternoons of nature; it must come through humans. The
personality of the preacher will and must shine through,
and that personality is a vital component of the incredible
thing called preaching. So preaching is truth communicated
by a human being.
When you stop to think of it, this is a strange occurrence.
A person standing alone before a crowd and proclaiming a
message from God: it seems outlandish.
Preaching is not the choice of humankind; it is the choice
of God. People may analyze its effectiveness, laugh at it, or
declare it too old-fashioned to work in modern times, but
preaching remains the choice of God. It will never lose its
power nor fail to accomplish its purpose. Preaching is the
audible voice of God. For the vast majority of us, preaching
is the only divine voice we will ever hear. While the Lord
often impresses hungry people with His words, that is,
speaks to them within their spirits in a voice that only they
can hear, God proclaims to all humanity His truth, His
purpose, and His plan through the voice of the preacher.
It should not surprise us that preaching is the
communication of divine truth through human personality.
After all, the truth is not a collection of dry, arcane facts.
The truth is a person who clearly proclaimed, “I am the
Truth.” To know this person, we must know both the person
and the truth. Perhaps because He was and is a person,

We Preach
He has chosen through the filter of human personality to

proclaim Himself to the world.
Fads and fashions come and go, opinions and ideas shift
like the sands of the Sahara, but the preaching of truth
remains constant, unchanged. Each generation feels the
need for something new, to find and proclaim a new way.
The old ways fade and new ways take their place; this is
so in almost every human endeavor. Even in the church,
methods, ideas, fashions in dress, music, worship, visual
presentation, architecture, and so many other things
change. But there are some things that never change; there
is a constant that connects each generation throughout the
ages, and that constant is the preaching of the Word of
God. From the Old Testament prophets through John the
Baptist to the apostles, we find this common thread. We
are on familiar ground when we read their sermons because
they remind us of the experiences we have every Sunday
when we join with our brothers and sisters and hear a
preacher preach the gospel.
Preaching still appeals to the human heart. This is
remarkable, not only because the act of preaching is
thousands of years old, but also because it has, like most
things religious, been the target of ever increasing attacks
by anti-Christian movements, particularly in popular media
and politics. Yet in spite of these efforts, it is estimated that
between 130 and 150 million Americans go to church every
week. This number means:
• More Americans gather in churches on any given

weekend than gather in sports stadiums and arenas

What is Preaching?
to watch the games during the entire NFL, NBA,

and NHL seasons combined.
• The major league baseball season lasts six months
and includes 2,420 games, yet this Sunday more
Americans will be in church than will attend every
MLB game for the entire season.
• NASCAR is said to be the most attended sporting
event in America based on average attendance per
event, yet there will be more people in church on one
Sunday than will attend all the NASCAR races for
the next four years combined.
• It is thought that the Super Bowl is the most watched
sporting event in the United States. Yet there will
be more Americans in church this Sunday than will
attend or watch the Super Bowl next February.
• The movies may be the most attended pastime in
America with 1.27 billion tickets sold each year. Yet
in just ten Sundays, more of us will be in church
than will be at the movies for the whole year. In other
words, more of us will be in church in the next year
than will go to the movies for the next five years.
Most of those who go to church will hear some sort of

preaching. Seen in that light, can we not say that listening
to preachers preach is America’s favorite pastime?
Preaching is central to Christianity because Christianity
is a religion based on a particular book. The anointed
preaching of that book—the Bible—is at the heart of all we
do. In the United Pentecostal Church especially, preaching
is the premier aspect of our worship. Our services are built

We Preach
around it. Our most popular meetings remain those that are
given almost exclusively to preaching. Our conferences, even
those at which we do business, highlight preaching. This
echoes our commitment to the Word of God, a commitment
which is based on a continuing recognition that preaching
is an absolutely vital component in the ultimate salvation
of a soul.
For after that in the wisdom of God the world

by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the
foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.
after wisdom: But we preach Christ crucified, unto
the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks
foolishness; But unto them which are called, both
Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and
the wisdom of God (I Corinthians 1:21–24).
In society as a whole, the popularity of preaching, as

well as that of preachers, has ebbed and flowed. In the
early church, being a preacher was downright dangerous.
Stephen was stoned, James was killed by the sword, and
according to tradition, all the original apostles except one
were martyred. Paul was beheaded. Of course, Constantine
changed all that. During the collapse of the Roman Empire
and the Dark Ages that followed, superstition shrouded
preachers in mystery and turned them into more myth
than men. The role of preaching ebbed and flowed during
the passing centuries, and as it did, the state of preaching
was an indication of the state of the church as a whole.
10

What is Preaching?
Brown, Clinard, and Northcutt in Steps to the Sermon

discuss the link between preaching and the health of the
church through two thousand years of church history:
Whenever Christianity has made substantial

progress, great preaching has led the way. In the
history of Christianity there have been five great
centuries of growth and development. These
same five periods are the five centuries of great
preaching: the first with the apostles, the fourth
with Chrysostom and Augustine, the thirteenth
with Francis of Assisi and Dominic, the sixteenth
with Luther and Calvin, and the nineteenth with
Spurgeon and Maclaren. Contrariwise, whenever
preaching has declined, Christianity has become
stagnant. In the Dark Ages, in the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries, and in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, in most countries, preaching
was weak and ineffective.
It can be argued that the rapid growth, sustained

enthusiasm, and strong appeal of the Pentecostal
movement—and especially the United Pentecostal Church
International—throughout the twentieth century are direct
results of continuing emphasis on preaching. However, even
in our churches, when other things begin to overshadow
preaching, the church grows weak.
This is true simply because the power of God is unleashed
by preaching the Word of God: “For the preaching of the
cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which
11

We Preach
are saved it is the power of God” (I Corinthians 1:18). To

minimize preaching is to minimize the power of God. This
is why churches often resort to entertainment, business
theory, psychology, and a thousand other gimmicks to
put people in the pew: there is no power where there is no
preaching.
People still respond when the Word of God is preached.
If you want to affect people’s lives, preach the Word. If you
want to build a great church, grow a great youth group, or
have a great ministry, commit yourself to preach the Word.
Fill your pulpit not with opinion, social commentary, jokes,
pithy sayings, wit, impressive displays of education, and
erudite philosophical speculation; rather, fill it with the
Word of God. Preach the Bible and people will come, they
will be changed, and your ministry will matter.
People are hungry for truth, for what is real. Sometimes
we fail to distinguish reality from the everyday routine
and the life situations we all live with. This is an error.
This life is an illusion. Its details seem to matter, but they
have only transitory meaning. We approach life as if it
will last forever; as if education, success, or acceptance
will endure, but they don’t. The only real world is the
world of the eternal; it is made up of those things that
do indeed endure. To settle for the temporary when the
eternal is within reach is the greatest tragedy of the human
experience. Even those whose lives are little more than
a steady diet of pop culture delivered by television, the
movies, and the news cycles understand in their deepest
thoughts that there surely is more to life than they have
found. Alcoholism, drug abuse, and the mindless pursuit
12

What is Preaching?
of unending pleasure are all symptoms of the search for

purpose and meaning in life. Even the higher pursuits of
life: culture, education, personal improvement, all ring
hollow over time: “For after that . . . the world by wisdom
knew not God” (I Corinthians 1:21).
This explains why 130 million Americans will attend
church this Sunday, and most of them will hear preaching
of some sort. Deep down, they understand that the answers
to their questions are in the preached Word of God. Never
has preaching mattered more, and never has true Bible
preaching been needed more.
It has been said that asking a preacher to describe
the ingredients of good preaching is like asking a cow to
analyze milk. Preaching is most often produced without
close examination of the process involved, and this is all
right. But when we stop to analyze just what it is we do
and how we do it, we find that while preaching is, of course,
a spiritual event, it is also a skill that is rooted deeply in
methods of communication that can be learned and
improved.
Of course how we define preaching, while important, is
not nearly so important as what God tells us preaching is.
To find that out, we now turn to the Bible.
13

We Preach
Sources Cited in Chapter 1
John Stott, “A Definition of Biblical Preaching” in Haddon

Robinson and Craig Brian Larson, eds., The Art and
Craft of Biblical Preaching (Grand Rapids: Zondervan,
2005).
Jay Kesler, “Overfed, Underchallenged” in Haddon

2005).
Andrew Watterson Blackwood, The Preparation of Sermons

(Nashville: Abingdon-Cokesbury, 1948).
Phillips Brooks, Lectures On Preaching Delivered Before the

Divinity School of Yale College in January and February,
1877 (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1878).
H. C. Brown, Jr., H. Gordon Clinard, Jesse J. Northcutt,

Steps to the Sermon (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1963).
14

What is Preaching?
Statistics in Chapter 1
Frank Newport, “In U.S., Four in 10 Report Attending

Church in Last Week,” last modified December 24, 2013,
accessed July 18, 2016, http://www.gallup.com.
Estimated attendance figures for sporting events and

movies in recent years:
NFL 2014 17.4 million
NBA 2014–15 21.9 million
NHL 2013–14 22.3 million
MLB 2014 73.7 million
NASCAR 2013 3.5 million
Superbowl 2015 114.4 million viewers
Movies 2014 1.3 billion tickets sold
Churches 2015 6.8 billion (with an average of 130
million attending each Sunday)
h ttp://www.statista.com/statistics/283897/national-football-league-
teams-ranked-by-average-attendance-2013/
http://www.nba.com/2015/news/04/16/nba-sets-attendance-record-with-
nearly-22-million-fans.ap/
http://www.hockeyattendance.com/league/nhl/
http://www.ballparksofbaseball.com/2010presentattendance.htm
https://www.quora.com/Why-is-NASCAR-attendance-down
h ttp://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/09/sports/football/viewership-of-
super-bowl-falls-short-of-record.html?_r=0
http://www.mpaa.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/MPAA-Theatrical-
Market-Statistics-2014.pdf
15

2
The Theology
of Preaching
Preaching is not entertainment, nor is it an ego exercise for

the preacher. It is not the result of tradition or old-fashioned
communication methods that ought to be supplanted by more
modern concepts and techniques. God chose preaching. Its
beginning is rooted in the Bible. The word preach in one form
or another occurs 153 times in Scripture. Seven times it is
found in the book of Ecclesiastes where it is more a title than
an action. That leaves 146 times. That puts preaching on par
with words such as hope (156), believe (146), and prayer (144).
Only four of the 146 mentions are in the Old Testament, but
as we will see, it is rich with examples of preaching.
The New Testament has no formal definition of preaching.
Instead it presents preaching by describing the preaching
ministries of John the Baptist, Jesus, Peter, Paul, Stephen,
17

We Preach
and hinting at that of others. It is as if the writers took for

granted that their readers were familiar with the concept
and needed no more explanation of it. Because of this, it’s
fair to say that preaching was a common experience.
As heralds of the news of Jesus Christ and His
resurrection, first-century preachers would have followed
the long-settled techniques of orators and teachers,
delivering their message with passion and effect. Their
models would have been preachers and proclaimers in
the Old Testament, as well as John the Baptist and
Jesus Himself. It seems reasonable that the principles of
persuasive rhetoric taught by the Greeks would have come
into play. So we can consider three examples early apostolic
preachers would have been influenced by: Old Testament
prophesy and preaching, Greek oratory, and the preaching
of Jesus and John. Before we look at each of these examples,
let’s consider how information was communicated in the
time of the early church.
The ancient world was largely illiterate. Scholars differ
in estimates, but the consensus seems to be that no more
than 10 percent of the population was able to read. By
illiterate, of course, we mean they could not read, not that
they were unintelligent or uninformed. In fact, the ancient
world transmitted information very effectively from person
to person, between cultures, and across generations.
It is important to realize that reading in the ancient
world was a hearing experience; that is, people read aloud
for others to hear. Reading as a private, silent activity
was unusual. Some scholars insist that ancient Greeks
and Romans could not read silently because the lack of
18

The Theology of Preaching
punctuation or even spacing between words, sentences,

and paragraphs made it impossible. Lucretia Yaghjian
encourages us to see ancient reading in a new way:
If we are to understand reading in the cultural

world of the NT, we must first take off the
conceptual lenses through which we habitually
read, and begin to read with our ears as well as
our eyes. Second, we must change our societal
image of reading from a private rendezvous with
the printed page to a public broadcast of oral and/
or written communication. Finally we must revise
our culturally biased definitions of literacy and
illiteracy and allow the biblical documents to spell
out their own contextual ones.
The reader could have been reading from a text, like

Ezra did at the Water Gate in Nehemiah 8, or the reader
may have been reciting from memory, but the result for
the hearer was the same. This was how almost everybody
learned: by listening to a reader read or recite stories,
proclamations, instructions, or the Word of God. When, in
His sermon recorded in Matthew 5, Jesus repeatedly used
the expression, “Ye have heard that it was said by them of
old time,” He was describing literally how people learned.
This oral method of teaching and learning was universal
and endured for thousands of years. Certainly, as Joanna
Dewey asserts, “early Christianity was an oral phenomenon
in a predominantly oral culture.”
19

We Preach
Old Testament Preaching

The first-century church was familiar with preaching
through the example of Jewish Scripture and culture.
Public reading of the Word of God was an integral part of
Jewish life, and the powerful presentation of the Word was
common. Oratory was part of the Jewish tradition.
The Old Testament is a rich record of preachers and
preaching. The preachers of the early church were familiar
with the preachers and sermons in the Old Testament. We
know this from the many references to them in the New
Testament. Jude quoted Enoch, the earliest preacher of
whom we have record: “And Enoch also, the seventh from
Adam, prophesied of these, saying, ‘Behold, the Lord cometh
with ten thousands of his saints, To execute judgment upon
all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all
their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed,
and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have
spoken against him’” (Jude 1:14–15). Peter called Noah “a
preacher of righteousness” (II Peter 2:5). In the dark time
in which Noah lived, to preach righteousness could not have
been a popular life work. The seemingly insignificant result
of his preaching, the saving of only seven other people,
must have been disappointing, but preach he did and saved
humankind in the process.
Abraham was the first person in Scripture to be called
a “prophet” (Genesis 20:7). The Hebrew word used there is
nabi and means “one who tells forth, announces, proclaims.”
So it was understood early on that a true prophet was a
preacher, God’s mouthpiece, and spoke the words that God
gave him.
20

It is ironic that Moses felt he was unable to speak for

God in the courts of Pharaoh. Maybe he was insecure
and self-consciously discounting his abilities, or maybe
he grew into his calling over time, but either way, Moses
became one of the great preachers of the Old Testament.
James F. Stitzinger describes Moses’ final words to Israel
in Deuteronomy 31–33 as “one of the earliest examples
of revelatory preaching. . . . This address was delivered
with tremendous ability and clarity.” David L. Larsen
believes that the entire book of Deuteronomy is a series
of sermons, culminating with Moses’ farewell. So powerful
is this book that when it was rediscovered in the time of
Josiah, read by Shaphan, and interpreted and applied
to their times by Huldah the prophetess, a great revival
came to Judah. (See II Chronicles 34:14–33.) That Moses’
preaching ministry was well-known in New Testament
times is confirmed by Stephen’s description of him in his
sermon before the Sanhedrin: “And Moses was learned in
all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words
and in deeds” (Acts 7:22).
Joshua left two farewell sermons (Joshua 23:2–16;
24:2–27) that John A. Broadus says “are really quite
remarkable . . . in their finely rhetorical use of historical
narrative, animated dialogue, and imaginative and
passionate appeal.”
The prophets were preachers with extraordinary impact
on their nation. They weren’t just future tellers; they often
called the people to repent and obey the Lord, and they
powerfully proclaimed the Word of God. They preached
with the purpose of getting a response from their hearers.
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Through psalms, proverbs, accounts of visions and dreams,

illustrations, metaphors, instruction, explanation, and
personification, they proclaimed the Word as they were
inspired of the Holy Spirit.
A well-known and dramatic example of preaching
by an Old Testament prophet was the sermon Nathan
preached in David’s court. (See II Samuel 12.) David had
fallen into adultery with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah.
When she became pregnant, he tried to hide his adultery
by summoning Uriah home from battle, hoping he would
spend the night with his wife, and thus disguise the fact that
the child was conceived while Uriah was away. When Uriah
refused to do so, declining special treatment unavailable to
his fellow soldiers, David sent him back to battle and sent
instructions to Joab to put Uriah in the most dangerous
place on the battlefield. Uriah was killed, and the plot to
hide David's sin seemed successful.
Then the Lord sent Nathan with a sermon for the king.
Nathan preached that sermon using a parable designed
specifically for David. It was the simple story of a poor
man and his ewe lamb:
There were two men in one city; the one rich,

and the other poor. The rich man had exceeding
many flocks and herds: But the poor man had
nothing, save one little ewe lamb, which he had
bought and nourished up: and it grew up together
with him, and with his children; it did eat of his
own meat, and drank of his own cup, and lay in
his bosom, and was unto him as a daughter.
22

And there came a traveller unto the rich man,

and he spared to take of his own flock and of his
own herd, to dress for the wayfaring man that was
come unto him; but took the poor man's lamb,
and dressed it for the man that was come to him
(II Samuel 12:1b–4).
David, of course, had been a shepherd and the least

among his brothers, so Nathan’s choice of this parable was
shrewdly designed to connect with the king on an emotional
level. Nathan also obviously knew David's empathy for the
underdog, as well as his sense of justice and fairness. All
these were used to bring the king face-to-face with his sin.
Nathan's courageous response when David indignantly
pronounced judgment on the rich man in the story, “Thou
art the man!” shattered David's facade and brought him
to repentance. “I have sinned against the Lord!” the king
cried. Although not released from the consequences of his
sin, David repented and was forgiven.
The rich legacy of effective and inspired preaching in the
Old Testament was the background for the ministries of
John and Jesus and the first-century church. This was their
context for understanding exactly what preaching was.
Greek Oratorical Tradition

First-century Christians were not only well aware of the
Old Testament examples of preaching, but they were also
part of a culture steeped in oratory. When Alexander the
Great swept through the known world in the fourth century
bc, he conquered not only kings and kingdoms, but also
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minds and cultures. Greek language, thought, and culture

began a reign that resisted Roman conquest and even the
rise of Christianity. Greek rules of rhetoric, later joined by
Roman thought on the subject, became the standard for all
public speaking.
Some scholars have identified the first formulation
of the rules of rhetoric with Korax about 466 bc. Korax
taught that five parts of a speech were needed to make an
effective, persuasive argument: introduction, presentation
of facts, argument, secondary remarks, and closing. Later,
Aristotle’s teachings on rhetoric became deeply rooted in
the ancient culture. His descriptions of persuasive rhetoric
remain classic. He taught that only three technical means
of persuasion are possible: the speaker must prove his case
by appealing to (a) the character of the speaker, (b) the
emotions of the hearer, and/or (c) traditional proofs, such
as statements of experts or the merits of the argument
itself. His suggested use of what he called ethos (character
of the speaker), pathos (emotions inspired in the hearers),
and logos (the persuasiveness of the speech as judged
by the hearers), form the core of Greco-Roman rhetoric.
Aristotle’s influence was immense. Even today we see the
influence of his teaching. In books on preaching we read
that every sermon consists of three parts: for example, the
preacher, the presentation, and the preparation; in other
words, ethos, pathos, and logos.
It is beyond the scope of this chapter to examine
Greco-Roman rhetoric in detail, but we cannot discount
its influence on how the first-century church would have
understood the act of preaching.
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New Testament Preaching

The first-century church not only had the examples of
Old Testament preaching and Greco-Roman oratory, but
the ministries of John and Jesus were fresh in their minds.
The Messiah and His forerunner were not ordinary men,
nor were they ordinary preachers. They stirred an entire
nation, indeed changed the world, and while Jesus’ death,
burial, and resurrection were the heart of this change,
preaching was the centerpiece of their ministries.
John was a remarkable character and a fearless preacher.
His confrontational style brought crowds of people to hear
him preach, including the Pharisees and Sadducees, whom
John denounced as a “generation of vipers” (Matthew 3:7).
He was a true forerunner, making the way for the One who
would come after. Preaching outdoors to huge crowds, he
was a rough-hewn man whose sermons stirred his listeners
to action. They repented, confessed their sins, and obeyed
his call to baptism. He also inspired others to follow him,
preparing them as individuals for later encounters with
Jesus, and even later ministries of their own. We know
Andrew and John, probably along with Andrew’s brother
Simon (later nicknamed Peter by Jesus) and John’s brother
James, were disciples of John before they answered Jesus’
call to “follow me.”
Matthew preserved enough of John’s preaching to give
us the flavor of his passionate and powerful delivery:
O generation of vipers, who hath warned

you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth
therefore fruits meet for repentance: And think
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not to say within yourselves, “We have Abraham

to our father:” for I say unto you, that God is
able of these stones to raise up children unto
Abraham. And now also the axe is laid unto the
root of the trees: therefore, every tree which
bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and
cast into the fire. I indeed baptize you with water
unto repentance: but he that cometh after me is
mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to
bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost,
and with fire: Whose fan is in his hand, and he will
thoroughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat
into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with
unquenchable fire (Matthew 3:7b–12).
It is no wonder that when he turned his attention and

tongue toward King Herod and Queen Herodias, he lost
his head. Jesus gave him this tribute: “For I say unto you,
among those that are born of women there is not a greater
prophet than John the Baptist” (Luke 7:28).
Jesus’ ministry began in a synagogue where He followed
what had become the usual method of presenting the Word
of God. In each synagogue there was a rostrum, or podium,
that faced the congregation. Here reading, teaching, and
preaching happened. In a service at the synagogue in His
hometown, Nazareth, Jesus announced His ministry in a
dramatic way:
And he came to Nazareth, where he had been

brought up: and, as his custom was, he went into
26

the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up

for to read. And there was delivered unto him
the book of the prophet Esaias. And when he
had opened the book, he found the place where
it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon
me, because he hath anointed me to preach the
gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the
brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the
captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to
set at liberty them that are bruised, To preach the
acceptable year of the Lord. And he closed the
book, and he gave it again to the minister, and sat
down. And the eyes of all them that were in the
synagogue were fastened on him (Luke 4:16–20).
Jesus commanded the attention of everyone there with His

reading of this dramatic text, and then began His sermon
simply, but powerfully: “This day is this scripture fulfilled
in your ears” (Luke 4:21). The reaction of the people at first
was amazement at the words of Jesus, and then turned
to rage when the sermon challenged them to see Him as
more than the local carpenter’s son. This reaction would be
echoed again and again in the preaching ministry of Jesus.
Jesus was in every sense a preacher. Mark introduced
Him: “Now after that John was put in prison, Jesus came
into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God,
And saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God
is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel’” (Mark 1:14–
15). He preached and taught to huge crowds, delivering
remarkable sermons that continue to connect with those
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who read them today. He preached with passion and

conviction. He modeled proclamation of the gospel for all
time.
Preaching in the Early Church

By studying these three examples of preaching and
recognizing they would have formed the early church’s
understanding of preaching, we can begin to glimpse what
first-century preaching would have looked and sounded
like. The first Pentecostal preachers would have modeled
their preaching after the preachers of the Old Testament,
added proven techniques of rhetoric that were on display
everywhere in the culture, and followed the examples of
John and Jesus.
We can also learn what early preaching was like by
examining how the authors of the New Testament used
various words to discuss and describe preaching. Wolfgang
Friedrich in the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament
identifies thirty-three different verbs in the New Testament
that describe the act of preaching. We will not cover them
all since I don’t want to bore you; moreover, most of them
play a minor role in describing preaching, so we will only
look at three of the most important.
κηρύσσω (kerysso)
Kerysso is the most common verb used for preaching
in the New Testament, and it means “to proclaim” or “to
herald.” It is used to describe the preaching ministries of
John the Baptist in Mark 1:4, of Jesus in Mark 1:14, and
of the apostles in Mark 3:14. It pictures a herald who is
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sent to proclaim the occurrence or explanation of an

event. The word is thought to come from the Old Persian
word, xrausa, which, according to Klaas Runia in a 1977
lecture entitled “What is Preaching According to the New
Testament?” means “to cry out loud and clear.” In Greek
usage outside the New Testament, an interesting example is
the use of the verb by the great Roman historian Plutarch.
In 197 bc a herald named Flaminius appeared at the
Isthmian Games in Greece to announce the Roman victory
over the Macedonians in a recent battle. Runia describes
the importance of this example: “At the same time [he
announced the Roman victory], Flaminius also announced
the liberty and autonomy of Greece. The two facts were
connected. At the moment that Flaminius announced
the victory, the Greeks virtually became free. By his
‘proclamation’ he, as it were, set an [already] existing fact
into motion.”
So κηρύσσω (kerysso) has a twofold meaning. It not
only means the proclamation of an event, but also the
effect of that event on the listener. Runia explains it like
this: “In the act of the κηρύσσειν [proclaiming] the event
becomes reality for the listener.”
Of course, the mere proclamation itself does not produce
this effect on the listener. The content of the message is
vital to the result. Friedrich says: “The essential point
about the report which [heralds] give is that it does not
originate with them. Behind it stands a higher power. The
herald does not express his own views. He is the spokesman
for his master. . . . Heralds adopt the mind of those who
commission them.” Important for our purposes, the New
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Testament stresses the importance both of the content

preached and its proclamation. Without proclamation, the
essential content of the gospel will never reach its intended
audience. According to Friedrich the verb kerysso occurs
sixty-one times in the New Testament, while the noun
kerygma occurs only eight times. This leads Friedrich to
comment: “Emphasis does not attach to the [kerygma]. . . .
The decisive thing is the action, the proclamation
itself. . . . The divine intervention takes place through
the proclamation.” Runia says it like this: “wherever this
event is proclaimed, it inaugurates what this event has
accomplished. The new situation, brought about by the
death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, now becomes reality
for every listener who accepts it in faith.”
How does the New Testament writers’ use of this verb
reflect the way the first-century church thought about
preaching? Friedrich asserts that “preach” does not
adequately convey the full meaning of kerysso in New
Testament usage. Kerysso “does not mean the delivery of a
learned and edifying . . . discourse in well-chosen words and
a pleasant voice. It is the declaration of an event.” Friedrich
leaves no doubt as to what preaching accomplishes and
how it does so: “Christian preaching does not persuade the
hearers by beautiful and clever words—otherwise it would
only be a matter of words. Preaching does more. It takes
place in the spirit and in power.”
εὐαγγελίζω (euangelizo)
Euangelizo occurs fifty-four times in the New Testament
and means the same thing as kerysso, that is “to preach.”
30

However, euangelizo carries with it the added emphasis that

the message that is preached is the good news of the gospel,
that is the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. The
important thing to remember is that there is no implication
that saving power is in the simple understanding of the
historical fact. Unless it is preached, no evangelizing (an
English word that comes from euangelizo) takes place.
When united with the power of Spirit-anointed preaching
as it is intended to be, proclaiming the good news of the
gospel is effective, bringing demonstration and power,
ministering to the whole gamut of human need. As Friedrich
writes, euangelizo “is not just speaking and preaching; it
is proclamation with full authority and power. Signs and
wonders accompany the evangelical message. They belong
together, for the Word is powerful and effective.”
μαρτυρέω (martyreo)
The third verb we will look at is martyreo. It means “to
witness.” The noun form μάρτυς (martys) means “witness”
or “one who testifies what he or she has personally seen or
heard.” Luke used the noun at the close of his Gospel to
report the words of Jesus to the apostles:
Then opened he their understanding, that they

might understand the scriptures, And said unto
them, Thus it is written, and thus it behoved
Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third
day: And that repentance and remission of sins
should be preached in his name among all nations,
beginning at Jerusalem.
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And ye are witnesses of these things. And,

behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you:
but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be
endued with power from on high (Luke 24:45–49).
The same description is found in Jesus’ last words to His

disciples: “But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy
Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me
both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and
unto the uttermost part of the earth” (Acts 1:8). The power
to accomplish this is in the Holy Spirit. God’s power will
enable them to fulfill the commission Jesus is giving them.
This is how we can be witnesses even though we were
not there as the disciples were during those momentous
days when Jesus was on the earth. Because of our faith
and obedience and the empowerment of the Holy Spirit,
we don’t need to have personally seen the death, burial, and
resurrection to be a witness of them. Neither is it necessary
to have been in the number that heard Jesus declare that
they would be witnesses (Acts 1:8). Both Paul and Stephen
are called witnesses, although there is no evidence either of
them ever met Jesus (outside of visions).
So what do we learn from this brief examination of
the New Testament’s three most commonly used terms to
describe preaching? First, we learn that preachers are heralds
of the good news of the death, burial, and resurrection
of Jesus Christ. As heralds, they are proclaimers, not of
messages of their own invention or choosing, but that of
their Master. The New Testament focuses on the act of
proclamation, but never loses sight of the content that
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must be proclaimed, so we must always see the message

and its proclamation in tandem, not one without the
other. By the proclamation of the gospel, those who hear
and obey are saved, thus making not only the message
but the proclamation itself a vital part of the process of
salvation. Second, we learn that the message of the gospel
is good news, not ignoring the tragic judgment that will
come to all who reject it, but focusing on the opportunity
for salvation for all who accept it. Third, heralds are not
hirelings, but participants in this gospel. They are witnesses
of its effectiveness by its work in their lives through their
own faith and obedience. They are empowered by the Holy
Spirit, which makes them ambassadors for God as they lift
His words beyond those of human wisdom, and He infuses
them with demonstration and power.
From what we have seen, it is clear that when the first-
century church thought of communicating the gospel,
they envisioned public proclamation. This was what the
Old Testament demonstrated to them; it was what they
were taught by Greek and Roman culture; it is what they
witnessed in the synagogue, on city streets, and in the
countryside; and it was the example of John the Baptist
and Jesus. In an almost exclusively oral culture, public
proclamation was the most common and effective way of
communicating with the masses, and it was a part of daily
life.
For first-century Christians, preaching was an event
marked with divine power and carried out in a public
setting. Preaching challenged the hearer with the gospel,
produced conviction, and called for a response. It was
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preaching like Peter did on the day of Pentecost that came

to model the presentation of the good news. Thousands
responded to his sermon, and through its proclamation of
the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, the church
began with a remarkable explosion of growth. In the early
years of the church, this kind of preaching was the method
of propagating the gospel. In fact, some believe that much
of the New Testament itself was first communicated as
preached sermons. Klaas Runia asserts: “Form-critical
research has, I believe, shown convincingly that much of
the material which we now have in the gospels, originally,
in the period of oral transmission, was passed on in the
preaching of the early church.”
So we conclude that, for the apostles, the method of
presenting the gospel was verbal, usually in a structured
setting, and that the form of the presentation was
proclamation. This, to them, was preaching. It turned the
world upside down, broke through barriers of paganism
and persecution, and conquered the Roman Empire. Why
would we abandon such a powerful tool today? Preaching
is still God’s method for proclaiming the gospel and, as in
the first century, this means persuasive, passionate, and
powerful proclamation. Let us preach as they did; I believe
it will, even today, produce the same result.
34

Lucretia Yaghjian, “Ancient Reading” in Richard

Rohrbaugh ed., The Social Sciences and New Testament
Interpretation (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1996).
Joanna Dewey, “Textuality in an Oral Culture: A Survey of

the Pauline Traditions” in Joanna Dewey and Elizabeth
Struthers Malbon, eds., Orality and Textuality in Early
Christian Literature (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994).
James F. Stitzinger, “The History of Expository Preaching”

in John McArthur, Jr.; Richard L. Mayhue; Robert L.
Thomas, eds. Rediscovering Expository Preaching (Dallas:
Word Publishing, 1992).
David L. Larsen, The Company of the Preachers: A History

of Biblical Preaching from the Old Testament to the Modern
Era (Grand Rapids: Kregel Academic & Professional,
1998).
John A. Broadus, Lectures On the History of Preaching (New

York: Sheldon, 1886).
E. C. Dargan, A History of Preaching (New York: George

H. Doran Co., 1905)
Wolfgang Friedrich, “Preaching” in Gerhard Kittel,

Gerhard Friedrich, eds., Geoffrey W. Bromiley trans.,
Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964–76).
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Klaas Runia, “What is Preaching According to the New

Testament?” The Tyndale Biblical Theology Lecture
for 1976, delivered at the School of Oriental and African
Studies, London, on January 4, 1977.
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3
Saved by Preaching
The purpose of preaching must always be the

first condition that decrees its character. The final
cause is that which really shapes everything's life.
And what is preaching for? The answer comes
without hesitation. It is for men's salvation.
Phillips Brooks
The central purpose of evangelical preaching is

to win an immediate commitment to Jesus Christ.
Alan Walker
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Some years ago, the church in Metairie, Louisiana, was

involved in an extensive remodeling program. They were
tearing down a portion of the old auditorium in preparation
for a planned expansion that would substantially enlarge
their church. In the portion of the construction that
required demolition, there were some things they were not
going to use after the project was finished, so they were not
particular about moving them until it was necessary. One
of those things was the old pulpit, which still sat in its usual
spot.
One day they were taking down some of the rafters and
lowering them carefully to the floor. Several men were on
scaffolding high above the floor of the old auditorium. One
of them, Ken Broussard, had the job of guiding down each
rafter, once it was torn loose, to other men waiting below.
He was standing twenty, twenty-five feet, maybe even more
off the floor of the old auditorium, helping pass the rafters
down. One of the long, heavy pieces of wood was lowered
down to him, and at the moment he gripped it, the rafter
slipped from the grasp of those above. The entire weight of
the beam was on him. He knew he could not hold it alone,
but in order to help protect those below him, he attempted
to slow its fall until others could rush to help secure it. As
he felt the weight, he took two or three steps back to try to
balance himself, and Ken Broussard stepped backward, off
the scaffolding, and into thin air.
Time seemed to slow as he fell. He realized that the
distance of the fall was certainly enough to cause serious
injury, maybe even enough to kill. Turning his head, he
looked down, and beneath him he saw that the pulpit was
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still where it had stood for many years. When he saw it, he
thought, The pulpit is still on the old platform. That makes
it several feet higher than the floor. If I could just fall on the
pulpit, it would break my fall and maybe save me. Somehow,
he was able to twist in mid-air, turning completely over,
and fell across the old pulpit. He rolled off the pulpit and
onto the platform floor as men ran to him, alarmed, sure
he was hurt, hoping they could help. His pastor ran to him
and anxiously asked, “Brother Ken, are you all right?” Ken
Broussard stood up, dusted himself off, and looked at the
pastor.
“Yes, Pastor, I'm fine,” he said. “I was saved by the
pulpit.”
All of us who have been born again were saved by the
pulpit.
You preach to those that are lost. They are the slaves
of sin, victims of its deception, entrapped by the call of
the world. They are ruled by fear, doubt, hurt, worry. But
preaching changes all of that. It liberates, frees, changes,
empowers. It produces new hope, new confidence, new
life. No wonder Paul said: “For the preaching of the cross
is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are
saved it is the power of God” (I Corinthians 1:18). Without
a preacher preaching the Word, the process that leads to
salvation is aborted before it is even begun.
In chapter 2 we gained a better idea of how preaching
was understood by first-century Christians and presented in
the New Testament. Now, let’s look in more detail at its role
in salvation. The role of preaching in the New Testament
may be best described by Paul in Romans 10:12–15. In
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making the point that salvation is available to all, Jew and

Gentile alike, he described a progression, in reverse, that
takes a person from ignorance of the gospel to salvation:
For there is no difference between the Jew

and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich
unto all that call upon him. For whosoever shall
call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
How then shall they call on him in whom they
have not believed? and how shall they believe in
him of whom they have not heard? and how shall
they hear without a preacher? And how shall they
preach, except they be sent? as it is written, How
beautiful are the feet of them that preach the
gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good
things! (Romans 10:12–15).
Obviously, this passage illuminates the role of preaching

in salvation, because the series of rhetorical questions that
Paul asked leaves little doubt that without preaching, the
chain—from hearing, to believing, to calling on the name
of the Lord, to being saved—is not only broken, it remains
unforged at all.
When Paul wrote his epistle to the Roman church, he had
never been there. But many of its members were known to
him. In fact, in the last chapter of the letter, he personally
greeted twenty-six people, which William Barclay notes is
far more than any other epistle. The majority of the saints
in Rome were Gentiles, mostly freed men and women and
slaves. There was also a significant Jewish minority. Since
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half of the names Paul mentioned in the letter are Jewish,

perhaps Paul was a bit more familiar with the Jewish
minority than the Gentile majority; at any rate he wrote
with both in mind.
Salvation
The theme of Romans is found in 1:16–17: “For I am not
ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God
unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first,
and also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of
God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, ‘The just
shall live by faith.’” In this passage, Paul declared salvation
is for everyone; it is “to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.”
He also carefully connected the gospel with salvation: “The
gospel,” he declared, “is the power of God for salvation.”
Salvation itself is a basic theme of Romans; in fact, it is
a basic theme of Paul’s entire work and ministry. William
Barclay calls it one of the “three great foundation pillars
of his thought and belief,” the other two being the closely-
related faith and justification.
Keep in mind that salvation in the New Testament is
not just about avoiding Hell and getting to Heaven; it is
holistic, affecting every aspect of our lives.
For Paul, salvation had a definite beginning; thus he
could speak of people having been saved (Romans 8:24,
11:11). He referred to that point in time when a person
responds to hearing the gospel with faith and obedience
by repenting, being baptized in the name of Jesus, and
receiving the baptism of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38). But
salvation is also an ongoing process, so Paul could speak
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of people being saved (I Corinthians 1:18; 15:2). It is also a

future event, so he could speak of people going to be saved
(Romans 5:9–10; 13:11). Salvation describes all that God
has done to restore humankind to a covenant relationship
with Him, now and in the future. It is at the core of the
message of the Old and New Testaments; it is why God
was manifested in the flesh, why the Cross, and why the
Resurrection. It is what God is all about in terms of His
relationship with human beings. As Paul J. Achtemeier
says, “the kind of history about which Paul is concerned,
and with which he is dealing, is history as it illumines and
displays the relationship between God and the world or, to
use other terminology, between Creator and creation.”
The Context of Romans 10

The context of Romans 10:13–15 is salvation, the need for
it, and how it can be obtained. The passage is part of Paul’s
explanation for the Jewish nation’s rejection of the gospel.
Specifically, after describing Israel’s refusal to accept the
gospel, he began a series of arguments dealing with potential
excuses for their rejection. In 9:6–13 he declared the problem
was not because of a failure of God’s Word. In 9:14–18 he
insisted that Israel’s rejection was not because God is unjust.
In 9:19–29 Paul argued that God has the right to exercise His
prerogative to offer the same salvation to Gentiles and Jews
alike. Beginning at 9:30, Paul described Israel’s responsibility
for her failure to accept the gospel. In 9:30–10:4, he pointed
out that Israel pursued righteousness through the Law
and failed to find it, yet the Gentiles through faith found
righteousness even when they had not pursued it. In 10:5–13,
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Saved by Preaching
he offered Old Testament support for salvation by faith in

Jesus Christ. Finally, in 10:14–21, Paul argued that Israel’s
failure came not because of a lack of knowledge, but due to
her own stubbornness.
Four Questions
In Romans 10:12–13, Paul continued his discussion on
the issue of salvation, and particularly Israel’s rejection
of it. In chapter 3, Paul had declared that all people need
salvation: “For there is no difference: For all have sinned,
and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:22b–23).
Now he reminds the Romans that just as the need of
salvation is universal, so is the availability of the gospel.
He said, in effect, “The Lord is not an exclusive God, but is
Lord over all mankind. He is rich in grace and mercy to all
who call upon Him.” He then quoted Joel 2:32: “whosoever
shall call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered.”
This is often misunderstood to mean that Paul was saying
salvation comes by a simple calling out to God. Those who
believe this overlook the fact that this statement is from the
same prophetic passage of Joel that Peter quoted in Acts 2
in explaining the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the Day
of Pentecost. Paul was talking about the entire process of
salvation outlined by Peter in Acts 2:38.
But how do people come to call on the name of the Lord,
that is, obey the gospel? What brings them to this point of
faith and obedience? Paul answered this with a series of
four questions:
How then shall they call on him in whom they have not
believed?
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How shall they believe in him of whom they have not

heard?
How shall they hear without a preacher?
How shall they preach, except they be sent? (Romans
10:14–15a).
The New Bible Commentary summarizes these questions
(and reverses the order) like this: “Messengers must be
sent, the message must be preached, people must hear the
message, and hearing must be met by faith.” It is obvious
that Paul was describing the usual steps that bring people
to “call on the name of the Lord” and thus be saved. This
is not speculative or theoretical; it is how people are saved.
Paul’s whole argument here was that the claim that Israel’s
rejection of the gospel can be excused because she did not
know about the good news is simply bogus. He proved this
by pointing out messengers have been sent and the message
has been preached. This whole argument breaks down
if preaching the gospel is only one of many ways people
come to saving faith and obedience. In other words, if this
is not the way salvation comes, then maybe Israel did not
know; therefore, she could not have responded in faith and
obedience, and her rejection of the gospel is excusable. Paul
left no room for this interpretation, and so leaves us certain
that hearing the preaching of the gospel is one of the steps
leading to salvation.
The Whole Gospel Preached to the Whole World

If preaching is a vital part of the normal progression
toward salvation, then it necessarily follows that preaching
must be available to all who would be saved. While this may
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Saved by Preaching
seem unlikely, Paul asserted that the fact that preaching

was available to all left Israel without the excuse that they
had not heard the gospel. M. B. Riddle discusses this point:
The beautiful precision of the Greek requires

us to find an intimation of the certainty of the
universal gospel proclamation. In the first two
questions, there is an absolute negative; in the
third, χωρίς occurs, implying the probability
that one will preach; in the last, we have ἐάν μή,
which indicates that, however men may fail to
call and hear, those who will preach will certainly
be sent forth. This turn of expression seems to
have escaped the notice of commentators, but it
points directly toward the position the Apostle
is establishing: the universality of the means
provided by God for the salvation of men, whether
they hear or forbear.
There are five actions taking place in this passage:

sending, proclaiming, hearing, believing, and calling. The
first is done by God, (and the church, in conjunction with
the divine calling, see Acts 13:2–4), the second action is done
by the one called (the herald or preacher), the last three by
the one who would be saved. None of these things, either
alone or in combination, saves. Salvation is through the
death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ: the gospel.
But since a person must believe and obey the gospel in order
to obtain salvation offered through the Cross, the calling,
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preaching, and hearing also have a role to play in bringing

the lost to the point of saving faith.
The “calling” of men and women to preach is the action
of God commissioning and sending men and women to
proclaim the gospel. This is what makes preaching possible
as God continues to call and use people to proclaim the
good news around the world. As men and women respond
to the call and follow the direction of the Holy Spirit, the
gospel makes its way into every corner of the globe. This
preaching accomplishes the purpose of God that all may
hear.
It is the act of preaching or proclaiming, and not just
the content of the message (the gospel) that is in view
here. As we saw in our discussion of kerysso, which is used
in Romans 10, there is an unbreakable link between the
proclamation and that which is proclaimed. Remember
Runia’s comment: “wherever this event is proclaimed, it
inaugurates what this event has accomplished.”
So we cannot escape the conclusion that preaching plays
a fundamental role in salvation. Outside the person seeking
salvation, no other action by human beings (other than
baptizing) is part of this process. No human righteousness,
no piety, no penance plays any part. In Romans 10, Paul
emphasized the importance of the role of the preacher and
preaching by quoting Isaiah 52:7 and Nahum 1:15, “How
beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of
peace, and bring glad tidings of good things!” (Romans
10:15). Warren Wiersbe points out that the context of
the Nahum reference was the arrival of the good news of
the fall of Israel’s enemy, the Assyrians. This was a past
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Saved by Preaching
event. In Isaiah, the reference is to news of a future event:

the end time, and the coming of the Lord. “But Paul used
the quotation in a present application: the messengers of
the Gospel taking the Good News to Israel today. . . . The
remedy for Israel’s rejection is in hearing the Word of the
Gospel and believing on Jesus Christ.”
Hearing
Preaching is part of the process, because hearing is
part of the process. For the person coming to salvation,
the process starts with hearing. Paul made the connection
between the proclaiming of the Word and the hearing of
the listener, and the coming of faith to the heart: “So then
faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God”
(Romans 10:17). “Hearing” as used in Romans is not just
the physical process of the mind receiving and processing
sound, nor is it passive attention to what is said. R. C.
Sproul explains:
Then Paul asks in verse 18: But I ask: Did

they not hear? There is a play on words here in
the original language between the Greek word for
hearing and the Greek word for obedience. The
verb “to hear” is akouein which simply means
“to hear.” The verb “to obey” is hupokouein. . . .
Those who really hear are the ones where the
message gets through and penetrates their hearts.
In fact, the word hupokouein is found in verse 16,
where it reads that they have not all accepted the
gospel—literally they have not all “obeyed” the
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gospel. Although we see a frequent contrast in

the Scriptures between law and gospel, here we
have an indication that the gospel is to be obeyed.
There is an implicit command in the gospel, a call
to obedience to Jesus Christ.
In verse 16, the New Bible Commentary points out, Paul

had “made clear that the condition in this chain that has
gone unfulfilled is the responsibility of those who hear the
preachers of the good news to respond in obedience and
faith.”
In terms of the broader application, Achtemeier insists:
“Whatever else this passage may be about, it is uniquely
about the great importance of hearing.” The word that has
just been used in verse 16 in the passive voice is used in
verse 17 in the active voice. “Faith cometh by hearing.” And
this active hearing is the response to the Word of God.
Gospel preaching challenges those who hear to respond
to the good news with faith and obedience, and this
response brings salvation. In this way, preaching is a vital
part of the salvation process. We find affirmation of this in
Paul’s question “How shall they hear without a preacher?”
(Romans 10:14), for the answer is, without doubt, they
won’t hear. And without hearing there is no believing,
and without believing there is no obedience, and without
obedience there is no salvation.
Conclusion
As we discussed in chapter 2, preaching as understood
by Paul and the rest of the first-century church, was the
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Saved by Preaching
proclamation of the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ.

This proclamation did not resort to philosophy or empty
rhetoric, but by the power of the Holy Spirit demonstrated
the presence of God through His Word. It was effective
in bringing conviction to the hearts of those who heard
it, bringing them to faith in what Jesus did on the cross,
and calling them to identify with Jesus’ death, burial, and
resurrection by obeying Peter’s instructions on the Day of
Pentecost: “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in
the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye
shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost” (Acts 2:38).
Recognizing that preaching is uniquely part of the
process leading to salvation does not mean there are no
other ways people might first discover the gospel. Are some
first convicted and attracted through a tract or a book?
Certainly. Are some saved by personal scriptural study?
Yes. Do others come to God after seeing a drama, hearing
a song, or witnessing a gracious act by a Christian?
Absolutely. God does not shackle Himself to one way
of accomplishing His will in an individual’s life, much
as He does not do so with the sequence of obedience
and experience found in Acts 2:38. Most will repent,
then be baptized, then receive the Holy Spirit; but this
sequence is not the experience of everyone. While none
receive the Spirit before repenting, many receive it before
baptism, as did Cornelius’s household in Acts 10. This
does not negate the need for baptism; it just means the
chronological order is not rigid. So with preaching; while
a preacher preaching the Word will play an undeniable
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role in all being saved, preaching need not be the first—and

certainly not the only—encounter with truth.
We are all like the Ethiopian eunuch. He sincerely
searched the Scriptures, obviously hungry to understand
them and the God they presented. So that his faith might
bring him to salvation, God sent a preacher; his name was
Philip. When Philip asked, “Do you understand what you
are reading?” the Ethiopian replied, “How can I, except
some man should guide me?” (Acts 8:30–31). Philip was
invited to get in the chariot with the eunuch, and when he
asked Philip to explain a passage from Isaiah 53, “Philip
opened his mouth, and began at the same scripture, and
preached unto him Jesus” (Acts 8:35). The proclamation
of the gospel resulted in faith and obedience by the hearer:
“And as they went on their way, they came unto a certain
water: and the eunuch said, ‘See, here is water; what doth
hinder me to be baptized?’ . . . And he commanded the
chariot to stand still: and they went down both into the
water, both Philip and the eunuch; and he baptized him”
(Acts 8:36, 38).
In coming to salvation, we all need a guide. That is the
job of preaching.
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Saved by Preaching
William Barclay, The Letter to the Romans (Edinburgh:

The Saint Andrews Press, 1975), rev. ed.
Paul J. Achtemeier, Romans, IBCTP (Louisville: John

Knox Press, 1985).
D. A. Carson, R. T. France, J. A. Motyer, and G. J. Wenham,

eds. New Bible Commentary: 21st Century Edition (4th
ed. Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity
Press, 1994).
John Peter Lange, Philip Schaff, F. R. Fay, and M. B. Riddle;

J. F. Hurst, tr. A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures:
Romans (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2008).
Wolfgang Friedrich, “Preaching” in Gerhard Kittel,

Gerhard Friedrich, eds., Geoffrey W. Bromiley tr.,
Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964–76).
Klaas Runia, “What is Preaching According to the New

Testament?” The Tyndale Biblical Theology Lecture
for 1976, delivered at the School of Oriental and African
Studies, London, on January 4th, 1977.
Warren W. Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary

(Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1996).
R. C. Sproul, The Gospel of God: An Exposition of Romans

(Great Britain: Christian Focus Publications, 1994).
51

Part T wo
The Preacher
The orator persuades by moral character when

his speech is delivered in such a manner as to render
him worthy of confidence; for we feel confidence
in a greater degree and more readily in persons of
worth in regard to everything in general.
Aristotle
Now that we have defined preaching and discussed the

biblical basis for it, let’s look at the process of preaching, that
is, how is it done? What are its components, and maybe most
importantly, how can we learn to do it and do it effectively?
Can preaching be learned? It is a spiritual event; that is
sure. It is a collaboration between God and humans, so why
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do we need to learn how to do it? Can’t we just leave it up

to God? Didn’t God tell one of His prophets not to worry
about what he would say, that God would fill his mouth with
words? Yes, He did say that. When Jeremiah was struggling
with the call of God upon his life, one of his arguments
was that he could not preach, he was only a young man, he
had nothing to say! God’s answer went to the heart of what
was really bothering Jeremiah: rejection. It wasn’t lack
of ability or knowledge that lay at the root of Jeremiah’s
reluctance; it was fear. “Be not afraid of their faces: for I
am with thee to deliver thee, saith the Lord. Then the Lord
put forth his hand, and touched my mouth. And the Lord
said unto me, Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth”
(Jeremiah 1:8–9). It was a reassuring vision for a scared
young man, overwhelmed by the immensity and difficulty
of the call to preach. This was not God describing the
method for preaching for all time; He was simply assuring
Jeremiah that with God’s help he would be able to do what
he was called to do.
While preaching is spiritual and demands the anointing
of God, as we saw in chapter 1, it is also communication.
It is public speaking. There are fundamentals to effective
public speaking that can and must be learned. They are
essential to success. They may seem simple or unimportant,
but failing to master them will cripple your preaching from
the beginning.
Albert Einstein had to learn his numbers, then
addition and subtraction. After that, he had to memorize
the multiplication tables and learn long division. Then
came geometry, algebra, trigonometry, and calculus.
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The Preacher
Step by step he had to master these fundamentals before

he had the skill to arrive at E=MC2. Powerful preaching
has many components. Many of them are spiritual and
wholly dependent on the Spirit of God; others are down-
to-earth. Coupled with the Spirit, these are fundamentals
of communication. Learn them from the basic to the
advanced, and God will put His words in your mouth.
Often in discussions of preaching, the process of
preaching is said to have three components. These three
components are present in every sermon preached,
regardless of the type of sermon. They are:
1. The Preacher
2. The Preparation
3. The Presentation
As you see, these have nothing to do with the number of

points used, or memorable alliteration, or the proper use
of illustrations. These three are more fundamental than
that; they are the foundation of every sermon. It is not an
oversimplification to say that if these are right, the sermon
will be right, but if these three are not right, nothing can
make the final product right.
This description of preaching is not new. In fact, it is
based on Aristotle’s description of effective public speaking:
“Now the proofs furnished by the speech are of three kinds.
The first depends upon the moral character of the speaker,
the second upon putting the hearer into a certain frame
of mind, the third upon the speech itself, in so far as it
proves or seems to prove.” Aristotle lists them in a different
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order (his order is the preacher, the presentation, and the

preparation), but you get the point. These three ingredients
will serve as a rough outline for the remainder of this book.
We will study each of these ingredients in turn, beginning
with the preacher.
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4
The C all
to Preach
I determined early in my ministry that I could

not afford to be good at golf. I decided to be good at
preaching. You have to choose what you will be good
at, because you can be good at only a very few things.
Quoted without attribution in 12 Essential

Skills for Great Preaching by Wayne McDill
And He appointed twelve that they might be

with Him, and that He might send them forth
to preach. This is the beginning of the preacher's
training, and the essential part of it—to be WITH
HIM and to be SENT FORTH BY HIM.
Arthur E. Gregory
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At the heart of every sermon is the preacher who is

preaching it. A person’s own relationship with God, with the
Word, and with the surrounding world will color and affect
everything that is said. It is possible to preach, and not be
a real man or woman of God. It is possible to be eloquent,
and even affect those who hear you. But it is impossible, in
the long term, to keep your true self from being revealed.
To be a preacher but not have a real and deep relationship
with God is to rob your efforts of true persuasive power.
Your results will be only those results that a well-crafted
and eloquent piece of public speaking can bring. We must
not confuse the power of effective speaking with the power
of God. There have always been powerful speakers who
brought great crowds, indeed whole nations, to follow them,
for good or ill. You must be much more than that. You need
the anointing of God and the power of the Word in order
to have an eternal effect on those who hear you. Without
those two things, your preaching will become tinkling brass
and sounding cymbals.
If you do not intend to dedicate yourself to a daily,
lifelong commitment to developing and maintaining a
genuine walk with God, then do something else; for the sake
of those who hear you, and for your own sake, don't be a
preacher. Preaching the Word of God is not a profession, it
is not a job, nor is it a career. It is a high and holy calling,
a sacred commission from God Himself. To approach it
lightly, to seek it for the chance to be in front of a crowd
merely to seek attention or applause is a foolish and even
dangerous thing to do.
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Called by God
The beginning of every true ministry is the call of God.
Of this call, William Sangster wrote:
Called to preach! Commissioned of God to teach

the word! A herald of the great King! A witness
of the Eternal Gospel! Could any work be more
high and holy? To this supreme task God sent
His only begotten Son. In all the frustration and
confusion of the times, is it possible to imagine
a work comparable in importance with that of
proclaiming the will of God to wayward men?
Not by accident, nor yet by the thrustful egotism
of men, was the pulpit given central place . . . it
is there of design and devotion. It is there by the
logic of things. It is there as the throne of the
Word of God.
It is absolutely vital to remember that God does the

calling. We do not choose to be a preacher like we would
choose to be, say, a lawyer, a doctor, or a salesman. God does
the choosing. Our only choice is to obey or not to obey. This
is never a simple, nor an easy choice. Something within us
seems to recognize the far-reaching ramifications of such a
choice, and it is natural to hesitate, to question, to doubt.
The call to preach is not simply the plan of God for our
lives, nor is it just the will of God for our lives. God does have
a will and a plan for the lives of all His children, no doubt
about that. Sometimes we talk of someone being called to
do something other than preach; this is true, because there
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are certainly lesser callings: doctor, lawyer, president, or

king. But this is the call to preach. This call touches not only
time, and life here, but this touches eternal life, because
preaching is integral to the process of salvation, as we have
seen in chapter 3: “How then shall they call on him in whom
they have not believed? And how shall they believe in him
of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear
without a preacher? And how shall they preach, except
they be sent?” (Romans 19:14–15a). This call is how God
sends those who preach, and only those who have this call
can truly preach.
God's call is forever. Look at Romans 11:29: “For the
gifts and calling of God are without repentance.” God does
not rescind His call, even though we may refuse it, abuse
it, or even disqualify ourselves from following it. To simply
ignore it and live our lives fulfilling our own ambitions and
plans is a dangerous business. “And Jesus said unto him, No
man, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is
fit for the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:62). The context here
is the call to preach the gospel.
Be Sure, Then Go Ahead

Because the decision to acknowledge and obey the call to
preach is a serious, life-altering choice, we must approach
it with the gravity it demands. After Jesus, the greatest
preacher of all time was Paul. His ministry has affected
the world as no other, yet even he sometimes marveled that
such a responsibility as preaching the only saving gospel
was placed on the shoulders of human beings. “For we are
unto God a sweet savour of Christ, in them that are saved,
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and in them that perish: To the one we are the savour of

death unto death; and to the other the savour of life unto
life. And who is sufficient for these things?” (II Corinthians
2:15–16). To engage in preaching because you love the
attention or want to impress somebody is to court disaster.
You preach because you have no choice.
There is a cost to being a preacher, and not everyone is
equipped to handle that cost. James may have had this in
mind when he wrote, “My brethren, be not many masters,
knowing that we shall receive the greater condemnation”
(James 3:1). The word rendered “masters” could be better
translated instructors so that the meaning of James’s
comment becomes “Many should not be instructors,
knowing the weight that they must bear.” All this goes
to your motive for wanting to be a preacher. For the vast
majority of preachers, there is little recognition, even less
applause. Most labor their lives away in obscurity, faithfully
fulfilling their call. Most will not be rich, famous, or by
the world’s reckoning, even successful. But they will fulfill
what God called them to do. They will pluck many from
the burning, and great will be their reward, not here, but in
Heaven. If you want anything other than a life of service,
self-denial, and commitment to an eternal cause more and
more out of step with modern times, don’t be a preacher.
My pastor A. E. Carney used to advise those who came
to him saying they felt a call to preach: “If you can do
anything else, don't preach.” I have on occasion shared that
advice, and it has sometimes been misunderstood; a few
times it has even offended someone. Once, after a class where
I quoted Brother Carney, I was approached by a young
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lady who was upset. She said, “Brother Jones, it is wrong

to say that only those who are not able to do anything else
should preach! If we teach that, we will prevent our best,
most able young people from being preachers, and those are
the ones we need!” Of course she was right, but she missed
the point. (I should have communicated it better!) When
Brother Carney said, “If you can do anything else, don't
preach,” he didn’t mean preachers should be drawn from
those who are so inept and unqualified they can’t make a
living any other way. He meant that no matter what other
fields of labor call to you, no matter how able and talented
you may be for something else, no matter how much you
may desire to do something else, if you are truly called to
preach, you will have no other choice, you simply must be a
preacher. So, if you find in spite of feeling like you are called
to preach, you can be happy, fulfilled, and satisfied doing
something else, then you weren’t truly called to preach. If
you are called, there is just no other choice: “For though I
preach the gospel, I have nothing to glory of: for necessity
is laid upon me; yea, woe is unto me, if I preach not the
gospel!” (I Corinthians 9:16).
If there are reservations, do something else until you
know for sure. Once you know, commit yourself totally.
Never ask God for an escape clause: “If this doesn't work
out, I can always . . . .” To enter the ministry with plans
for exiting doesn't work. It doesn’t work for a marriage; it
won't work for a ministry. You will get discouraged, you will
feel like quitting, but if you are truly called, and completely
committed, you will make it through, simply because there
is no choice.
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Response to the Call

It is important to realize the call is just that—a call. It
doesn't make you a man or woman of God. It is what you
do with that call that makes you a man or woman of God.
The call is the starting point, the foundation. It must be
built upon.
So how should you respond to the call? Simply put, get
busy. Involve yourself in the life of a local church. One of
the qualifications for a preacher we will explore in the next
chapter is “not a novice.” A novice is a beginner, one who
lacks experience. Experience comes only with time and
involvement. You need experience—not at preaching—at
living, at praying, at witnessing.
Almost forty years ago, Brother Fred Foster was teaching
a class for young ministers during a district meeting in
Louisiana. During the lesson, he made a statement that I
wrote on the flyleaf of my brand-new Thompson Chain-
Reference Bible. It reads: “You can be young in years but
old in hours, if you haven't lost any time.” Don’t expect
pulpit time right away, but don’t sit and sulk; get busy.
Start pouring yourself into Bible study, sermon study,
ministry study. Go to your pastor and put yourself at his
service, then do what he asks, no matter how menial. I
started out mowing the church yard. Jeff Arnold cleaned
the bathrooms. Almost every preacher who is in ministry
today started out just like us. Meditate on Matthew 25:21.
“His lord said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful
servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will
make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy
of thy lord.”
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Make a place for your calling. I have met preachers who

are bitter at what they consider the unfairness of their
ministerial organization. You have to know somebody, or
be kin to somebody to have a chance they say. I don’t claim
human organizations are not prey to some of the same
ills that plague any group of human beings, but there are
too many examples of men and women of no connection
or birth who have had great ministries and tremendous
impact for that excuse to hold water. You are responsible to
make your calling and election sure. I received a letter from
one preacher who surrendered his preaching credentials
from the United Pentecostal Church International because,
as he angrily pointed out, “I have been licensed two years
and the UPC still hasn’t found me a church to pastor!”
Phillips Brooks says such people “are of the kind who make
no place in life for themselves, but wait till someone kindly
makes one for them and drops them into it.”
It should not be easy to be a man or woman of God. It
ought to cost as much in terms of sacrifice, commitment,
and effort as to be a doctor or lawyer, and maybe even more.
If you are blessed to have a leg up, someone who can help
you on the way, thank God for it; but if not, make your way.
God called you; your job is to obey the calling regardless of
how hard the road.
When I began preaching, I knew virtually no one, and no
one knew me. My father was not a preacher. Neither of my
grandfathers served the Lord. I did have the advantage of a
great pastor, A. E. Carney, who made calls and encouraged
his friends to give me an opportunity to preach, and a few of
them did. Mostly though, like so many others who started
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out the same time I did (Carlton Coon, Tommy Parker,

Tim Mahoney, Mark Christian, Ronnie LaCombe, Murrell
Cornwell, Darrel Johns, and many, many others), I had to
carve out a place for myself. There were lots of weeks with
nowhere to preach. Often during Christmas, when there
were hardly any revivals, I took odd jobs. Sometimes I was
able to help with the yearly inventory at the car dealership
where my dad was parts manager.
I learned to preach conducting revivals in small
churches in small communities: Six-Mile, Doodle Fork,
Jigger, Red Star, Oberlin. The crowds were small, but they
were forgiving of a novice trying to learn how to preach
effectively. It was akin to learning to swim by jumping in
and hoping for the best. I hauled my little library around
with me, structured my days around devotion and study,
and put together sermons. Some of them were pretty good.
Many more of them were bad. I worked on sentences, how
to say things effectively and memorably. I thought about
how to gauge the impact of each point and how to order
them for maximum effect. Without realizing it, I learned
about cadence, rhythm, the power of illustration, and how
to tell a story. I learned this by experience. I preached,
often eight times a week, night after night.
And I learned from other preachers. As I watched
them, I began to analyze their preaching and look for what
worked and why. There is no richer source for learning to
preach than the effective preachers around you. However,
a word of caution: in learning from them, avoid the
trap of impersonating. It is a mistake to adopt a pulpit
personality not your own. Of course you will use syntax
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and sentence structure in the pulpit that is different from

everyday speech. But to simply imitate another preacher
is distracting to the congregation at best, and amusing at
worst. It can even be a little weird. Moreover, it robs the
church of something we need: your voice.
Make a place for yourself by serving and doing what is at
hand with an unwavering commitment to doing your best.
The calling will make a way; your ministry will be born.
Learn to talk, to walk, then run. Opportunities will come
if you will be faithful. You cannot see very far down the
road. None of us can. But you can start today, right where
you are, doing what you have a chance to do. The journey is
long and it can be hard, but take it from one who has been
on it for more than forty-five years: it is worth it. Answer
the call and start today.
William Sangster, The Approach to Preaching (London:

Epworth Press, 1951. Repr., Grand Rapids: Baker, 1974).

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5
The Preacher’s
Qualific ations
A master is somebody who, every single day

tries to pursue perfection. There’s a lot of days you
would rather take the shortcut than to do it as well
as it can be done, and better than the day before.
A master is somebody who has the work ethic, who
has the discipline, who has the passion to do what
they do incrementally better each day until the day
they die.
Ryan Neil
You can be young in years but old in hours, if

you haven't lost any time.
Fred Foster
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As in any other endeavor, there are qualifications to be

a preacher. They have nothing to do with your last name,
your parents’ occupations, the size of your home church,
or your pastor’s reputation. They also have nothing to
do with education, experience, skills, or any of the other
accomplishments that fill résumés. They all have to do with
you: your choices in life, your character, how you spend
your time, who you hang out with. All these play a part in
whether you are qualified to preach or not.
Just as it tells us what preaching is, the Bible tells us what
a preacher is. In writing to a young preacher, Timothy, Paul
gave a list of the qualifications necessary to be a preacher.
Although he was primarily describing a pastor, his list fits
all preachers regardless of their ministry position.
This is a true saying, If a man desire the office

of a bishop, he desireth a good work. A bishop
then must be blameless, the husband of one
wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to
hospitality, apt to teach; not given to wine, no
striker, not greedy of filthy lucre; but patient, not
a brawler, not covetous; one that ruleth well his
own house, having his children in subjection with
all gravity (For if a man know not how to rule his
own house, how shall he take care of the church
of God?), not a novice, lest being lifted up with
pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil.
Moreover he must have a good report of them
which are without; lest he fall into reproach and
the snare of the devil (I Timothy 3:1–7).
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The Preacher’s Qualific ations
In his letter to Titus, Paul gave a list of qualifications

for those who would be ordained as elders in the churches
in Crete:
For this cause left I thee in Crete, that thou

shouldest set in order the things that are wanting,
and ordain elders in every city, as I had appointed
thee: If any be blameless, the husband of one
wife, having faithful children not accused of riot
or unruly. For a bishop must be blameless, as the
steward of God; not selfwilled, not soon angry,
not given to wine, no striker, not given to filthy
lucre; But a lover of hospitality, a lover of good
men, sober, just, holy, temperate, Holding fast the
faithful word as he hath been taught, that he may
be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and to
convince the gainsayers (Titus 1:5).
You should carefully study and deeply consider these

qualifications. There are many in these two passages to
choose from, but we will focus on seven of them: discipline,
moderation, honesty, good stewardship (of both money
and time), sincerity, morality, and faithfulness. Let’s briefly
look at each of them in turn.
Discipline
This is the most important because all the others rest
on this one. Simply stated, someone who has no discipline
will have none of the other traits either because they are all
extensions of discipline. None of them can exist without
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it. For preachers especially, discipline is vital because we

don’t punch a time clock, have a supervisor to oversee our
activities, or account to anyone for how our time is spent.
Self-discipline is crucial.
Moderation
Closely related to discipline is moderation. Paul probably
had moderation in mind when he wrote I Corinthians
6:12. “All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not
expedient: all things are lawful for me, but I will not be
brought under the power of any.” The context is the power
of sin, but the larger view is “meats for the belly, and the
belly for meats” (6:13). In other words, power to dominate us
doesn’t always come from things that are sinful or addictive
in themselves, but from us allowing them to consume our
lives. Hobbies, sports, social media, and all the interests
that consume our time and fill our thoughts must be tightly
controlled and kept in their place, or they will spiral out of
control. Moderation in all earthly things is a worthy creed.
Honesty
“Resolve to be honest at all events; and if in your
judgment you cannot be an honest lawyer, resolve to be
honest without being a lawyer.” So advised lawyer Abraham
Lincoln. It almost seems absurd to remind ministers they
should be honest, but the Bible does just that. Dishonesty
is a habit of mind and attitude. If you exaggerate, mislead,
or deal falsely with people, not only will you face God in
the end, you will, in this life without fail, lose the respect
of people. Your reputation is vital to your success as a
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minister. Without fundamental honesty, you will be without

a ministry.
Stewardship
A steward is one who manages the possessions of others.
Our wealth, our time, and our talents do not belong to us;
they belong to God. He allows us to use them. How we use
these assets for Him determines whether we are good or bad
stewards. In our management of time, money, and abilities
we must put to work the three attributes we just talked
about: discipline, moderation, and honesty. The lack of any
of these three shows itself most often in the management
of money. Unpaid bills, living beyond one’s means, and
financial dishonesty all reveal a chaotic inner life. Anyone
can run into hard times, but handling them with discipline
and honesty not only builds a good reputation, it builds the
inner person.
Sincerity
Simply put, sincerity is living what you preach. It is
being real. By its nature sincerity is not something you can
try to be, or act out. You can force yourself into a disciplined
lifestyle, develop good habits, and become a person of
integrity, but sincerity doesn’t work like that. I don’t mean
you cannot commit to being sincere and monitor your
behavior to insure you mean what you say and only be what
you are; I mean if you are insincere, you will act like you
have integrity, discipline, and honesty, but really you won’t.
You will say all the right things and instruct those who hear
you in all the biblical teachings on righteousness, but you
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will give your secret self a pass and justify a lifestyle that is
not what you teach others. While discipline is the exercise
of will to be what we should be, sincerity is the spiritual
engine behind the acts of discipline. Sincerity is not an act
of will; it is an act of relationship. To know Jesus and to
sincerely be like Him must be the heart’s desire of all of us.
Morality
Like so many of these traits, it seems strange to point out
to preachers that they should be moral. Why would anyone
even imagine that a person could be a preacher without
being moral? Yet, examples are plentiful of preachers
failing in this fundamental area. Your relationships with the
opposite sex must be guarded at all times. The promiscuity
of our times, the laxity of social media, and the secret
opportunities of the Internet, all demand a commitment
to morality; not because you want to be a preacher, but
because you want to be right, and to be righteous.
Faithfulness
Notice Paul’s final statement in his description of the
qualifications for preaching that he gave to Titus: “Holding
fast the faithful word as he hath been taught, that he may
be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and to convince
the gainsayers” (Titus 1:5). This is why we develop these
traits in our lives. Internalize the Word. Your faithfulness
to the Word will be, sooner or later, questioned by some cool
preacher who has forward-sounding ideas. This preacher
will attack the people who you have trusted, the church
you have been part of, and even the Word itself. Holding
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fast doesn’t imply a loose, easy grip; it pictures a death grip

that, though someone is pulling with all their might to tear
it away, won’t let it go. Hold fast the Word, it is not only the
basis of what we believe and what we do, but it defines who
we are. Don’t give that up without the fight of your life. To
paraphrase a bumper sticker, you can have my faith in the
Word when you pry it out of my cold, dead hands.
Why We Live This Way

We live by this code so that we may be effective preachers
of the Word. These qualifications are not so that we will be
credentialed by an organization, or honored as a minister,
or even blessed by God; they are so that we will be able to
effectively handle the Word of God.
This is no light matter. In II Corinthians 2, Paul discussed
the awesome role of the preacher in handling the Word of
God:
Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth

us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the
savour of his knowledge by us in every place. For
we are unto God a sweet savour of Christ, in them
that are saved, and in them that perish: To the
one we are the savour of death unto death; and
to the other the savour of life unto life. And who
is sufficient for these things? For we are not as
many, which corrupt the word of God: but as of
sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God speak
we in Christ (II Corinthians 2:14–17).
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Even a cursory examination of this passage reveals some

sobering truths about the relationship between preachers’
inner lives and their preaching. First, we are used of God;
what we do is ultimately not the result of talent, skill, or
education. In the end, preaching is a divine thing, a God
thing. When we preach, God is using us to manifest the
savour (reveal the influence) of the knowledge of God.
Second, Paul insisted that the Word changes people, for
good or ill when it is revealed through anointed preaching. If
people accept and obey, it brings life to them; if they reject
it, it brings death. But either way, they are changed forever
by the influence of the preached Word. These are souls, and
these souls will live eternally in Heaven or Hell, in large part
because they have been persuaded or not persuaded by our
preaching. Of course they are exercising their own free will,
but Paul refused to exonerate us; rather, he emphasized the
role we play, when we preach the Word of God, in settling
the eternal destinies of those who hear us: “And who is
sufficient for these things?” (II Corinthians 2:16).
We can have no doubt that he had preaching in mind
because he focuses our attention with these words: “For
we are not as many which corrupt the word of God.” And
finally, he explained the only way any human being could
possibly bear such responsibility: “but as of sincerity,
. . . as of God, in the sight of God speak we in Christ”
(II Corinthians 2:17).
Indeed, who is worthy to handle such a powerful thing
as the Word of God, which is life or death to those that hear
it? Only sincere men or women, only those who recognize
fully their own frailty as human beings, but cannot escape
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the fact that they have been called. They know they cannot
be worthy; they can only be obedient.
How can we develop the sort of life that equips us to
deal with the eternal issues of God's Word? The sincere
life must begin with the right convictions. Convictions are
our unshakable core beliefs. Core beliefs are nonnegotiable
doctrines and values that we believe in and hold. Regardless
of changes in culture, public mores, or legal standards, our
core values do not change. Our identity as the church as
well as our individual relationships with God are reflected
in our core values and beliefs. Without such unshakable
convictions, we cannot hope to properly handle the Word
of God. In his book, The Apostolic Church in the Twenty-
First Century, David K. Bernard identifies three categories
of core values: apostolic identity, apostolic unity, and
apostolic revival. Within these categories are the basic
beliefs that form the foundation of our Christianity. Here is
how Brother Bernard describes them:
As apostolic believers we model ourselves after

the New Testament church. These three core
values are prominent in Acts 2, which describes
the beginning of the church, the message of the
twelve apostles, and the life of the early believers.
In this account, we see a strong commitment to
doctrinal identity (verse 42), including the deity
of Jesus (verses 21, 36), the plan of salvation
(verses 4, 38), and separation from the world
(verse 40). We also see a strong example of
unity—in fellowship, prayer, sacrificial giving,
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and worship (verses 43–47). Finally, we see true

revival, with wonders, signs, discipleship, and
numerical growth (verses 43, 47).
Your dedication to these core beliefs of identity, unity,

and revival shape your inner person to reflect Jesus Christ.
As you personally become more and more like Him, your
preaching takes on an aspect impossible to produce any
other way. You truly become His messenger. People hear
His voice when you preach.
John R. W. Stott, in Between Two Worlds, discusses the
convictions that are necessary to form the foundation of
the preacher’s ministry. Let’s look at Stott’s list:
The first is our conviction about God.

• God is light. As the nature of light is to shine it is
God's nature to reveal Himself.
• God has acted, both in creation and in redemption.
• God has spoken. Not only in deeds has He revealed
himself, He has actually spoken.
The second is our conviction about the Word.

• The Scripture is God's Word written. As such it is the
basis of all we say.
• God still speaks through His Word. It is not a dead
textbook of the past.
• God's Word is powerful. Do you expect something to
happen every time you preach?
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Third, we need a conviction about the church.

• It is a creation of God's Word. As such, it is dependent
on the Word.
Along with that we need a conviction about pastoring.

• God still gives overseers to His church, and always
will.
Finally, we need a conviction about preaching.

• The preacher should preach the Word. Not opinion,
not politics, but the Word.
These convictions form the bedrock of our attitude

toward what we are called to do. We should pay particular
attention to the second one. We must never lose our absolute
confidence in the Bible as God’s Word. It is not just a source
of stories and texts that illustrate successful principles that,
if followed, enrich and bring purpose to our lives; it is the
source of power that enables us to live by those principles.
Preaching the Word of God does not just save its hearers, it
transforms them. Once we come to be absolutely convinced
of this truth, the final conviction is formed: the preacher
must preach the Word.
I am saddened when I see preachers using the pulpit to
educate, inform, even inspire, but do so without the Bible
as the source and center of the sermon. While the principles
they are communicating may be valuable or even essential,
to base them on psychology, human experience, or business
principles is to strip them of the power that the Word
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brings. In the next chapter, we will look at the fundamental

requirement of all preachers: preach the Word.
David K. Bernard, The Apostolic Church in the Twenty-First

Century (Hazelwood, MO: Word Aflame Press, 2014).
John R. W. Stott, Between Two Worlds (Grand Rapids:

Eerdmans, 1982).
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6
Preach the Word
Three words should be clearly understood and

kept distinct in our thoughts: gift, knowledge,
and ability. Gift, or talent, comes from God.
Knowledge stems from prayerful, concentrated and
conscientious study of the Word of God. Ability is
developed as the gift is exercised in an atmosphere
of spirituality.
Alfred P. Gibbs
Sermon delivery derives its reason for existence

from its relationship to sermon content. That
relationship may be specified as one that maximizes
the message and minimizes the messenger.
Al Fasol
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The so-called emergent philosophy we hear of today,

among other dreadful failings, robs the pulpit of its
authority and the preacher of his or her dignity. This
philosophy is nothing new. There has always been this
insidious falsehood that the preacher knows no more, has no
more insight, no more understanding of God and His Word
than the newest convert in the pew. “I know no more than
you, so come, we will search together. Your opinions and
your comments are as important as mine.” So preaching is
abandoned for dialogue, and absolute truth for relativistic
foolishness. “Men have always passed by” such nonsense,
said Phillips Brooks 135 years ago, and they always will.
This is exactly what Paul had in mind when he insisted
to the young preacher, Timothy: “Study to show thyself
approved, a workman which needeth not be ashamed” (II
Timothy 2:15). Your calling expresses God's confidence
in you; what you do with His calling determines your
effectiveness and success as a preacher.
No one in his right mind would put his health and life
in the hands of a doctor who proclaimed, “I know no
more about medicine than you. Come on in and we will
discuss your problems, and with your knowledge and mine
together we can perhaps find a solution that you can believe
in.” I want a second opinion! Neither would anyone seek
legal advice from someone who had no more training and
experience in the law than she had. We wouldn't even trust
our car to a mechanic who was no more knowledgeable about
automobiles than we were. Why should people trust their
souls to a preacher who claims to be no more knowledgeable
about the things of God than they?
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Our authority is found not in the fact that we preach,

but in the content of our preaching. Silly, shallow,
entertainment-oriented preaching is no more worthy of
attention than any other effort at public speaking, but
a sermon that contains the truths of the eternal Word
commands a response.
The early church was consumed with a desire to take the
gospel to the world. Even before their eyes were opened to
the fact that Christianity would not be just another sect of
Judaism, they spread the news of the gospel everywhere
they went. Just as Jesus said they should, they began at
Jerusalem. After the Day of Pentecost, revival spread
across the city, great miracles drew crowds including those
who lived in surrounding towns, and thousands were filled
with the Holy Ghost and baptized in Jesus’ name. What
was striking in the account of the Jerusalem revival was
how powerless the council’s members were to stop the
revival and how utterly terrified they were of uneducated
and unsophisticated men. The disciples were arrested,
threatened, released, rearrested, delivered from prison in
the middle of the night, then arrested again, only to be
released again. The council was paralyzed by fear. It is also
amazing to realize that the council was not afraid of the
miracles the disciples worked, or the huge crowds that came
to hear them preach. It was the preaching itself that they
feared. Over and over the council commanded the disciples
to stop the preaching and teaching: “And they called them,
and commanded them not to speak at all nor teach in the
name of Jesus” (Acts 4:18).
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Their threats did not stop the disciples; they continued

to spread the good news everywhere. The results of their
fearless and faithful preaching were incredible: people were
filled with the Holy Ghost and baptized every day. It may
be that in a matter of weeks as many as fifty thousand were
saved. What was the secret of this great revival? It was not
buildings, organized effort, or structure. Their secret was
simple: the frustrated council itself described it best in Acts
5:28. “Did not we straitly command you that ye should not
teach in this name? and, behold, ye have filled Jerusalem
with your doctrine, and intend to bring this man's blood
upon us.”
The success of the disciples was not based on personality,
talent, or people skills. It was their preaching and teaching
of doctrine, pure and simple. The church in Jerusalem just
would not quit proclaiming the doctrine, and God gave
them revival.
“Ye have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine.” The truth
of the doctrine is the engine of revival; it is the hope of the
world. Doctrine defines the church; it is what we preach,
but it is much more: it is what we are. It is what makes
us distinctive. To abandon doctrine is to abandon our very
identity. In spite of what those who hate truth may say,
doctrine, properly preached and taught, does not divide;
it gathers people together, it turns their faces toward God.
There is a powerful attraction embedded in truth that calls
to men and women in every culture and in every time.
Not so long ago I heard a preacher preaching from
Hebrews 6. That happens to be a chapter that has long
fascinated me, so I gave him all my attention. I was shocked
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and saddened by his comments on this wonderful passage.

Here’s what the Word of God says:
Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine

of Christ, let us go on unto perfection; not laying
again the foundation of repentance from dead
works, and of faith toward God, Of the doctrine
of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of
resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment.
And this will we do, if God permit (Hebrews 6:1–3).
The preacher focused on these first three verses of the

chapter, and more especially the first verse. He taught
that the Word was urging us to leave behind our immature
fixation on doctrine. It served us well in the past when we
were small, weak, and needed protection from the enemies’
wiles that would have destroyed us. But now we are grown
up; we don’t need to be so hard-nosed now. All doctrine does
at this point is to separate us from others that we could
learn from and who could learn from us. So, as the writer
of Hebrews says, let us leave the principles of the doctrine
behind us, and go on into perfection.
What the preacher did, of course, was to pick and
choose the parts of the passage that fit his argument and
ignore the rest. If we only read verse 1 up to the semicolon
and stop there, the argument that the preacher made that
night sounds true. But the words that follow the semicolon
modify the words that precede it. To ignore the words in the
second half of the verse is to miss the meaning of the words
in the first half.
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Look carefully at the words after the semicolon:

“not laying again the foundation.” Now we see clearly
the meaning of the word “leaving.” It does not suggest
abandoning the doctrine, but building upon it. No building
can ever be built if the foundation is constantly being torn
up and re-constructed. The writer is telling us to stop re-
laying the foundation, but to settle it once and for all; then,
finish the structure on that foundation.
It has been said that it is better to debate the issue
without settling it, than to settle it without debating it.
This may be true, but to constantly debate without finally
settling the issue is surely the worst result of all. Especially
when it occurs within our own hearts, it is evident that
constant debate is paralyzing. Hebrews 6 issues a clear
call to end the debate. Certainly it is a scriptural concept
to put ourselves in remembrance of our faith. But there
must be some foundational truths that are inviolate. Some
things must finally and for all time be settled. These are the
anchor of our souls; they are the foundation upon which all
other faith rests.
As a builder pours and finishes the foundation, and
then completes the building, we must pour and finish the
foundation of our faith. Hebrews 6 is not a call to move
from doctrine, it is a call to establish it. Not laying again
the foundation is the imagery not of abandonment, but
of settling with certainty, then building up from there.
Foundations are not made to be abandoned; they are made
to be built upon.
This matters because the most vital part of any building
is the foundation. The importance of the foundation cannot
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be exaggerated, since the foundation provides stability for

the entire structure. The Word of God uses this imagery
to teach us that our lives must have a foundation strong
enough to withstand the storms of life and to provide the
basis of building a greater structure to the glory of God.
What happens when there is no good foundation? Often
the building collapses. This is what Jesus described in
Matthew 7:24–27:
Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of

mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a
wise man, which built his house upon a rock: And
the rain descended, and the floods came, and the
winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell
not: for it was founded upon a rock. And every
one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth
them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man,
which built his house upon the sand: And the rain
descended, and the floods came, and the winds
blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and
great was the fall of it.
The foundation was so poor that the building collapsed,

and all the labor of constructing it was wasted. We have
all seen those who seemed to be doing well, appeared to be
strong in the Lord; yet they suddenly collapsed in a time
of stress, almost overnight. Their dramatic demise took
our breath away, and made us wonder how such things can
happen. The truth is they simply had no solid foundation;
they had never really settled their core beliefs. All they had
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done is gone along with the way they were brought up or

had been taught when they first came to the Lord. They
had never laid the foundation solid and firm in their own
hearts. When our core beliefs are always up for grabs, our
entire lives rest on a shaky foundation.
Sometimes the collapse is not so swift or dramatic, but a
slow weakening until one day the structure is beyond repair.
Usually this means the foundation is weak because it does
not rest on Bible truth, or perhaps it is diluted by human
opinion or the demands of the present culture. Michael
Pollan in A Place of My Own describes the danger of a
foundation that is not solid and true:
But long before our house would collapse, the

shifting of its foundation would set in motion an
incremental process that would doom the building
just as surely. The slightest movement of the
footings would ramify throughout the structure,
gradually eroding one after another of its right
angles; “trueness,” in the carpenter’s sense, is the
first casualty of a poor foundation. First the door
frame falls out of square, since it is braced on
only three sides. Then the windows. A building is
a brittle thing, and eventually its seal against the
weather will be broken‑through a crack in the roof,
perhaps, or in the slight discrepancy that arises
between a ninety‑degree window sash and what
has become an eighty-nine-degree window frame.
Now a drip at a time, water enters the building
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and the process of its decomposition begins. As

Joe put it, “Pretty soon, it's termite food.”
What then should be our foundation? The basis of an

enduring foundation is found in Ephesians 2:20: “And are
built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets,
Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone.” The most
interesting aspect of this analogy is that Jesus is not the
foundation; He is the chief cornerstone. The cornerstone
is not part of the foundation, but the whole structure rests
on it.
Let me hurry to say that, of course, in one sense, Jesus
is our foundation: “According to the grace of God which
is given unto me, as a wise masterbuilder, I have laid the
foundation, and another buildeth thereon. But let every
man take heed how he buildeth thereupon. For other
foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus
Christ” (I Corinthians 3:10–11).
But something else is in view in Ephesians 2. Among
other things, Jesus is shown as the cornerstone because the
emphasis is deliberately being placed on the apostles and
prophets. This is to focus on the truth that our foundation
is the Word of God, which God wrote through the apostles
and prophets. The reason Paul was inspired to describe
the foundation as being the written Word instead of being
Jesus Himself was because he wanted us to escape the trap
the Jews fell into. The Jews did not recognize Jesus because
they were looking for a Messiah that was the product of
their own imaginations instead of the Word. You cannot
build your life successfully on an imaginary Jesus. Our
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foundation is the Jesus of the Scriptures. A lot of people

are in love with an idea, but not the reality. The message
is that your house must be built on the Word. That will
determine whether it stands or falls.
The foundation for our Christian life is our “most holy
faith” (Jude 20), which is the same as “the faith which was
once delivered unto the saints” (Jude 3). Doctrine is not just
our introduction to God, it is the basis of our continuing
relationship with Him. We cannot know Him outside His
revelation of Himself, and that revelation is embodied in
doctrine. That means to abandon doctrine is to abandon
knowing Him. The church of the Book of Acts learned this
truth very early: “And they continued steadfastly in the
apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread,
and in prayers” (Acts 2:42).
Doctrine is powerful as the engine of real revival and
essential as the foundation of life for a simple reason:
it is the truth. There is a power truth has just because it
is the truth. Truth has a life of its own. Here are some
characteristics of the truth that are important for us to
keep at the forefront of our thinking.
First, the truth is absolute. That means regardless of
time, situation, or circumstance, the truth is the truth. It
needs no one to agree with it to be true. It needs no one to
believe in it to be true. This is astonishing to us who live
in a society governed by polling data. If we read that 64
percent of Americans believe something, our subconscious
reaction is to believe that makes it true. But 64 percent can
be wrong. What percentage of people once believed the
world was flat? What percentage once believed man would
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never fly? Indeed, the truth is, 100 percent of people can
be wrong: “For what if some did not believe? shall their
unbelief make the faith of God without effect? God forbid:
yea, let God be true, but every man a liar” (Romans 3:3–4a).
The rejection of the concept of absolute truth has
corrupted other fundamental aspects of logical thinking.
One example is the change in the definition of the word
tolerance. Tolerance means: “To recognize and respect the
rights, beliefs, or practices of others.” It does not mean one
has to approve, or declare as right, the beliefs or practices
of others. If a preacher tells people they are saved without
the Holy Ghost or without being baptized in Jesus’ name,
I respect his right to believe that, but I don’t have to agree
he is correct or that the Bible backs up that teaching.
Tolerance does not require me to compromise my beliefs.
We love people, no matter their lifestyle, no matter what
they have done. But we must continue to point them in a
better direction, toward God, toward the power that enables
them to choose real righteousness. We must never be rude
or unkind, and it is never our intention to be hurtful. While
we can and should be tolerant, we must also stand for the
truth.
This wrong idea about tolerance has led to another
concept about truth that is wrong; that is the idea that
everyone finds his or her own slant on truth and everybody
is right. Look at II Peter 1:20: “Knowing this first, that no
prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.”
There is not one truth for me and another for you. There
is only one truth. Let’s say someone decides it is only fifty
million miles from the earth to the sun. Someone else believes
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it is 150 million miles to the sun. Now, they can’t both be

right. In fact, they are both wrong. It is about ninety-
three million miles. The Word is the truth, and we must
conform our opinions to the Word of God. If one preacher
says you are saved by faith alone and another says you must
be baptized to be saved, they cannot both be right. And
the truth is not affected by either of their opinions. The
truth never looks back to see who is following; it just goes
on being the truth.
Second, the truth is not only absolute, it is powerful—
powerful enough to set men free: “Then said Jesus to those
Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word,
then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the
truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:31–32).
Falsehood and compromise cannot liberate; they can only
enslave. To declare truth is to break the shackles that hold
so many; it is to open the doors to the prison house. It is
the only key. That is why we must proclaim truth. To do
any less may gather a crowd, but will not build a church
because people are not set free from sin where there is no
truth proclaimed.
Third, the truth opens the way to God. Once Jesus met
a woman at Jacob’s well in Sychar. After she realized she
was speaking to a man with extraordinary insight into the
things of God, she asked a question from deep in her heart:
“Where can we find God? Some say Jerusalem, some say in
a mountain near here, but I need to know. Where can I find
Him?” Today, many would tell her that it doesn’t matter.
God isn’t particular about what church or what faith you
embrace; after all, all roads lead to God. That most decidedly
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is not what Jesus said. “But the hour cometh, and now is,
when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit
and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him.
God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship
him in spirit and in truth” (John 4:23–24). The truth is
the only route to God. Not feelings, not sacrifice, not good
works. Not even the presence of the Spirit alone. There
must be truth for humans to find God.
Finally, truth alone will judge us: “Before the Lord:
for he cometh, for he cometh to judge the earth: he shall
judge the world with righteousness, and the people with
his truth” (Psalm 96:13). This is the standard by which
all lives will be judged. It is not politically correct; it goes
against the modern rejection of anything that smacks of
absolutism. Sometimes folks say to us: “Who do you think
you are? You think you are right and everyone else is wrong!
You are judgmental, and holier–than–thou!” They miss the
point. No one will be judged by my opinions or ideas. No
one will be judged by what I think the truth is. But they
will be judged by what the truth actually is, and the Bible
is that truth.
We ourselves as preachers of truth will not be judged by
earthly standards of success, but by the truth. Not by the
size of our congregations, the prominence of our ministries,
the number of those who know our name. We will be judged
by the truth: did we preach it, did we live it, did we love it?
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Man with his burning soul

Has but an hour of breath
To build a ship of truth
In which his soul may sail
Sail on the sea of death
For death takes toll
Of beauty, courage, youth,
Of all but truth.
John Masefield

Michael Pollan, A Place of My Own: The Education of an

Amateur Builder (New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell,
1997).
John Masefield, “Truth” in The Story of a Round House and

Other Poems (New York: MacMillan, 1912).
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Part Three
The Sermon:
Preparation
The heights by great men reached and kept

Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night
Augustine
Preparation precedes power.
Charles Lindbergh
Charles Lindbergh was the first person to fly solo across the
Atlantic. He made his historic flight in 1927, after others who
had attempted the dangerous flight failed, some losing their
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lives in the process. Lindbergh succeeded simply because

he was better prepared. This devotion to preparation is
summed up in the laconic statement often credited to him:
“Preparation precedes power.”
In no area is this true more than in preaching. An
unprepared preacher is a powerless preacher. From time to
time there are trends that discount preparation, trends that
seem to argue that to prepare is somehow carnal; that to be
prepared is to be unable to respond to the Spirit. I think
the opposite is true. When I am prepared, my mind is not
frantically searching for the words I am to say; instead, it
is free to respond to the move of God, knowing that when
preaching time comes, I am ready. Prepare well, know what
you are going to say, then respond to the Spirit, and you will
have power in your preaching.
To step to the pulpit unprepared is one of the most
inexcusable behaviors for a preacher. Never accept second
best in yourself; always be prepared.
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7
The First Steps to
Preparing a Sermon
The less experienced the speaker, the more

preparation time is needed. My opinion is, no less
than twenty hours for a forty-minute message. The
people deserve that. When you multiply the man-
hours sitting in your audience (their time), they
deserve better than just a few scraps of paper and a
cheeseburger Happy Meal.
Stan Gleason
Step One
The first step to being prepared sounds like a simple one:
you must decide what you are going to preach. It is only
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logical that you have to decide what to preach before you

can prepare to preach. Of course, it is not as simple as it
sounds. It is an act of faith to believe that days before you
are to preach, God can direct you to a text and subject that
will meet the needs of a congregation. But this is literally
true, and you must believe it.
Where do sermon ideas come from? Everywhere: a good
story that captures your imagination, a Scripture text
that leaps out at you in devotions, a sermon that you read
or hear that gets your own mind churning, a newspaper
article, something you hear on the radio, or come across
on the Internet. Ideas are everywhere. I will never forget
Brother Fred Hyde, pastor, missionary, and founder of
Spirit of Freedom Ministries, getting a sermon idea from a
receipt in a fast food restaurant: “When your order is ready,
your number will be called.” Be on alert for sermon ideas
from everything you read, hear, or see.
Of course, most of your ideas will come from the Bible
itself. This makes daily Bible reading vital, not only for
personal devotion, but for sermon preparation. The climate,
landscape, and culture of the Bible should be as familiar
to you as that of the physical world. As you read it, you
should be familiar with the basic facts of the who, what,
where, when, why, and how of what you read. Watch for
the memorable turn of phrase, the striking narrative, the
universal application of truth. All these are where sermon
thoughts are born.
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The Fir st Steps to Preparing a Sermon
Step Two
Regardless what catches your attention and captivates
your mind, the second step is absolutely crucial: you must
write what I call the purpose statement. Some call it the
theme, or the thesis. It is one sentence that contains the
central idea of the sermon. It should be written down in
the beginning when the sermon is still only an idea, it then
becomes the measure against which all the subsequently
compiled Scriptures, illustrations, and information must be
compared. It is the focus that keeps you on track. A fuzzy
purpose statement produces a fuzzy sermon. A crisp, clear
purpose statement produces a clear sermon. Spend time to
get it right. Let's look at some purpose statements I have
written and the texts from which they came.
John 1:45–46: “Philip findeth Nathanael, and saith unto
him, We have found him, of whom Moses in the law, and the
prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.
And Nathanael said unto him, Can there any good thing
come out of Nazareth? Philip saith unto him, Come and
see.”
My purpose statement: “My purpose is to show that
no amount of argument can convince people of the grace
and power of Jesus, but if people will ‘Come and See’ for
themselves, they will discover His love for them.”
II Kings 7:3–5: “And there were four leprous men at the
entering in of the gate: and they said one to another, Why
sit we here until we die? If we say, We will enter into the
city, then the famine is in the city, and we shall die there:
and if we sit still here, we die also. Now therefore come,
and let us fall unto the host of the Syrians: if they save us
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alive, we shall live; and if they kill us, we shall but die. And
they rose up in the twilight, to go unto the camp of the
Syrians: and when they were come to the uttermost part of
the camp of Syria, behold, there was no man there.”
My purpose statement: “My purpose is to show that
even when we aren’t sure of what God will do, if we act
on whatever faith we have, rather than surrendering to our
doubt, God will respond to our need.”
II Samuel 13:1–3 “And it came to pass after this, that
Absalom the son of David had a fair sister, whose name was
Tamar; and Amnon the son of David loved her. And Amnon
was so vexed, that he fell sick for his sister Tamar; for she
was a virgin; and Amnon thought it hard for him to do any
thing to her. But Amnon had a friend, whose name was
Jonadab, the son of Shimeah David's brother: and Jonadab
was a very subtil man.”
My purpose statement: “My purpose is to convince young
people that their destiny can be decided by the people they
choose as their friends, since friends will encourage us either
to serve God or to turn from Him.”
The Third Step

After the purpose statement is written, the next step is
the gathering of data. Your sermon is based on a passage
of Scripture. You should attempt to learn all you can
about that passage. I’ll have more to say about this later.
Next, identify, by consulting your purpose statement, what
application you will be making from this text to the lives
of your hearers, and begin collecting information that will
illustrate, demonstrate, and illuminate your purpose.
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The first source I consult for supporting material for my

sermon is the Bible itself. That should be the first choice for
content. Why? Because you can never have too much Bible
in a sermon! We are called to preach the Word, so put all the
Word into your sermons that you reasonably can. I don’t
mean load it up with dry, arcane theology; rather, use other
texts, stories, and events from Scripture to illuminate your
topic or theme. Also, remember the purpose of preaching
is to convince your hearers of the truth and importance
of what you say. Most people you preach to will believe,
rightly, that Scripture itself is the arbiter of truth, so use
Scripture to support Scripture and demonstrate the truth
of your theme.
EXAMPLE SERMON
Let me illustrate the comments I have made so far by
looking at a sermon I have constructed and preached.
One of my favorite Bible stories is about the four lepers
that huddled in the gate of the besieged city of Samaria.
The entire story is recorded in II Kings 6–7. I have used
this story in many different sermons, but began to see
it in a new light when I noticed the remarkable state-
ment: “Why sit we here until we die? If we say, we will
enter into the city, then the famine is in the city, and
we shall die there: and if we sit still here, we die also.
Now therefore come, and let us fall unto the host of the
Syrians: if they save us alive, we shall live; and if they
kill us, we shall but die” (II Kings 7:3b–4). I saw in my
mind’s eye as these four desperate men took stock of
their situation: a city dying behind them, certain death
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if they stayed where they were, a ruthless enemy before

them. Admitting they had no idea what would be the
final outcome, they decided to do the only thing that
offered any hope at all—to go to the Syrian camp and
see what would happen. I thought about the fact that
they were sure of only two things: if they went into
Samaria, they would certainly die, and if they stayed
where they were, they would also surely die. There was
no doubt about the outcome of these two courses of ac-
tion. The only doubt they had was about the outcome
of the only possible action available to them, to go to
the Syrian camp: “if they save us alive, we shall live;
and if they kill us, we shall but die.”
I have noticed many times how people talk them-
selves out of the blessings of God, because they have
some doubt about whether God will actually do for
them what they need done. Sometimes, I think, in our
efforts to encourage faith, we emphasize the need for it
until our hearers draw the conclusion that unless they
have total confidence that God will do what they need,
He will not hear them. In a way we have an unspoken
belief that the least bit of doubt prevents God from
responding. This causes discouragement and a resigna-
tion to accept less than God would like to do for us.
I do not believe this to be true, and as I studied
again this Old Testament story that I had used so many
times, I saw it was the perfect text to dispel this tragic
mistaken belief that has robbed so many. I wrote the
purpose statement you have already read: “My pur-
pose is to show that even when we aren’t sure of what
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God will do, if we act on whatever faith we have, rather

than surrendering to our doubt, God will respond to our
need.” I have identified what I want to preach, I have
located my text, I have written my purpose statement.
Now it is time to begin gathering materials to use in the
sermon.
After spending more time with the four lepers, I be-
gan gathering items about faith and doubt. It quickly
became obvious that I would need very little material
from outside the Bible itself. I did consult my “sermons
preached” database and came across some material I
had used in past sermons about education inducing
doubt in us by teaching us to question established fact,
authority, and convention. I also did some other re-
search and came across information on the widespread
acceptance of secular concepts, including evolution,
which undermine our faith in the supernatural power
of God. But I used Scripture almost exclusively be-
cause of the wealth of resources there.
First, there were passages that do what I think of
as providing the theology of my theme. Some seemed
to support the opposite of my purpose. It is vital not
to ignore these, as many of your hearers will know of
them or discover them; if you ignore them, it will un-
dermine not only the theme of this sermon, but your
credibility as a preacher. I don’t mean you need to turn
your sermon into a polemical debate or a technical Bi-
ble study; I just mean you must present the Bible hon-
estly and openly, giving both sides of the issue. I will
talk about this in more detail later. A couple of those
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verses are Mark 9:23: “Jesus said unto him, ‘If thou
canst believe, all things are possible to him that belie-
veth,’” and Hebrews 11:6: “But without faith it is im-
possible to please him: for he that cometh to God must
believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them
that diligently seek him.” On the other hand, are these
Scriptures: Matthew 17:20 (also Luke 17:6) “And Jesus
said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I
say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard
seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to
yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be
impossible unto you,” and Mark 9:24 “And straightway
the father of the child cried out, and said with tears,
Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.”
The real power of the sermon will come from the
Bible stories that demonstrate someone receiving from
God despite imperfect faith. I made notes on six differ-
ent events in Scripture that fit my goal:
1. The father bringing his son to Jesus for deliver-

ance (Mark 9)
2. Esther agreeing to go before the king, though it
presented an uncertain outcome (Esther 4)
3. The king of Nineveh calling for fasting and re-
pentance, though Jonah never offered any hope
(Jonah 9)
4. The leper approaching Jesus for healing, though
not sure of the outcome (Matthew 8)
5. The prodigal son returning to his father though
unsure whether he would be welcome (Luke 15)
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6. The woman of Canaan coming to plead for her

daughter’s deliverance (Matthew 15)
This seemed to be enough material to build my ser-
mon. In the next two chapters we will talk about how
to turn this unorganized mass of information and ideas
into a sermon.
In the last chapter, I argued for a determination to preach

the Word; this is what you are called to do. Now, let’s talk
about how to make sure you are doing just that. It begins by
devoting yourself to Bible study. The Bible is at the heart of
the preacher’s craft. Devotional reading may inspire sermon
topics, but systematic study explores the deeper truths of
the Bible, revealing its nuances of structure, text, history,
and doctrine, among many other aspects. You should know
more about the Bible than anything else: history, sports,
hobbies, cars, gardening, construction, politics, or gadgets.
It should be your goal to know as much or more about the
Word of God than anyone else in your congregation, in your
community, in your state. This can only be accomplished by
hard, consistent study.
If you were fortunate and blessed enough to have
attended Bible college, build on the exposure to the Word
you received there. Remember, a college degree, even from
a Bible college, does not mean you have arrived; it simply
means you have been shown the path and provided with the
equipment needed for the journey. How far down the path
you go afterward is up to you.
I would urge you to attend one of our Bible colleges, or
Urshan College. The systematic approach to learning you
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encounter there will be invaluable to you. If you cannot,

dedicate yourself to self-training. If you can attend a
Purpose Institute class, do so without fail. Avail yourself of
all the resources available online. One of the best is Ministry
Central. All our institutions of higher learning offer
distance (online) classes. Be proactive. Your preparation for
ministry is ultimately in your hands.
All this begins with your pastor. Most pastors have
developed training opportunities for the beginning ministers
in the church. Attend these training sessions and place
yourself under the mentorship and instruction of your
pastor. Remember, the role of your pastor is not just to give
you a pulpit to practice your preaching in, it is to develop
you spiritually, mentally, and emotionally for the long haul
of a life of ministry. Follow his or her instruction and never
discount the incredible resource of wisdom, experience, and
knowledge God has given you in your pastor. This isn’t just
smart, it is scriptural. Woe to the beginning preacher who
doesn’t work under the direction of a pastor! Your ministry
will be stillborn.
Start now to build a great library. I prefer a real, physical
book in my hands, but I read ebooks, too. The main thing is
to buy good books. Quantity is not necessarily quality. One
hundred good books are much better than one thousand
mediocre ones. The best place to find good books is in the
bibliographies of good books. Also, there are books and
web pages dedicated to lists and discussions about books
focused on the study of the Bible.
Remember, studying the Bible in order to communicate
through the medium of preaching is not the same as
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studying the Bible with an emphasis on simply gaining

knowledge about it. Both approaches are valid and vital;
just different. You should do both because they overlap. It
is much like the difference between a scientist who seeks to
gain empirical knowledge without concern for its practical
application, and an inventor who uses this pure science,
and develops practical applications that we use every day.
The researcher seeks truth without worrying whether it
will be useful or not. He seeks truth for truth's sake. The
inventor takes the pure truth discovered by the researcher
and figures out how to utilize it to make a product that will
improve everyday life. She seeks truth, not for truth's sake
alone, but for what that truth can do.
Recently, I visited the Royal Institute in London.
This is the home of the famous laboratories and lecture
halls where Humphry Davy and Michael Faraday made
and publicly demonstrated some of the most amazing
discoveries in science in the early and mid-1800s. I enjoyed
the tour of the original area where the labs were and the
displays full of the original equipment Davy, Faraday, and
others used in their experiments. As I was leaving, I asked
the kind lady at the desk if the journals of Michael Faraday
were ever put on display. I had long been interested in the
famous journals, having read about them for years. They
were considered a model of scientific record-keeping. “Well,
no,” she answered my question, “We have them here in
the archives where they have been for the last 175 years.
They are considered priceless.” I thanked her and again
complimented the interesting tour and headed for the
door. “Just a minute,” she stopped me. “I'll just make a
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call.” Not knowing quite what to expect, I waited as she

spoke to someone on the phone. She gave me directions to
the subbasement in an area not accessible to the public. “A
researcher will be waiting to meet you. She'll be just at the
door,” she said.
I went down the stairs, and just as the receptionist said,
a woman in a white coat waited for me at a large steel door.
“Just this way,” she said. I followed her into a room with
several large tables and desks. A few people worked at the
desks. “Now,” she said, “I understand you wish to see one
of Michael Faraday’s journals.”
“Absolutely!”
“Do you have any special one in mind?”
“No, I will leave the choice up to you.” She disappeared
into a vault door in the opposite wall, and in a few minutes,
returned with a thin, bound book, much like an old-
fashioned ledger. She handed it to me and invited me to
sit at one of the tables along the wall behind me and take
as long as I liked to examine the book. She walked away, I
sat at the table, opened the book in my hands, and I was
reading a scientific journal in the handwriting of Michael
Faraday. It detailed experiments conducted in 1831–32.
I read through the accounts of several experiments,
written in a neat, small hand, and noted the drawings of
electromagnets and other equipment, also clearly and
precisely done. I soon realized I was reading the original
accounts of a scientific discovery that had dramatically
changed the world. In 1831 Faraday carefully worked
through a series of experiments in which he sought to
explore the relationship between electricity and magnetism.
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It had already been discovered that electricity could be

made to produce magnetism by wrapping a wire around a
piece of metal and introducing an electric current through
the wire. The current magnetized the metal as long as it
was flowing. Faraday wondered if the opposite could be
true: could magnetism produce electricity? In my hands I
held the record of the results of those experiments. Faraday
passed a magnet through a coil of wire and measured an
electric current that resulted from it. He had discovered
the principal behind the dynamo, a device that to this day
generates the electricity that powers our world. Here, in
this manuscript I held in my hands, was his description of
a discovery that created the modern world.
In a sense Faraday invented the dynamo, but in another
he did not. Others, over the next forty years, turned the
researcher's discovery into the forerunners of the powerful
machines that we know today. Faraday was a lover of pure
science, and in this instance he experimented to learn, but
not to apply that learning in a practical way. This is true for
the student of the Bible who seeks to know the Word simply
for the joy of discovering this fascinating and unique book.
We should all be that pure researcher. But preachers should
and must go further. As Phillips Brooks explains it:
So the student preparing to be a preacher cannot

learn truth as the mere student of theology for its
own sake might do. He always feels it reaching out
through him to the people to whom he is some day
to carry it. He cannot get rid of this consciousness.
It influences all his understanding. We can see
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that it must have its dangers. It will threaten the

impartiality with which he will seek truth. It will
tempt him to prefer those forms of truth which
most easily lend themselves to didactic uses,
rather than those which bring evidence of being
most simply and purely true. That is the danger
of all preachers.
Against that danger the man meaning to be a

preacher must be upon his guard, but he cannot
avoid the danger by sacrificing the habit out of
which the danger springs. He must receive truth
as one who is to teach it. He cannot, he must not
study as if the truth he sought were purely for
his own culture or enrichment. And the result
of such a habit, followed with due guard against
its dangerous tendencies, will be threefold. It
will bring, first, a deeper and more solemn sense
of responsibility in the search for truth; second,
a desire to find the human side of every truth,
the point at which every speculation touches
humanity; and third, breadth which comes from
the constant presence in the mind of the fact that
truth has various aspects and presents itself in
many ways to different people, according to their
needs and characters.
Without Faraday, the inventors would not have known

the science that made possible their invention, without the
inventors, the science would have remained hidden in a
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handwritten notebook in the vaults of the Royal Academy.

As you study the Bible, look for the applications of its truths,
that is, how this ancient but timeless book reveals to us
practical truths for our day. Fill your library with good, solid
Bible dictionaries, commentaries, Old and New Testament
surveys, book studies, doctrinal studies, exegetical studies,
character studies, and church histories; and use them to
illuminate, explain, and bring to life the eternal truths of
the Bible for those who hear you. Remember, the fact that
preaching does not have as its primary goal to disseminate
information, as does teaching, does not mean it is empty of
the deeper truths of God’s Word. Those truths are simply
offered in a different way: not shallower, but more concise;
not altered, but applied.
Now, let’s apply all that we have said to the preparation
of sermons. You have the sermon’s basic idea and you know
what you are going to preach. You have written a well-
crafted thesis, or purpose statement, so you know what you
want to say. Now you turn to your library and its Bible
dictionaries, commentaries, and other good books. Don’t
forget magazines, your favorite Internet resources, as well
as your own past sermons. Gather everything you can. The
idea is to amass everything that might be useful. Open a
folder on your computer or a file in your file cabinet. Put
notes on where you found information, scans of book pages,
magazine articles, downloads from websites, highlights from
ebooks, jotted notes to yourself of ideas for the sermon’s
structure, notes from phone conversations with friends
about the idea, contemporary illustrations, news articles,
notes of personal experiences, possible biblical stories that
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illuminate the sermon: anything and everything that might

be used to illustrate your text.
This is where the organization scheme you use to store
the information you uncover, run across, dig out, or hear
is so important. A maxim to keep in mind is this: if you
can’t find it when you need it, you might as well not have
it. Keep your books organized on the shelf, use color
stickers to mark pages with important information. Some
people place a sheet of paper in a book, mentioning some
important ideas or information and the pages where they
can be found. For more sophisticated schemes, there are
a multitude of computer programs that catalog books,
some with searchable fields to record important highlights.
Some are inexpensive, some are expensive, depending on
the program’s capabilities. Scans of pages from books,
downloaded documents, highlights from ebooks, notes of
past sermons, sermons in development, or simply random
ideas, can all be simply stored in computer folders by
subject, and searched by keywords or any word. On the
more advanced side, but with a steeper learning curve, are
free-form database programs that can keep track of any
number of variables and provide even more flexibility. I use
essentially two programs, Evernote and Paperport.
The important thing is, whatever method you use
to maintain your data must actually be used, or it is
worthless. No matter how sophisticated your software,
unless you catalog your books, scan magazine articles, and
import your notes and outlines, it is a waste of money. It
must become your habit to maintain your data, keeping it
at your fingertips. This is why a simple plan that you will
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use is better than a sophisticated plan you won’t, and why

I recommend you start with something simple and move on
from there.
As you are gathering data, don't forget the simple
examination of the text. This will help prevent the most
common mistake novice (and sometimes experienced)
preachers make: using Scripture out of context or otherwise
mistaking its true meaning. An otherwise great preacher
once misread Proverbs 13:20. The text reads: “He that
walketh with wise men shall be wise: but a companion
of fools shall be destroyed.” Somehow he read the word
“companion” as “champion” and prepared and preached a
sermon about people who excuse, or “take up for” fools and
their words and behavior, in other words a “champion” of
fools. He told me that all through the sermon people seemed
at first confused, then amused (a deadly combination for
a preacher to inspire in a congregation). Later someone
kindly pointed out his mistake. He told me about his
embarrassment and said, “I wish I would have just read it
one more time!”
In order to avoid such easily made mistakes, you should
ask yourself a few questions about every passage of
Scripture you plan to use in your sermon, whether it is your
“text” or not:
1. Who is the speaker? For instance, are we hearing from

God or the devil; a prophet or an infidel?
2. Who is being spoken to?
3. What is the occasion?
4. Where is all this happening?
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5. Why?
6. What is the application for us?
I asked these questions of all the Bible stories and

Scripture verses I gathered for the sermon we have discussed
in this chapter. As you will see, they helped determine which
ones I would use and which ones I would save for another
day.
The Fourth Step

The fourth step is the honing of materials. By that I
mean deciding what to use and not to use in the sermon.
Ideally, you will have more content than you could preach
in one sermon. Start the process by referring to the purpose
statement. This is the ruler you will use to decide what to
use and what to file away for future reference. Be ruthless:
any illustration, Bible story, or character development that
does not fit, get rid of it. Anything that does not propel the
sermon forward to its closing, anything that doesn't point
your hearers directly to your purpose, get rid of it. Hone,
sharpen the focus, keep only that which fits like a glove.
Remember, there will always come a time to use the other
information. Keep your eye on the goal.
Sometimes things may fit just fine, but there is too much
for one sermon. Sometimes things have to be culled, not
because they aren’t good, or because they aren’t a great fit,
but because you don’t have the time to use them. You can
only preach so long.
This is probably a good time to talk about sermon length.
How long should you preach? The simple answer is until
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you are done. The better answer is until your congregation

is done. Take it from a preacher who has preached the Spirit
down, only to preach it back up again more times than I
care to admit, it’s better to stop too soon than too late.
Remember, the purpose of preaching is not to show how
knowledgeable you are or to overwhelm your hearers with
unassailable proofs piled one upon the other. The purpose
of preaching is to bring people to the point of a response
to the Word of God. This is a delicate calculus, a balance
between the power of the Word, and the Spirit. Learn to
recognize the moving of the Spirit and move in that flow.
Acceptable sermon length changes over time. When I
was a teenager, no sermon was under an hour, and many
were much longer. I have listened to two-hour-plus sermons.
When I began preaching, the feeling was if you didn’t
preach an hour you weren’t trying. Over time, attention
spans have shortened, and now, although not unusual,
hour-long sermons are not the rule.
Personally, I try to be completely done (including
acknowledging the introduction, thanking whoever invited
me to preach, recognizing special guests, preaching, and
giving the altar appeal) within forty-five minutes. This
means the sermon itself needs to be thirty to forty minutes
max. As a beginning preacher, preach twenty to thirty
minutes, no more.
This requires careful use of your materials to provide
a sermon that moves quickly without haste, covers the
subject adequately without bogging down, and moves
people to respond in prayer and worship at the end. Not
an easy task! You must carefully choose from the materials
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you have gathered, then skillfully weave together what you

have chosen to create an effective sermon.
If you hope to do this, you must become effective at
gauging the emotional impact of each of the materials
you have gathered. You must answer these questions: How
forcefully will this Scripture verse, story, or illustration
drive home my point? How much emotion will it create in
the hearts of my hearers? And, how effectively will it propel
my hearers toward a response to the presence of God?
SERMON EXAMPLE
Let’s look again at the sermon we have been working
on. Of the six stories I found, which one do you think
has the most emotional impact? Here they are again:
1. The father bringing his son to Jesus for deliver-

ance (Mark 9)
2. Esther agreeing to go before the king, though it
presented an uncertain outcome (Esther 4)
3. The king of Nineveh calling for fasting and re-
pentance, though Jonah never offered any hope
(Jonah 9)
4. The leper approaching Jesus for healing, though
not sure of the outcome (Matthew 8)
5. The prodigal son returning to his father though
unsure whether he would be welcome (Luke 15)
6. The woman of Canaan coming to plead for her
daughter’s deliverance (Matthew 15)
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What would be your choice? For me, the story with

the most impact is the story of the father who brought
his demon-possessed son to Jesus. He is obviously shat-
tered, at his wits end, and overwhelmed by the suffering
of his son. This innocent child presents a heart-rending
picture; no one can remain unmoved by this desperate
father and his tormented son. I have something special
in mind for this story.
How would you rate, in order, the emotional impact
of the rest of the stories, the most impactful to the
least? This determines how you will fit them into your
sermon to create an emotional current, carrying your
congregation toward the closing and the altar.
Here is my list:
1. Father and demon-possessed son come to Jesus.

2. Four lepers march on the Syrians.
3. King of Nineveh repents.
4. Esther goes to the throne room.
5. Prodigal son comes home.
6. Woman of Canaan asks for the crumbs.
Normally, I would discard all but the first three.

Since each of those three needs some background and
detail in order to maximize its impact, to try to do
more, along with an introduction and a closing, is to
risk going too long.
Discarding number six, the woman of Canaan, is not
hard since it doesn’t really fit anyway: Jesus Himself
said she had “great faith,” and since we are trying to
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reach those who have little faith, we will save her for
another time. But I really like the two that are left, Es-
ther and the prodigal son, and I may have an idea how
we can effectively work in Esther and the prodigal son
too, without going over time.
I’ll show you how in the next chapter. First let’s look at
types of sermons and why it is important to recognize the
type of sermon you are going to preach.

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8
What T ype of
Sermon Is It?
The classification of sermons is a topic that seems to

capture the attention of many preachers and those who
write about preaching. Many schemes have been proposed,
some are detailed and elaborate, and some are simple and
straightforward. While I believe it is important to keep in
mind a general idea of the genre of your sermon, most of
what you need to know is found in the purpose statement
itself. More than just stating the theme or thesis, a purpose
statement also helps keep you focused on those who will
hear your sermon, not just on the sermon itself. This is more
important than fitting a sermon into a certain category. A
second reason I think the classification of sermons can be
overemphasized is that most sermons are not just one type,
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but often display characteristics of several types at once,

fitting neatly into no one category.
Having said that, though, it is good to at least become
familiar with the concept of thinking of sermons in
categories, for the simple reason that identifying the
prevalent category of a sermon is a tool that can clarify
your thinking and thereby help you preach a more effective
sermon. For example, if you know the aim of your sermon
is evangelistic (aimed at those who are unsaved), then this
knowledge would help you craft your opening and certainly
your closing. It could also affect your choice of materials, as
how you select them will be guided by the fact your target
audience will probably be less familiar with the Bible,
especially its doctrine and terminology, than saints will
be. When you preach to the church, you can make certain
assumptions about what they already know and don't know,
but when you preach to the lost you must assume that their
knowledge of the Bible is limited. You should avoid difficult
theological terms, church jargon, and other language with
which they may be unfamiliar. Other classifications will
have a similar effect on how you craft your sermon.
There are as many ways to classify sermons as there are
books and authors on the preaching of sermons.
W. E. Sangster, in The Craft of the Sermon, offers a
classification system with six classes:
1. Biblical interpretation
2. Ethical and devotional
3. Doctrinal
4. Apologetic
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What T ype of Sermon Is It?
5. Social
6. Evangelistic
Brown, Clinard, and Northcutt, in Steps to the Sermon,

another classic work in the field, identify seven classes:
1. Expository
2. Biblical
3. Analytical
4. Contemporary
5. Special Forms
6. Occasional
7. Evangelistic
A more modern approach is found in The Art and Craft of

Biblical Preaching, edited by Haddon Robinson and Craig
Brian Larson. The authors of this book seem to emphasize
seven genres of sermons:
1. Expository (defined as revealing the meaning of a

Scripture passage and applying that meaning to the
hearer’s life)
2. Verse by verse (really a subgenre of expository
preaching)
3. Textual (defined as being based on a shorter passage
than expository)
4. Topical (sometimes I have heard this called
“thought” preaching, and it is probably the most
common among Pentecostals)
5. Series of sermons
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6. First-person narrative (telling a Bible story from the

viewpoint of one of its characters)
7. Evangelistic
John A. Broadus, in his classic work On the Preparation

and Delivery of Sermons, classifies sermons based on
homiletical structure, content, and pattern. The only
category relevant to the present discussion, however, is the
first: homiletical structure. He further divides this category
into four genres:
1. Textual
2. Topical
3. Textual-Topical
4. Expository
These are just a few of the approaches to classifying

sermons that have been devised over the centuries; all of
them have something to commend them. If you have an
interest, you can read all the sources I have mentioned and
many, many more, and there certainly may be benefit in
doing this. But I am a simple preacher, and for the purposes
of this book, let’s think of sermon classes in a simpler way,
even more simply than Broadus does.
In a practical and empirical way, a sermon is either aimed
toward the saved, or it is aimed toward the lost. For our
purposes, this is the most basic way to think of the sermon,
and has the most impact on its structure and content. The
decision whether the sermon is evangelistic or not is one of
the first you must make while in the process of crafting it.
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This decision must be and will be reflected in your purpose

statement.
Now a word of caution that complicates things: we have
all preached sermons that were intended for the church, but
that under the unction of the Holy Spirit were transformed
into evangelistic appeals. We have also seen the opposite
happen. In fact, most of us, in every sermon, regardless
of its classification, structure, or subject matter, include
an evangelistic appeal at some point, or in the case of a
predominantly evangelistic sermon, include the needs of
the saved people who are there by alluding to healing, or
supernatural help with family, marital, or financial issues.
This is not bad or wrong, or to be avoided, but is simply a
fundamental part of preaching to congregations that are
growing and dynamic and thus include people with many
needs. Such churches most always have people on the pews
that need to respond to the call of God in their lives for
salvation, as well as church members who are dealing with
many other needs. Pastors who are blessed to preach to such
congregations can't well afford to ignore the motivational,
doctrinal, or devotional types of sermons, but also must
learn to employ the techniques of the evangelistic sermon,
often within the same sermon.
So, when building sermons, we should think of them as
having a predominant genre or classification; namely, either
they are predominantly evangelistic or predominately
to benefit the church. If a sermon is predominantly
evangelistic, for example, and you wish to include the
church in your target audience, it is important that you do
so in a smooth and logical way. Find a hook in your material
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that restates your purpose in a way that addresses the

needs of the saved. Utilize a Bible story, an illustration, or
a Scripture verse to do this.
SERMON EXAMPLE
In the sermon we have been working on, most of the
stories that we intend to use are targeted toward saved
people, as is our overall purpose. The story of the father
and his demon- possessed son appeals to those that are
saved and, like that father, are coming to Jesus for heal-
ing or deliverance. The story of Esther is about a mem-
ber of the king’s household coming before the throne,
so this too is more targeted toward those that are saved.
The story of the four lepers is also more about those
who are already saved and in need of a miracle.
However, the story of the king of Nineveh who,
without even hearing about repentance, repented, and
ordered the entire city to repent, is obviously a great
hook for including those who need to come to God. The
story of the prodigal son provides an opportunity to
encourage those who are backslidden to come back
home again even if they're not sure of the welcome
they would receive.
So, even though this sermon will mainly deal with
people who are saved but struggle with the fear that
their faith is not strong enough to bring God’s answer
to their needs, there are a couple of hooks that, if used
well, can open the appeal to both the backslider and
those who have never known God.
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By keeping firmly in mind the primary target audience

for the sermon, we avoid what to me is a recurring weakness
in many of the classification systems that have been
devised. That is, they mix and overlap sermon types. For
example, three of the four examples I gave you above list
“evangelistic” as one of the classes. Yet with one minor
exception (“occasional” in Brown et al.) all the other classes
they list are based on the structure or technique of the sermon,
and have nothing to do with its purpose. “Evangelistic”
has everything to do with the purpose of the sermon,
that is, who you intend to reach and the response you want
from them. I think this mixing of types or classes causes
unnecessary confusion, and leads to giving up on the whole
idea of considering the classification of one’s sermons. By
settling early in the process, and then keeping your eye on,
who you are predominantly trying to reach, you can use the
consideration of the classification of your sermon to avoid
a mixed up mess and help keep your preaching crystal clear.
You will notice that all the other classes will fit under
both categories of saved or lost. A textual sermon will
work equally well under either category, as will topical,
expository, or most any other category. The important
thing is to stay focused on your target audience and allow
whatever technique or structure you use to bring them to a
place of response to the message.
Now, let’s look at two major types of sermons based on
technique or structure. If you understand these types, the
differences between them, and how to master them, you will
have a much better understanding of how to put a sermon
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together. Almost all the other types are subtypes of these

two.
Expository Preaching
First, let’s look at expository preaching. As defined
above, this is “revealing the meaning of a Scripture
passage and applying that meaning to the hearer’s life.”
The emphasis here is on the passage of Scripture itself. All
of the materials gathered, other texts, illustrations, and
definitions, serve only to explain and reinforce the message
of the text you are expounding. Your sermon may be
focused on one verse, a dozen verses, or an entire chapter,
but for that sermon those are your entire world. No theme
or subject is introduced that is not found in that passage.
This is “Bible preaching” in its purest form. Subforms are
verse-by-verse preaching and series preaching. While all
preaching should be grounded in the Scripture, expository
preaching is the most grounded of all.
William Sangster gives four reasons preaching the Bible
in this way has benefits beyond the simple fact that there
is unlimited power in preaching the unadorned Word of
God. The first is that expository preaching offers endless
material for the preacher to preach. I once was in the home
of a pastor who told me that for the preceding eleven years
he had been preaching through the Book of Proverbs. He
told me that he was on chapter 13 and was not sure he
would live long enough to finish the book. The expository
preacher never lacks something to preach.
Another advantage that Sangster mentions is expository
preaching keeps preachers on guard against their own biases.
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All of us have our favorite topics to preach, and often in the

press of the busy pastorate, or under the demands of the
bivocational lifestyle, we fall into the habit of preaching
the things we are most familiar with, or most comfortable
with, or those topics that speak more into our own hearts.
By preaching systematically through a chapter or a book,
we are guaranteeing that we will avoid the trap of staying
in our comfort zone, or preaching to our own needs, rather
than those of our hearers.
Third, Sangster speaks of the fact that preaching
expository sermons encourages those who hear us to study
the Bible for themselves. I would add that it highlights the
Bible in the minds of our congregation and creates a climate
of love for God’s Word. Traveling and preaching in churches
across the United Pentecostal Church International, I've
often been able to discern the kind of preaching ministry
the pastor offers. Those who preach with a focus on the
Bible, making it not only the text of their sermons, but
allowing it to speak clearly through expository preaching,
are more likely to produce a congregation with a love for the
Word of God, an open heart to God's Word, and a thirst and
hunger to hear more about the Word of God. Congregations
usually value what their pastor values.
Finally, Sangster points out that a preacher cannot
dodge the difficult when preaching systematically through
a portion of the Word. Certain difficult subjects that we
might tend to avoid may be handled more diplomatically,
and even more effectively, when they are embedded in a
passage along with many other less painful subjects. When I
pastored, I often found that using the Word Aflame Sunday
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school literature, rather than lessons I wrote from scratch,

offered me the same benefit. Everyone knew I was just
following the “quarterly,” so I wasn’t singling out anyone,
or any situation. I often marveled how lessons that had
been written several years before came at the right time for
my congregation. The same is true when preaching through
a book or a lengthy passage. You will often be amazed at
how God can take your preaching and address situations
and circumstances in your congregation through the flow
of the Word of God.
This type of Bible preaching is not as easy as musing
publicly about our own opinions and ideas. It is a challenge
because, done right, it requires long hours of deep study. On
the other hand, every moment spent preparing a sermon
that is full of the Word of God has a great reward, both
to the preacher who prepares it and to the hearer. Feed
your hearers on a steady diet of God's Word. Avoid the
temptation of the trivial, offering shallow preaching based
on the latest trends, faddish ideas, empty rhetoric, and
worn-out examples. Get into the Word for yourself and get
it deep in your own heart. It will not only bless your life,
but, when you share it under the anointing of God, you
will bless the lives of your hearers like nothing else could
possibly do.
Topical Preaching
Topical preaching, sometimes called “thought” or
devotional preaching is the second category that I wish to
mention. By the foregoing discussion of the importance and
power of expository preaching, I do not mean to denigrate
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or demean topical preaching. On the contrary, done well,

topical preaching is just as much focused on Scripture as
expository; it simply uses the Word in a different way.
By applying many different texts to a unifying theme or
“thought,” topical preaching focuses the Word of God on
the challenges and struggles of everyday life in the twenty-
first century in a thought-provoking and inspirational way.
The Bible is a living book. Some have interpreted this to
mean that its plain admonitions and teachings are plastic,
molded by changing culture, society, and circumstance to
fit whatever belief is current in our day. Nothing could
be further from the truth. “Thy word is forever settled
in heaven,” the psalmist said (Psalm 119:89). The Word
of God is not made malleable by circumstances or by
cultural changes. The Word of God is inviolate; it is a firm
foundation. But this firm foundation fits modern life as
well as it fit life when it was first penned. The Word of God
contains principles that apply to any time and to any place.
It offers help in any of the circumstances and situations
in life. Preaching the Word of God in our time is the great
challenge of the pulpit today. It involves, above all, making
clear those eternal principles which do not change and are
forever relevant. This is the great work of the modern-day
preacher; it is the hardest work that he or she will ever face.
Fidelity to the Word of God is an absolute must for the
Pentecostal preacher. To stray from the plain teachings
of the Bible in order to claim relevance to our changing
culture is the cardinal error for any of us. To preach the
plain truths of the Bible is an absolute must if we are to
accomplish the purpose of God. Yet even in this modern
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world filled with problems, we must present those truths in

a way that is relevant and reaches the hearts of our hearers.
Topical preaching is a tool that connects the Word of
God to circumstances that people face today. Preaching
such sermons is sometimes described as shallow, but it
certainly need not be, indeed, must not be. To rally people,
to instill courage in them in a time of trouble, to put faith
and strength into a flagging spirit, are not only some of
the most rewarding accomplishments of preaching, but
are absolutely essential in a confusing world like the one
in which we live. Devotional preaching is necessary for a
pastor or other minister who stands before people whose
whole week is filled with disappointment and heartache,
people who come to church desperately searching for a word
from God that will give them the courage to face another
day.
Thankfully, the Word of God does not fail us in this
challenge. It is filled with the stories of those who overcame,
who have endured, indeed, who have triumphed. Their
stories are in God's Word, not simply for entertainment, but
for inspiration. And those stories are as valuable today as
they have ever been. Sometimes I think we miss the boat
when we grow tired of stories we've heard all of our lives,
when those stories have lost their impact on us because of
their familiarity, and we forget that many who walk into
our churches have never heard those stories preached under
the anointing of God and applied to modern-day life.
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EXAMPLE SERMON
The sermon we have been putting together is a top-
ical sermon, primarily directed toward the church, al-
though we will also appeal to those who need renewing
and those who need the Holy Spirit baptism. The top-
ic is faith. We are attempting to answer the question:
must we have absolutely no doubt that God will answer
our prayer in order for God to do so?
This is a vital topic, striking to the core of living
for God, and much on the minds of those who have
needs that only God can meet. The stories we will use
to inspire and encourage are well-known, but we will
be preaching them from a slightly different angle than
they are usually preached, and we hope this will make
them as fresh and exciting as they would be if they
were new.
Evangelistic Preaching
In the final section of this chapter, I would like to share a
word about preaching to the lost. Evangelistic preaching is, in
one sense, a redundancy. While there can be preaching without
evangelism, there can be no evangelism without preaching.
That this is true is made clear by Romans 10:13–15:
For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord

shall be saved. How then shall they call on him
in whom they have not believed? and how shall
they believe in him of whom they have not heard?
and how shall they hear without a preacher? And
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how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is

written, How beautiful are the feet of them that
preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings
of good things!
In another sense, though, it is a perfectly good term

because it differentiates between preaching that is aimed
at presenting salvation to those who have never known
the Lord and preaching aimed in other directions, such
as training or encouraging those already saved. While
most good sermons will address several needs, both of the
saved and the lost, evangelistic preaching is a method of
presenting truth that is especially focused on the lost.
First, let's consider what we mean by evangelistic. In the
most precise sense, evangelism is the proclamation of the
gospel. The English word evangel is simply a transliteration
of the Greek word euangelion, meaning “good tidings or
good news.” Gospel, which is a contraction of the Anglo-
Saxon word godspell, has the same meaning.
For those of us who know the truth, evangelism must
always hold the meaning of not just proclaiming the gospel,
but creating the atmosphere in which souls can meet Jesus
in the full power of His Spirit, and follow His example and
command in baptism. Anything less is not true evangelistic
preaching. So, what about door-knocking, home Bible
studies, or street services? Aren’t these evangelism?
Certainly, they are. But the aim of each of them is to bring
people to a point of hunger, or at the least, curiosity about
the gospel. When they respond and come into an atmosphere
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created by Bible preaching, the work of evangelizing them

is completed by the preaching and their response to it.
One could think of the difference between preaching to
the lost and preaching to the church much like the difference
between communicating within a family and communicating
with guests in your home. When it's just the family, there
may be reference to events, jokes, and family secrets that
everyone in the family is familiar with. When you have
guests, however, you have to explain such references or risk
leaving your guests in the dark, not understanding what
you are talking about. This is like the difference between
an evangelistic sermon and a sermon that is geared toward
the needs of the church. The evangelistic sermon assumes
the hearers don’t understand church jargon, terms, events,
and doctrines. It does not require an introductory course to
understand; it is the gospel presented simply, in everyday
language, so that the uninitiated can easily understand
what they must do to be saved.
This does not mean an evangelistic sermon has no
doctrine, avoids biblical concepts, or uses first-grade
English. You should not insult your audience in such a way.
If I wander into a session at a conference for brain surgeons
and I don’t understand everything they are talking about,
it does not mean I am an ignoramus. It means I am not
familiar with the subject. Most people today are not
familiar with the Bible, the need for salvation, and the
plan God has for their lives both here and in the hereafter.
Evangelistic preaching seeks to meet people where they are
and bring them to faith and obedience to the gospel so that
they might be saved.
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Evangelistic preaching could be considered as being

rooted in Philippians 4:19: “But my God shall supply all
your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.”
Let’s look at this statement in some detail.
You have a need. This is the first job of the evangelist:
to point out the need of the sinner. In our day many come
to our churches who require little reminding of their needs.
They are broken and shattered by sin, and have often tried
many things to meet their needs. All they have tried has
failed, and the result for most of them is only to have made
their lives worse. They are ready for help. But, you should
still point out their needs. Talk to them about what is
happening in their lives. Remind them of the false promise
of the world. In doing so, try to maintain as broad an
appeal as possible. Mention a broad range of specific sins,
or better yet, speak in broad terms, not to avoid naming
sin, but to be sure everyone feels you are speaking to them.
I have a God. The second job of an evangelistic sermon
is to tell them about our God, who alone can meet their
needs. A brilliant example of this simple but vital aspect of
reaching the lost is Paul’s sermon in Acts 17:22–28:
Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars' hill,

and said, Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all
things ye are too superstitious. For as I passed by,
and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with
this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD.
Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him
declare I unto you. God that made the world and
all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven
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and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with

hands; Neither is worshipped with men's hands,
as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth
to all life, and breath, and all things; And hath
made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell
on all the face of the earth, and hath determined
the times before appointed, and the bounds of
their habitation; That they should seek the Lord,
if haply they might feel after him, and find him,
though he be not far from every one of us: For
in him we live, and move, and have our being; as
certain also of your own poets have said, For we
are also his offspring.
Paul didn’t condemn, or even debate their idolatry; he

simply used their own superstitions to point them to the
only God who made them, loves them as His children, and
is near them to hear their prayers. Don’t forget to assure
them that not only can He meet their needs, but He will.
No one is too bad, too sinful, too far gone. Tell them His
mercy is abundant, His power unlimited, His love so great
He is moved by our needs; and if we come to Him, He will
receive us.
Third, always lift up Jesus. “And I, if I be lifted up
from the earth, will draw all men unto me” (John 12:32).
He is speaking of His death on the cross. The Cross is the
source of this hope and confidence. Don’t be afraid of John
3:16 because it is not Acts 2:38; it is still true and offers no
contradiction when one understands what is involved when
someone “believeth on Him.” God came in the form of a
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man, died for our sins, and now anyone who believes and
obeys can be saved.
Finally, preach for a response. The first Pentecostal
sermon was an evangelistic sermon. It was deliberately
designed under the anointing of God to bring its hearers
to a point of action. Peter ended this gem with a powerful
closing, specifically targeting his Jewish hearers:
This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we

all are witnesses. Therefore being by the right
hand of God exalted, and having received of the
Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath
shed forth this, which ye now see and hear. For
David is not ascended into the heavens: but he
saith himself, The LORD said unto my Lord,
Sit thou on my right hand, until I make thy foes
thy footstool. Therefore let all the house of Israel
know assuredly, that God hath made that same
Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and
Christ! (Acts 2:32–36).
When Peter closed his message with these words, full of

both accusation and hope, we can only imagine the scene.
Perhaps silence falls across the crowd as each hearer comes
face to face with his guilt before God. Then, we witness for
the first time, the power of the preaching of the gospel by
a Holy Ghost–filled preacher under the anointing of the
Spirit:
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Now when they heard this, they were pricked

in their heart, and said unto Peter and to the
rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what
shall we do? Then Peter said unto them, Repent,
and be baptized every one of you in the name
of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye
shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. For the
promise is unto you, and to your children, and to
all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our
God shall call. And with many other words did he
testify and exhort, saying, Save yourselves from
this untoward generation. Then they that gladly
received his word were baptized: and the same day
there were added unto them about three thousand
souls (Acts 2:37–41).
May all your preaching have such an effect!

Let me end with a word to beginning preachers. Master
the evangelistic sermon. Master it by committing yourself
to preaching evangelistically. You will be sorely tempted in
your preaching to focus on the church, particularly to point
out their shortcomings and failures. Resist this temptation
at all costs! You don’t have the chops to preach that kind of
sermon yet, at least in a way that anyone will accept as any
more than the words of a novice. Take to heart instead the
words of instruction that the apostle Paul gave to a young
preacher: “Do the work of an evangelist” (II Timothy 4:5).
If you will learn to compassionately and creatively point
out the need of those who do not know the Lord, remind
them of the mercy and grace of Jesus, constantly lift Him
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up, and learn to close your sermons by creating a climate

where the Holy Ghost can move into the service and convict
the hearts of those who hear you, you will make a place for
your ministry, and, more important, you will be a blessing
to all those to whom you preach.
William E. Sangster, The Craft of Sermon Construction

(Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1950, 1951).

Haddon Robinson and Craig Brian Larson, eds., The Art and
2005).
John A. Broadus, On The Preparation and Delivery of

Sermons 4th ed. (New York: Harper Collins, 1979).
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9
Putting It All
Together
Don't just throw the seed at the people! Grind it

into flour, bake it into bread, and slice it for them!
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Now it is time to take all we have discussed and commit

the sermon to paper. Keep the purpose statement firmly in
mind as you begin creating your introduction, arranging your
materials, and crafting the closing. Keep an eye on whether
you will mainly reach for the lost or seek to encourage and
challenge the saints (unless you are a novice, in which case
you should keep your eye on the lost). So how do you put a
sermon together?
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A sermon is usually thought of as having three basic

parts: the introduction, the body, and the closing. Keeping
this in mind will help you construct tight, easily-understood
sermons. The most important and difficult parts are the
introduction and the closing, each of them requiring real
skill to make them effective. Let’s look at each of these
three parts.
The Introduction
If you watch great preachers preach, you’ll soon become
aware that they all pay great attention to how they begin
their sermons. No matter what technique they use, they are
meticulous in putting the introduction together. Many of
them read their introductions verbatim from their notes,
rhythmically turning the pages (or sliding their finger
across the screen of their tablet), carefully enunciating the
words, dramatically demanding we follow them into the
world of their message. What do they know that requires
such an obvious investment in time and energy? Why is the
introduction so important? They know that there is only a
limited time, probably less than two minutes, to get your
hearers’ attention and convince them you have something
to say worth saying.
In his book You Are the Message, Roger Ailes insists when
you engage an individual or an audience you have only
seven seconds to convince them you and your opinions are
worth their time. If you think about it, you will realize he
is probably right. Around a restaurant table, in the display
hall at general conference, in a seminar, at church, everyone
subconsciously and quickly “does the math” about whoever
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Putting It All Together
is talking and gives their attention or tunes them out. Their

decision is based on many shadowy factors, including
physical appearance, what is said, how it is said, past
interactions with the individual, as well as how well that
person adheres to social conventions that create a comfort
zone around him or her. In other words, loud, rude airheads
don’t command our attention; instead, we instinctively try
to find an escape route, even if it is just retreating into our
own heads when we can’t physically get away.
To be fair, a Pentecostal congregation will give you more
than seven seconds, mainly because they came to church
to hear good preaching, so they are rooting for you. They
will give you a chance if for no other reason than they hope
not to be bored to death, but they won’t give you much
more than those seven seconds. So pay attention to how
you begin.
(For the following discussion of the parts of a sermon
I am indebted to Introduction to Homiletics by Donald E.
Demaray. As its title suggests, this work is a basic and
simply-presented book on preaching that I have read and
referred to many times.)
The great Roman orator, Cicero, wrote that all effective
introductions must fulfill three purposes: to arouse interest,
to secure favor, and to prepare to lead. As in the case
with Aristotle’s three proofs, no one has improved on this
description very much. What did Cicero mean? Arousing
interest is pretty clear: if you don’t get the congregation’s
attention in the beginning, you probably won’t get it at
all, and the rest of the sermon will fall flat. To secure favor
means to create a bond between you and the audience,
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putting them at ease with you, assuring them that not only
do you have something to say, but that you know what you
are talking about. The third one is a little harder to nail
down. One reason is that, to me, it is connected to and flows
out of the second one, securing favor. Once you have gained
their attention and put them at ease with you, you must
draw them into the sermon, causing them to trust that you
know where you are going, and then lead them into the
body of your sermon and on to the closing.
Arousing Interest
In order to arouse interest, a carefully-thought-out
opening sentence is vital. It must catch their attention
away from every distraction in the room: bodies settling
into seats, scraping of chairs, even the sudden absence
of background music, a silence that can be so loud. After
pausing a beat to let things settle, read your text, announce
your title, then begin your opening with that first sentence.
Demand the crowd’s attention by clearly presenting its
arresting statements and assertions. This first sentence is
vital, so prepare it with care. Mull it over in your mind,
frame it on paper, reframe it, and revise it as many times as
necessary. Perfect it for interest and clarity, and deliver it
with confidence.
After the first sentence, set your rhythm. Follow with a
second sentence that expands, explains, or elucidates the
first one. As you move through the opening paragraph,
draw them in by making it personal. Remember your
purpose statement; consider the question, why does it
matter to them? Tell them why it matters in simple, active
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verbs and concrete nouns. Establish the momentum and

keep it going. Remember, the whole of the introduction
must arouse interest. It is during those first two minutes or
so that the audience makes that all important decision—
whether or not to listen to what you have to say.
Someone has said there are three kinds of preachers:
those you cannot listen to, those you can listen to, and
those you must listen to. People don’t come expecting the
first; either they come with the intention to listen or they
don’t come to church at all. For most, option two is the best
they can hope for, and probably what they expect. Your
job in those first few moments is to persuade them to opt
for number three: make it so interesting they simply must
listen.
Securing Favor
Securing favor also must happen quickly, or not at all. If
you are preaching in a familiar church, particularly at home,
people already know you and hopefully like and accept you
as a preacher. If you are preaching in an unfamiliar setting,
you must draw people to you and create a bond between you
and the audience. Sometimes this bonding is hard to define.
I think this is so because it is an impression, almost an
emotion, that your hearers feel rather than think, and this
impression is the result of many things. Your appearance—
muted, modest, conservative dress; confidence rather than
nervousness; assurance of the importance of what you are
about to preach; but not arrogance, aloofness, or stiffness—
plays a great part in creating this. The tone of your
voice—low, yet vibrant; real, almost conversational in the
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beginning as you politely acknowledge the invitation that

brought you to that pulpit—speaks more than your words
to the congregation. A gracious manner—complimenting
the pastor and the music, a kind word about the worship of
the church—is another clue that the congregation will use
to size you up.
Humor is a great tool to gain favor, but it must be used
carefully and sparingly, particularly when you are preaching
to an unfamiliar audience. Nothing that can remotely be
interpreted as off-color, derogatory, or disrespectful will
work, except to dig a hole you may not get out of. Obvious
jokes rarely work either (except for a well-known television
preacher whose shtick includes a usually corny joke that
works because it is anticipated by his sympathetic crowd).
Humor should be connected to relevant situations. Often
the kind words of the person that introduced you can be a
starting point: “Wow, now I am the most over-introduced
preacher in Pentecost!” or “Thank you for all those kind
words! I probably shouldn’t have heard all that, but I’m
sure glad my spouse did!”
People love to be complimented, so look for something
you can honestly say something nice about—the décor, the
choir, the praise team, the nice basket in your room—be
sincere and don’t overdo it, and it will help win their favor.
Above all, be real and always focus their attention on the
presence of the Lord. This is the true bond between you
and the congregation; they want to know that you know
Him, love Him, and will lead them to Him.
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Prepare to Lead
The third purpose of the introduction, according to
Cicero, is to prepare to lead. People come to church with
their minds distracted and scattered. They are impossible
to lead until you have gained their attention and won their
confidence. Once you have done this, then lead them into
the Scripture and into your sermon.
People follow confident leaders; leaders who know
who they are and where they are going. You must project
both of these characteristics in order to lead them. These
cannot be faked, your hearers will quickly sense if you are
not ready to lead them, and they will hold back. Don’t
flail around, starting and stopping, repeating yourself,
obviously struggling to get going. Once you have read your
text in a smooth, confident way; stated your opening line
with a sureness that comes from that confidence, let the
introduction and then the body of the sermon unfold. In
this way you will lead them where you have been led by the
Word and the Spirit. This is why your introduction needs to
be well-thought-out and well-crafted; you must first know
where you are going in order to lead others there.
AN EXAMPLE INTRODUCTION
Romans 10
The epistle to the Romans was written by Paul
around ad 58. The church in Rome was mostly Gentile
by the time of the epistle’s writing, but it was found-
ed by Jewish Christians. And there are many Jews
still there, in spite of imperial edicts banishing Jews
from Rome. Paul is introducing himself to this church
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which, although he seems to know several of its mem-

bers, he has never visited. He is also hoping to enlist
the church’s support for his future missionary work.
The theme of the letter, according to David Bernard, is
“The gospel of salvation is the gift of God’s righteous-
ness received by faith in Jesus Christ.”
Prior to chapter 10, Paul has already affirmed the
doctrine of universal guilt, that “all have sinned and
come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23), and,
beginning in chapter 9, he focuses on Israel, specifical-
ly addressing the question, why, if they are the chosen
people of God, is Israel lost? Paul Achtemeier points
out he does this by asserting what is the theme of the
entire chapter “It is not as though the word of God has
failed” (Romans 9:6). Now, in chapter 10, he begins his
argument as to why, if God’s word has not failed, Israel
is still lost. His conclusion is that it is because they have
refused to hear.
Romans 10 is a stand-alone rhetorical piece develop-
ing this argument. We can see it as a sermon following
ancient rules of rhetoric; for example, it is a blend of ju-
dicial and deliberative rhetoric, and contains appeals to
all three of Aristotle’s proofs: ethos, logos, and pathos.
It follows the classic pattern for speeches and contains
all six parts of that pattern: exordium (introduction);
narration (statement of facts), proposition (what is to
be proven), proofs (appeals to authority), and perora-
tion (closing).
In this section, let’s look at Paul’s introduction. It
is found in verses 1–3: “Brethren, my heart's desire and
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prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved.

For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but
not according to knowledge. For they being ignorant of
God's righteousness, and going about to establish their
own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto
the righteousness of God.”
In this introduction, Paul fulfills all three of the pur-
poses of an introduction. He gets their attention with
some provocative words about the Jews. In essence, he
is saying that while Israel has a godly zeal, they are
also ignorant, self-righteous, and rebellious (a word
to the wise: this is Paul . . . you are not Paul). At the
same time, Paul secures their favor with these words:
“Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Isra-
el is, that they might be saved.” He presents himself as
having to say some harsh things, but he is not against
Israel, certainly doesn’t wish them ill; he prays for them
and, if he had his way, they would all be saved. In other
words, he is saying, “You can trust me to tell you the
truth because I have no motive to hurt or punish Israel.”
He leads them by using this striking language, and
by immediately moving them to his next statement
which is essentially his theme, or purpose statement. It
is the heart of the truth he wants to communicate: “For
Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone
that believeth. For Moses describeth the righteousness
which is of the law, That the man which doeth those
things shall live by them. But the righteousness which
is of faith speaketh on this wise, Say not in thine heart,
Who shall ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring Christ
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down from above:) Or, Who shall descend into the deep?
(that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead.)” (Ro-
mans 10:4–7). This is his transition from the introduc-
tion to the body of the sermon; he is asserting that the
Law was completed or fulfilled in Jesus and no longer
saves people, because its righteousness is based on the
works of those who follow it. But faith’s righteousness
comes by unquestioning belief in Jesus’ death, burial,
and resurrection. This is why Israel is lost: they contin-
ue to trust in the righteousness of the law and question
the righteousness of faith and obedience to the gospel.
Methods of Introduction
There are many different ways you can introduce a
sermon. Let’s look at a few of them. The most common way
is usually called the Textual Method. It means that your
opening sentence is simple and straightforward: “My text
this morning is . . . ,” then you read your Scripture text.
This verse or passage should, of course, be the primary
one from which you draw your sermon, or at least the most
prominent verse that touches on your theme. The great
advantage of this method is that it helps put your audience
at ease. It does this because it is familiar to them, since
most sermons begin this way; and it assures them you are
going to preach from the Bible, which also is reassuring to
them. Perhaps most importantly, it helps you be more at
ease, since you begin by reading, word for word, something
with which you are familiar. This is a great help to calm
the jitters. Remember though, this makes the reading of
your text part of your introduction. You cannot think of it
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as a preliminary act that happens before the introduction

begins; it is part of the introduction, and because of this,
you must read the text with emphasis and emotion. Not
overly dramatic, but read with real interest, using inflection
in your voice to draw out the meaning of the passage.
Sometimes, I will even inject short explanations or asides
as I read it, helping to make the text more understandable,
especially if those particular nuances will not be used in
the sermon. Usually the reading of the text will be followed
with telling the story of the text. If it is an event, set the
stage: who is involved, where, when, and why. If it is more
of a doctrinal or theological passage, discuss who wrote
it, to whom, and why. Sometimes after reading the text,
you don’t discuss the text immediately; instead you utilize
another type of introduction altogether. In fact, opening
by reading a text will work with all the other methods we
will talk about.
Another type of introduction is to begin with an
illustration. This is extremely effective assuming the
illustration is almost perfectly fitted to your purpose
statement. If you have to tell it, then explain what you
meant by it, don’t use it; it won’t work. An illustration that
does fit, however, is a beautiful thing. The effectiveness of
an illustration is governed by several factors, each of which
are vital. Remember, how you tell a story is more important
than the story itself. Stories should be told using concrete
nouns and active verbs. The effect of this is a sense of
immediacy and a sense of action. You don’t just want to tell
your congregation what happened, you want to take them
to the scene and show them what happened. That’s what
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a sense of immediacy does: it makes the audience feel like

the events of your story are happening now. Active verbs
show them what is happening instead of just telling them.
Here is part of one of my favorite sermon introductions. It
blends textual exposition (our first type of introduction)
with an introduction using an illustration. Its uniqueness
is that it uses a little imagination to turn a biblical story
into a powerful illustration. As you read it, notice the sense
of immediacy and the sense of action. The sermon is “The
Woman of the Shattered Romances” by Clovis Chappell:
Look, will you, at this picture. There sits a man

in the strength and buoyancy of young manhood.
He is only thirty or thereabouts. About him is the
atmosphere of vigor and vitality that belong to
the springtime of life. But to-day he is a bit tired.
There is a droop in his shoulders. His feet and
sandals are dusty. His garment is travel stained.
He has been journeying all the morning on foot.
And now at the noon hour he is resting.
The place of his resting is an old well curb. The
well is one that was digged by hands that have
been dust long centuries. This traveler is very
thirsty. But he has no means of drawing the water,
so he sits upon the well curb and waits. His friends
who are journeying with him have gone into the
city to buy food. Soon they will return and then
they will eat and drink together.
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As he looks along the road that leads into the

city he sees somebody coming. That somebody
is not one of his disciples. It is a woman. As she
comes closer he sees that she is clad in the cheap
and soiled finery of her class. At once he knows
her for what she is. He reads the dark story of
her sinful life. He understands the whole fetid and
filthy past through which she has journeyed as
through the stenchful mud of a swamp.
Notice the nouns: picture, man, strength, buoyancy,

vigor, vitality, springtime, shoulders, feet, sandals, garment,
well, curb, hands, water, food, friends, woman, finery, story,
life, mud, swamp. All concrete, not an abstract among them.
Now the verbs: Look, sits, is, belong, journeying, resting,
digged, drawing, waits, gone, buy, return, eat, drink, looks,
sees, coming, comes, knows, reads, understands, journeyed.
Action everywhere! Even the adverbs and adjectives are
robust and colorful. The language puts you there and makes
the scene come to life.
An effective illustration introduction can also come from
using an understated story that in itself seems not to be
connected to the grand theme, but, as becomes apparent,
tells the story in miniature, using as much detail as possible
to build realism. While more complex and risky, using such
an illustration can be as effective in capturing attention as
using its more dramatic cousins. This example doesn’t come
from a sermon, but from one of the most significant books
of the twentieth century, if for no other reason than it tells
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the story of an event that changed the world as few have

done. John Hersey begins Hiroshima like this:
At exactly fifteen minutes past eight in the

morning, on August 6, 1945, Japanese time,
at the moment when the atomic bomb flashed
above Hiroshima, Miss Toshiko Sasaki, a clerk in
the personnel department of the East Asia Tin
Works, had just sat down at her place in the plant
office and was turning her head to speak to the
girl at the next desk. At that same moment, Dr.
Masakazu Fujii was settling down cross-legged to
read the Osaka Asahi on the porch of his private
hospital, overhanging one of the seven deltaic
rivers which divide Hiroshima; Mrs. Hatsuyo
Nakamura, a tailor’s widow, stood by the window
of her kitchen, watching a neighbor tearing down
his house because it lay in the path of an air-raid-
defense fire lane; Father Wilhelm Kleinsorge, a
German priest of the Society of Jesus, reclined
in his underwear on a cot on the top floor of his
order’s three-story mission house, reading a Jesuit
magazine, Stimmen der Zeit; Dr. Terufumi Sasaki,
a young member of the surgical staff of the
city’s large, modern Red Cross Hospital, walked
along one of the hospital corridors with a blood
specimen for a Wassermann test in his hand; and
the Reverend Mr. Kiyoshi Tanimoto, pastor of the
Hiroshima Methodist Church, paused at the door
of a rich man’s house in Koi, the city’s western
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suburb, and prepared to unload a handcart full

of things he had evacuated from town in fear of
the massive B-29 raid which everyone expected
Hiroshima to suffer. A hundred thousand people
were killed by the atomic bomb, and these six
were among the survivors.
Hersey uses six mini-stories, one after the other, to

draw us in and move us toward the dramatic final line that
cannot fail to get our attention and propel us onward into
the story: “A hundred thousand people were killed by the
atomic bomb, and these six were among the survivors.” It
makes us think, how? and why? and how many others? But
most of all it makes us think tell me more! Open a sermon
with an introduction that does that, and you will be on your
way.
A sort of subgenre to beginning with an illustration is a
type sometimes called a Life Situation introduction. This
type of illustration describes a situation that someone has
faced in contemporary life. The idea is to relate a story in
which someone has dealt with a dramatic event in life, then
to apply his or her way of coping in a more general way
so everyone can relate to the story. Of course, it also must
illustrate and transition into your theme. Here is an incident
from my life that I have used to introduce a sermon titled
“Knowing Where to Run.”
I remember the incident very well. It is one of

those things that I suppose lodge in your mind
when you are a child. One morning my brother
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and I were with my dad in an old, black, beat-

up pickup truck driving down a dirt road out in
a small oil field just outside Kerman, California.
Dad pulled to the side of the road and stopped.
“Look over there,” he said and pointed. It was
obviously a place where some horrible accident
had happened. As Dad began to explain it to
us, we understood what a terrible thing it had
been. An oil drilling rig had been operating there
the day before. The ruin of it rose from the flat
terrain about a hundred yards from us, the top
half of the rig lying along the ground, a mass of
twisted metal. It was easy, even for us, to realize
what had happened; the top of the structure had
simply toppled over, crashing onto the rest of it.
As we sat there in the old truck, my dad began
to tell us about the driller. Just that morning,
leaving for work, Dad said, the driller had told
his wife of his concerns about the condition of
the rig: “That thing is a piece of junk,” he had
said. “Somebody’s going to get killed one of these
days.” An accident, I guess, was inevitable. When
those pins sheared and the top half of that rig
began to fall, the crew began to run. Everybody
got off safe, except the driller. He had, from
where he was standing on the “floor” when the
top began to fall toward him, only two choices of
escape routes: He could run to his left and down
some stairs and off the rig to safety or he could
run to his right across the floor and there, moving
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quickly behind the huge engine that powered the

rig, might find a place of shelter. He had only a
split second to decide. Unfortunately, he chose
wrong. Running across the floor, he veered right,
heading for the safety of the massive engine, but
before he could get there, those falling tons of
steel pinned him against the radiator and crushed
out his life.
Of course, I did not see the body, but my dad
had seen it the day before; his face was a study
in horror as he turned the tragic incident into an
object lesson—a life lesson for his sons. I will never
forget the look in my dad’s eyes, or the words he
spoke to us that day as he described what had
happened to the man who ran the wrong way.
He said to us: “Always look around you, pay
attention, and think ahead. Always know where to
run. It just might save your life.”
Sometimes it is best to begin with a simple, straight-

forward statement of your purpose. It should be brief and
direct: “Today I will show scripturally why the baptism
of the Holy Ghost is absolutely essential to salvation,” or
“I’m here to challenge your faith to enable you to see God
as willing and able, in fact, eager, to answer your prayers!”
Use your purpose statement, just modify it to make it speak
directly to your hearers.
The last type I will mention is the dramatic statement.
The idea is not to woo their attention, seduce them from
their distractions, or gently plead for their time; it is to set
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off a stick of dynamite, turn on a siren, fire up a searchlight.

It is to grab them by the nape of the neck and make them
want to listen. How’s that for a dramatic statement? Here
are some better examples: in introducing a sermon entitled
“What Christ Does for the Soul,” Arthur John Gossip
makes this dramatic opening:
What, exactly, has Christ done for you? What

is there in your life that needs Christ to explain it,
and that, apart from Him, simply could not have
been there at all? If there is nothing, then your
religion is a sheer futility.
V. A. Guidroz, a master Pentecostal preacher, used this

introduction for his often-requested sermon, “The Death
March”:
This is a congregation of religious people.

We are facing the great catastrophes of the
culmination of time. You can’t get yourself out of
it. You’re in it with all your might. You’re going
to give account of everything that is said in this
camp meeting. You can play with it or you can
spit it out and walk away from it. But you’ve got
to face it just the same.
We’ve got to be serious about it. God lives
or He’s dead. Jesus Christ was the Son of God,
born of the virgin Mary or it’s the biggest joke in
the world. Men and women speak in tongues as
inspired by the Holy Ghost or that is the biggest
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farce ever put between two lids of a book. Either

people are born again or we are just deceiving a
whole lot of folks. We have our names written in
the Lamb’s Book of Life, or we’re just playing the
biggest joke upon the biggest bunch of innocent
people the world has ever known. We either have
a Hell beneath us and a Heaven above us, and
we’ve got to win one and lose the other one, or
else we are sitting here tonight just playing away
our time.
Remember, dramatic statement doesn’t necessarily mean

provocative statement, as Paul’s was in Romans 10, Gossip’s
in “What Christ Does for the Soul,” or V. A. Guidroz’s in
“The Death March.” Sometimes it catches attention by its
striking imagery. F. W. Boreham introduces a sermon (or
an essay, sometimes it’s hard to tell with Boreham) about
delivering bad news called “Breaking the News” like this:
As a general rule, things that are broken are

broken by the clumsy. When eggs are broken, or
when dishes are broken, or when promises are
broken, it is because someone has blundered. But
to this general rule there is one striking exception.
Careless people may break our china; careless
people may break our hearts; but, when it comes
to breaking the news, careless people would be
worse than useless.
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Sometimes, the drama comes from suspense which

promises future interesting revelations that pull us into the
sermon in spite of ourselves. Boreham uses this technique
in “A Tangled Skein,” skillfully building the suspense in a
brilliant introduction:
My fingers have often itched to set down the

story of Mary Creighton, just as she told it to me
that day under the apple-tree, but, until now, my
pen has been chained. A newspaper that came last
week, however, contains announcements which
have effectually brushed away the scruples that
I cherished.
Mary Creighton was not her real name: her real
name was much prettier, or she made it seem so
to me. None of the names that I shall mention
are real names. Mary herself was, for years, an
inscrutable mystery to me. She was to everybody.
Indeed, until that lovely afternoon she made
her great confession, I never understood her and
I never met anybody who did. A very general
feeling prevailed in Mosgiel that, away back in the
unforgotten years of Mary's life, a tragedy was
buried somewhere; but nobody knew its nature.
Innumerable guesses were made: but they were all
contradictory, and, therefore, unsatisfactory. No
theory squared with all the facts. And so it came
to pass that the little township gave it up. Mary
came to be regarded as a riddle that everybody
had asked, but of which nobody knew the answer.
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Don’t overdo the drama, make it outlandish, or resort to

gimmicks. You will get their attention, but they may laugh
at you in the process. Years ago when I was a young pastor,
I took the advice of a friend and tried a bit of drama to
introduce a sermon. The text was from I Corinthians 13:12.
“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to
face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as
also I am known.” After reading this text I had everyone
pray, and as they did, I put on a pair of sunglasses I had
placed in the pulpit. The idea was to preach about how in
the present we are forced to see life through dark glasses,
but one day we will take them off and see things as they
really are and understand the reasons why life is like it is.
The title was “When I Take My Sun Shades Off.” It would
have been great except for the roar of laughter when the
congregation opened their eyes after the prayer and saw me
with my shades on. It was so out of character for me that
some of my dear saints giggled through the whole sermon.
I am still embarrassed as I type these words.
Keep the introduction short; it should do its job and get
out of the way. The introduction should not use your best or
most powerful material. Of course you must use good stuff
in the introduction because of its crucial role, but I have
heard preachers who had powerful introductions, but not
much else, and things went rapidly downhill. I have even
been that preacher on occasion. If all you have is a powerful
introduction, wait until you have a powerful sermon to go
with it before you use it.
One last comment on introductions. Many great
preachers fully write out their introductions, although they
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may outline the body and the closing. This is a testament

to their understanding of just how important introductions
are. They know if the introduction suffers from a stall, a
misstatement, or a brain freeze, they will spend the rest
of the sermon trying to recover. If you fail to capture the
audience’s attention, arouse their interest, and secure their
favor in the introduction, the rest of the sermon is lost. If
you are a beginning preacher, write out your introductions.
Later, as you gain experience, you may decide you only
need detailed notes for the introduction. But by then, who
knows? You may be hooked and want to continue to write
them out.
The Title
Throughout the process of building your sermon, you
should be thinking about the title. There is no real hurry, as
the title may come to you at the beginning, in the middle,
or at the end of the process. Sometimes the title is easy to
come by as the sermon seems to title itself. It was that way
with a sermon I titled “Amnon Had a Friend.” The text
was from II Samuel 13, and in verse 3 we find the pivotal
statement of the whole story of Amnon: “But Amnon had
a friend.” What else could you call that sermon? Usually
though, it isn’t so easy to find that perfect title. Sometimes,
when struggling to come up with the right title, we convince
ourselves that the titles don’t really matter. “Just name
it something,” we say, or worse yet, we decide to skip it
altogether. But as Rick Warren wrote in The Art and Craft
of Biblical Preaching,
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Writing a great sermon title is an art we must

continually work on. I don’t know anyone who
has mastered it. We all have our hits and misses.
But if the purpose of preaching is to transform,
not merely inform, or if you’re speaking to
unbelievers, then you must be concerned with
your titles. Like the cover of a book or the first
line of an advertisement, your sermon’s title
must capture the attention of those you want to
influence.
The title should contain the promise of the sermon,

simply stated. For a sermon that focused on what God can do
with nothing (for example, create a universe), and therefore
concluded that the less there is of me (that is, the less of
my ego, my ambition, and my desire) to get in the way, the
more God can do with me, I chose the title, “The Incredible
Potential of Nothing.” In another sermon I point out that
while God is all-powerful and can do anything, there are
things He cannot do: He cannot fail, make a mistake, lie, or
be unjust. The sermon title I chose was “The Limitations of
God.” For a sermon on the destructive power of sin, I used
Samson and King Saul as examples of the tragic end of sin.
My introduction used an anecdote from the American Civil
War of a witness to the ghoulish robbing of slain soldiers
still lying on the field on the morning after a battle. The
title was “Stripping the Slain.”
If we do it right, the title fits so well that, upon reflection,
it seems like it was somehow ordained to be the title of
that sermon. Consider Jonathan Edwards’s “Sinners in the
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Hands of an Angry God.” Would anything else have fit

that sermon? Charles Spurgeon’s “The Stone Rolled Away,”
Clovis Chappell’s “A Good Man’s Hell,” Stanley Chambers’s
“Can the United Pentecostal Church Survive the Onslaught
of History?” and V. A. Guidroz’s “The Death March” are
all examples of perfect titles for remarkable sermons.
Avoid being overly cute in your titles. (See “When I Take
My Sun Shades Off,” above.) A title may be memorable, but
for all the wrong reasons, such as giving an impression of
immaturity and shallowness. A great sermon doesn’t need
a cute title. Here are a few overly clever titles taken from
church ads in the Los Angeles Times and shared by Rick
Warren: “Peter Goes Fishing,” “The Ministry of Cracked
Pots,” “Give Me Agape,” and “No Such Thing as a Rubber
Clock.” I am not sure exactly where these titles were meant
to go, but I’m pretty sure they didn’t get there.
By all means scrutinize your title for unintended meaning.
Some borderline suggestive or even vulgar titles have been
used by preachers apparently thinking, wrongly, that it
would get attention without offending. Maybe they didn’t
even realize what they were saying. In Steps to the Sermon,
Brown et al. share a few: “Nudist in a Graveyard” (I assume
the demoniac of Gadara.), “The Man Who Wouldn’t Leave
Women Alone” (I am afraid the preacher may have meant
Jesus and the woman at the well, Mary in the garden, the
woman taken in adultery, Mary Magdalene, etc.), “The
Man, the Woman, and the Hotel Room” (I have no idea),
“Why Every Preacher Should Go to Hell” (no comment),
and “Kissing in the Dark” (I have tried, but can’t think of
anything in the Bible this may be referring to). Even if they
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can be explained by some torturous logic, or tied to some

anecdote or illustration, don’t ever use such titles.
Here are some questions, suggested by several writers,
that you can ask yourself about potential titles to help keep
you on track.
Is it arresting? Is it phrased in a way that makes it clear
that this sermon has something to say that they will want
to hear?
Is it clear? Rick Warren shares a test of this: “If I read
this title on a cassette tape five years from today, would I
instantly know what the sermon was about?” Substitute
“CD” or “file on my computer or phone” for “cassette tape”
and you get the idea.
Is it brief ? Brown recommends two to seven words,
with no more than three or four “strong” words. This is a
generalization, of course. A quick look at fifty of my own
sermons shows titles which average between three and four
words, with a ten-word title the longest and several one-
word titles the shortest.
Is it suitable? You are in the house of God, in the pulpit,
preaching the Word of God. Act like it.
Is it relevant? The title should make it clear that this will
not be a dry, academic discourse. It will be a sermon that
addresses your hearers’ needs.
The Body of the Sermon

We are making progress: we have our thought, we have
written our purpose statement, gathered our materials,
begun honing our materials, written our introduction,
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maybe even settled on our title. Now, we put the sermon

together.
The body of the sermon should be made up of three,
or sometimes four, or rarely five points that are carefully
arranged for the most effective thematic and narrative
flow, as well as maximum emotional impact. The points are
connected with transitional and explanatory comments. In
order to learn to properly order sermon points, we must look
at the sermon as a whole, rather than at its parts. A sermon
is made up of a title, a text, a first sentence, an introduction,
three (and sometimes more) points, and a closing. But each
of these must blend with all the others, creating harmony
and cohesion that accomplish the purpose of the sermon.
Another way of saying this is that they must be arranged
so that the sermon flows smoothly from the first reading of
the text to the final words of the altar appeal toward one
goal: to bring people to a place where they will respond to
the prompting of the Holy Spirit. Whether that response is
to come forward to be baptized in Jesus’ name, or to receive
the Holy Ghost, or to be healed, or delivered, or blessed;
or simply to be closer to God, more willing to obey His
word, and thus grow as Christians, the goal of the sermon
is the same: to bring them to that point of action. This is
done both through the head and the heart, but mostly, for
preaching as opposed to teaching, the heart.
It seems to me that there are three considerations
you must keep in mind as you craft the body of the
sermon: the flow of the theme, the flow of the narrative,
and the flow of emotional impact. While each requires
different arrangements, and one or the other can be
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more or less important depending on the sermon, they

must be harmonized, fitted together to move the sermon
intellectually and emotionally toward its goal. Probably
the most flexible, thus the easiest to work with, is narrative
flow. You might not think so, since the narrative or story of
a biblical event happened in a certain order: A happened,
then B happened, then C, and finally D. Aren’t you pretty
well locked into the chronology? Don’t you have to tell it
the way it happened? Actually, no, you don’t. In fact, many
times the Bible doesn’t either.
Thematic flow is a bit more rigid. It means you have
to present your theme in a logical way. Sometimes it is
not as much of a need, but often, you must demonstrate
the foundational part of your theme, then build on it in
successive blocks of truth. It is hard to rearrange this order
without befuddling your audience. As a simple example,
you may be preaching on humankind’s need of God. It
might go something like this:
1. Life’s greatest tragedy is to be a sinner.

2. “The soul that sinneth” (Ezekiel 18:20).
3. All of us are sinners.
4. “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of
God” (Romans 3:23).
5. Because of this, we cannot save ourselves.
6. “It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps”
(Jeremiah 10:23).
7. Only God can save us.
8. “For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of
goats” (Hebrews 10:4).
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9. He did save us by coming as a man and dying.

10. “Great is the mystery” (I Timothy 3:16).
11. “For God so loved” (John 3:16).
12. Only by obeying the gospel of the death, burial, and
resurrection of Jesus can we be saved.
13. “I am the door” (John 10:9).
This is a six-point sermon, but could easily be made into

five points by combining points four and five. We can even
make it a three-point sermon by making point one part of
the introduction, and point six part of the closing. What we
cannot easily do is mix up the logical order of the points.
The flow of the logic moves from the foundational premise,
that being a sinner is a great tragedy, and then proceeds,
each point arising out of and resting on the preceding
point. All are sinners, we cannot save ourselves. Only God
can save, and He has established a way for us to be saved.
He did this by coming as Jesus Christ and dying on the
cross, rising again, and offering the gift of the Holy Ghost.
And we can only be saved by embracing this offer through
obeying the gospel. This is the logical flow, and it is difficult
to change.
The most important consideration is the flow of the
emotional impact of the sermon. It is this that is most
vital to bring the hearers to a point of response. Ian Pitt-
Watson, writing in The Art and Craft of Biblical Preaching,
calls this emotive flow the “cardiovascular system” or the
“bloodstream” of the sermon. He asserts that until we
have felt the truth of the gospel, we have not heard the full
gospel. He goes on:
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Preaching involves a kind of passionate

thinking. Sometimes the preacher is giving
conceptual expression to what the hearer had
previously only felt to be true, but at other times
the preacher is expressing as a felt truth something
the hearer had previously only thought to be true.
Both tasks are equally important, and for both
a healthy cardiovascular system is required that
can express felt truths and carry the affect (the
feel) of these truths to every limb and organ of
the sermon. This is the lifeblood of preaching.
Every Scripture, every story, every illustration has

an emotional effect, some greater than others. It is
essential that you learn to gauge the impact each has, and
arrange them within your sermon to provide a flow of
emotion, gradually building toward the invitation and the
opportunity to respond to the Spirit. When I say “gradually
building,” I don’t mean moving in a straight line from the
least impactful to the most impactful. This is hard to do,
and not very effective, because an audience doesn’t react
well to that. Similarly, they do not react well to a sermon
that takes off like a rocket, reaches a high level of emotion
immediately, and tries to sustain that high level for the
duration of the sermon. Emotion must build, and that
requires ebbs and flows, moments of high emotion followed
by less emotion, then even higher emotion.
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Let’s further explore this concept visually using the

following graphs.
This is an emotionally dead and therefore boring sermon:
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
Level
Introduction
Point 1
Point 2
Point 3
Closing
Emotion
It fails because, though it may be doctrinally sound and

intellectually stimulating, it does not engage the heart. At
the end, the response will be out of duty or routine, and the
time of prayer will likely be short. This is not an effective
approach, even for teaching. You should always try to vary
the emotional impact of your points in order to hold your
congregation’s attention.
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This is an emotionally exhausting sermon:
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
Emotion
Level
Introduction
Point 1
Point 2
Point 3
Closing
This takes people to near the top of their emotional

capacity and expects to keep them there. While some can
stay with a sermon like this, many can’t, it is too exhausting.
Unless you plan to speak fifteen minutes or less, or the
Holy Spirit has taken over and is driving this, avoid this
approach.
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This is better than the first two, but still expects too
much out of a congregation:
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
Emotion
Level
Introduction
Point 1
Point 2
Point 3
Closing
Notice, the emotional level never dips; it continues to get

higher and higher, with no chance for the audience to catch
its breath, to absorb what is being said, and to prepare
emotionally for what is coming next.
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This is probably the ideal:
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
Emotion
Level
Introduction
Point 1
Point 2
Point 3
Closing
The emotional impact of the introduction catches their

attention and wakes them up. The first point allows them
to settle down, catch their breath, and begin to be touched
by the Word. The second point begins the ramp up, and the
last point is the most impactful of all, moving them into
the emotion of the closing, and into the appeal.
So, by identifying the emotional effect of each component
of the sermon, we can arrange the body of the sermon in
the most effective way, within the confines of the logic of
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our argument, to bring our hearers to a point of responding

to the voice of the Spirit.
The Closing
Never summarize as an ending to your sermon. A
summary is a point by point review of what you have just
preached: “So as you can see, when we open our hearts to
the gospel, God (1) forgives our sins, (2) transfers them to
the cross of Christ by our being baptized in Jesus’ name,
(3) fills us with His Holy Spirit, and (4) through His Spirit,
empowers us to live a holy life.” You might as well end with,
“Are there any questions?”
The choice of the word closing rather than conclusion or
summary is deliberate.
You close a sermon in the same way a salesman closes
a deal: you want them to sign on the dotted line. The
difference is you are offering the greatest deal ever offered
in history: a new beginning, a fresh start, a brand new life
in exchange for the old one. Your job is to convince them it
isn’t too good to be true, it’s just true, and available now.
There will be more on closing the sermon and making the
invitation later.
The Notes
Now it is time to prepare the sermon notes. These notes
are what you will take to the pulpit with you. There are
many different formats that can be used for these notes. This
is probably a matter of personal taste as much as anything
else. Some preachers use bullet points, some bold font and
italics, some use formal outline rules, others simply write
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down sentence by sentence or thought by thought without

any outlining at all. The only thing to keep in mind is that
the material must be almost instantly see-able. You need,
while in the pulpit, to be able to easily find your place once
it is lost. Learn to create notes that keep what you need
to know segmented into the broad outlines of the sermon,
before your eyes, so you can find what you need when you
need it.
I began outlining my sermons a long time ago and
developed the habit of using a formal outline format. I use
the traditional style:
I. Major Heading 1
A. First Point
1. Subpoint that explains or illuminates first
point
a. Subpoint that explains or illuminates
subpoint 1
b. Subpoint that explains or illuminates
subpoint 1
2. Subpoint that explains or illuminates first
point
B. Second Point
II. Major Heading 2
For me this type of outline is so familiar that I can

quickly follow the major points, moving away from the
notes and back to them quickly and seamlessly, finding
exactly where I need to be. You may find another outline
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scheme fits better, and that’s fine. The point is, find what
works for you and use it.
EXAMPLE SERMON
Before we continue putting our sermon together,
let’s settle on the title. There is no certain time in the
process better than any other, so let’s do it now. As a re-
fresher, here are the highlights of our section on titles:
The title should contain the promise of the sermon,
simply stated.
• Avoid being overly cute in your titles.

• Scrutinize your title for unintended meaning.
• Is the title arresting? Is it clear? Is it brief? Is it
suitable? Finally, is it relevant?
To begin, let’s go back to our purpose statement

to determine the “promise of the sermon.” Here it is:
“My purpose is to show that even when we aren’t sure
of what God will do, if we act on whatever faith we
have, rather than surrendering to our doubt, God will
respond to our need.” The promise of the sermon is to
encourage those who struggle with doubt by pointing
out God will still respond even when our faith is weak.
As I think about that, I realize the arresting word in
my purpose statement is “doubt,” not “faith.” We have
heard many sermons on faith, but few on doubt; plus,
relieving the anxiety almost all of us have about our
doubt is the promise of the sermon.
In gathering my materials, I came across a sermon
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I prepared when I was pastoring in the St. Louis area

which is similar to the sermon we are constructing now.
It focuses on the fact that, as an answer to a request, a
maybe is always better than a no. I called this sermon
“Taking Advantage of a Doubt.” I like that sermon
and title and will certainly use parts of the sermon, but
I think we can do better on the title.
It strikes me that I want to cast this sermon as an-
swering a question; namely, what effect does the pres-
ence of doubt have on receiving the miraculous from
God? So, why not phrase the title as the question we are
answering? We don’t want to put too fine a point on it,
and the title “What Effect Does the Presence of Doubt
Have on Receiving the Miraculous from God?” at four-
teen words is too long, so let’s simplify and shorten it.
At the same time, if we can make it a bit more dramatic,
a bit more arresting, let’s do that, too. One way is to use
rhythm and cadence. This is done by using repetitive
words or word sounds. Let’s ask ourselves, what rhymes
with doubt? Snout . . . lout . . . without . . . about. There
you go: “about.” Let's use “What About Doubt?” It
asks the question we want to answer, it is not overly
cute, no unintended meaning, it is arresting, clear, brief,
suitable, and relevant. It has a little rhythm, and uses
parachesis (the repetition of word sounds). I like it.
Now that we have settled on a title for our sermon,
let’s settle on the text. Let’s use the story of the four
lepers: this is our second-most impactful story and I plan
to place it last among our points in the body. We could
use the story of the father who brought his son to Jesus,
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which we would normally do since it is the most impact-

ful, but as I mentioned earlier, I have something special
in mind for this story, so I don’t want to lessen its impact
by “giving it away” too soon, which using it as the text
would do. So we will read II Kings 7:3–5 as our text:
And there were four leprous men at the enter-

ing in of the gate: and they said one to another,
Why sit we here until we die?
If we say, We will enter into the city, then the fam-
ine is in the city, and we shall die there: and if we sit
still here, we die also. Now therefore come, and let us
fall unto the host of the Syrians: if they save us alive,
we shall live; and if they kill us, we shall but die.
And they rose up in the twilight, to go unto the
camp of the Syrians: and when they were come to
the uttermost part of the camp of Syria, behold,
there was no man there.
We have our text and title, now we will begin con-

structing the introduction. As you remember, this is a
crucial part of the sermon. You must start right, or you
will struggle ever after. I have gathered some materials
about doubt: why we are so prone to it, why it is such a
part of the human experience. My opening paragraphs
would go something like this:
We live in an age of doubt. Our children are

taught in school, as we were taught, the scientific
method: which is to doubt, to question, everything.
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This has led to the undermining of faith as perhaps

nothing else in our history. So-called Situation Eth-
ics, the teaching that there is no right or wrong but
only the shifting sand of situation, leaves us all in
doubt. Does it really matter how I live? Does it
matter if I am honest, if I am fair, if I am kind, if
I am compassionate? Does anything in human be-
havior really matter? If lying, stealing, even mur-
der can be justified by the situation, where is solid
ground on which I can stand?
The elevating of evolution almost to religious
status, the rejection of traditional Christian moral
standards, the acceptance of abortion, the main-
streaming of promiscuity and homosexuality as
not just acceptable, but celebrated lifestyles, have
all undermined belief in the Bible as the Word of
God. We have relegated the Bible to a collection of
sayings, myths, and outmoded rules. And, since
we have cut loose from the Bible, we know noth-
ing about God, not even if He exists. And since we
don’t know Him, we no longer know ourselves.
Not only is doubt ingrained in modern culture,
it is in human nature to doubt. We are locked into
our five senses, prisoners of our incomplete under-
standing. We pray and sometimes are not healed,
the miracle does not happen, the loved one does
not come to God. No one here has not struggled
with doubt. It is our nature.
Today I am not going to try to talk you out of
your doubts. I think I could, at least for a while.
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I could talk to you about the Bible picture of a

caring God:
I Peter 5:7 “Casting all your care upon him; for
he careth for you.”
Ephesians 3:20 “Now unto him that is able to
do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or
think, according to the power that worketh in us.”
John 14:14 “If ye shall ask any thing in my
name, I will do it.”
I could talk to you about the miracles that I
have witnessed. (Here you would insert brief ac-
counts of two or three healings, deliverances, or
other miraculous events you have witnessed or ex-
perienced.)
But I believe, even if I could talk you out of
your doubts, they would come back tomorrow, or
the next day, perch on your shoulder, and whisper
in your ear: “I believe He did it for them, but He
won't do it for you. He did it then, but not now.
He did it there but not here.”
So here’s what I am going to do. I am going to
urge you to act upon your doubts. Even if you
are not sure there is a God; if in your mind He is
only a maybe, then act on that maybe. If, in your
mind the blessings of God are only a possibility,
then act on that possibility. If in your thinking
you have only a slim chance of being saved, then
act on that chance. I am preaching on the premise
that a doubtful step toward God is better than the
most certain step away from Him.
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I like it! But we could make it better. I think I

would get rid of the first two paragraphs. They are
good, and I will certainly save them for the future,
but they may be a distraction here. Your introduction
should be razor sharp with as few competing thoughts
as possible: you don’t want your hearers’ minds reeling
as they try to process several striking ideas at once.
Besides, I don’t want to blame somebody else for our
proclivity to doubt, I want to keep the focus where it
belongs: on us.
So skipping the social commentary, I move imme-
diately to our own tendency to doubt. Since I have
eliminated two paragraphs, I have the time to punch
up paragraph three, make it clearer, better. I begin my
introduction like this:
It is human nature to doubt. We are locked

into our five senses, prisoners of our incomplete
understanding; and because we know there is so
much we do not see, so much we do not hear, we
come to doubt what we know, and we become less
sure. Our experiences too, rob our confidence: we
pray and sometimes are not healed, the miracle
does not happen, the loved one does not come to
God. There is no one here who is so spiritual that
they have not struggled with doubt. It is our na-
ture to doubt . . .
There are two other things I want to do to my

introduction. First, I want to include the question we
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are planning to answer: What effect does the presence

of doubt have on receiving the miraculous from
God? Second, I want to punch up the impact of the
introduction. It already has a lot, but can do with more.
What are its emotional highpoints, so far? The first is
the statement, “No one here is so spiritual that they have
not struggled with doubt.” This has impact because it is
true, but seldom talked about. It also creates a sense of
togetherness. It will cause some hearers to think, “I am
not alone.” Some will shake their heads yes, and make
eye contact with others in the room. This statement will
pull them into the sermon. The second is the powerful
statement that hints at the answer to our question:
“I am preaching on the premise that a doubtful step
toward God is better than the most certain step away
from Him.” Give this a moment to sink in; you will like
the result.
Now, we will raise the emotional impact even more by
introducing the demon-possessed child and his desperate
father. Almost always, you save the most impactful point
of a sermon to use as the final point. Why, then, use the
father and the demon-possessed son in the introduction
rather than later? There's a couple of reasons. One is be-
cause of a striking text within that story that underlines
and effectively introduces the theme of the sermon. That
text is the honest cry of the father: “I believe, help Thou
my unbelief!” This admission of the reality that faith
is often (if not usually) mixed with doubt not only de-
scribes our own reality when it comes to faith and doubt,
but perfectly sets up our sermon. Second, this story also
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includes a Scripture verse that we had already identified

as emphasizing the role of faith in the miraculous. This
verse is Mark 9:23: “Jesus said unto him, ‘If thou canst
believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.’” We
do not want to leave the impression that we are preach-
ing that faith is not important, an obviously unscriptur-
al position, so better to make that clear early on in the
message. This text will do it. Finally, the story can easily
be split into two parts, lessening its initial impact, but
enhancing its later emotional effect. We will quickly de-
scribe the story of the father appealing to Jesus after the
disciples had failed to help him: Jesus tells him in no un-
certain terms that his miracle is dependent on his faith,
and he answers with his description of his faith /doubt
mixture, and we stop there, pointing out that we are like
the father more often than not. Later, at the beginning of
our closing, we will point out that Jesus was not offended
by the presence of doubt, nor the honest admission of it:
indeed, the boy was healed in spite of the father’s doubt.
He will do the same for us. The power of splitting the
story is that the body of the sermon will pile evidence
upon evidence that God responds to even the weakest of
faith, in the face of doubt itself, until the truth of it is
inescapable. Then, after all that evidence, the hearer is
brought back to the very first story they heard, the story
they immediately identified with: “Yeah, I am like that
father!” and shows that this story too, is proof that God
chooses to respond to our faith and ignore our doubt.
So, putting this together we craft our title, text, and
introduction:
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What About Doubt?

II Kings 7:3–5
“And there were four leprous men at the entering in
of the gate: and they said one to another, Why sit we
here until we die?
If we say, We will enter into the city, then the famine
is in the city, and we shall die there: and if we sit still
here, we die also. Now therefore come, and let us fall
unto the host of the Syrians: if they save us alive, we
shall live; and if they kill us, we shall but die.
And they rose up in the twilight, to go unto the
camp of the Syrians: and when they were come to the
uttermost part of the camp of Syria, behold, there was
no man there.”
I. Introduction
It is human nature to doubt. We are locked into
our five senses, prisoners of our incomplete under-
standing; and because we know there is so much
we do not see, so much we do not hear, we come
to doubt what we know, and we become less sure.
Our experiences too, rob us of our confidence: we
pray and sometimes are not healed, the miracle
does not happen, the loved one does not come to
God. There is no one here who is so spiritual that
they have not struggled with doubt. It is our na-
ture to doubt.
In fact, if we are honest, we are, more often
than not, like the father who brought his son to
Jesus for healing in Mark 9. A demon possessed
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the boy, throwing him into the fire, and into wa-
ter, trying to destroy the child. The disciples of
Jesus had been unable to help, and now, desper-
ate, the father comes to Jesus Himself, the Master
is his last hope. He relates the story of his son’s
torment, and Jesus says to him, “If thou canst be-
lieve, all things are possible to him that believeth.”
I don’t want you to misunderstand what I am say-
ing in this sermon: faith is the coin of the realm
of Heaven, it takes faith to receive from God; in
fact, without faith it is impossible to please God.
But let’s be honest, as this father was when Jesus
reminded him of the necessity of faith, the Bi-
ble says: And straightway the father of the child
cried out, and said with tears, “Lord, I believe;
help thou mine unbelief.” That is us! Seldom do
we have that certain faith that banishes all doubt.
Most often, like that father, we believe enough to
ask God for help, but doubt lurks in our heart,
wondering if He will help us.
We need to settle the question, what about
doubt? Does doubt disqualify us from receiving
from God?
In this sermon, I am not going to try to talk
you out of your doubts. I think I could, at least
for a while. I could talk to you about the Bible
picture of a caring God:
I Peter 5:7 “Casting all your care upon him; for
he careth for you.”
Ephesians 3:20 “Now unto him that is able to
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do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or

think, according to the power that worketh in us.”
John 14:14 “If ye shall ask any thing in my
name, I will do it.”
I could talk to you about the miracles that I
have witnessed. In my own family, just a little over
a year ago we saw the miraculous. My wife went
to her doctor for some routine imaging, no prob-
lems, just time to do it. Within a few days she got
a postcard, then a phone call: “Mrs. Jones, please
make an appointment at the hospital for some
further testing, we have found something we are
concerned about.” They told her of a mass they
had detected, the size of it, the exact location of
it. I confess, God and I had a heart to heart. We
were afraid, knowing what this could mean, and
it was reflected in our prayers. Mine was, “God,
I ain’t having it! You said you would never put
more on us than we could bear. Well, we can’t bear
this!” I admit, my faith was not so strong.
I will never forget dropping off my wife at
the hospital door, parking the car, and walking
through a cold rain to join her, or sitting with
my wife in the waiting room for what seemed like
hours. Then when she was called to the back, it
seemed like a century passed, before she emerged,
smiling. “Let’s go into the hall,” she said, and I
followed her. When we got into the hallway, she
said, “Well, they did all the things they needed to
do, and then told me, ‘Mrs. Jones, go home and
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forget about it, whatever was there, simply isn’t

there anymore!’” Our God is a miracle-worker! He
will heal, save, deliver; and He will do it for you!
But I believe, even if I could talk you out of
your doubts, they would come back tomorrow,
or the next day, and perch on your shoulder, and
whisper in your ear: “I believe He did it for them,
but He won't do it for you. He did it then, but not
now. He did it there but not here.”
So what I am going to do, I am going to urge
you to act upon your doubts. Even if you are not
sure there is a God; if in your mind He is only a
maybe, then act on that maybe. If in your mind
the blessings of God are only a possibility, then
act on that possibility. If in your thinking you
have only a slim chance of being saved, then act
on that chance. I am preaching on the premise
that a doubtful step toward God is better than the
most certain step away from Him.
The Bible is full of examples of this truth; in
fact, the challenge was not to find illustrations, it
was to choose among the many. What about Esther?
Now, on to the development of the body. After the

introduction has gotten their attention, you should in-
sert the three points in the order of their emotional ef-
fect. I feel that order would be Esther, Nineveh, and the
four lepers. We will outline our points. Certainly if you
want to write the entire sermon word for word, go for it.
The body will look like this:
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II. Esther
A. Haman's plot to destroy Mordecai and all the
Jews
B. Mordecai sends Esther word: You must go be-
fore the king.
C. Esther sends word back:
1. I don't know; it is illegal to enter the throne
room uninvited.
2. If the king doesn't like it, I could be put to
death.
D. Mordecai answers: if you do nothing two
things are certain.
1. All Jews will die.
2. You are a Jew.
3. If you go to the king you may die, if you
don’t you will die.
E. Esther's response: “I go in unto the king, which
is not according to the law: and if I perish, I
perish.”
F. She went in, and the king was not angry.
1. He lifted his golden scepter.
2. “Whatever you want, up to half the
kingdom!”
G. Our King awaits us. Maybe you aren’t sure but
come to Him anyway!
III. Nineveh
A. “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be over-
thrown!”
1. Jonah did not care. In fact, he wanted them
to be punished.
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2. There is no record they heard from their

preacher any hope at all.
a. Never mentioned repentance
b. Never mentioned mercy
B. They acted on their doubt: Jonah 3:6–9 “For
word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he
arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from
him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat
in ashes. And he caused it to be proclaimed
and published through Nineveh by the decree
of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither
man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing:
let them not feed, nor drink water: But let man
and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry
mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every
one from his evil way, and from the violence
that is in their hands. Who can tell if God will
turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce
anger, that we perish not?”
1. Jonah built his church with a seating capac-
ity of one, and waited for judgment.
2. But God heard their repentance, even
though they were not sure He would.
IV. The Lepers
A. I have always been impressed with the logic of
these men.
1. Trapped between the besieged, dying city
of Samaria, and the ruthless, merciless Syr-
ians, they reviewed their choices.
2. They only knew two things that were certain.
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a. If we go into the city, we will die.

b. I f we stay here in the gate, we will also
die.
3. Only one thing that was uncertain
a. If we go to the Syrians they may kill us.
b. Or they may not kill us.
B. They chose the only real hope, though they
were doubtful of the outcome.
1. They “rose in the twilight to go to the Syri-
an camp.”
2. When they got there, the Syrians were gone.
C. This is how four starving lepers ate king’s food,
dressed in king’s robes, and delivered a dying
city.
Now we want to put our closing together. The emo-

tion will be high at the end of the story of the lepers.
People are beginning to see the point, and for many it
will be a revelation. They will be ready to bring their
faith to God, trusting the truth you have just preached
that their doubt does not disqualify them from receiv-
ing from God. Because of this, the closing should not be
long, but it should maintain the impact of the body of
the sermon, and get people to respond.
Here’s what I would do:
V. Closing
A. God is not insulted when we come to Him un-
certain, even doubtful.
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1. When that desperate father cried out, I be-

lieve, help thou my unbelief
a. Jesus did not send him away.
b. Jesus did not say “I can’t help you.”
c. What He did was set that boy free, an-
swer that father’s prayer.
d. He will do the same for you!
2. When that leper came timidly to Jesus and
called to Him: “Lord, if thou wilt, thou
canst make me clean.”
a. What he was saying is, “I believe You
can, but I don’t know if You will.”
b. Jesus was not insulted, turned off, angered.
c. What He did was “put forth his hand,
and touched him, saying, I will; be thou
clean. And immediately his leprosy was
cleansed.”
3. When the prodigal son woke up at the hog
pen he decided to go home.
a. He did not know the reception he would
receive.
b. “I’m not worthy to be your son.”
c. “I’ll live with the servants.”
d. But the Father ran to meet him, and wel-
comed him home.
B. Why don’t you come to Him?
1. He is coming to meet you.
2. Don’t let doubt rob you of what God wants
to do for you. Come now.
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One final comment. In this closing, detail is not your

friend; don’t slow down to set any scenes, explain who
any of these characters are, how they got in their pre-
dicaments, or what their thought processes are. If the
audience suspects you have three more points, they may
tune you out. Create the scenes with only a few words,
but use powerful ones, and move quickly to the prodigal
and his father in the road, and then give the altar call.
Roger Ailes and Jon Kraushar, You Are the Message: Secrets
of the Master Communicators (New York: Bantam
Doubleday Dell, 1989).
Donald E. Demaray, An Introduction to Homiletics (Grand

Rapids: Baker, 1974).
Clovis Chappell, “The Woman of the Shattered Romances,”

in Sermons on Biblical Characters (Garden City, NY:
Doubleday Doran, 1928).
John Hersey, Hiroshima (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946).
Jerry Jones, “Knowing Where to Run,” in Amnon Had

a Friend and Other Sermons (Hazelwood, MO: Word
Aflame, 2006).
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Arthur John Gossip, “What Christ Does for a Soul,” in From

the Edge of the Crowd (Edinburgh: T.&T. Clark, 1924).
V. A. Guidroz, “The Death March” a description of the sermon

and the introduction can be found at https://www.
pentecostalherald.com/articles/article/old-sermons-still-
live-preaching-vily-able-guidroz.
F. W. Boreham, “Breaking the News” and “A Tangled Skein”

in Wisps of Wildfire (London: Epworth Press, 1924).
Rick Warren, “The Purpose-Driven Title,” in Haddon

2005).
Jonathan Edwards, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry

God” is available from several online sources. I referenced
http://www.jonathan-edwards.org/Sinners.html.
Charles H. Spurgeon, “The Stone Rolled Away,” in Twelve

Sermons on the Resurrection (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1968).
Clovis Chappell, “A Good Man’s Hell,” in Sermons On

Biblical Characters (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Doran,
1928).
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Stanley Chambers, “Can the United Pentecostal Church

Survive the Onslaught of History?” was preached at the
General Conference of the United Pentecostal Church
International in 1967.
Ian Pitt-Watson, “Lifeblood of Preaching,” in Haddon

2005).
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Part Four
In the Pulpit:
Presentation
The orator persuades by means of his hearers,

when they are roused to emotion by his speech; for
the judgments we deliver are not the same when we
are influenced by joy or sorrow, love or hate.
Aristotle
Come to that very field of preaching, that of

public speaking. Recall the truly appalling urgency
which rested on Mr. Winston Churchill in June
1940. An imminent invasion, the issue of which no
one knew but all could fear, placed upon him the
necessity of playing the role of an Atlas, of getting
under a whole nation and literally lifting it up to a
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new level of fortitude and faith and the will to

endure. . . . [T]o a large degree Mr. Churchill could
bring what the urgency of the crisis demanded—
the superb technique of a man who had worked
for a lifetime with words. The Nazis had talked
much of secret weapons, but England had two
secret weapons which the Nazis did not know.
One was Gibbon. The other was Macaulay. Mr.
Churchill had learned a craftsman’s way with
words and sentences from both of them. When he
was a young army officer in India, he gave long
hours to both of these favorite authors. They
helped to give a rhythm to his speech which in a
real way matched the rhythm of the pulse in men’s
bodies. . . . When the British came to “their finest
hour,” they responded to a technique adequate
to the urgency. Anyone could have shouted, “Let
us be brave.” It was the artist who could etch an
unforgettable picture in the minds of millions,
the picture of a defending army giving ground
but never giving up: “We shall defend our island,
whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the
landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and
in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall
never surrender.” It was the artist who lifted a
nation to its feet.
Halford E. Luccock
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In the Pulpit: Presentation
You have dedicated your life to God, you have given

yourself to study, you have sought for direction, found a
“thought,” studied your Scripture passage, gathered your
materials, chosen your illustrations, gauged the impact of
each point, prepared your notes. Now, it is time to preach.
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10
Getting and
Keeping Attention
I have devoted my life to answer one question:

Why is it that some can preach for an hour and it
seems like five minutes while others preach for only
five minutes and it seems like an hour?
Haddon Robinson
Indeed the orator is the embodiment of the

passions of the multitude. Before he can inspire
them with any emotion he must be swayed by it
himself. When he would rouse their indignation his
heart is filled with anger. Before he can move their
tears his own must flow. To convince them he must
himself believe.
Winston Churchill
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In the last chapter of this book, I will discuss the role of

the anointing in the pulpit. I hope you will read it carefully
and prayerfully. Without the anointing, preaching is mere
public speaking, and even the best public speaking, though
it can inspire its hearers to action, lacks the supernatural
power needed to transform people’s lives. Always, always
seek the anointing.
But it is also true that the anointing can be hindered
by poor preparation and poor presentation. Hopefully, the
last three chapters have helped insure you are well prepared
when you step to the pulpit. But no matter how firmly based
on the Bible, how well-structured, and how well-illustrated,
if your sermon is not presented in an effective way, it will fail
to accomplish all that it should. There are skills that can be
learned that will capture your congregation’s attention and
keep them engaged with your sermon, opening their hearts
to the supernatural. The lack of these skills can hinder the
work of the Word and the Spirit by distracting, or failing
to capture the congregation’s attention in the first place. In
this chapter we will discuss some of those skills.
At the very least your presentation should minimize
distractions that will draw the hearer’s attention from
the sermon. Wildly mispronounced words, exaggerated
expressions, clownish gestures, convoluted syntax,
repetition of phrases, and inappropriate dress can all get in
the way of the message reaching the hearts of its hearers.
You have probably heard the stories of young people in the
congregation counting the number of times the preacher
said “Amen!” or “Hallelujah!” If they are doing that, they
are probably not listening to whatever else you are saying.
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Getting and Keeping Attention
Show and Tell

First, we will discuss the nonverbal or silent aspects
of your presentation. These include mannerisms, facial
expressions, and body language. Whether planned and
deliberately executed, or coming without thought or even
awareness from your subconscious, they can be just as
important as the spoken word in effectively preaching a
sermon, and so deserve close attention.
Mannerisms are the often-unconscious ways you
habitually move, respond, or otherwise behave. They are
the idiosyncrasies that make you identifiably you: the way
you walk, the certain tilt of your head when you are in deep
thought, the way you move your hands when you talk. All
of these can be a help in communicating your message or a
distraction that takes away from it.
Facial expressions are the emotions, reactions, and silent
messages sent to your hearers by the expressions that move
across your face as you preach. If your message conveys
the need for urgent action, but your face remains placid
and unemotional, the effect will be ruined. A fixed smile
while preaching about the sufferings of Jesus on the cross
or the terrible cost of sin will send conflicting and confusing
messages, and your congregation will be unresponsive. The
Churchill quote at the beginning of this chapter is true:
you must feel the emotions you wish to inspire in those who
hear you. But just feeling them is not enough, you must
show that you feel them, and the expression on your face is
the best way to do this.
Body language is everything from your posture, to your
gestures, to whether you are nervous or relaxed, confident
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or unsure of yourself. Your body language can be a

powerful tool to bring stories to life and help capture your
congregation’s attention; likewise, out-of-sync, wooden, or
nervous body language is a deadly distraction.
These three silent communicators are incredibly
important if you want to improve your preaching. John
Broadus reminds us that, “In many cases a gesture is much
more expressive than any number of words.” To illustrate,
he quotes Herbert Spencer:
How truly language must be regarded as a

hindrance to thought, though the necessary
instrument of it, we shall clearly perceive on
remembering the comparative force with which
simple ideas are communicated by signs. To say,
“leave the room,” is less expressive than to point
to the door. Placing a finger on the lips is more
forcible than whispering, “Do not speak.” A
beck of the hand is better than “Come here.” No
phrase can convey the idea of surprise so vividly
as opening the eyes and raising the eyebrows.
A shrug of the shoulders would lose much by
translation into words.
When you recognize the power of mannerisms, facial

expression, and body language to speak when no words are
being said, it is clear that to bring these three methods of
pulpit communication together in harmony multiplies the
power of each of them. On this, Broadus quotes Robert
Louis Dabney:
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He who is master of this sign-language has,

indeed, an almost magic power. When the orator
can combine it with the spoken language, he
acquires thereby exceeding vivacity of expression.
Not only his mouth but his eyes, his features,
his fingers speak. The hearers read the coming
sentiment upon his countenance and limbs almost
before his voice reaches their ears: they are both
spectators and listeners; every sense is absorbed in
charmed attention.
In order to begin to use the silent communicators to your

advantage, first you must eliminate the distractions they
can cause. Get the video of your last sermon, or if one isn’t
available, video yourself preaching. Study that video. What
you are looking for is not the highlights, but the lowlights
(there are always some, and sometimes a lot). Don’t get
distracted admiring your great sermon. What you say isn’t
important for what we are doing; how you say it is what
we are after. If you have to, turn the sound down. Watch
yourself carefully while trying to imagine the image on
the screen is not you. You’re looking first for mannerisms:
habits, quirks, tics; anything that will distract the audience.
Be honest with yourself, could you spend most of an hour
watching and listening to this person preach and really
hear what he or she has to say? Or would your attention be
drawn to something he or she is doing that simply will not
let you focus on the sermon?
Next, watch the facial expressions of the person on the
screen. Ask yourself, do they look panicked? Stern? Angry?
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Scared? Decide what is the one thing above all others

conveyed by the face of the preacher on the screen. Write
that one thing down, think about it, and ask yourself, is this
what I want to communicate to the congregation?
Finally, analyze the body language of the preacher
you are watching. Once again decide the impression you
receive from the way the preacher moves, gestures, walks,
and worships. Is the preacher comfortable in front of the
congregation? Are his movements natural, or obviously
practiced and forced? Is he stiff, wooden, seemingly afraid
to move, unsure of himself? Does the preacher make
consistent eye-contact with the audience? Do her eyes
move from person to person, across the congregation, not
shifty, but meeting their eyes, inviting them as individuals
to listen?
If you are courageous enough, and self-confident
enough, ask someone you trust to watch the same video
and go through the same process: look first for distracting
mannerisms, next facial expressions, and finally, body
language. Ask them to record their impressions and share
them with you. If you do this, you can’t be thin-skinned
or defensive. Do not explain, argue, or justify anything,
just listen carefully and encourage your critic to be
brutally honest. The idea of this exercise is to compare
what someone else saw with what you saw in order to help
identify potential problems, ultimately to help you be a
better preacher. Nothing they see is permanent, nothing
they mention means you aren’t cut out to be a preacher,
nothing will be unique to you. They will all be problems
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common to nearly all preachers. Don’t forget to sincerely

thank whoever does it, you owe them big time.
Start working on the main issues you identified by
studying the video. When you have overcome the one
main problem in each area studied, then do the process all
over again, and go to work on the next issue you identify.
Remember only the most egregious issues demand frantic,
emergency effort. Preaching is a life work; you will never be
perfect, just commit yourself to steady improvement.
Powerful Preaching
Never lose sight of the fact that, even though this
chapter is titled “Getting and Keeping Attention,” the
congregation’s attention is not, in itself, the ultimate goal.
Attention is a means to the real end, and that end is to
create an atmosphere, through the preached Word, for the
power of God to move, for people to respond, and for them
to receive what they need from God. Phillips Brooks lists
five characteristics or elements that are the source of power
in preaching. All of them except the first have to do with
how preachers handle themselves while in the pulpit. They
are as follows:
1. Character
2. Freedom from self-consciousness
3. Enjoyment of the work
4. Gravity (Gravitas)
5. Courage
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We have already considered the preacher’s character at

some length in previous chapters, so it should be sufficient
here to say you must be real so that you can project genuine
sincerity when you walk into the pulpit, and throughout
the sermon. It is devastating to the sermon if there is a lack
of sincerity because you are not who you pretend to be. You
need not be perfect, but you must be real. Let’s look at the
other four.
Number two is freedom from self-consciousness. This is
one that doesn’t come easy. When you step to the pulpit,
you mustn’t be thinking of yourself and what people may
think of your preaching. This self-absorption leads to
nervousness, timidity, and even stage fright. Never preach
thinking of how to impress your hearers; that is not your
purpose. Don’t preach to make a name for yourself, further
your career, or get more invitations to preach. Of course,
for good or ill, all these things are affected by how well you
do in the pulpit, but they are by-products, they are not
your purpose. Keep your eye on the ball. If you don’t, you
are doomed to failure.
How do you banish self-consciousness from your
preaching? One way is by focusing on the needs of those who
will hear you. As you join in the worship service, scan the
congregation, not as a group of people, but as individuals.
Look at their faces. See them as hurting, needy human
beings who have come to hear from God. Your success is not
gauged by how well you do, but how much you help them.
Remind yourself that this is what the Word is designed to
do, and if preached sincerely it will accomplish its purpose.
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Transfer your attention from yourself to your hearers, and

it will work wonders.
A second way to become free from self-consciousness is
to see yourself as what you are: a representative of God
Himself. In chapter 2, we discussed that a preacher is a
herald and preaching is the proclamation of a message
from the King. See yourself as an announcer of good news,
a proclaimer of a message that is not your own, but from
the throne of God Himself. These are not your words, they
are His. See Him speaking through you. This is not self-
aggrandizement; the one who delivers the message is not
important, the message is what’s important. By keeping
your mind on the One who sent you, and on those to whom
you were sent, you can find yourself forgetting yourself
long enough to let God powerfully move through you as you
preach.
Brooks’s third point is enjoyment of the work. People
who enjoy what they do are better at it than people who
don’t. This is a simple axiom that is nowhere more true
than in preaching. I am surprised when I sometimes hear
preachers say that preaching is the least favorite part of
their ministries. “I love teaching!” or “I am a counselor at
heart!” Maybe so, but I think all preachers should learn to
love preaching. It should be the highpoint of their week.
Everything else they do, and there are many things that fill
a pastor’s days, should take a back seat to preaching. Learn
to love it, to look forward to it, to revel in it, and you will be
more effective in the pulpit.
Why would a preacher not love to preach? I am not sure
I can answer that. I have to confess; I did not want to be
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a preacher. I wasn’t against it, I just had other plans: I

wanted to be a scientist. I loved the Lord and served Him
with all my heart, but I loved chemistry and physics, too.
Among my greatest heroes were Faraday, Edison, Newton,
and Galileo. But when God’s call came to me, I gladly
answered, and for forty-five years, I have had no regrets.
There are aspects of the ministry I do not enjoy. When I
pastored, there were things I was called upon to do that
were not fun. But I have always loved preaching.
I think it may be that the egocentric dilettantes, the
entertainment preachers, the pleasers, and the performers
have given preaching such a bad name that some don’t
want to be identified with that sort of preaching. This
unwillingness leads them to minimize the role that
preaching plays in their ministries. They seem to be saying
“Preaching is my duty, a part of what’s required, but I
don’t love it; it’s too shallow, too juvenile for me. I prefer
the real meat of ministry.” I get that. I understand why
you would say that, but I have to tell you, you are wrong.
Others may do it wrong and for the wrong reasons; they
may exploit it or make an ego trip out of it, but preaching
is still the highest calling of God given to humankind.
If you do not value preaching, or even if you simply
don’t enjoy it, those feelings will be communicated in many
subtle ways to the congregation. People will follow strong
leadership, they will like what you like and enjoy what you
enjoy. If the preaching is the highlight of the service for
you, it will be for them, too. This will pay rich dividends,
not only for you, but for those who learn to love preaching
through you.
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Besides, if you don’t love to preach, you would have been

miserable on the pastoral staff at First Pentecostal Church
of Jerusalem in ad 40. They gave themselves “continually
to prayer, and to the ministry of the word” (Acts 6:4).
Next is gravitas. In his book A Complete Guide to Sermon
Delivery, Al Fasol declares:
Every congregation or audience need to know

that the preacher or speaker is (1) a person of
competence, a person “who knows what he
is talking about;” (2) a person of integrity, a
person who can be trusted, not a manipulator or
exploiter; and (3) a person of vitality, a preacher
who communicates a deep sense of belief in all
that is said. The messenger’s credibility with the
congregation is critical in preaching.
How does a congregation know these things? By the way

we behave ourselves. Silliness, foolishness, shallowness all
destroy your ability to effectively preach the Word. I don’t
mean to equate gravitas with sternness or aloofness. You
should be open, friendly, even fun to be with. Humor in
the pulpit is not a no-no. But you can go too far and seem
flighty, foolish, or shallow.
While we live in an ever more informal age, don’t forget
that dignity and decency must never be sacrificed to a
misplaced desire to relate. Extreme clothing, over-the-top
joking, and silly gestures rob a preacher of the gravitas that
creates a level of comfort and trust in the congregation that
is essential to effective preaching. You are an ambassador
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of the King of kings with a message from His lips, look and
act like it.
Finally, Brooks lists courage as a source of power in
preaching. The courage to preach is found in preaching the
Word of God, regardless of whether it is popular. It is not
found in harshness, arrogance, or anger while you are doing
so. It is found in love. Loving people enough to preach what
they don’t want to hear takes real courage. You must not do
it to show your imagined superiority, or to simply discharge
your duty, but to compassionately try to persuade them to
choose a better path, to strive to please God, or to repent
and obey the gospel. This is your highest calling. It takes
courage to show this kind of love, even at the risk of them
leaving our congregations, speaking evil of us, or rejecting
truth.
Sometimes, it isn’t that people don’t want to hear the
more demanding truths of the Bible, it is because the
values of the society we live in have seeped into their lives.
They simply don’t get what you are talking about; and
what’s worse, they seem to not even care if they get it. In
“Turning an Audience into the Church,” Will Willimon
describes the “twin temptations” this modern attitude
toward preaching offers preachers: you can “pander to
their consumer mindset,” or cynically “preach without
expecting any significant change.” In the first case you
“avoid the controversial, even if it’s biblical,” and “strive
to make people feel good.” In the second you just discharge
your duty and end up preaching powerless sermons because
you expect no power can change those who hear them.
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True courage will not allow you to fall for either of the
twin temptations. True courage will demand that you see
that even in a consumer and leisure-driven culture like ours,
deep down, people are still hungry and hurting, they are still
needy and wishing for something real and satisfying. The
gospel still addresses these unchanging human longings.
Willimon describes a period when he was teaching full time
at Duke. During this time he was not pastoring and was
attending a local church:
One Sunday I walked into the church sanctuary

and sat beside a middle-aged woman. . . . I asked
how she was doing.
“Not so well,” she replied. “My husband was
killed last week.”
“What?”
“A drunk driver killed him,” she continued.
“What makes his death so hard is that we were
separated at the time.”
“I’m so sorry.” Taken back, I turned to greet
an older man who had just sat down on the other
side of me. “George, how have you been?” I asked.
“I haven’t been here in a month,” he replied.
“Anything wrong?”
“Well, my mother died,” he said. “It’s just the
worst that has ever happened to me. I miss her so
much.”
“I’m so sorry to hear that.” Just then the
service began, for which I was extremely grateful.
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I've never since presumed my listeners don’t need

and want the community created by the gospel.
Paul pointed out in his farewell to the Ephesian church

that he had done what God had sent him to do in their
city. “For I have not shunned to declare unto you all the
counsel of God” (Acts 20:27). Shunned carries the meaning
“cower or shrink.” Declare in this context most likely means
“preach.” Paul is saying, “I had the courage to preach to
you all that God gave me for you.” May we all have the
same testimony.
Interesting Preaching
Preaching boring sermons is inexcusable. When God
gave us the Bible, He chose not to give us a dry, boring,
theological textbook (well, except for some of those
genealogies and ritual details). Instead He gave us an
engaging, humorous, tear-jerking, tragic, bloody, beautiful,
romantic, adventurous, puzzling, embarrassing, fascinating
account of His efforts to covenant with humankind for
more than four millennia. You can say these things and
many more about the Bible, but you can’t say it is boring.
Why in the world then, would you content yourself to put
your congregation to sleep when you have such a resource
to preach from?
I have so far in this chapter warned you of the deadliness
of distractions and showed you the pulpit demeanors that
work; freedom from self-consciousness, enjoying what you
are doing, gravitas, and courage. Now let’s look at the basic
building block of sermons: words. The right word in the
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right place demands attention from your audience like

nothing else. Mark Twain said, “The difference between
the right word, and the almost right word is the difference
between lightning and the lightning bug.” And he was right.
Words can inform us; they can also inspire us. Words can
cause us to know more; they can also cause us to be more.
The careful choice of words is vital to good preaching.
Action verbs are better than passive. Gripping modifiers
turn ordinary nouns into attention holders, and rhythm
and cadence move your congregation toward the moment
of decision. Used sparingly, even the much-ridiculed
alliteration can make a phrase a memorable event.
Preaching is not writing because listening is not reading.
There is no opportunity for the hearer to turn back a page
or two to review what she missed while her mind wandered.
Repetition is the only tool a preacher has to offer the hearer
a chance to catch up. And while repetition is an effective
tool, it is better to hold their attention in the first place.
Attention cannot be demanded; it must be coaxed, carefully
held, and nurtured, or it is lost. We accomplish these things
by the use of dramatic imagery and memorable language.
This is the power of well-chosen words.
Just as hammer and nails are the tools of the carpenter,
words are the tools of the preacher. In communicating our
thoughts, using the right tool for the job makes all the
difference.
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Consider this paragraph:
From the stream in the middle of the field,

five stones were chosen by David and placed in
his pouch. When he saw David on the battlefield,
Goliath was angered that such a young boy had
been sent to fight him. David told the Philistine
that he came, not trusting in weapons or skill,
but in the name of the Lord. As Goliath rushed
toward him, the shepherd boy took one of the
stones, put it in his sling and flung it at the giant.
It struck Goliath on the forehead and he fell to
the ground. David cut off his head with his own
sword and won the victory for his country and his
God.
Not bad. The facts are there and the dramatic contrast
between the inexperienced David and the trained killer
Goliath is at least subtly communicated. Now let’s punch
it up a notch or two:
David moved onto the battlefield with no

sword, no spear, no armor; all he carried was
a sling he had used since he was just a little
boy. Goliath had still not noticed him when he
crouched at the bank of the shallow stream that
cut through the field and there carefully chose
five stones, smooth and round. He placed them
in his pouch and continued his advance toward
his destiny. When Goliath saw the shepherd boy
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he was incensed. “What am I, a dog,” he roared

toward the Israelite trenches “so you send a boy
with a stick to run me home?”
David felt his own blood rise. “You come at me
with a sword and a spear, but I come in the name
of the Lord God of Israel!”
“Come on then,” Goliath snarled, “I’ll feed
your carcass to the buzzards and the jackals!” As
Goliath raced toward David, his massive sword
whipping arcs through the air, the shepherd
calmly reached in his pouch, put a stone in his
sling and began to swing it around his head.
When the giant closed in, almost within reach
of that massive sword, David released the stone.
It flew straight and true, driving into Goliath’s
forehead, and the Philistine crashed to the ground.
David ran to him, picked up his sword, and cut off
his head. When David raised the grisly souvenir,
the Philistine army ran for their lives.
That’s better! But what makes it better? For one thing,

it demands your attention by choosing more colorful and
powerful words:
Instead of: From the stream in the middle of the field,
five stones were chosen by David and placed in his pouch.
We have: Goliath had still not noticed him when he
crouched at the bank of the shallow stream that cut through
the field and there carefully chose five stones, smooth and
round.
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In the first sentence, we begin with three prepositional

phrases: “from the stream,” “in the middle,” and “of the
field,” all modifiers, all dull. Next is a passive-voice verb
and the subject being acted upon: “stones were chosen,”
also dull. The only action in the sentence is David “placed”
the stones in his pouch.
By contrast, the second sentence is full of action:
Goliath had (not) noticed. He (David) crouched, the stream
cut, David chose. No passive verbs, and even the modifiers
have been spiced up: “shallow” modifies “stream” both
beginning with “s,” and the five stones are modified by
adjectives that come after it to add drama to them: “five
stones, smooth and round.”
Notice we added a sentence at the beginning to better
capture the congregation’s attention: David moved onto
the battlefield with no sword, no spear, no armor; all he
carried was a sling he had used since he was just a little
boy. Look through and compare the rest of the two pieces,
and you will find similar word choices that together make
the second piece more dramatic, colorful, and interesting.
Every word is chosen to convey a part of the story in a way
that will gain and keep the interest of your hearers.
H. C. Brown and the other writers of Steps to the Sermon,
in discussing style in the pulpit, say this: “Effective style is
first of all, a matter of clarity.” This is certainly true. Keep
your words short and readily understandable. The children
in the audience should understand what you are saying. But
clarity need not be dull. Add a little hot sauce and you will
make your audience want to hear what you have to say.
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John A. Broadus, On the Preparation and Delivery of

Sermons, 4th ed. (New York: Harper Collins, 1979).

Al Fasol, A Complete Guide to Sermon Delivery (Nashville:

Broadman & Holman, 1996).
Will Willimon, “Turning an Audience into the Church,”

in Haddon Robinson and Craig Brian Larson, eds.,
The Art and Craft of Biblical Preaching (Grand Rapids:
Zondervan, 2005).

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11
The A nointing
The writer seeks to change blood into ink; the

preacher seeks to change ink into blood.
Charles L. Bartow
But ye have an unction from the Holy One.
John, son of Zebedee
Preparing a purpose statement, using the emotional

impact of our points, preserving the logic of our thoughts,
choosing the right word, as well as all the other tools of public
speaking we have discussed so far in this book, are essentially
carnal techniques. Aside from the fact we are communicating
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the Word of God, the things we have studied in the last

four chapters work for any type of public speaking. This is
because, by trial and error, speakers over the past two and a
half millennia have found these tools work simply because
they touch human beings on a deep, almost subconscious
level. And because they use basic human nature to produce
results, they work for anybody, with any agenda. When
asked how to make a speech, Winston Churchill answered
in a style true to his form. Said he to his questioner, “If you
have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or
clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back
and hit it again. Then hit it a third time—a tremendous
whack.” This, allowing for Churchill’s colorful language and
deft touch of sarcasm, is a perfect description of what we
have studied in this book. These techniques have been used
by great speakers for centuries. Churchill and Roosevelt
used them. But so did Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin.
What this means to us is that we must have something
more than a mastery of technique. We must not fall prey,
because of innate talent or acquired skill, to becoming
cynical manipulators of the church and of the lost. We
must not use cheap appeals to emotion: stories, illustrations,
and questionable applications of biblical doctrines and
texts, which may be dramatic, but are empty and totally
disconnected from Scripture. We must not labor just to
touch hearts without caring whether we have transformed
them. This kind of preaching has robbed the church,
discredited the calling, and even created a sense in saints
and preachers alike that preaching is shallow, uninformed,
and manipulative. We hear this in comments like, “We
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have enough meetings that only offer inspiration (read:

preaching); we need teaching and practical tools more
than inspiration!” I mean no disrespect for teaching and
training; in fact, I am in favor of more of both. (That’s
why I wrote this book.) But we must not move preaching
from the primary place it is given by Scripture, judging it
unworthy to remain there.
We must not be manipulators but true men and women
of God, committed to the Word of God, and to those who
hear us preach. We must bring to them not carnality, but
true spirituality. In this chapter, I will urge you, above all,
to seek the anointing of the Spirit for your preaching.
Never be satisfied with anything less than the
supernatural. Use the techniques we have studied for
what they are: tools to make our preaching as effective as
possible. But never forget they are not where our power is.
Drench these tools in prayer and dedicate them to the use
of the Holy Spirit. Do not trust in the tools, trust only in
Him: only then will those who hear us not merely be moved,
but changed.
It is difficult to describe the anointing; it is truly
supernatural. Sometimes, the miracle happens and
everything works. All the preparation, both of the sermon
and your own heart, the worship that built the conducive
atmosphere of the service, all of it comes together in a
moment of unbelievable anointing. Most of the prose
is yours, but you know you never could have written the
music. The rhythms are from somewhere, someone else.
When you look down at your notes, they are alive.
Nuances, whole revelations you did not see in your study, are
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now apparent and they come to your lips with an eloquence

you could not have crafted in the quiet times. You are on
fire. The deep is broken up and your own soul is exposed.
The people who are hearing you are drawn in because you
are drawn in; they are simply following you.
You are on a high wire, but you don’t care. Some warning
voice says you might say something foolish, but you ignore
it. Another voice from deeper in the human side of you,
maybe even a darker side, where there is frustration,
disappointment, or even pride, tries to intrude with carnal
words, even insulting or mean words, but you ignore them
too. This is pure, this is truth, and it is coming from both
you and Him, and this is preaching.
Getting to this place, allowing this to happen, is the
highest goal of our calling. Here preaching is much more
than speechifying, more than simply saying words, even
words of eternal truth; here lives are changed, miracles
happen, both in bodies and hearts. This preaching is what
causes Felix to tremble, Festus to call out “Paul you are
mad!” Agrippa to be almost persuaded, and the crowd at
Pentecost to plead with Peter to tell them, “What must we
do?” Getting here is what your life is about, this is where
your life’s work is accomplished.
She was talking about writing, but it’s true of preaching
too: Sophy Burnham says, “When it is going well, the
words flow off your fingertips; you are immersed in the
music. You could not possibly tell anyone what songs you
are hearing, what ecstasies you feel. ‘I listen to the voices,’
says Faulkner.”
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It isn’t always like this, of course; sometimes you neither

soar nor sing, you just slog. But when it does happen, there
is nothing like it. How can we make it happen more? How
can we enter this high place more frequently? We cannot
manufacture this synergy with the Holy Spirit, we can
only do those things that invite His coming, make ourselves
available, and be able to recognize and seize the opportunity
when it comes. Some of those things are simple, like getting
enough rest so we are physically and emotionally engaged
in the pulpit; others are harder, like leaving distractions
behind, not preaching from our own pain, and for the
moment truly forgetting ourselves.
Of course you must not be carried away from your study
by this inspiration. I remember a well-known and very good
preacher, who in the inspiration of the moment totally lost
his audience and the service when he exuberantly expressed
a “truth” that occurred to him on the spot but was patently
false in scriptural terms, and everyone in the audience knew
it. He spent months, even years, trying to explain that one
away. Let the inspiration of the crowd and the anointing of
the Spirit open your thought, inspire your language, engage
your imagination, but always stay grounded in what you
know to be so.
I am not talking about the rush that comes from a
connection with an audience. Although remarkable, this is
only a carnal, earthly thing. When a speaker transcends his
arguments and truly inspires himself and his audience (e.g.,
I have a dream! Ich bin ein Berliner! This was their finest
hour! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!), this synergy takes
place. Abraham Lincoln’s “lost speech” was delivered on
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May 29, 1856, at the Illinois State Republican Convention

in Bloomington, and has been described as the greatest
speech he ever gave. We don’t know if it was or not because
as Paul Angle writes: “So powerful was his eloquence that
the reporters forgot to take notes of what he was saying.
Several commenced, but in a few minutes they were entirely
captured by the speaker's power, and their pencils were
still." According to Robert Norton, about forty reporters
were there but, like the audience of over one thousand, were
“simply mesmerized.”
“The audience sat enthralled,” says Benjamin Thomas.
“Men listened as though transfixed. Reporters forgot to use
the pencils in their hands, so that no complete and authentic
record of what may have been his greatest speech has ever
been found. At the end, the hall rocked with applause.”
This is what Aristotle meant when he spoke of
emotionally engaging your hearers if you hope to persuade
them that your arguments are true. This is public speaking
at its finest and most effective. But it is not supernatural, it
is not the anointing.
Preaching the Word of God is a spiritual occurrence. God
uses the synergy between speaker and hearer to implant
truth in the human heart, to move the needy to do that
which can meet their need, and to save them that believe.
He does this through His Spirit. This is what we call the
anointing. A dead, dry presentation of even divine truth
can leave the hearer cold and unresponsive, but the power
of a true connection in the Spirit between the preacher and
his congregation is the conduit through which the Spirit of
God makes the Word live. Don’t fear this anointing; it is at
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the heart of all great preaching. Learn to direct it, harness

it. Don’t lose yourself in the emotion it generates, but let
that emotion give wings to your words and you will preach
beyond your talent, your ability, and your skill.
If this anointing is the source of true power in preaching,
do we need to bother with extensive notes, outlines, even
fully written out portions of our sermons? Absolutely. The
written notes from which we preach are not designed to stifle
this inspiration of the moment, but to complement it. In
fact, in my own experience, the more familiar I am with the
facts, the biblical events, the scriptural basis of the sermon,
the more likely it is the anointing will come. The comfort I
feel when I have a good grasp of my message, and good notes
to come back to regardless where the anointing may take
me, liberates me to respond to the power of the anointing.
When I am concentrating hard to simply remember exactly
what it is I am trying to say, such as the points of the
sermon, the illustrations, the flow of the arguments, and
the facts that support all these, the less I am enraptured
into the anointing. Notice, great preachers like Anthony
Mangun and Mike Williams, who often read large segments
of their sermons, but as the sermon progresses and the
power of the presentation affects the audience, move into
the anointing. You will see that when the anointing comes,
it elevates the preacher, the sermon and the congregation
into a higher realm. The same is true of other outstanding
preachers like Wayne Huntley, Jack Cunningham, and
Scott Graham. I witnessed it in great preachers of the past
like C. M. Becton and J. T. Pugh. All these preachers and
many, many others work, and worked hard to prepare their
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sermons, but always allowed the supernatural to break into

their preaching.
The most brilliantly constructed, incredibly learned
sermon is a waste of time, unless it is accompanied by the
anointing. Seek the anointing, open your heart to it, allow
it to move into the service. You don’t have to finish the
sermon, but you must have a move of God.
Was Paul For or Against?

I have sometimes been misunderstood when I speak on
the Scripture passage that inspired the title for this book.
Let’s look at it again.
For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the

wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding
of the prudent. Where is the wise? where is the
scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath
not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?
For after that in the wisdom of God the world
by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the
foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.
after wisdom: But we preach Christ crucified, unto
the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks
foolishness; But unto them which are called, both
Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and
the wisdom of God (I Corinthians 1:19–24).
Duane Litfin, in his book Paul’s Theology of Preaching,

points out that the first four chapters of I Corinthians form
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a unique and enlightening accounting of Paul’s concept

of preaching: what it is, how it works, and what it does.
Paul lays out for all time the primacy of preaching in the
Christian life, and what makes it so important. In those
chapters, he makes clear how preaching should be done.
In this passage from chapter 1, Paul contrasted
competing interests in the life and role of the church: Jews
want signs, Greeks want wisdom, but, Paul asserted, we
preach. It is inescapable that Paul elevated preaching above
the seeking of signs and the pursuit of wisdom. In fact, a
less-than-careful reading might lead to the conclusion that
Paul positioned preaching in place of the other two and
thus excluded the pursuit of signs and wisdom from the
Christian’s life.
Because of this some have insisted that this means
that Paul was against—to a greater or lesser degree—
both the supernatural demonstration of the Spirit and the
desire to study and seek education. When this passage is
preached on, because of the passion this subject raises,
unfortunately, that is what some hear. Depending on the
individual’s interests, this creates some confusion and not a
little disagreement.
So it is important to rightly interpret Paul’s stand on
this important subject. What was Paul for and what was he
against? As with all Scripture, this passage must be seen in
context not only with its own surrounding verses, but with
the entire corpus of Paul’s writing. To believe that Paul was
against learning is to ignore his advice to his young protégé,
Timothy: “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a
workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing
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the word of truth” (II Timothy 2:15). Likewise, to assert

that Paul in I Corinthians 1 set preaching in opposition
to the supernatural, is to forget his statement to the same
church in the same letter, in fact, only one chapter later:
“And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing
words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit
and of power” (I Corinthians 2:4). This verse adds to the
confusion and debate, because it has led some to believe
Paul was against structured, planned sermons, especially
those which use rhetorical persuasive techniques, and that
he endorsed only demonstration of the supernatural!
How do we reconcile all this? It seems to me we must
remember why Paul wrote these things. The apostle was
trying to help a church that was filled with demonstration
and power (“You come behind in no gift,” he told them
in 1:7), but struggled with carnality and competition.
The people had come to regard preaching as some sort of
competition, going so far as choosing which preacher they
would root for: “I am of Paul!” “I am of Apollos!” ‘I am of
Cephas!” “I am of Christ!”
Paul was combating this divisive and carnal spirit by
insisting that preaching is at the heart of what the church
is, and everything else finds its place in relationship to
preaching. He does not insist that preaching is all there is,
he does not set up a competition between using rhetorical
technique on the one hand, and supernatural demonstration
on the other, with preaching in the middle. Rather, he
acknowledges the role of all these things and connects them
together. Preaching is more important than signs and the
seeking of wisdom, but preaching contains both of these
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things, and is incomplete without them. For Paul it is a

matter of emphasis. When he says, “The Jews seek signs,
and the Greeks wisdom, but we preach,” he is saying we
value the essential aspects of the supernatural and wisdom,
but for us, they find their place in the preaching of the
gospel. It is the preaching of the gospel that we emphasize.
Then according to Paul, our sermons should be well-
thought-out, the result of careful study of God’s Word,
and put together using the most effective tools possible. But
when delivered, those sermons must be made alive by the
presence of the supernatural; without the anointing they
cannot possibly accomplish what they should. Anointed
preaching should be accompanied by the demonstration
of the power of God. Altar services, laying on of hands,
healing lines, sweeping moves of God that prostrate human
beings, bring tears and laughter, shouts and praises, ought
not be rare or even occasional, they should be a consistent
part of our preaching.
So what was Paul for, what was he against? Let me put
it like this: Paul insisted that in contrast to the sign-seekers
who hope to know God by following assumed supernatural
manifestations and put their trust in them, and in contrast
to the knowledge-seekers who hope to find God in the dry
accumulation of knowledge and put their trust in wisdom,
we preach. We preach with knowledge: faithful to the
Word of God, rightly dividing it; but we also preach with
anointing: the powerful, supernatural presence of God. By
doing this, our trust rests, not with rhetorical technique,
nor in superstition, but in God alone.
225

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Where the Anointing Leads

The anointing has a purpose beyond inspiring the
preacher and the congregation. When the Spirit moves
into the sermon, it moves toward the goal of meeting the
needs of those who are there. Sometimes the anointing will
so move the congregation that they will simply not wait
for you to finish. Be sensitive to both the people and the
Holy Ghost, and quit! Several years ago, I was preaching at
the Philippines General Conference. The crowds were huge.
(I remember they said about ten thousand were there.)
Preaching was a delight, even though I preached through an
interpreter. The people were responsive, attentive, and the
anointing was rich and powerful. One night, I had probably
not been preaching more than ten minutes; I remember I was
not even finished with the introduction, when there came a
sweeping move of the Holy Spirit. Almost as one person,
that great crowd surged to their feet and worshiped with all
their hearts. As far as I could see, to the back rows of the
balcony people were shouting, dancing, and praying. People
were receiving the Holy Ghost everywhere. I encouraged it
a while, then turned the service over to the service leader
and joined in. Later, one of the national leaders thanked
me for not preaching further, but letting the Spirit have its
way. I thanked him. But what I wanted to say was, “What
choice did I have? God took over!” I also wanted to say that
I had learned what I know the hard way, by preaching away
the move of God because I thought what I had to say was
more important than what the Spirit was doing. I learned
this is never the case.
226

The A nointing
Assuming the Spirit does not interrupt your message, as

you begin the closing section you have so carefully crafted,
make sure you are sensitive to what is happening in the
congregation. Watch faces and body language. Are they
ready to respond to the presence of God? Sometimes, one
or two will come to the altar while you are still preaching;
are they the exception, perhaps especially touched because
of a situation in their life that has made them desperate
for God? Or, is what they are feeling shared by many or
even most of the congregation? If you see signs of emotion,
hunger, and eagerness to respond to God throughout the
crowd, it is time to stop preaching.
At the same time, be sensitive to the Spirit. What is God
saying? How does He want you to conduct this climactic
moment of the service? He knows every need of every
person there. Let Him direct you in helping people break
through doubt, push aside fear, and receive what they need.
Sometimes preachers ask me, “Do you give an altar call
after every sermon?” The simple answer is yes. But let me
qualify it by quoting Jonathan McClintock in his excellent
book, Life Preaching: “Not every sermon will demand an
altar call—in the traditional sense—but every sermon
should lead to prayer. Whether you are wanting the people
to decide to repent or rejoice, surrender or express faith,
you will want them to call on the name of the Lord.” Here
is where you must be sensitive to the Spirit. What does God
want to do?
Sometimes, I feel a prompting to emphasize the gift
of the Holy Ghost. I will take a few moments and briefly
describe what it is, how it is for everyone, and how to receive
227

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it. If I feel prompted, I will lead in a corporate repentance

prayer, often I don’t. Sometimes I will simply invite all
who want the gift of the Holy Ghost to come forward first.
Usually I will say something like, “If you come, someone
will come with you, you won’t be alone.” This signals the
saints to encourage those around them to come. Sometimes,
after talking about the Holy Ghost, I will ask anyone who
wants to receive the Holy Ghost to tell the person beside
them, “I want the Holy Ghost.” This does two things: it
brings them to a decision by asking them to do something
simpler than coming to the front and it commits the person
to whom they speak to be part of the process. I then ask
both to come to the front.
Sometimes I feel to emphasize healing or other areas of
human need. If there is a possibility of embarrassment:
marital problems, depression, financial problems, I will
lump them together with other things like wanting a fresh
touch of God, needing direction for your life, and so forth. It
is important to mention these categories of need. An open-
ended generic call to come pray is not nearly as effective as
a focused call, as people will see themselves and their needs
more clearly when they are named.
Sometimes, maybe most of the time, I do not feel to
emphasize one particular need, but want everyone to come
together. I still mention needs, tying them if possible
to what I just preached. “The prodigal found the father
waiting with open arms, God is waiting to welcome you!”
“The woman said if I may but touch the hem of his
garment, I shall be whole! Come, you too can be whole!”
“Those four lepers didn’t wait for a better time, they knew
228

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there was no better time, they got up and went right then!
Come now, now is the best time. Help is here now!”
You can still segment the appeal, that is, mention a need
and urge them to come, then move on to another need.
At some point invite everybody. Make it clear the only
requirement is need. “You are welcome to join us for a few
moments of prayer to close our service. You don’t have to
be Pentecostal, you don’t even have to be a Christian, or
even religious; anyone can come. Come now, let’s spend
some time talking to the Lord.”
Then join those who are praying. You will be tired and
spent, but pray with people anyway. This is what all the
study, thinking, and preparation was for. This is why you
are a preacher, why Jesus came, why there is a Bible. This is
what being a preacher means; to proclaim the gospel so that
men, women, and children might be saved.
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Winston Churchill on speechmaking: http://www.

brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/w/winstonchu111314.
html
Sophy Burnham, For Writers Only (New York: Ballantine,

1994).
Paul M. Angle, ed., The Lincoln Reader (New Brunswick,

NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1947).
Robert Norton, Abraham Lincoln Research Site, http://

rogerjnorton.com/Lincoln2.html
Benjamin P. Thomas, Abraham Lincoln, A Biography (New

York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1952).
Duane Litfin, Paul’s Theology of Preaching: The Apostle’s

Challenge to the Art of Persuasion in Ancient Corinth
(Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2015).
Jonathan McClintock, Life Preaching (Hazelwood, MO:

Word Aflame Press, 2015).
230

Epilogue
Job sits in the ashes, “comforted” by his friends/accusers.

There is a volcano of words, roaring, tumbling over one
another. One cannot escape the impression of peacocks
strutting, striving to impress, trying to outdo each other.
Even Job in his own defense reaches for fine phrases and
undertakes impressive verbal feats.
Now, at Job’s insistent invitation, the Lord has arrived.
Now, at last, the talkers fall silent as He speaks:
Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades,

or loose the bands of Orion? Canst thou bring
forth Mazzaroth in his season? or canst thou
guide Arcturus with his sons? Knowest thou the
ordinances of heaven? canst thou set the dominion
231

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thereof in the earth? Canst thou lift up thy voice

to the clouds, that abundance of waters may
cover thee? Canst thou send lightnings, that they
may go, and say unto thee, Here we are? (Job
38:31–35).
God is showing Job and his friends the folly of their

debate: they use many words, but are only wasting their
time because they are making themselves to be experts
in things they don't understand. And as far as making a
difference, their words don't matter at all. There is no power
in their words to change their circumstances, or anything
else. To illustrate, He names three obvious areas where
words fail:
in commanding heavenly bodies

in bringing rain
in calling lightning from Heaven
No words, no matter how forceful, could accomplish

those three things. But years after Job’s time, the words of
men would accomplish all three of these things.
Joshua spoke words, and the sun held in the zenith of
the sky and the moon stood in the valley of Ajalon.
Elijah stopped the rain with mere words and three and a
half years later he spoke, and the rains came again.
Elijah stood at the soaked-stone altar and called the
lightning and it leapt to its feet and said: “Here I am!”
What is happening here? Was God wrong when He
rebuked Job and his friends for their folly? Not at all. Not
232

Epilogue
only the Law, but indeed all God's dealings with man were a
schoolmaster, teaching us. Teaching is not an instantaneous
process. Neither does the student stay at one level until the
process ends; he or she learns and puts to use that which is
learned.
God was, step-by-step, revealing the power of words,
until the boundaries were brought down. Those things that
were impossible in Job’s time became possible in Joshua’s
and Elijah’s. Words were gaining power.
But it did not stop.

Remember Ezekiel and the valley of dry bones? It was
words, mere words, preached by a preacher to the unhearing
remnants of a long-dead army that brought resurrection
and life.

The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us. All
manner of diseases were healed, miracles were wrought.
He declared if you say unto the mountain “Be removed!”
it shall be removed. He said anything we asked in His name
was possible.

Remember God’s sobering description of the limitations
of men’s words to Job and his accusers? I said there were
three, but there were actually four. The fourth could have
had very little meaning to His hearers: “Knowest thou
the ordinances of heaven? canst thou set the dominion
thereof in the earth?” Now we understand more, because
233

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this limitation has no physical meaning, but a spiritual one.

It was not in the power of words to do these things until
death had been destroyed and salvation had come: “And
I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven:
and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in
heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be
loosed in heaven” (Matthew 16:19).
This is why preaching is the culmination of God's slow
education of mankind. Thousands of years of God's careful
planning, meticulous training, and patient instruction have
reached their zenith in preaching the gospel. Limitations
are gone. The answers to the great questions of time and
eternity are found in the voices of men and women.
Now the words of a human being can affect eternity.
Now we see the ultimate power of words: It pleased God
through the foolishness of preaching to save. We do not
save, but the preached gospel does. Now, because of the
power of words, men and women can have eternal life.
No wonder Paul said we are the savor of life and death.
In our voices is the very power of life and death over those
who hear us. And who is sufficient for these things?
234

Acknowledgments
So many people offered encouragement and help along the

way to the completion of this book, it would be impossible
to list them all here. There are a few, however, to whom I am
deeply indebted. To Dr. Robin Johnston, editor in chief of
the United Pentecostal Church International and my friend,
a constant encouragement who never missed an opportunity
to remind me to persevere. To the staff of Word Aflame:
the editors, graphic artists, and production staff. To David
Johnson, who made it a better book. To Dr. David Norris, who
encouraged me to write and helped improve the paper that
formed the basis for chapters two and three. To Dr. Jeffrey
Brickle, who taught me to love books even more than ever,
and to not be afraid of Greek. To Tim Dugas and the staff at
then Gateway College of Evangelism who asked me to teach
235

We Preach
on preaching all those years ago. And my wife, Phyllis,

always my First Reader and first editor, and the love of
my life. And, finally, my grandson, Gavin, age seven, who
though he felt on occasion that time spent writing took too
much time away from playing, in the end announced that
he was proud of Papa for writing this book. Thanks to all.
236

Bibliography
Achtemeier, Paul J. Romans. Interpretation: A Bible

Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. Louisville:
John Knox Press, 1985.
Ailes, Roger and Jon Kraushar. You Are the Message: Secrets of
the Master Communicators. New York: Bantam Doubleday
Dell, 1989.
Angle, Paul M., ed. The Lincoln Reader. New Brunswick, NJ:
Rutgers University Press, 1947.
Barclay, William. The Letter to the Romans. Revised edition.

Edinburgh: The Saint Andrews Press, 1975.
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Bernard, David K. The Apostolic Church in the Twenty-First

Century. Hazelwood, MO: Word Aflame Press, 2014.
———. The Apostolic Life: Perspectives on Christian Living,

Doctrine, and Ministry. Hazelwood, MO: Word Aflame
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———. Spiritual Leadership in the Twenty-First Century.

Hazelwood, MO: Word Aflame Press, 2015.
Blackwood, Andrew Watterson. The Preparation of

Sermons. Nashville: Abingdon-Cokesbury, 1948.
Boreham, F. W. “Breaking the News” and “A Tangled Skein”

in Wisps of Wildfire. London: Epworth Press, 1924.
Broadus, John A. Lectures on the History of Preaching. New

York: Sheldon, 1886.
———. On the Preparation and Delivery of Sermons. Fourth

edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1979.
Brooks, Phillips. Lectures On Preaching Delivered Before the

1877. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1878.
Brown, H. C., Jr., H. Gordon Clinard, Jesse J. Northcutt.

Steps to the Sermon. Nashville: Broadman Press, 1963.
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Burnham, Sophy. For Writers Only. New York: Ballantine,

1994.
Carson, D. A., R. T. France, J. A. Motyer, and G. J. Wenham,

eds. New Bible Commentary: 21st Century Edition. 4th
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Chambers, Stanley. “Can the United Pentecostal Church

Survive the Onslaught of History?” Preached at the
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International in 1967.
Chappell, Clovis. “A Good Man’s Hell.” In Sermons on

Biblical Characters. Garden City, NY: Doubleday Doran,
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———. “The Woman of the Shattered Romances.” In

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Dargan, E. C. A History of Preaching. New York: George H.

Doran Co., 1905.
Demaray, Donald E. An Introduction to Homiletics. Grand

Rapids: Baker, 1974.
Dewey, Joanna. “Textuality in an Oral Culture: A Survey

of the Pauline Traditions.” In Orality and Textuality in
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Elizabeth Struthers Malbon. Atlanta: Scholars Press,
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Edwards, Johnathan. “Sinners In the Hands of an Angry

God.” Available from several online sources. http://www.
jonathan-edwards.org/Sinners.html. Accessed July 30,
2016.
Fasol, Al. A Complete Guide to Sermon Delivery. Nashville:

Broadman & Holman, 1996.
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Gossip, Arthur John. “What Christ Does for a Soul.” In

From the Edge Of the Crowd. Edinburgh: T & T Clark,
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live-preaching-vily-able-guidroz. Accessed July 30, 2016.
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a Friend and Other Sermons. Hazelwood, MO: Word
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Jordan, J. Mark. Living and Leading in Ministry. Hazelwood,

MO: Word Aflame Press, 2006.
Kesler, Jay. “Overfed, Underchallenged.” In The Art and

Craft of Biblical Preaching, edited by Haddon Robinson
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J. F. Hurst, tr. A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures:
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Larsen, David L. The Company of the Preachers: A History

of Biblical Preaching from the Old Testament to the Modern
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Pitt-Watson, Ian. “Lifeblood of Preaching.” In The Art

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Amateur Builder. New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell,
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Runia, Klaas. “What is Preaching According to the New

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243


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We

We Preach Book.indb 1 8/23/16 1:35 PM

The Priority and Practice of

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Jones, Jerry, 1952- author.

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016033490

We Preach Book.indb 4 8/23/16 1:35 PM

We Preach Book.indb 5 8/23/16 1:35 PM

We Preach Book.indb 7 8/23/16 1:35 PM

Once, when asked about writing, Saul Bellow said, “Well,

We Preach Book.indb 9 8/23/16 1:35 PM

conferences and camps when I began to be asked to preach

We Preach Book.indb 10 8/23/16 1:35 PM

We cannot be certain where the valley of dry bones was

We Preach Book.indb 11 8/23/16 1:35 PM

preacher was, called to a place in which he or she simply

We Preach Book.indb 12 8/23/16 1:35 PM

what now? His preaching has effected a transformation

We Preach Book.indb 13 8/23/16 1:35 PM

For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek

No matter what our station, daily life in a fallen

We Preach Book.indb 1 8/23/16 1:35 PM

image within them. They suffer distorted images

After such a week, it’s a wonder that a person

But then they hear anointed preaching, and

Craig Bryan Larson

We Preach Book.indb 2 8/23/16 1:35 PM

Before we get into how to preach better, let’s talk about

We Preach Book.indb 3 8/23/16 1:35 PM

Preaching is the communication of divine truth

What is preaching? Good question. Most of us have

We Preach Book.indb 5 8/23/16 1:35 PM

is to open up the inspired text with such faithfulness and

We Preach Book.indb 6 8/23/16 1:35 PM

any situation. It need only be clearly communicated for this

We Preach Book.indb 7 8/23/16 1:35 PM

He has chosen through the filter of human personality to

• More Americans gather in churches on any given

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to watch the games during the entire NFL, NBA,

Most of those who go to church will hear some sort of

We Preach Book.indb 9 8/23/16 1:35 PM

For after that in the wisdom of God the world

In society as a whole, the popularity of preaching, as

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Brown, Clinard, and Northcutt in Steps to the Sermon

Whenever Christianity has made substantial

It can be argued that the rapid growth, sustained

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are saved it is the power of God” (I Corinthians 1:18). To

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of unending pleasure are all symptoms of the search for

We Preach Book.indb 13 8/23/16 1:35 PM

Sources Cited in Chapter 1

John Stott, “A Definition of Biblical Preaching” in Haddon

Jay Kesler, “Overfed, Underchallenged” in Haddon

Andrew Watterson Blackwood, The Preparation of Sermons

Phillips Brooks, Lectures On Preaching Delivered Before the