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It’s Friday afternoon and you have a great outline for your Sunday morning message. The tears dropping onto your keyboard in response to the moving of the Holy Spirit as He burned this message in your heart convinces you that this week’s sermon has the potential to really change the lives of some of your members.

Now fast forward to Sunday morning at about 11:45. You have been preaching for ten to fifteen minutes and the Holy Spirit has really been moving in your heart and you are extremely excited about the potential response from this gem that was birthed in your study on your computer and in your heart. You look up to make good eye contact with the congregation just like Dr. Preacher taught you in seminary assuming to see old Mrs. Snooty sitting on the edge of her seat wondering how she can give up her pattern of pride and arrogance. But as you look over the congregation you notice that it seems no one is with you. In fact Mrs. Snooty is looking at the other members of the congregation and you can just see the wheels spinning as she seems to be thinking, “These people are such sinners. Thank God I’m not like them.”

What happened?

The fact is you committed one of the greatest homiletical sins known to modern preachers. You were boring! I know, I know. You are probably saying, “Hey, aren’t they supposed to put forth an effort to listen? You only get out of it what you put into it... right?” Yes that may be true. But remember that we, as pastors, are supposed to lead our people into a vibrant and exciting ministry of the word. If we make the Bible seem boring and irrelevant on Sunday morning, they will think that, albeit subconsciously for most of our church members, the rest of the week.

So we’ve diagnosed the problem. Now how do we overcome this scourge on our preaching ministry? I am so glad you asked, because that is the topic of this essay. If I were to give it a title it would be something like: Taking the Snooze Out of the Good News! Now please hear me properly. I am not saying the gospel is boring and it relies upon our communicating skills to make it more exciting. As Paul say, “May it never be so!” I am saying that our culture is not programmed to listen to the kind of preaching that most of us are doing. The only time they sit and listen to speeches, which is basically what a sermon is to them, is in class at school, at a campaign stop with their favorite candidate, and at church. The rest of the time information is communicated through stories and interesting facts thrown at us in rapid fire segments never longer than a couple of minutes. And most of the information we are gathering through mass media like Television, Radio and the Internet is filled with fast paced or highly graphical content presented in ways designed to play on our emotions and motivate us to do things we don’t want to do.

Can we apply these same techniques to our preaching? Yes and no! The yes part is the fact that we can appeal to the emotions of people using interesting and (dare I say) entertaining stories and facts. However, we should never attempt to manipulate people the way Madison Avenue does so expertly and continually. The fact is most of our people are already Christians, with the exception of the seeker churches who often have a majority of non-believers in their Sunday morning “crowd”. And given the fact that most of our people are Christians, they do want to be faithful to God and obedient to his word. They just cannot because they have not been either properly taught how or properly inspired by faith building preaching.

So now that you have the picture of what we hope to do with this essay, let’s get to it.

The single greatest key to preaching that really grabs people where they are is to make our preaching merely the instrument God uses to communicate HIS word to HIS people. That means that we must let the bible speak to our times instead of letting our opinions dictate what our message will be. Some like to call this expository preaching. That is a weak term since it carries a connotation of an old man with his glasses dangling off the tip of his nose as he goes word by word and verse by verse through Leviticus explaining what every jot and tittle means. That is exposition, but it is not preaching. And what is worse, unless the communicator is exceptionally gifted, it is boring.

The term I prefer is bible-centered preaching or biblical preaching. That term allows for the possibility that a sermon may not necessarily be boring verse by verse exposition, but it will take the message from the text and make it alive today. It is preaching that is centered on the scriptures. It is preaching that says, “God is the one with the message, so what is he saying here is....”

And the first step in biblical preaching is to ask the question, “What is God saying here?” After you have carefully selected a portion of scripture and studied it using careful exegesis (a subject for another essay) you are ready to ask the most important question of the passage: “What is God saying here?” What that question is getting at is the real meaning that the author, inspired by God, is trying to get across to his audience. Remember this is not a general theological statement, but a particular statement focused on the past – the context of the text. If your text is Revelation 21, the description of the New Jerusalem, then your author is John and he is speaking to people who lived right after the temple of Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 AD. They believed that God almost literally resided in that temple. So when it was destroyed, that sent them into a tailspin emotionally and spiritually. Now John is saying that in the future there is going to be a New Jerusalem without a temple because God’s presence will be with the people who live in that city – overcomers who have come through the persecution of the anti-Christ. So understanding all of that, “What is God saying here?” The answer is that he is talking about the comfort of God’s presence. So we would state that in the form of a question. “Who will be comforted by God’s presence?” That is the subject of the text. Then you look for the complement, which is the answer to your subject question. In this text the answer might be, “Those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life will receive the comfort of God’s presence.” And so we would state the Big Idea, as Haddon Robinson calls this in his book “Biblical Preaching”, as follows: “Anyone whose name is written in the Lamb’s book of life will enjoy the presence of God in the New Jerusalem.”

What is the benefit of this approach? In other words, why should I do it this way? The answer to that question is multiple.

First, if you know what the subject of your message is, then you can better communicate it. If you have a fuzzy idea of your passage’s overall theme, then so will those who are listening to you. People naturally organize ideas into a general overall idea. If they cannot figure out what that general idea is, they will revolt by ignoring your message at best or even worse they will stop coming to hear you at all. You can see the picture. You preach your message and the people all file out shaking your hands and say, “Good sermon, preacher.” But then they get in their cars and ask (if they bother to even ask this question) “What was the preacher preaching on today?” Mom says evangelism while Dad says discipleship. The daughter says, “I don’t know... I was writing notes with Jerry Southerland. He’s so cute.” The point is they haven’t gotten it. You didn’t communicate.

Second, having a clear message makes it easier to organize the passage into a preaching outline. If you know what the general idea is, you can make the points of your message all relate to the one Big Idea. If you have a fuzzy notion of your theme, then you might have a list of disjointed or unrelated points that don’t effectively communicate what God wanted you to communicate from the chosen text. That means people won’t get God’s word and won’t have their lives impacted by your preaching. So when you are preaching on evangelism and your desired effect is to inspire your people to get involved in the evangelism of the church and they don’t have a clear idea that your message is doing just that, they are less likely to put their lives on the line for your “program”. They will see the basic discipline of witnessing as a preacher’s program instead of a foundational element of the Christian life.

Third, you can quickly grab attention in a way that will lead your people to listen to you. If you know the Big Idea, then you can find a way to introduce it that grabs their attention immediately relating to that subject and then you can surface their need to hear this message. The first part requires that you find a good opening illustration or attention getting device that will speak to your subject. You have all heard preachers begin a sermon by telling a joke about the goose and the dog who went into a bar. And besides not being that funny it had very little to do with the message. Oh, he stretched it to make it fit by saying something really lame like, Aren’t you glad God has a sense of humor? So do we and he created us with one. But he also created us with free will so let’s talk about that.” The people might have politely laughed, but subconsciously they were saying, “This message must not be that important since he didn’t prepare hard enough to find a joke that really fit.” By knowing your Big Idea you will be inspired with an opening illustration or attention getting device that will actually further communicate the subject instead of just “warming up the crowd” like a comedian opens up for a rock band. Also, after having grabbed their attention, you can surface the need for this message. For people hearing a message on the Revelation 21 text you might ask, “What would you do if our church was destroyed by anti-Christian terrorists and there was no possible way for us to rebuild.” This not only grabs their attention but introduces the content of the message and gives you a lead in for a statement about feeling lost without God in your life or feeling alone in the world without a community of believers focused on the presence of God. That will really surface the need for the post-modern audiences to whom we communicate the word of God.

Finally, your appeal or invitation will be more focused. Maybe you have done this. The message is over and you want to make a really good invitation. You have been preaching on tithing and yet you know there are non-believers in the audience. So you work that invitation to say, “Yeah, you can give a tenth, but you won’t want to unless you get saved first.” The non-believers hear this and say, “There’s another reason not to become a Christian.” But if you have just preached a message with a clear, biblical topic that comes directly out of the text, then your appeal will be more focused. You won’t worry about tacking on that salvation message because God will have worked through your message to the hearts of the people and anyone who is not saved in your congregation will be pricked by the Holy Spirit. The message’s invitation will sound like this: “I know that you are struggling with your finances. I know that you have a lot of things you could do with your money. But consider what God can do with it that you cannot. He can use your dollars to … (list of ways) … and you can be a part of that if you are regular tither. If you are a Christian who loves the Lord and wants to see his kingdom furthered, then you can by committing today to become a tither. Will you make that commitment today?” The effect of such an invitation is that it is focused on the message of your text and it is inspiring in such a way that a non-believer might hear that and say I would like to be part of something bigger than myself. The Holy Spirit can use that to not only inspire your people regarding the sermon’s Big Idea, but also to speak to the guarded hearts of skeptical unbelievers.

You may have read this and said, “I want to know more.” There are a couple of resources that you can get to help you. I mentioned the book by Haddon Robinson, “Biblical Preaching.” He also has a book of sermons preached in this way called, “Biblical Sermons”. The third book in that series is called “Biblical Illustrations.” These can be found at Amazon.com.