Pastor, let’s step into your study for a moment. It’s Wednesday or Thursday or maybe some weeks it’s Saturday night. You sit down to harvest the wheat of truth from the text to prepare the weekly bread for your people. After a bit of study, you feel reasonably certain that you understand the author’s intent in the passage you plan to preach, and now you’ve got to pull it all together into something resembling a sermon. Open before you are a Bible, your study notes, and a blank page for your manuscript or outline.
Now, what’s your first thought? Where does your mind go when you start writing this sermon?
Some go immediately to illustrations – how can I make this truth come alive? Others consider just the right way to word the application to give it that really convicting zing. The self-conscious among us comb through the archives to make sure MacArthur didn’t steal our outline. This is the stuff of homiletics, the substance of preaching preparation. This is what you need to build a sermon, undoubtedly.
But, pastor, here’s my concern: If you rush into the what of preaching without reminding yourself of the why, my guess is that your sermon will show it and your people will know it. There is a far more important and foundational homiletic question to ask before you put pen to paper on your outline, your exegesis, or your conclusion. Even if you’ve got the meaning of the text deftly in hand, you must not rush to preach without this answer in the other.
After understanding the truth from your text, the most important question to ask in sermon preparation is: Do I love them?
“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal” (1 Cor 13:1). Or, we might say it, “If I preach with the tongue of Knox and of Spurgeon, but have not love, I’m just making noise in the pulpit.”
Paul demonstrates for us in his letters to the Corinthian church that a pastor’s love for Christ’s sheep is the defining motivation behind all his preaching. He says what he says because he loves how he loves. Preaching is for people, so the preacher must love his people. He doesn’t preach for himself, he preaches for them. And that motivation, that clarity of purpose, shapes everything about the sermon.
So, let’s briefly observe how the why of homiletics affects the what of homiletics, or to put it another way, how love for your people should shape your sermon-writing this week:
Love Writes Sermons with the Right Tone
In 2 Corinthians, Paul sets out to defend his ministry against the vain accusations of the “super-apostles” that were plaguing the church in Corinth. With respect to this self-defense, Paul writes, “As the truth of Christ is in me, this boasting of mine will not be silenced in the regions of Achaia. And why? Because I do not love you? God knows I do!” (2 Cor 11:10-11). You can almost hear Paul’s exasperation in these sentences. How could they possibly think that he’s motivated by anything less than love for them? So, to make things crystal clear, Paul pulls back the curtain on his heart and shows them why he’s written this way: It’s because of love.
Or consider Paul’s words rebuking those who were arrogant in the Corinthians church. “I do not write these things to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children.” (1 Cor 4:14). As a fatherly tenderly correcting his little ones, so Paul writes out of love to humble those who have exalted themselves, and so uses a strong, assertive tone. But he also says that his love could produce a different tone: “What do you wish? Shall I come to you with a rod, or with love in a spirit of gentleness?” (1 Cor 4:21). The implication is that if the Corinthians would be humbled, then Paul’s love would come with gentle, sweet words of encouragement and praise.
Pastor, our love for the dear sheep must create in us a sensitivity to their needs that manifests in our preaching tone. They need to hear in your voice that you love them, either through necessary rebuke or through gentle, nurturing comfort. How you preach, for instance, the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) should not only be shaped by the tone of the text but also by the tone they need to hear. Do they need to hear, “Blessed are the poor in spirit” or do they need to hear, “Blessed are the poor in spirit”? Love should shape a sermon’s tone.
Another way to say it is: If you don’t love your people, then you’ll be tone-deaf as you preach. If you’ve preached for any number of years, you’ve known the homiletic blight of an insensitive, calculated sermon. You can check all the exegetical boxes perfectly, but if you don’t know how this text can minister to their daily needs then your sermon will be a cold, audio commentary. If your heart isn’t bleeding in the pew, their hearts won’t beat with the pulpit. The sheep know the tone of loveless sermons and ignore them instinctively.
Therefore, pastor, this implies that you need to not only love your people but also that you need to know them; that you take the time throughout the week to call, visit, write, and share your life with them as they do with you. Only when you know the joys and struggles of your people will you know what tone most serves their needs as you unfold the Word of God before them. If love is writing your sermon, then your preparation begins over coffee, in the hospital, and by the graveside. Love knows the right tone to write a helpful sermon because it knows the sermon’s target hearts.
Love Writes Sermons with Clear Content
Love also compels clarity in the sermon-writing process, which often manifests in simplified explanations and understandable illustrations. Consider Paul’s burden in correcting the Corinthians’ obsession with unintelligible “tongue-speaking”: “Otherwise, if you give thanks with your spirit, how can anyone in the position of an outsider say, ‘Amen’ to your thanksgiving when he does not know what you are saying? For you may be giving thanks well enough, but the other person is not being built up” (1 Cor 14:16-17). Remember that 1 Corinthians 14 follows right after Paul’s great exaltation of the gift of love in 1 Corinthians 13. What should compel a preacher to want to build up his congregation in preaching? Love. How does he build them up? By preaching truth clearly.
Clarity is the deepest diamond in the mine of sermon preparation. It’s hard work to speak clearly, and it’s easy to be obscure. But if you love your people, then you’ll scrub the vague sludge off the window of your sermon to let in the light of Scripture’s clear truth. We must think ourselves clear to serve our people well.
To write clear sermons, then, you have to know how make eternal, transcendent truths accessible. You avoid unfamiliar theological terms, or if you use them then you also explain what they mean in plain English. Strunk and White’s advice still stands: Short, Saxon words over long, Latinate pontification. If you can’t explain what the text means with everyday language, then you probably don’t understand it. As Haddon Robinson said, “If it’s a mist in the pulpit, it’ll be a fog in the pew.”
Practically speaking, you can love your people well by using illustrations to bring clarity to the text. Love illustrates because love seeks to aid understanding. Did you notice Paul’s goal? “But the other person is not being built up.” They can’t be built up if they don’t understand, and a well-placed illustrative phrase or story could make all the difference. So, don’t throw in an illustration just to get attention; illustrate to clarify.
Another clarifying tool in the preacher’s kit should be negation. “Not that. Not that. But this.” We don’t understand an idea until we know its boundaries, and negation helps toward that end. Think of Jesus’ most famous sermon: “You have heard that it was said… but I say to you” (Matt 5:21-22). Or consider Paul’s clarifying word on sanctification: “Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own because Christ Jesus has made me his own” (Phil 3:12). Negation can be overdone but should be used wisely by a loving pastor who wants to help his congregation understand God’s Word.
Love Writes Sermons with Helpful Application
After defending his ministry out of the love for the Corinthians, Paul begins to draw his argument to a close, saying, “Have you been thinking all along that we have been defending ourselves to you? It is in the sight of God that we have been speaking in Christ, and all for your upbuilding, beloved” (2 Cor 12:19). That’s a strong statement. Paul’s conscience is so clean that he can declare before God himself that everything he’s written was out of love and for one purpose. What was that aim? Well, we would call it application. Upbuilding. Edification. The growth and maturity of the saints. “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up” (1 Cor 8:1).
A sermon written from a heart bursting with love has Christlikeness in its audience as its aim. Paul said to the Galatians that he was “in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you” (Gal 4:19). If a pastor loves his people, then it should be a strong, almost uncontainable desire to see his people grow. More than anything, he wants them to put off sin and put on Christ, and that has strong implications for how he preaches to them.
Pastor, remember: The purpose of preaching is application. That application may be as simple as learning new truth or as tangible as changing jobs, but either way, the preacher always announces God’s Word to bring about sanctifying change in the lives of his hearers. Preachers help people love and live like Jesus. A sermon’s aim is change.
So, when preparing your sermon this week, pastor, don’t overlook application! If you love your people and know what preaching is for, then you’ll necessarily spend time crafting appropriate, exegetically grounded, life-changing words of application. The “so-what” of your sermon should not be an afterthought, but a pervasive mindset behind every word you say. Do you want to see people look more like Jesus? Then help them. Apply the text.
Much could be said about how to apply a text well, but perhaps the most important homiletical step towards effective application is to apply the text to yourself first. If you have been changed by God’s Word, then you’ll be a walking billboard for that change in the lives of others. If the Word has convicted you of jealousy, then you’ll know what incisive questions will penetrate another envious heart. If you’ve been swept away with the grandeur and glory of Christ, then they will see your face shining. Come to the Word as a Christian so that you can go to the pulpit as a preacher. Help your people by being helped by Christ. He is always ready to give mercy and grace to help in your time of need (Heb 4:16).
Brother, if you want to be used of God to sanctify his saints as you preach this coming week, then emblazon this verse on your heart: “For the love of Christ controls us” (2 Cor 5:14). Jesus’ love for you is the ink in your pen. Without it, there is no sermon. Controlled by it, you just might preach a sermon that helps someone. Let your love, then, be genuine. Let it shape every sentence you craft and every point you make. Let it adjust, clarify, illustrate, and apply. Or, as Paul said it, “Let all that you do be done in love” (1 Cor 16:13).