Seven Marks of a Good Sermon.docx

Seven Marks of a Good Sermon

Everyone wants to hear–and some preach!–a good sermon. But what exactly is a good sermon?

Certainly you know one when you hear one, but pinning down the details can be difficult:

preaching is an interesting mixture of theology (what we’re saying) and rhetoric (how we say it).

Yet when a sermon includes the following seven central elements, and when the Holy Spirit is

present, something happens–the word comes alive and people come to faith.

In brief, a good sermon engages the biblical text, proclaims the gospel, connects God’s word to

the lives of God’s people, is well organized and easy to understand, captures the imagination of

the hearers, is delivered well, and orients people toward life in God’s world.

hear it. Therefore, good preachers strive to engage the biblical passages seriously, in a manner

that is interesting, inspiring and relevant.

2. A good sermon proclaims the gospel

Wait a second. Isn’t preaching the Bible the same as preaching the gospel?

Yes and no. Certainly our sense of the gospel (in brief, what God has done through Jesus Christ

for us and all the world) emerges from the biblical witness. At the same time, though, there is

some value in realizing that we cannot simply equate the two. Luther had a nice way of putting

this. The Bible, Luther said, is like the manger in which the Christ child rests. So while we

should flee to the Bible to find Christ, Luther counseled, we should avoid falling on our knees to

worship wood and straw. To put it another way, we value the Bible so highly precisely and

primarily because it contains the gospel.

somehow it relates to the ongoing work of the God we have come to know most fully through

Jesus Christ.

3. A good sermon connects God’s Word to the lives of God’s people

Part of the significance of the Christian

doctrine of the Incarnation is God’s commitment to be accessible, to speak a divine word in

human form, to take on our lot and our life. Preaching is an incarnational word, one that

reaffirms God’s commitment to meet us where we are.

To put it another way, we might go so far as to say that there is no universal gospel apart from

the way it manifests itself in the particular and concrete aspects of our actual lives. To talk about

“God’s love” or “forgiveness” or “grace” in general makes very little sense without pointing to

specific examples and instances of love, forgiveness and grace in our lives and the world around

us.

Preaching that is generic or universal in character and does not struggle to relate God’s word to

our actual lives is boring, irrelevant, and gives the impression that God does not really care about

4. A good sermon is well organized and easy to understand

As we all know, if the message isn’t clearly thought out and presented, it just doesn’t matter

5. A good sermon engages the imaginations of the hearers

that the gospel is more than a head-trip. That is, the gospel is more than thinking a certain way. It

speaks to the whole person, and to do that we need to engage the imaginations of our hearers.

6. A good sermon is delivered well

To preach is to communicate. Therefore, it must be delivered effectively so that we may hear the

message. In order for that to occur, two things need to take place:

a) The preacher must deliver the sermon with the appropriate affect. If you’re excited, bursting

with good news, and think what you have to say really is good news, then your facial expression,

body gestures, and voice should express those emotions.

b) The preacher must deliver the sermon with passion and integrity. People should know that you

believe what you say, that you have something at stake in this message, that it is true for you, and

that it matters. Insincerity is easily detected by most listeners and greatly undermines preaching.

7. A good sermon orients hearers to life in God’s world

Christian worship is the gathering of the faithful so that they may be renewed in faith and sent

once more into the world as the people of God. Preaching, as a central part of that worship, has

people sent to care for God’s world risks engendering an inwardly focused, even self-centered

The next time you are listening to or preaching a sermon, look for these seven marks. And later,

when the appropriate opportunity presents itself, talk about the sermon with your pastor. Most

preachers welcome, even crave, honest feedback. This outline of the seven marks of a sermon

may give preachers and their hearers some guidelines to talk about what makes good preaching.

1- Purposeful: The preacher should have a clear direction and central theme.%

A preacher might say lots of good things, but if it is not all tied together with a central theme – I

don’t think it’s the best meal for the congregation. A professor in seminary used to say, “If I

wake you up at 2am the night before you preach and say, ‘What’s your sermon about?’ you

should be able to immediately answer in one sentence.” There’s a lot of wisdom in that. If the

preacher doesn’t know what the sermon is about, the congregation won’t either! As the pastor

studies the text and prays, he should look for a central theme. Then he can develop 2-4 subpoints,

but those subpoints should all work to reinforce the key theme. The sermon needs to stay

focused.=

unpacking one passage of Scripture verse-by-verse. A series going through a book of the Bible is

an expository series. This is the meat-and-potatoes of good preaching because it gives the

congregation a consistent, regular diet of biblical truth, guided by the Bible itself. But there is

also time for topical sermons. Topical sermons should be no less biblical, just biblical in a

different way. A topical sermon is like systematic theology; rather than starting with one

passage, it starts with a concept and then looks to see what the Bible has to say about it in a few

different places. A good pastor should be listening to the Spirit and congregation and

prophetically addressing pressing issues with topical sermons. Whether an expository or a topical

message, the sermon should penetrate the depths of biblical truth. Don’t go over people’s heads;

dig deep.=

3- Prepared: The preacher should be organized and ready.%

There have been a couple times I was asked to preach without any time to prepare – usually on

the mission field – but this is the exception. Usually the preacher should invest hours in studying,

note-taking, planning, writing, and praying. Jesus often spent time alone to prepare for ministry.

There is a misnomer out there that if you plan and prepare too much, then you’re not relying on

the Holy Spirit. The power of the Holy Spirit should (and must) fill and guide the pastor’s

preparation just as much as his presentation. A prepared preacher will have organized notes and

be familiar enough with those notes so that he’s not reading. Being prepared means you can

engage with the congregation, look at the people, and – when the Spirit leads – go off your notes.

Of course the first step of preaching is to prepare your heart. If the preacher hasn’t done that, he

should just stay at home.=

4- Personal: The preacher should know his people and share his life.%

When I first felt called to the ministry, I knew I wanted to preach, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to

pastor people. “Can’t I just tell people about Jesus without having to care for their messy lives?”

No! Preaching is an essential tool in pastoring, and pastoring is an essential tool in preaching. It

is much, much harder to preach a good sermon if you don’t know the congregation. A good

preacher should know the Word and know his congregation. And if preaching is an act of

shepherding, then the congregation should know the preacher as well. This means you share

yourself in the day-to-day of life, and you share yourself in stories and examples when you

preach. As Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy wrote, “we were ready to share with you not only the

gospel of God but also our own selves” (1 Thessalonians 1:8). Of course you could take this too

far; remember the sermon is not about you. “What we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ

as Lord” (2 Corinthians 4:5).

5- Practical: The preacher should lead the people toward life-change.%

The Sunday sermon is not a running commentary of a Bible passage. That’s part of it, but it’s so

much more. Like any good Bible study, the sermon should follow the interpretive method

(hermeneutics) of Observe, Interpret, Apply. The preacher should help the congregation observe

what is in the text and provide insights and interpretation about what it means. But if it stops

there, it’s not a sermon- it’s a lecture. There needs to be application. The goal of the sermon is

heart-change and life-change. Every passage of the Bible leads to some growth in belief or

action. The pastor who trained me used to ask, “How are you going to challenge the people?

How will they walk away different?” A sermon must have practical application which calls the

people to believe and live differently. This is where Examples, Illustrations, and Analogies are

6- Passionate: The preacher should be excited about what he is saying.%

When I get excited, I get loud and animated, and I talk fast. This is how I preach most of the

time. I need to be purposeful to calm down and slow down (people have told me this!). Not every

preacher is super high energy; that’s OK. But if you don’t care about what you are saying, no one

else will either. If the preacher looks bored, I assure you everyone else is too. The preacher

should believe what he is saying with all of his heart! He should believe that the Gospel and the

truth of God’s Word have the power to change people’s lives! That is something to be excited

about! Passion can be expressed with loud volume and animated gestures. But it can also be

expressed in a calm, intense tone and a caring, focused look. A gifted, passionate preacher will

know how to vary his volume, tone, and pace to connect with his audience.=

It might surprise you to know that in the lists of spiritual gifts in the New Testament, Preaching

is not mentioned. I think good preaching is a combination of the gifts of Teaching (targeting the

mind with clear insights from the Word), Exhortation (targeting the heart with stirring,

challenging, encouragement), and Evangelism (targeting the soul with a clear, powerful

presentation of the Gospel – both believers and unbelievers need this). The power of preaching

doesn’t come from the pastor’s loud voice, eloquent words, or witty anecdotes. The power of

preaching comes from the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit. He is the one

with the power to transform lives. This was the apostle Paul’s approach:

“And when I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom,

proclaiming to you the testimony of God. For I determined to know nothing among you except

Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling,

and my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in