5 Keys to A Good Sermon
You probably hear it in some form every week: “Good sermon,” “good lesson,” “thank you for the lesson.” I’ve been learning to preach and attempting to craft sermons now for over 45 years. I’m still a novice. I hear most guys and wonder how they did what seems to me so unnatural, so effortless. But I am a learner and here are a few things I’ve learned about “good sermons.” Please don’t oversimplify or over-spiritualize this - I know any sermon that is from the Word of God and that teaches truth in love is technically a good sermon. But YOU also know that there are good and better sermons within that sphere and I want to be the best I can be as an attempted ambassador for God.
That said, I humbly submit to you five key elements to a good sermon:
- “The way to evaluate the success of a sermon is how long it is till Jesus shows up in it” - David Shannon. Now, it would take a real fool to not know Jesus being in the sermon was essential to a sermon being good. BUT I’d been preaching nearly 30 years when I heard David first say this and that simple sentence has marked every sermon I have preached since then! See Acts 8:35 and 1 Corinthians 2:2.
- A good sermon touches both the head and heart: One of my first helpful sermon critics was one of my biggest preaching fans. I always looked forward to her encouraging critiques of my lessons. I remember well the Sunday afternoon I thought I’d hit a real homer and I waited and waited and then finally asked: “So, what’d you think of the lesson today?” She said: “It was full of a lot of good information, but it didn’t move me at all.” How dare she assess the sermon so…accurately. To various degrees, sermons will enlighten and enliven. Some sermons should be full of fire calling the sinner to Christ, some should be packed with materials to instruct and inform on the teachings of scripture. If all of your preaching is of one sort all the time, you are not reaching as many people as you should. I suspect that every one of us has a natural lean one way or the other on this matter. Find out which is more natural for you and then make sure your preaching does not neglect the other. Acts 2 is spot on - Peter walked them through the Scriptures and “proved” that this Jesus was Messiah. But then he cut their heart with the truth they had with wicked hands crucified the Son of God.
- A good sermon is honest with the text: It should go without saying that a sermon is simply NOT worth preaching if it is not “birthed and bathed” in the Text. But it can become easy for some to parrot a position taken by a hero, the majority, or that is simple to land on. If in your preaching and preparation you cannot give “the other side” an honest evaluation, it may show that you are not confident in your interpretation of a text or your evaluation of a position to look at it with an open mind. Truth has nothing to fear. I have said before: “It would be a whole lot easier if the text did not say ‘x” but it does and I have a responsibility to preach what the text teaches. This should be obvious but if you ever exalt your opinion or preference to even remotely close to the Word of God you have gone askew.
- A good sermon will present real and workable challenges to the hearer: How sad to preach a moving, convincing truth and then not tell the hearer what to do with it. My experience is that this is where many of our preachers fall short. We spend so much time in exegetical work (as we must) that we either assume the listener will be able to apply it themselves OR we don’t do the hard work of showing the application. This is not good. I think of it this way. What good is paint if it stays in the bucket - you have got to apply it! The same is true of the Word of God - unless applied it is not alive!
- A good sermon is worth hearing: A sermon is a living thing. Must have passion! I’m preaching to myself in these. A good sermon will engage the hearer. It will delight the senses and ignite the listener to action.
I can assure you some will disagree with these points and others will note what I’ve left off, so add your additions and corrections in the comment section for others to hear. Don’t be mean or you’ll get deleted. Let’s all help each other be better.