A Truly Modest Proposal (Part 2)

In the first part of this essay I sketched three different approaches to preaching, offered an alternative, and then gave a provisional template for sermons. The principal goal of the essay is to encourage preachers to be faithful to the text, which means leading the hearers to the text, and then through the text to lead the congregation where the Scriptures lead. Where is that? In John 5:39 our Lord Jesus said of the Scriptures, “It is they that bear witness about me.” A subsidiary goal of the essay is to encourage preachers to ask the right questions, some of which I discussed briefly in the first part. The outline I offered is the one I developed over the years by trial and error. As much as any outline, it works for me. It might not work for you. Most of the time I keep my sermon notes in an 8×5 notebook. If I keep my outline to one notebook page, I should be able to preach that sermon in about thirty minutes (if I am disciplined in the introduction and if my sermon illustrations do not cause more harm than good).

The Introduction

Whether I am preaching a series through a book or a single sermon on a passage it is important to draw the reader into the text. This is the opposite approach of most preaching today, which begins with the assumption that we must bring the text to the reader. Many years ago, a man who really wanted to understand the Scriptures said to me, “Tell me what the apostle Paul would be doing if he was driving down the street and something happened.” This brother has a commendable desire to understand and apply Scripture to his life, but this approach should be reversed. Before we get to us we must first get to the text. The hearer needs to be drawn out of himself, his time, his place, his questions, and into the time, place, and context of the text of Scripture. The preacher wants to draw him into the social and thought world of the text and the author of the text. The text must shape us rather than the reverse.

How to accomplish this? In the provisional outline I started with the sort of data that one finds in the background studies, commentaries, and the like. Rhetorically, however, it would probably be better to tell a story not from our life and experience but from the life and experience of those in the world that is before us in the text. So, I would revise the provisional template a bit by starting with a story that emerges from the text and that helps to immerse the hearer in the world of the text. This is not easy and requires some digging, but it can be done.

From there it would be good to explain briefly when, through whom, and to whom the text was originally given by the Holy Spirit. Too often preachers simply skip this stuff to move on to other things, but in order to locate the hearer in the text he must know the essential things about the text. Learning those things is part of the immersion process. Hearers of a sermon should insist that their pastors help them this way by grounding the sermon in the original context.

As part of the introduction, the preacher should tell us unequivocally what the main point of the passage and the sermon is. If the main point of the sermon is not the main point of the text, the sermon is fatally flawed and must be brought into submission to the text.

At this time, it is appropriate to help the congregation move to the first point by telling a story or by using an appropriate illustration that illumines the main point of the text and sermon. Oh that it were easy, but it is not. Sermon illustrations and stories are fraught with difficulty. The chief problem is that rather than illuminating the text and sermon they can easily draw the hearer away from the text and to the preacher—and every pastor has committed this faux pas. One might think that translating the text, analyzing the text, outlining the text, or understanding the original setting of the text might be the most difficult part of preaching, but, in my experience, the most difficult part of preaching is illustrating. I suspect that I am not alone since there are whole volumes and online services offering sermon illustrations. That there is a market for these products suggests that many preachers struggle to illustrate sermons well.

As I work and pray in my study trying to find ways to illustrate the main point or one of the subsidiary points of a sermon, I can rarely think of an appropriate analogy. In nearly all sermons (at least in its first preaching) the illustration is extemporaneous. For me, it is not until I am in the text with the people that the analogies come to life. Nevertheless, I do not recommend this procedure. For this reason, the best way to illustrate a point is from Scripture itself.

The Points

How one develops the points of the sermon is determined by how one analyzes the preaching text (the pericope).¹ It is also determined by whether one is preaching a text serially or topically (e.g., in a catechism sermon) and by whether the sermon outline follows the flow of the text as we have it, or whether the preacher, having done his work to discover the organizing theme of the passage, reconstructs (i.e., rearranges) the text for the purposes of the sermon. For my part, I tend to follow the organization of didactic and narrative texts. When I am preaching a psalm, where repetition is intended, I will typically arrange the sermon to try to capture the point of the repetition without becoming repetitious. In the case of a psalm or texts in that genre I am also looking for the point in the text that is not repeated (e.g., Psalm 110:4), which is often the central point of the text.

The goal of the outline is to integrate exposition and application. I agree with the old Reformed that the text must be applied, but what the application is must be determined by the text itself and not decided a priori (i.e., before one has done the work in the text). The text itself must lead us to the application, which, depending on the text, might be behavioral (which is what most think application is), or it might be doctrinal, or it might have to do with piety, or it might simply be to call the congregation to faith in Christ.

Whatever application is required by the text of Scripture must flow from a thoughtful, contextual, and careful exposition of the text. By exposition I do not mean merely marching through a verse word by word, which can result in a kind of unintended deconstruction of the text. Rather, by exposition I mean paying attention to the intent of the text. As far as can be determined, what was the author saying to the original recipients in their context and why? Answering these questions well may well rescue a sermon from treating the text as a springboard where the application is justified by a word or a phrase but not by the intent of the author and text.

The Conclusion

Taking off and flying a plane are very important, but perhaps not as important as landing the plane. Here I offer advice with fear and trembling since, in this regard, I feel unqualified. Most of my conclusions might fairly be considered rough landings. Again, where I have a story or illustration at the end, it might be more effective to use it as the transition from the last point to the conclusion, and perhaps there are grounds for using a story to conclude a sermon. I remember Jay Adams imploring us not to default to concluding sermons with poems or hymns. That counsel seems right, and it stuck with me. In the middle of the illustration sandwich, the preacher should restate the main theme or thesis of the sermon. What is this text about and what has the preacher been saying for the last thirty minutes? It is a good idea to remember that no one in the congregation has probably paid undivided attention to the sermon.

Resources On Preaching

What follows is a suggestive, and not an exhaustive, list of resources. These are some of the volumes that have influenced my preaching or that I think are helpful or that I intend to read (e.g., Ferguson and Van Mastricht). As valuable as these and other books are, my preaching has probably been just as shaped by the preachers I have heard over the years. My first Reformed pastor was Vern Pollema, who was the minister at St John’s Reformed Church (RCUS), Lincoln, Nebraska when I first encountered the Reformed faith. I could guess some of Vern’s influences (he grew up in the CRC and graduated from Westminster Theological Seminary). What affected me most was his passion for the truth of Scripture, for Christ, and for us. I was affected much by the preaching of David Fletcher, Rector of St Ebbes, Oxford. His love of Christ, the Scriptures, and Christ’s people was infectious. Mike Horton’s 2008 lecture on distinguishing law and gospel in preaching was a turning point for me. To that point I fear I had regularly confused the two. After that lecture I began consciously to try to ask how the principles of law and gospel are reflected in a given text. I am grateful for Bob Godfrey’s preaching. I wish he would write a book on homiletics. His preaching is a model of fidelity to the text and the benefit of doing good exegesis, of asking the right questions of the text, and of answering them from the text. I am grateful for the influence of Andy Cammenga, who always addressed the children, and whose warm smile always reminded me that however stern he might have been at any one moment in a sermon, Jesus really does love us. Finally, I have benefited immensely from the faithful labors of my pastor Chris Gordon, who is a model of gracious faithfulness as he preaches the text week by week and through each sermon draws us to Christ.

Some of these books are probably not perfect homiletical models for North American preachers in 2025. For example, Perkins and Van Mastricht had an hour to preach a sermon. Virtually no preacher has that luxury today. Vos’ messages were well suited to the chapel at Princeton Seminary but probably should not be translated to the pulpit; but still, we preachers could learn from how he understood redemptive history, how he read texts, and what he thought was important for hearers. I do not necessarily agree with everything these books say. For example, I included Jay Adam’s book because it affected me, but I would not recommend it now as a model. Yet, Jay is a model of clear and compelling communication. It was impossible to be in a congregation where he was preaching and come away untouched.

Note

Pericope comes to English via Latin from Greek (περικοπή). In classical usage it signaled “a cutting all round, mutilation.” G. H. Liddell, An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1996), s.v., περικοπή. In this context it refers to a selected passage.

Part One

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Post authored by:

R. Scott Clark
R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.
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