So maybe this post isn’t for everyone, but it’s for a lot more people than just pastors. So yeah, pastors do a lot of preaching, but there are a lot more opportunities for sermons than there are pastors to deliver those sermons. Children’s ministry, nursing homes, youth group, long-term care facilities, Christian school chapels, and rehab facilities all have opportunities for preachers to bring the Word of God. Maybe you feel called to preach, I promise, those opportunities are out there. Or maybe you just see the opportunity, and you are willing to be used by the Lord to meet that need. So whether you’ve been a pastor for 20 years or think you might be willing to preach a sermon sometime, here’s my handy-dandy guide to building an expository sermon. (Shout out to the godfather of Biblical preaching, Haddon Robinson, whom I stole from liberally and without remorse as all good preachers do.)
Step 1: Choose the Passage of Scripture
Your starting point should be Scripture. Grab one story, parable, or contained thought. While I do think topical sermons are viable, healthy, and wise at times, they do involve some inherent dangers. First, the topic-based sermon is only as good as the topic is Biblical. A topical sermon on the work of the Holy Spirit in our life – perfect. A topical sermon on principles of dating – eh, there’s no verses directly about that so it’s a bit of a stretch. A topical sermon on getting wealthy through multi-level marking – nope, not in there! (And my all-time pet peeve, using the titles of movie blockbusters to craft your summer sermon series. Movies can be illustrations not sermon ideas!!!)
The second danger is that there’s a real possibility of speaking only about what you want to talk about and not talking about what you don’t want to talk about. I love the peace that comes from marching through a book of the Bible where God is setting the agenda on what is being talked about. If it’s an uncomfortable passage, they can’t blame me, God inspired it.
Step 2: Clearly State the Main Idea & Outline the Passage
I like to answer the question: why did the author, both human and divine, write this passage? Even in the narrative portions of the Old Testament, we can ask ourselves, for instance, why did God have Moses include this particular story about Abraham? To display “what” to the people of Israel in the Wilderness? Likewise, in the Epistles in the New Testament, I essentially am playing a game of Jeopardy. I view Scripture as giving the answer, but I don’t always have the question. Thus 1 Corinthians 15 would be “What is the importance of the Resurrection, Alex.” This helps us to make sure we stay focused on the main idea or “major on the major” as opposed to getting too distracted by minor aspects of the passage.
As we create an outline of the passage, we should be able to see whether we are dealing with 2, 3, or maybe 4 ideas that support the main idea (but beyond that you’ve got to cut your passage down smaller and preach the sequel next week.) This outline of the passage becomes the outline of the sermon. If we just use a passage as a jumping off point to talk about whatever we want, well then we might as well build a topical sermon. The hallmark of the expository sermon is that we stay locked into the scriptural passage from start to finish.
Step 4: Build the Body of the Sermon
Thus, we take each point from the outline of the passage to build the sermon itself. We essentially follow the same pattern with each point. First, explain it. I want to pull-apart the verses and squeeze as much information out of them as I can like an orange press. Once I go through the passage myself a couple times, I peak at some of my favorite commentaries to make sure I didn’t miss anything. I do it in that order because if I jump to commentaries too quickly, I’m not strengthening my own spiritual muscles and commentaries, by their very nature, tend to hone on the obscure. They do help adjust my word choice just a bit, but remember, sermons should “major on the major” and not focus too much on article declension or whatnot. To me the import part of that study is for my own confidence that I understand the passage inside and out and that confidence comes out in my delivery.
Second thing I’m going to do is illustrate what’s happening. While the audience has just been fed the healthy, free-range meat of the Word, an illustration will help them chew on it a bit more and, ideally, bring the concept into the modern day. Personal stories, hypothetical examples, or even snippets from movies can all be useful tools to help us relate and understand a concept of Scripture. Even other Bible verses can be used as illustrations. Sometimes another passage might say something even more clearly and we can use those verses and then snap back to our primary passage like a rubber band.
Finally, we use a transition. This is just a sentence or two that relates this point in the outline to the main idea and how it relates to the next point. If you were to look at my sermon notes, they would look like something John Nash from A Beautiful Mind wrote on the back of a napkin. It would be incomprehensible to the untrained eye (and even myself when I read my notes from too many years ago.) But one thing I consistently do is write my transition sentence in…
Bold Size 18-point Font.
Why? Because I have crafted that sentence to not only help recap the key ideas in a concise fashion, help the audience see how everything fits together like the final few pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, and I want to be able to easily find that sentence in the midst of my written word salad.
Step 5 or 6: Write an Introduction to the Sermon
I did not mislabel the steps. The introduction is not the first thing you write. The introduction is helping to introduce the main idea of the sermon and orient you to the passage of Scripture. How can you write it before you’ve taken the time to dissect the passage like it was a frog in your 9th grade biology class? You don’t even know what you are dealing with yet.
Now the first thing out of your mouth should be geared toward grabbing the audience’s attention. We are competing with a lot of distractions. If you don’t get eyes and ears on you fast, you probably won’t get them later. This can be done in a variety of ways. You can make a powerful or even controversial statement (but true!!!) You can ask a probing question and let it set with them and churn uncomfortably in their mind for just a moment. You can start with an engaging story – something that captures emotions, intrigue, or relatability. Every preacher needs to work inside their skill-sets and temperament. I’m not calling anyone to pretend to be something there not, but don’t hem and haw for the first two minutes. Even if I’m guest preaching somewhere I don’t introduce myself in the beginning usually. It honestly doesn’t matter who I am and fast-facts aren’t that interesting or attention-getting. Connection can be built in better ways, and I’d rather spend time squeezing as much truth into the sermon as possible.
Beyond grabbing their attention, there are two other goals I want to accomplish in the first 3-4 minutes of the introduction. I want to orient the audience to what they’re about to hear and give them context for the passage we’re about to dig into. I know there is an idea to conceal the main idea of the sermon for later like a knock-out punch. We all want to be Nathan standing before King David and get our audience enthralled in a story and then hit them with a “You… you are that man!” and have them weeping in the aisles over their sin. But I find that is not the most consistently effective tool. If we want people to remember what they heard (and you should want that), you should tell them what your about to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them. People tend to want to categorize what they’re learning. Help them open to the right section in their brain.
Additionally, we want to help our audience contextualize the passage of Scripture we’re about to encounter. In a typical audience, you will have a wide knowledge base. The average church-going person knows who Noah, Abraham, and Moses are. But do they know they lived hundreds of years apart. We are closer to Chrisopher Columbus than Moses was to Abraham, and I think a lot of people probably think they played poker or Hebrew Hold’em together. Giving people the historical context of the world in which they are about to enter will help them frame what they are hearing once Scripture is read. I often hear preachers read the passage of Scripture first and then talk about its context 15-min later. The average person was seriously limited in understanding that passage when they didn’t have all the information to do it successfully. This often times could just be 2-3 sentences. If I’m dealing with one of the Epistles of Paul, I might just say something like… “This letter was written to the church in Ephesus which was one of the churches Paul worked with for many years there in present-day Turkey (I guess they rebranded into the fancier Türkiye now). So this is about 30 years after Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead. The disciples and especially the Apostle Paul, who used to persecute the church but Jesus appeared to him on the road to Damascus and his life was radically changed, are now spreading the Good News of Jesus around the world and helping to build up churches in every major city that will listen.” Then I will share any relevant information the previous verses (i.e. previous weeks’ sermons) that is necessary or helpful to understand what is being discussed in this passage. Once I actually read the passage of Scripture, we enter the body of the sermon.
Step 6 or 5: Write a Conclusion to the Sermon
If you noticed, Step 5 and 6 are interchangeable. You can construct your introduction and conclusion in either order. The first goal of the conclusion is to restate everything that was said, but in a sentence or two. I know this feels like its cheapening the sermon. How can you sum up all the important things it took you 45-minutes say into 15 seconds? Well, you’ve been practicing doing this with your transition sentences, and the truth is, that is how Scripture works. If I say, “The Gospel is incredible.” Some of you know exactly what I mean. But if you ask me to speak 3-hours on the Gospel I could do it no problem. There are multiple words in the Bible like it such as Righteousness, Justification, Atonement, Propitiation, Sin, Grace, Mercy, etc. Each could be whole topical sermons. Recapping the sermon in 15-seconds helps both the person who paid attention and now has a simple sentence or even just a word with a huge depth of meaning. But it also helps the person who was districted on their phone and riddled with adult-undiagnosed ADHD who at least heard a great sentence that will hopefully bounce around in their head enough to impact them a little or maybe even re-listen to the sermon later.
The final goal of the conclusion is to help people apply this sermon to their lives. Application can be tough for both the preacher and the audience. Sometimes the application is easy and obvious or comes to me almost supernaturally. Other times, I have to wrestle with the passage for days until I can finally bring a worthwhile invitation. One thing that helps me is to say, “how could a kid in middle school apply this passage?” “How could a stay-at-home mom apply this, like really live it out?” “How could someone in a workplace, a hospital, their home, or their school actually exemplify what is being discussed in this passage of scripture?” I basically just share these thoughts. I always want people to go beyond a change of thinking. I want them to venture into changes of action. Even if the passage is just challenging us to think differently, how might those thoughts begin to affect our actual lives? Don’t assume people will just do this on their own. It’s easy to just hear the Word and forget it. It’s easy to hear the Word and think it’s for someone else. The shepherd must help the sheep see this is for them. Help guide them to running waters and green pastures. We take the time to make sure they don’t miss what the Lord is saying to them, and then we hope and pray that they continue on that journey throughout the week and engage Scripture the same way they saw it displayed from the pulpit.
Hope this helped : )
Joe Allotta 