Josh Benner

Tag: homiletics

  • 4 goals I have with every sermon I preach

    4 goals I have with every sermon I preach

    I’ve had the privilege of preaching over 450 sermons. In every sermon, I have four goals and those never change.

    1. To be faithful to the text

    Preaching must begin with the text itself. That might sound like stating the obvious, but it’s not actually where every pastor starts. Many pastors start with an idea “how to be a good parent,” “how to be a good financial steward,” “how to have a happy marriage,” etc. From that thesis, they seek out Biblical texts or passages which support that idea.

    It’s my conviction that the better place to begin in preaching is with a Biblical text itself.

    Sermons around topics can often take or leave the Bible.

    I believe that the best sermons are the ones that are so intimately tied to the Biblical text that they would be incomprehensible without it. The sermon must be grounded in the text. My goal is to let the text speak for itself and to preach that faithfully.

    2. To preach the gospel

    This is just as important as the first goal. Every sermon should be a gospel sermon. Every sermon should be an opportunity to communicate the Good News of Jesus Christ and that we have an offer of grace and forgiveness from a good and loving savior.

    There are two key reasons why every sermon should be a gospel sermon. First, because Christians need to constantly be reminded of the gospel.

    In Romans 1:16-17, Paul says:

    For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. 17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.” 

    Secondly, there will almost always be someone listening to the sermon who does not actually believe in the gospel. For that reason, every sermon should be taken as an opportunity to proclaim the message of salvation.

    3. To explain how the text applies to life

    If the sermon has no real world application, it’s not a sermon. It’s a lecture!

    The great 20th century expositor and preacher John Stott said “if there is no summons, there is no sermon.” His point was that if a sermon isn’t calling on the congregation to do something, it’s not truly a sermon.

    Application can be challenging. Good application requires having an understanding of the true heart of the text. If the great takeaway from every sermon is “read the Bible more and pray more,” then it is ultimately lazy preaching. Great preaching must be mining for gold in the passage.

    4. To preach with clarity

    I’ve heard many a sermon that began well and then wandered off into incoherence.

    I’ve been in the middle of sermons and thought “what is the preacher even talking about?” Clarity is important in good preaching.

    I think the easiest way to preach with clarity is to have a clear outline for the sermon. Honestly, a good outline can be one of the biggest challenges of writing a sermon. Studying the passage is the easy part. Arranging the sermon in a logical way is where a lot of the real work of sermon writing comes in. But it’s the difference between a good sermon and a bad sermon.

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  • 4 goals in every sermon I preach

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    I love preaching. I love everything about it. I love preparing to preach. I love behind the pulpit. I love evaluating a message afterwards. I love listening to sermons.

    I think a lot about preaching.

    In preaching, there are a lot of factors to consider in how to construct a sermon: genre of the passage, length of the passage, the audience, etc.

    But four things that don’t change for me are certain goals I have in every message.

    1. To be faithful to the text
      You must begin by going to the text with reverence and not importing opinions onto the text, but prayerfully and carefully trying to understand the text for what it has to say.

      The Apostle Paul addresses the temptation for people to be drawn to unfaithful preaching in 2 Timothy 4:2-4: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.

    2. To preach the gospel
      I’m reminded the word of the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 2:2, I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. Sermons cannot lose sight of the gospel. No matter what else is covered in a sermon, it needs to always go back to Jesus and the grace the he offers to sinners, the life he offers to those dead in sin. No matter how practical a pastor wants to make a sermon, the most practical message of all is that you need Jesus. He is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the father except through him (John 14:6).

    3. To explain how the text applies to life
      When I started preaching, I think this was one of the things that came hardest for me. But it’s also essential to preaching. Without application, a sermon isn’t a sermon, it’s a lecture.

      The Apostle James said to be doers of the word and not only hearers, adding: the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing (James 1:25).

    4. To be clear
      A sermon is useless if people can’t understand it. I’ve listened to many sermons and found myself thinking “what is he talking about?!” No idea is so brilliant that it can’t be comprehensibly communicated. I think lack of clarity is often a byproduct of a lack of preparation.

    Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear what you think, and don’t forget to subscribe! 

    Josh Benner is the associate pastor at Cornerstone Evangelical Free Church in Fergus Falls, Minnesota and has a Master of Divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He enjoys writing about faith and culture. He lives with his wife Kari in Minnesota.

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