Send us a text

Isolation means we must choose one passage out of all the passages of the Bible for use in the expository sermon. The choice of a preaching text is important. 

As the preacher prays and reads the word of God, the Holy Spirit will lead the preacher to what he is to deliver. He will prepare his sermons from these passages of Scripture. Since the Bible is a book of texts, it is vitally important for the preacher to saturate himself in the Word of God. The preacher must live in the Bible so the Lord God can bring sermon ideas to his mind.

If the preacher is preaching through a book of the Bible, or if he is preaching a sermon series on some Bible character, or some Bible topic,  his passage is already chosen. Regardless, the preacher must have a text to serve as the basis for his sermon.

Let this matter of having a good, biblical never be underestimated! Let the preacher ever beware that he seeks the mind of God in the choice of his preaching texts. Let him always make sure that he is preaching the text in its natural context, and that he never twists a text to suit his own preaching goals or doctrinal slant.

Here are four reasons you should choose a text for your sermon:

Your hearers do not need a word from you, they need a word from God.

• Not only should the word be from God, but it should also be shown to be from God.
• God has spoken through the Scriptures — all the truth that we need, and more meaning than you could ever exhaust is found in the Bible.
• You are not the authority in the sermon. God is the authority, speaking by his Spirit, through his Word as you faithfully proclaim it. Without a text, the authority for your sermon is shaky at best and probably lost completely.

WHY CHOOSE ONLY ONE TEXT?
Your next temptation might be to pull out your concordance or your topical Bible and lead your hearers on a trek through multiple texts. This is another way of choosing not to choose. There are several good reasons for settling on a single text:

• You only have time for one text. There are not enough hours in your week to study multiple texts deeply. If you choose to preach on many texts, you will only skim the surface of any of them.
• If you preach multiple texts, you miss the opportunity to give your hearers a good example of how to study a passage of Scripture deeply.
• The more texts you use, the more subjective your message tends to be. You will tend toward proof-texting your ideas rather than explaining the ideas in the text. You can find yourself preaching your own mind, rather than the mind of God.
• Using multiple texts lets you off the hook too easily. Wrestling with the meaning of a passage is hard work. It takes effort, thought, prayer, and listening to God. Multiple texts can give you an easy out. Instead of staying long enough to reap the benefits of the hard work, you can just skip on to the next text.

HOW LONG IS A GOOD SERMON TEXT?
There are almost unlimited possibilities for sermon texts. Here are three guidelines for a good preaching text:

• Short enough to be manageable in the time you have for preparation and delivery.
• Long enough to provide a thorough foundation for your sermon.
• A complete unit of thought. If you are using a story or a parable, use the entire episode. If it is an argument in an epistle, let the text be a major point within the

Support the show

Subscribe to this podcast, leave us a review, and tell others about us if you find it helpful.

Contact me at [email protected].

The podcast is a ministry of Dr. Alan Carr and The Sermon Notebook (http://www.sermonnotebook.org)