Every passage has a unique take on the gospel: In John 10 you are a sheep who needs a Shepherd to lay down his life for you, in Ephesians 2 you are a spiritual zombie who needs to be raised to new life, in Psalm 72 you need a king who executes God’s justice and righteousness. All unique gospel messages, yet all are gospel. And notice how only one of them involves the doctrine of substitutionary atonement.
Do you tend to tack the same gospel message onto every sermon? Or do you look for the unique demonstration of God’s grace in each passage you preach?
4. Prepare the sermon for your own spiritual growth, as well as your church’s.
Imagine you are at a steakhouse and you get to pick the cook who will grill your ribeye. You can choose between two equally talented chefs. One is a big dude named Bud (whose arteries you’re guessing have about 63 percent blockage). The other is a skinny vegetarian. Again, they are equally talented chefs. Who do you pick?
I don’t know about you, but I’m going with Bud. I have a feeling that he feasts on the stuff he grills. He can taste the thing the whole time he’s cooking it. He can prepare it for you how he would prepare it for himself. The vegetarian is personally invested in me enjoying the meal,
But when it comes to your pulpit, are you Bud, or are you the other guy?
We need more preachers whose arteries are even gospel-centered, who are feasting while they are preparing. I fear that many preachers have good homiletical skills, but are skin and bones spiritually because they only work to feed others.
5. Rely on the Holy Spirit—not the preaching style itself—to bear fruit in your ministry.
Don’t treat gospel-centered preaching like a formula to guarantee ministry results. Keller, Piper, Dever, etc. are gospel-centered preachers, and they have huge ministries. If I apply their style of preaching, then my church will grow, too!
Ummm, no. That’s not how it works. And even if it did, that would be God working despite the preacher, not because of him.
The Spirit does his work in God’s people through God’s word, but the Spirit also blows where he will. Preaching style is a matter of what gives the Spirit the most to work with, not what coerces him into doing a work. I happen to believe that gospel-centered, expository preaching gives the Spirit the most to work with because it aims to let the word run at top gear. It’s the Lamborghini of preaching styles because it most aims to put the Spirit in the driver’s seat.
