How Then Shall We Live?

What is the goal of good preaching? What should a great sermon be? Should it be an act of great oratory? Should it be full of passion and verve? Should it touch us emotionally? Should it reach us logically?

Ideally a great sermon would be all of the above, but fundamentally what should a great sermon do? It should cause us to ask the question how then should I live? Given what I have heard from God's revealed word how should I alter my life? How should I change my life so that it is more conformed to the image of God's son Jesus Christ?

Yet as I reflect on nearly eight years preaching periodically I think this is still the thing I struggle with most...how do I apply this passage to people who are listening? How does the exegesis of this passage help the lady in the pew struggling with infertility? How does the exegesis of this passage help the man struggling with envy? This is difficult because it requires us to know the people we are preaching to, to make an accurate application we need to know the struggles of the people, the pains of the people, the hurts of the people.

Of course we can make general applications of the "now go and do likewise" variety, but yet in order to make application which is real and heartfelt we must know the people. We must never use the pulpit as a battering ram to hammer someone who has confided in us but yet the word of God needs to be applied. For it to be applied effectively it requires knowledge of the people, knowledge of their struggles and knowledge of the situations which they find themselves in. In short it requires us as preachers to love the people we are preaching too, it requires us to desire not that people think we are a great orator, a passionate speaker or an intellectual giant but that we desire that people come away from our sermons thinking in light of todays sermon i really shouldn't gossip about that women in work, in light of todays sermon i really don't need to spend all those extra hours in work.

What makes a great sermon, of course it should be logical, of course it should be delivered with passion, of course it should be intellectually stimulating, but above all a great sermon should cause us to ask how then should I live in light of God's revelation to me? How should my life be changed and moulded by what I heard today?