What Does a Good Sermon Cost?
The
Glad Sacrifice of Christian Preaching
August 16, 2018
The Mondays.
Sometimes they even creep into Sunday nights.
Various
physical, emotional, and even spiritual letdowns often follow pouring yourself
out in the pulpit. Lows that inevitably come after the highs of corporate
worship. Regrets about what I didn’t say, or didn’t say quite right, or said
and should not have. Even when “it went well” from all the preacher can tell,
we feel an emotional deficit because of all it takes to prepare and deliver a
sermon.
Maybe the most
underrated aspect of the Mondays isn’t what’s now past, but what’s still ahead:
next Sunday. Another week of preparation. Another seven days to shoulder the
burden. Another week of pondering what to say, and the often harder work of
what not to say. Another week of waiting on God to provide a word from his word
to again feed and preserve the people.
Good Christian
preaching and teaching requires regular, and at times enormous, self-sacrifice.
In the preparation. In the moment. And outside the pulpit. It’s often a quiet,
private, behind-the-scenes mantle the preacher’s wife and children see, but the
congregation does not. It is not heavy lifting physically, but it can be
unusually taxing spiritually and emotionally.
It is a burden
good preachers gladly
bear, and yet it is a burden.
 |
George Whitefield preaching
on the streets
|
Mid-Sermon Mirage
Every
Christian knows what it’s like to hear a sermon, but very few know the personal
costs involved in faithfully giving one. Hearing a sermon takes half an hour.
Giving one takes days, if not weeks, and in some sense a lifetime. How easy it
would be for a listener to sit comfortably in the pew thinking, I could do this, and better.
It’s simple to see what he’s doing wrong. It would be a quick fix if he just
asked for our help, right?
One of
preaching’s many paradoxes is the disparity between how hard it is to stand up
and preach well, and how easy it is to sit there and take it lightly.
Wouldn’t
it be great if I were up there and telling people what I think? Wouldn’t it be
nice to have all these people listen to my thoughts? All with little to no
consideration of the actual pressure, the demands and deadlines, the dying to
one’s own perfectionism and putting yourself forward to be misunderstood and
criticized. Pride in some of us dreams of ourselves up front as the center of
attention. Pride in others terrifies us from saying anything firm to so many,
especially in public, face to face with a crowd of potential critics.
Pride will not
only jump to speak when it’s puffed up, but button the lip when insecure.
Preaching bids a man come and die to both.
 |
The True Appeal of Spurgeon's Preaching
|
Cost of Preparation
Preachers,
aspiring preachers, and non-preachers alike do well to consider the costs of
faithful word ministry in the church. The cost begins in preparation, long
before the moment of delivery. Preachers often bear the burden weeks before a
particular message, a weight that gets greater the week of, and is especially
heavy the night before and morning of.
Perhaps the
most stress comes in the pinch between a coming assignment, on a fixed day, and
the uncertainty of what specific direction to take in the message. What does
God want me to say to this
people and at this
time? The pinch is especially acute because the message we have
been charged to give is not our own but God’s. “What we proclaim is not
ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’
sake” (2
Corinthians 4:5).
Faithful preaching
resists the allure of simply telling other people in public who we are and what
we think and what we have done. Rather, it is a stewardship from God (Titus
1:7; 1
Peter 4:10) to serve others, not self, by announcing the good news about
who he is, what he thinks, and what he has done and will do, based on what he
says in his word. “Whoever speaks, [let him do so] as one who speaks oracles of
God” (1
Peter 4:11). We are stewards, and “it is required of stewards that they be
found faithful” (1 Corinthians 4:2).
Before we
graciously expose the church to the words of God, he calls us first to submit
ourselves to him. To preach his words well requires that they first land
hardest on the preacher himself. We bear another’s message, not our own. In our
preparation, we carry a weight that involves not just the mental work of study,
but the heart work of repentance and the spiritual work of shepherding a
particular people.
Cost in the Moment
For
Christians, corporate worship, in a real sense, is our most important hour of
the week, and single
most important habit. We want to be careful with this way of thinking and
talking, because the importance of the hour lies not in our performance or
individual roles, but in what God delights to do by his Spirit when his people
gather together in worship. And yet it’s unavoidable that the preacher plays a
significant part — which should humble God’s spokesman, not puff him up.
For preachers,
the public nature of the sermon is both a necessity and a cost. It is necessary
because the very nature of the task is heralding God’s word to his church. And
it’s a cost because, among other pressures, most of us agree that public
speaking is challenging. Survey after survey reports that on the whole, modern
people fear public speaking more than anything else, including death.
 |
1 I charge you in the presence
of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and
by his appearing and his kingdom: 2 preach the word; be ready in
season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete
patience and teaching. – 2 Timothy 4:1-2 (ESV)
[PHOTO SOURCE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVqLedcmpRI]
|
Add to that
the solemnity of the task, as Paul charges his protégé in 2
Timothy 4:1–2, of which John Piper writes, “There is nothing quite like it
anywhere else in Scripture. . . . I am not aware of any other biblical command
that has such an extended, exalted, intensifying introduction” (Expository Exultation, 66). Note the
“five preceding intensifiers” to Paul’s charge to Timothy to preach the word:
(1) I charge
you
(2) in the presence of God
(3) and of Christ Jesus,
(4) who is to judge the living and the dead,
(5) and by his appearing and his kingdom:
(2) in the presence of God
(3) and of Christ Jesus,
(4) who is to judge the living and the dead,
(5) and by his appearing and his kingdom:
Preach the word.
To those today
who suspect previous generations overestimated the place of preaching, Piper
comments, “I doubt that anyone has ever overstated the seriousness that Paul is
seeking to awaken here.”
Beyond the
solemnity of the moment is the call to courage. Public speaking is one
challenge. Speaking into the church’s most important hour is another. Preaching
with courage, when God’s word is at odds with the prevailing word in society
(which inevitably takes root in the church in some form or fashion), requires
even more. If we are faithful to God’s voice, it is almost certain that someone
within earshot each Sunday, if not many, will not like what we are saying.
Preachers also
are unusually exposed spiritually. Extended monologue, on God’s behalf, to
human souls, unavoidably reveals a man’s own heart, both by what he says and
what he does not — which produces a deep, unconscious aversion to preaching in
many men.
Cost Outside the Pulpit
Finally,
sacrifice in good preaching is intimately intertwined with the preacher’s own
life. Faithful preaching is not just a once-in-a-while event but a lifestyle.
Paul’s charge to Timothy to preach
the word includes “be ready in season and out of season” (2
Timothy 4:2) and “always be sober-minded” (2
Timothy 4:5). When a man stands before God’s people as God’s spokesman, the
stakes are not only raised for his words in the moment but for his life outside
the pulpit.
Keep a close
watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you
will save both yourself and your hearers. (1
Timothy 4:16)
Not many of
you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be
judged with greater strictness. (James
3:1)
The man who
addresses God’s people as his herald will be looked to, inevitably, as an
example. “Set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in
faith, in purity” (1 Timothy 4:12). Lazy preachers may get by for
a time, but their laziness will be revealed soon enough. “Practice these
things, immerse yourself in them, so that all
may see your progress” (1
Timothy 4:15). Sunday after Sunday becomes a public demonstration of
whether the preacher is growing or stagnant, and it will be plain over time (1
Timothy 4:24).
One of the
greatest costs outside the pulpit is the subtle (and at times not-so-subtle)
way the preacher’s wife and children endure the ups and downs Daddy navigates.
It is no small thing to carry the height of one’s vocational responsibilities
during the weekend, when the kids are out of school and most available. It
takes work, and emotional fortitude, to give yourself fully to family all day
Saturday, without being distracted by the task of preaching to dozens or
hundreds of hungry Christians in less than 24 hours.
 |
|
Where the Bible is esteemed as the inspired and
inerrant Word of God, preaching can flourish. But where the Bible is treated
merely as a record of valuable religious insight, preaching dies. - John Piper
[PHOTO SOURCE: https://www.azquotes.com/quote/1323668]
|
My Burden Gladly Bearing
Yes, the costs
are great, and aspiring preachers should count them, but when God lays hold on
a man to make him his herald — in preparation, in the moment, and outside the
pulpit — he will gladly bear the burden, like a husband and a father, for the
sake of those God calls him to lead, provide for, and protect. Faithful
preachers say to their people, as Paul said to his, without pretense, “I will
most gladly spend and be spent for your souls” (2
Corinthians 12:15).
True preaching
is not easy work, but good preachers do it with joy. The kind of week in, week
out investment that is most beneficial to the church is the preaching done,
with all its attendant costs, with
gladness. “Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for
that would be of no advantage to you” (Hebrews
13:17). Pastors who bear the burden begrudgingly do not bless their people
so much as those who do so happily — “not under compulsion, but willingly, as God
would have you; not for shameful gain, but eagerly; not domineering over those
in your charge, but being examples to the flock” (1
Peter 5:2–3).
What will a
faithful sermon cost your pastor this Sunday? Much more than you might think.
