Every sermon, every Sunday, it’s personal. It’s always personal, says Jonathan Edwards. Well, actually, John Edwards in his book, The Preacher (London, 1705), said it.

Part of the fun of reading Jonathan Edwards’ earliest preached sermons in Kimnach’s, The Works of Jonathan Edwards (vol. 10) is learning about his major influencers. Kimnach describes John Edwards’ philosophy of preaching:

“In order to preach persuasively, Edwards insists, the preacher must believe and feel intensely what he preaches; he must then communicate his personal feelings with the message so that he preaches experience, as it were.” (p. 17).

The Preacher was one of two books that Jonathan Edwards quoted, so we know he read it. I know from Edwards’ preaching that he learned from it. Imagine Edwards reading his sermon manuscript knowing he has to communicate his personal feelings about Scripture.

Now imagine you (and me) this Sunday. Hopefully preaching without–or very few–notes. Imagine that you and I “believe and feel intensely what” we’re preaching. That shouldn’t be too hard for us to imagine, right?

We should be able to communicate our experience, our personal faith and intense feelings about the passage. No amount of exceptional exegesis and understanding of the passage communicates well without it. I might go so far to say that our experience with the text outweighs exegesis.

And this takes no extra sermon preparation.

But what it does take is a sincere act of worship in the study and in the moments prior to our Sunday teaching/preaching moment. It means responding to the Text before asking our parishioners to do so.

We have a week ahead of us, Lord willing, to study God’s Word and to make it personal. We have a week to prepare to preach our own experience with God through that Word. That means, most of all, not preparing sermons for “them.” It’s God’s Word to us. And we have the privilege to hear it first before preaching it so God receives glory in the church and in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:21).

Randal

P.S. If you’ve ever preached through a book of the Bible, you know how difficult it is to feel the same intensity about every Text. Great sermons require great texts and not all pastors and parishioners consider every text a great text.