mgpcpastor's blog

While known primarily for his background in counselling, Jay Adams is a great teacher of preaching.
The Institute for Nouthetic Studies is posting articles by Adams on preaching each Friday.
They will be refreshing for experienced preachers or instructive for novices.
Preaching With Purpose was the initial text from which I learned to preach.

This week Adams focusses on the need to discern the purpose of the text upon which the sermon is based and for that to plainly be the purpose of the text.
It’s amazing how many preachers use texts as a departure point into what they want to say (content which some times is biblically based and helpful) without ever telling the congregation what the text before them actually means.

From Adams:

For years now I have told my students that on Sunday morning if I were to awaken them at 3 o’clock and ask, “What is the general purpose of your sermon today?” and at 3:15 a.m. I were to ask, “What is your specific purpose?” they ought to know the answers so well that they could spit them out in a crisp, one-sentence response (“My general purpose is to inform”; “My specific purpose is to inform the congregation about the facts of death and resurrection listed in 1 Thessalonians 4”) and roll over and go back to sleep.
“You’re kidding!” you say. “Is purpose all that important?” You’d better believe it. Unless a preacher knows the purpose of his sermon, all is lost. He himself is lost, the congregation will soon get lost, and the sermon would be better if it were lost.

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When I speak of the Holy Spirit’s purpose in writing a portion of the Scriptures, what I have in mind by “purpose” is what He intends to do to the reader. In every passage that He inspired, the Holy Spirit (unlike many preachers) had some intention, some purpose, in view. It is the preacher’s task to discover not only what He intended to do to the reader, but also to make that same purpose his own in preaching to the listener. The preacher has no right to use a portion of the Scriptures for his own purposes; he must discover the Spirit’s purpose and preach from that passage to achieve that purpose and that purpose alone. When preachers begin to take this matter seriously there will be more power in their preaching (the Spirit blesses His Word) and more understanding of the Scriptures by the congregation. There will be less heresy, less scripturally detached essays, and less wasted effort and time.

Read Preaching With Purpose here.