I went to the fair last week, a day filled with fried dough, horse pulling, and old tools. The farm museum displayed obsolete pieces of equipment culled from deteriorating barns and tagged to explain their purposes. The curator had tagged some items with the question, “What does this do?” The farm equipment had lost its purpose, and even the curator did not know what it was. Sermons, too, can become like old barns and rusty tools. Preaching loses its God-intended purpose when divorced from the God-inspired text. God breathed His Word through His writers to do something in our lives today (2 Tim. 3:16-17). Every sermon should do what God intended to do through the passage being explained.

Abraham Kuruvilla wrote an excellent article in the Journal of the Evangelical Society exploring the importance of pragmatics as opposed to semantics in preaching. Semantics deals with what the author is saying while pragmatics deals with what the author is doing by what he is saying. Suppose my wife tells me, “The trash is full.” A semantic analysis of the statement would lead to an understanding of the state of the trash can. A pragmatic analysis of the sentence would lead me to conclude that my wife is really saying, “Take out the trash!” If I am going to understand what my wife is doing by what she is saying I must grasp the intention behind the statement (Kuruvilla, “What is the Author Doing with What He is Saying? Pragmatics and Preaching – An Appeal!” in JETS, September 2017, Vol. 60, No. 3, p. 565).

 

The same is true for expository sermons. Non-expository sermons, of course, don’t care. The text is merely a springboard to do what the preacher wants to do. Unfortunately, many expository sermons die because the preacher focuses on semantics and syntax. The sermon devolves into an explanation of how full the trash can is not what we should do about it! Either way, what God wants to do with the original text is lost in the sermon. Ignoring the intent of the original author to do what we want to do with the sermon means that we lose sight of God’s purpose. Abusing the intent of the original author places the preacher above the Spirit of God.

Our Associate Pastor, Mark Labacz, recently preached an excellent sermon on Philippian 2:5-11. Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, Paul wrote. Mark shared with me how he was tempted to preach an evangelistic sermon seeking to convert unbelievers. However, he couldn’t get away from Paul’s obvious purpose in writing these words. What was Paul (and by extension the Spirit) trying to do with this passage? Is Paul seeking to convert non-Christians who need to come to the cross or exhort Christians who need to live like Jesus? Paul’s intention is focused on sanctification, not regeneration. While it is not heretical to preach an evangelistic sermon from this passage, it is not consistent with what Paul wanted to do with what he wrote. Pragmatics tells us to frame the sermon to do what God through Paul sought to do with these words.

 

Mark then raised the theological issue of the kenosis. Should he have spent more time on the kenosis in his sermon? The passage opens the door to an explanation of kenotic theory as we explain the self-emptying of Christ. Should the sermon focus on explaining the kenosis of Christ or move quickly to the humble attitude of Christ followers? Here again, the pragmatic question governs the decision. What was Paul trying to do by what he wrote? Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus. The central command explains Paul’s intention and governs our sermon. The self-emptying of Christ is one element in the downward descent we are to emulate. Mark rightly chose to summarize the kenotic truth in a sentence or two while moving on to drive home the point Paul was making in the passage. 

 

What’s a sermon to do? A sermon should do what God through the original author intended to do.