Preach the Word ≠ Give a Speech

I occasionally hear the length of famous speeches cited as evidence that sermons should be shorter. After all, some of the most memorable speeches in American history were remarkably brief: the Gettysburg Address lasted only a few minutes, Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech about seventeen minutes, and President Reagan’s “Tear Down This Wall” address roughly twenty-six minutes.

But there is a fundamental problem with that comparison: A sermon is not a speech.

A well-prepared expositional sermon has a different purpose, a different authority, and a different responsibility. The preacher is not merely attempting to inspire an audience, persuade a crowd, or deliver a memorable piece of oratory. He has been entrusted with the holy responsibility of interpreting, explaining, and applying the Word of God.

Paul wrote: “Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine.” (2 Timothy 4:2)

Notice the charge: “Preach the word.”

Paul did not tell Timothy merely to preach from the Word, on the Word, or about the Word. He told him to “Preach the word.”  That distinction matters!

The preacher’s task is not to use a biblical text as a launching pad for his own ideas. The Scriptures are not merely a source from which we find something to say. The Word of God is the message. Our responsibility is to study it carefully, understand it correctly, explain it faithfully, and apply it appropriately. That requires preparation and perspiration.

Certainly, there are occasions when time must be limited. Every sermon need not be long in order to be biblical, and length is certainly no guarantee of depth. A preacher can speak for an hour and say very little; another can faithfully expound a passage in twenty minutes. But the clock must never become more important than the Text.

Therefore, those of us who stand before God’s people must come having studied, prayed, and prepared. We should know the passage well enough, and have lived in it long enough, that we preach from the overflow of careful study and communion with God, rather than scraping the bottom of the barrel of a casual acquaintance with the Text.

The pulpit does not primarily need better speeches. It needs men who will preach the Word.