Pastor, I know this can be easy to forget in the press and stress of ministry. I know that, on any given Sunday, a dozen thoughts can dominate your head before this one. I know it can feel untrue in seasons when the fruit seems small and the weeds seem large. So, can I remind you?
Sermons change lives.
Our Lord Jesus’s miracles healed bodies, but it was his sermons that healed souls. By a sermon God cut and then cured three thousand hearts, bringing awakening with a word. By sermons Paul called Jew and Greek, slave and free, to come into the kingdom of God. And by sermons Timothy, Titus, and a thousand other pastors guarded the gospel for the next generation.
In the centuries since, God has used sermons to save and sanctify, to call and commission — rescuing sinners from hazardous paths, sending ordinary saints across oceans, snatching the weak from Satan’s hands, and building such unlikely fellowships that they can boast only in him. Sunday after Sunday, through sermon after sermon, sometimes quietly and sometimes climactically, God brings his purposes to pass.
No, sermons cannot substitute for one-on-one soul care, life-on-life discipleship, or the many one-another commands God gives. They are not the Christian’s only strength. But what life-changing, eternity-shaping, devil-shaming power a sermon can have, even on the most seemingly ordinary Sunday.
Today, I know two families heading toward the mission field because of sermons. I see scores of Christians encouraged, kept, and called to more through sermons. And I can trace the thread of my own spiritual life back to a normal, simple, faithful sermon.
Ordinary Sunday
On April 13, 2008, I entered Mountain View Community Church on accident. Someone had recommended a different church with mountain in the name (a Colorado problem), and I confused the two.
Even apart from this accident, I entered the building a bit lost. Only recently had I started taking Jesus seriously, stirred by the words of a college-campus evangelist, and my head was a mishmash of theological notions. Someone told me I should expect to speak in tongues. Others described true conversion as an outwardly dramatic, swooning affair. I didn’t know what to think.
The gathering was ordinary, so far as I remember. The church may have sung a hymn or two I didn’t know, but otherwise, I was already familiar with something like this service. The pastor preached simply, without any flair. I remember nothing of his sermon except that it came from the Gospel of John.
But that afternoon, as I sat alone in my college dorm room, I found my confusion quieted, my hesitations set aside. And I told Jesus I wanted to follow him.
Sermons That Save
As I reflect on that Sunday seventeen years later, I’m struck by the common pattern it holds. God loves to take unsettled people, bring them to a gathering by strange paths, and save them through the words of simple men.
Consider first the odd roads that lead people to our churches. “We never know the treacherous path that others take to arrive in the pew that we share Lord’s Day after Lord’s Day,” Rosaria Butterfield writes (Openness Unhindered, 22). And we often do not know the strange, twisting, turning, seemingly accidental paths others take either.
Every week, someone stumbles into a church building because they saw it from the street, or because one of the members said something three months ago, or because Internet algorithms popped up the name, or because a loved one’s plea finally prevailed. Some come seeking, some come skeptical, some come confused — all come within reach of God’s saving word.
Consider too the plain men God often uses. The preacher I heard — and whom I would hear again often — had average abilities. No one has gathered his sermons into a podcast. But he was faithful, clear, earnest, and sincere, and God was pleased to use that combination for the good of my soul.
And how about you? You are probably no Spurgeon or Whitefield or anywhere close. But the God who saves likens his word to the rain or snow that comes down and does not return empty (Isaiah 55:10–11). And even the most ordinary preacher can be a cloud.
Consider finally the kind of souls that may sit among us on any given Sunday. By the time I entered the gathering in April 2008, someone had already planted, another had already watered, and God, with just a few drops more, was ready to give the growth (1 Corinthians 3:6). How many times have such people sat under our preaching? How many more times will they?
Pastor, some of the faces you see on Sunday have already heard the gospel, are already considering Christ, and now they need one more heartfelt word before coming to him.
Preach Expectantly
My exhortation, brothers, is this: Preach expectantly. Preach like the people before you are not present by accident. Preach like a seed may be ready to sprout.
As Paul traveled the Gentile world, he carried this unassailable assurance with him:
Those who have never been told of him will see,
and those who have never heard will understand. (Romans 15:21)
They will see. They will understand. Yes, they will, for God had promised as much through his prophets (Isaiah 52:15), and his promises don’t return empty. Paul knew Jesus died to make not just some but “many to be accounted righteous”; he knew his Lord had borne “the sin of many” (Isaiah 53:10–12). And so, he preached like his ministry was one of God’s means to bring the many home.
God’s heart has not changed two thousand years later. His Spirit has not departed. His word is no less like the hammer it once was, no cooler than the fire of old (Jeremiah 23:29). You preach the same saving gospel in service of the same gracious God by the same mighty Spirit.
So, who knows what will happen this Sunday? A lost sheep may hear the Shepherd’s voice in yours. A hardening heart may be broken soft. A despairing soul may believe again that there is forgiveness with God. A family may take their first steps toward the mission field. Or a seed, already planted and perhaps long watered, may finally sprout.
For sermons change lives.
