How I Preach an Expository Sermon (Step by Step)
Pastors ask me all the time, “How do you preach an expository sermon?”
How do you work your way through a text, verse by verse, and create a sermon that’s not like a seminary lecture, but is still compelling and faithful to the Word?
Here’s the process that I follow. I’ll walk you through an expository sermon I preached recently and how I went about it step-by-step.
1. Prayerfully Pick A Passage.
Always begin with prayer. Pray for God’s guidance in selecting the passage and inspiration for writing it.
My text for this sermon was Colossians 1:21-23. Three verses that are incredibly deep.
2. Study the Text
Before you preach a text, you need to know it.
Read the text in context.
Understand how the author arrived at the passage and how it follows their flow of thought. You don’t want to preach eisegetically, inserting your ideas into the text. You want to exegete, pull the author’s ideas out of the text.
So I read what comes before and after. Before Colossians 1:21 is the famous passage of the preeminence of Christ (1:15-20).
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, whom all things were made through and for, and 1:21-23 is the tag at the end. Because of this, I decided to read this full passage before unpacking v.21-23 to show the connection.
Read it over and over again.
I read the verses multiple times over, sometimes switching translations, familiarizing myself with it. One of my favorite practices is hand-writing the passage. It forces me to slow down to notice the details.
As I did that, I noticed it could breaks naturally into three parts:
- Who you were.
- Who you are.
- Who you must be.
The first verse focuses on who you were before Christ: alienated, hostile in mind, doing evil deeds. I highlighted those three phrases and examine what they meant so I could explain them to my congregation.
The second verse explains who you are in Christ. You are now reconciled., brought back into harmony with the relationship, and He’s going to present you holy, blameless, and above reproach before Him. So I spoke about how Jesus how we’ll be saved not because we’re holy, blameless, and above reproach, but because Jesus is.
The third verse teaches who you must be. You must continue steadfast and stable in the faith, not shifting from the hope of the Gospel. Naturally, this raises questiond about people who walk away from the faith. Do they lose salvation? So I played that out, and showed how we are steadfast and anchored in Christ.
Consult study materials.
After my initial study, I turned to commentaries in Logos. Many affirmed what I had already observed, which is encouraging. But I also gained some other helpful insights. I consult commentaries last because I want outside voices to challenge my thinking, not change my thoughts before I’ve done the work.
3. Focus on One Idea
With my study complete, I condensed my findings into a single, memorable sentence that gives the entire point of the message. Based on the text, if everyone only remembers one thing from this entire sermon, what should it be?
After workshopping a number of different phrases, I landed on: Once you were alienated, but now you are anchored in Christ.
I liked the alteration of alienated and anchored. But more importantly, it captured the heart of the passage: Before Christ, we were hostile and alienated from God. But in Christ, we are reconciled if we continue in the faith. And I believe those with genuine faith are held firm (anchored) in Christ.
I titled the message “Once Alienated, Now Anchored” and worked this phrase into the sermon, repeating it throughout for emphasis.
4. Illustrate Key Points
Next, I added illustrations to make the sermon more understandable and memorable. I looked for places to ask good questions, add clarity, or sprinkle appropriate humor.
For example, to illustrate how we are sinful from birth, I created slides showing a cat and a cat don’t produce a puppy. It’s a kitten every time. So why would we expect a sinful mother and father to produce a sinless angel baby?
I joked that what we actually produce is a “Sinlet,” a little sinner that will eventually grow into a big sinner. Someone later emailed me that I should have called it a “Sinfant”. I wish I would have thought of that.
The whole idea is that you’re born sinful. I teased that out a little bit, played around with it, and had some fun, but I also think it made the point.
I also thought of some anecdotes from my life that could provide practical application to strengthen the message. The key is not getting carried away in these: Keep stories brief and to the point. Don’t make your stories the main point. Hold the Bible high, not yourself.
5. Outline The Message
With all these raw materials, I needed some structure. So I pull up my usual three-part outline I’ve talk about: tension, text, takeaway.
Tension
What’s the tension this passage resolves? I look for a story, a shocking statement or statistic that introduces this tension.
In this sermon, I shared a quick memory of a guy I knew who was the farthest thing from Christian until he shockingly became one, and was radically transformed. I connected his story to the undeniable fact that the message of Jesus as transformed millions of lives over thousands of years. Then I asked, “What is this power of Jesus that takes people from death to life, addiction to freedom, hatred to love?”
Text
What does Scripture say, and how does it resolve the tension?
Here I walked thgouh Colossians 1:21-23, showing how we were once alienated from God are now anchored in Christ.
Takeaway
So what? How does this affect you and me?
Here I repeated the big idea, and applied it to three groups of people in the room:
First, unbelievers need to realize who they are: they’re alienated enemies of God, they’re doing wrong, and they need to know that that’s not the end of their story. They could be reconciled even though they’re alienated now. So I called them to faith.
Second, believers need to recognize who they are in Christ. The call for them is to continue in the faith. Don’t give up. Hold firm to the gospel. Continue to be, as Paul says, a minister of the gospel to others. Share the good news.
Third, there are those who used to believe, but they’re struggling. Maybe they got invited back to church for the first time in a long time, and they’re here because God hasn’t given up on them. I called them back to faith, to know that they are secure in Christ if they repent and turn to him.
6. Edit Everything
Once I have an outline full of all my thoughts, I start writing and rewriting, cutting anything unnecessary for time and clarity.
After I get to a place where I think I’m good, I build slides, practice, and preach it.
The Result
Following this simple process created a clear, faithful, expository sermon that connected deeply with my congregation.
If you want more details about these steps, I go more in depth in my books and preaching course.
This is how I typically preach an expository sermon. I mix in topical sermons occasionally, but a healthy balance keeps both the pastor and the congregation grounded and growing.
