What Should I Preach?

Twenty-five years ago I began my first fulltime job as a youth minister in Pikeville, Kentucky. A couple weeks after I started, the pulpit minister had neck surgery and was unable to preach for several months. Guess whom the elders asked to preach on Sunday mornings? I had no experience, had written maybe 15 sermons or so, and was terrified. I sat in my office on Monday mornings flipping through my Bible trying to find something to preach. I’d find a text I thought would make a good sermon, but I had a horrible time taking that text and writing a sermon—more often than not, I’d abandon a good sermon simply because I couldn’t find a way to say what should be said. Those were terrifying days for a young man fresh out of college.

I matured quickly as a preacher by being thrown into that furnace. My experience confirmed my belief—there is only one thing to preach: the Word of God. Too much of what passes for preaching today doesn’t deserve to be called preaching. Preachers get in the pulpit and tell cute stories but they don’t tell about Jesus. Preachers tell the assembly all about what they’ve read in the latest self-help book but they never tell what they’ve read in holy writ. Ministers talk politics or marriage help or current affairs or great wisdom and ignore divine revelation.

There is no excuse—none whatsoever—for any man to step into a pulpit with anything other than the Word of God. When Micaiah was told to prophesy favorably for Ahab, he replied, “As the LORD lives, whatever the LORD says to me, that I will speak” (1 Ki 22:14). Paul reminded the Corinthian Christians that he had no time to proclaim anything but God’s truth: “We speak of these things in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit” (1 Cor 2:13). Paul preached no human wisdom; to the Thessalonians, he said, “We also constantly give thanks to God for this, that when you received the word of God that you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word but as what it really is, God’s word, which is also at work in your believers” (1 Thess 2:13).

The preacher must always preach the word of God, for that word has the power to save souls (Rom 1:16; Js 1:21). That word—and that word alone—brings new life in Jesus (Jn 6:63). That word will serve as a judge on the Great and Final Day (Jn 12:48; cf. Rev 20:12). Since the word of God saves, brings new life, and judges, doesn’t it make sense that the preacher has a solemn responsibility to preach that word?

The word will not always be popular. That word will not always be uplifting. That word will not always make us feel great when we leave the assembly. But obedience to that word will reap blessings now and forevermore (cf Js 1:25).

This article was originally written by Dr. Justin Imel, Sr., for the weekly newsletter at Church of Christ Deer Park in Deer Park, Texas.