Book Review: Preparing Sermons from the Page to the Pulpit (Wayne Baxter)

A good sermon can change a life. People have come to a saving knowledge of Christ through sermons. Others have been convicted of sin and have repented. Many have been compelled to go to the mission field to teach and make disciples. In what is probably his last written letter, Paul tells Timothy to “preach the word” (1 Tim 4:2). One of the most important things pastors will do is study and preach the word. As they are shaped into Christ’s image, they teach and disciple their church members.

But why are sermons so difficult to write? Why can they be so hit-and-miss from week to week? How does a pastor get to the main point(s) of a sermon while providing the appropriate level of illustrations and heart application so that his congregants learn both about the Bible and how to live for Christ? We want our congregants to change, making it easy to offer moralistic sermons. Pastors show how the biblical character is the hero, and they tell their congregants how to follow that example. But with their eyes on Moses instead of God, people don’t see God’s grace. Sermons become “self-help, motivational speeches” (5).

While conventional wisdom and motivational speeches can compel us to act, they offer fleeting feelings. As professor Wayne Baxter observes, “Holy Scripture inserts God’s life-imparting grace deep within us, thereby creating a lasting, life-changing… experience that, when lived out in community, has the power to impact and uplift those closest to us” (5).

In this book Baxter shows you how to move from exegesis to exposition. He shows that sermons aren’t meant to be given by just anyone (at least most of the time). The pastor-exegete must:

1. patiently read through the biblical text,
2. pore over the details of the text,
3. bring together what the rest of the Bible says through Biblical and Systematic Theology, and
4. call their church members to change their lives according to God’s word (13–15).

Baxter writes to pastors, primarily those who graduated from a Bible college or seminary with biblical languages and hermeneutics, and they continue to use what they learned when studying and crafting their sermons (16). Pastors should want their hearers to encounter God through the biblical text as presented in their sermons.

Summary

I won’t get detailed here, but I really liked this book. Baxter doesn’t teach you how to do exegesis nor how to transform your results “into a skillfully packaged, rhetorically engaging sermon outline” (19). In his book, Baxter offers many more examples of NT texts than OT, and that is because he is a NT professor (at Heritage College and Seminary). What Baxter does do in this book, he does well.

Baxter helps you shape the results of your exegesis into a sermon. What text will you preach? If preaching through a book, how many verses you should preach this coming Sunday? You have to determine the outer limits (ch 1) of your text, and this is done through finding catchwords, an inclusion/frame around your text, narrative features (such as a change in geography), the use of the vocative, and more. 

As we see in chapter two, you need to be able to understand where the text is going in the overall message of the book. Why does Paul place the “Christ hymn” of Philippians 2:5–11 where he does in the letter? If it’s so important, why didn’t he begin the letter with this text? What he wrote led up to this text. It brought his readers to this answer, which then guides them through the rest of the letter. 

Chapters four and five cover outlining: how to outline the text and how to let that shape your sermon outline. This is where a knowledge of the original languages is a real benefit, for you can look at the biblical text yourself to determine the main clauses, the dependent clauses, main verbs, participles, modifiers, etc. These chapters were as beneficial as they were difficult. I hardly remember my Greek and understanding how Baxter outlined and indented the biblical texts was difficult for me to understand. If you’ve taken exegesis classes, you’ve probably (hopefully) learned how to outline and indent properly. But this shows me I have a lot of work to do! However doing it well helps you shape your sermon accordingly. 

Chapter six shows how the details matter. He looks at Greek verb tense, voice, and case, as well as what to do and not to do with semantic nuance. Chapter seven brings in Biblical theology and how your sermon text relates to the rest of Scripture, while chapter eight briefly presents how to apply Scripture. Chapter nine is the book’s conclusion where Baxter revisits a poorly done Sunday School sermon he gave as a pre-seminary layperson. He he reshapes it into how it should have looked, going through the steps presented in the book. 

Recommended? 

As I wrote, I enjoyed this book. It is rich with biblical connections and the importance of the sermon task. When writing a sermon, it is not enough to choose a text, sprinkle some illustrations and application, and consider that sermon finished. Rigorous study should first shape you into someone who embodies the biblical text. Then you shape what you’ve learned into a sermon, adding illustrations and application as necessary. Baxter ably shows to where our exegesis should lead us. After a pastor has examined the Greek or Hebrew, outlined the text, understood the biblical theological connections, what then? This book takes those and adds more to them to help one begin crafting a sermon. If you are a lead pastor or an elder who preaches often, picking up this book will enrich your sermon writing. If you are going to write many sermons, you might as well take the time to write them well.  

Lagniappe

• Authors: Wayne Baxter
• Paperback: 185 pages
• Publisher: Lexham Press (December 6, 2023)

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Disclosure: I received this book free from Lexham Press. The opinions I have expressed are my own, and I was not required to write a positive review. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_03/16cfr255_03.html.

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