A grammar lesson is not a sermon. A sermon is not a textual commentary, a systematics discourse, or a history lecture. Mere lectures are pre-sermons because they dispense information about a text without relevant application from the text that helps listeners understand their obligations to Christ and his ministry to them.16

A message remains a pre-sermon until a preacher organizes its ideas an the text's features to apply to a single, major FCI? We might represent the concept this way:

textual information (pre-sermon material) -> addressing a textually rooted FCF + relevant textual application = sermon

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A message that merely establishes "God is good" is not a sermon. Howe when the same discourse deals with the doubt we may have about whether God is good when we face trials and demonstrates from the text how handle our doubt with the truths of God's goodness, then the preacher h a sermon. A pre-sermon message merely describes the text. Such a "speech may be accurate, biblically based, and erudite, but the congregation know it falls short of a sermon even if the preacher does not.

A former student recently telephoned me for assistance because his congregation seemed to be growing less and less responsive to his preaching. "Last Sunday during the sermon," he said, "they just looked at me like they were lumps on a log. I got no feedback whatsoever. What am I doing wrong?"

I asked him to describe his sermon to me. He responded by giving me the main points of his outline:

Noah was wise.

Noah was fearless.

Noah was faithful.

"I understand," I said. "Now, why did you tell them that?"

There was a long pause on the other end of the phone line. Then he groaned. "Oh yeah. I forgot!"

Information without application yields frustration. This old adage rings true for preachers as well as for parishioners. Preachers who cannot answer "so what?" will preach to a "who cares?" Later in this book we will see that one way to help keep the Bible's truths from seeming disconnected from life today is to state main points and subpoints as universal principles rather than simply as descriptions or recitations of the facts in a text (such as "Noah was wise"). The reason is that only when we can demonstrate that the facts of Scripture were recorded for a purpose and have practical application for the lives of God's people today do our sermons warrant a hearing. This is not simply because people have no reason to listen to what has no apparent relevance to their lives — though this is certainly true. We must also recognize that sermons that do not spell out the purposes and applications for which they were written fail to fulfill God's stated will for his Word.

We are not simply ministers of information; we are ministers of Christ's transformation. He intends to restore his people with his Word and is not greatly served by preachers who do not discern the transformation Scripture requires or communicate the means it offers.