Luther's one aim was to present the Gospel by expounding the Scriptures. On Easter 1519, he began continuous exposition of the Gospels and Genesis. In 1520 he began in Latin, and then continued in German, a collection of sermons on the lectionary readings for the day. Another writer says, "Doctrines drawn from the Scriptures were combined in a living fruitful unit with practical application to the needs of the believers and of the Church alike."2

The great truths for which the Reformation stood were constantly proclaimed. The general appeal was to the heart and the will, rather than to the intellect. Luther retained the allegorical method of exposition but was not bound to it. He did not try to give the sermon an organic unity, rather the passage was expounded verse by verse. His language was simple, strong, and manly. Nature spoke rather than art.

It was Luther who put the sermon into Protestantism, in the place held by the Mass, and so made preaching the most powerful influence in the churches of the Reformation. He wrote once in a letter, "I simply taught, preached and wrote God's Word: otherwise I did nothing. The Word did it all."

Almost all Luther's sermons were expository. He liked to preach on entire books of the Bible; two of his favorite books were Genesis and 1 Peter. The chief aim of his preaching was to acquaint the congregation with the great truths of the Bible and especially to proclaim Christ as Savior. He said, "We preach always Jesus Christ. This may seem a limited and monotonous subject, likely to be soon exhausted, but we are never at the end of it."

Most of his sermons as he preached them were taken down by interested hearers. As a rule he did not write out his entire sermon.

Luther's concept of preaching may be seen in the advice he gave to preachers: "A good preacher should have these virtues: first, to teach systematically; second, he should have a ready wit; third, he should be eloquent; fourth, he should have a good voice; fifth, a good memory; sixth, he should know when to stop preaching; seventh, he should be sure of his doctrine; eighth, he should engage body and blood, wealth and honor in serving the Word; ninth, he should suffer himself to be mocked and jeered by everyone."

Plain, simple, but beautiful language marked Luther's preaching. He knew how to address himself to his hearers in a way that led them accept his messages. He believed that the Gospel should be "prepared plainly and carefully just as a mother prepares the food for her baby."

Luther preached two or three times a week, and his last sermon was preached four days before he died in his sixty-second year. His preaching was never merely topical. He would never turn a text into a pretext. He said, "I take pains to treat a verse and stick to it, and so to instruct the people that they could say, 'that is what the sermon is about'." He would have agreed with Kierkegaard's description of the Bible as a letter from God with our address upon it, though he would have wanted to add that it comes to us like that most forcibly when it is read to us in the living voice of the preacher. Every sermon for him was a struggle for souls. His hearers were made to feel that the offer of the Gospel was here and now, and now or never. For him to preach the Gospel was nothing less than to bring Christ to the people and the people to Christ.