Table Showing the Governing Contrasts

This table is not meant to flatten every sermon into a rigid formula. It is an analytic model. Its purpose is to show where the displacement occurs, what replaces the Spirit’s proper office, and what the resulting effect is upon the sermon and the hearer. Each row identifies a theological substitution. Taken together, they describe a fundamentally altered doctrine of preaching.

Agency: God Speaking by the Spirit, or the Preacher Managing the Hearer

The deepest contrast concerns agency. In Reformed preaching, the primary actor is God. Preaching is not first the preacher speaking about God, but God speaking through the ordained ministry of the Word. This does not mean that the preacher is passive, nor that careful preparation is unnecessary. It means rather that the preacher is ministerial, not magisterial. He is servant of the Word, not a manager of its effect. The Holy Spirit is therefore not an ornament to the sermon, but the divine agent by whom preaching becomes effectual.

In the modern pattern, however, agency subtly shifts. The preacher does not usually deny divine agency in explicit terms. Yet in practice he assumes responsibility for producing the conditions in which the sermon may become effective. His introduction must secure interest, establish rapport, generate openness, create an atmosphere, and frame relevance. His method is now carrying the burden that Reformed theology places upon the Spirit’s work through the Word.

This is why the first three minutes matter. They often reveal where the preacher believes power lies. If he begins as though God’s speech through Scripture must be preceded by a humanly crafted entry point, then the preacher has already assumed a functional role greater than that of ministerial herald. He has become the manager of access. The Spirit is not verbally denied, but He is practically displaced.

This video is an example of a minister carefully fencing a theme that he will use throughout the sermon. The sermon was preached at Surrey Hills Presbyterian Church on the 22nd Mar, 2026. The theme dominates the sermon, even though the sermon also contains much that is true.

Here is a second example of an introduction which was preached at Horsham Presbyterian Church sometime around April, 2025. Within the first 2 minutes, the minister has brought his listeners before the text and its inherent warning.

Why is this difference so important? When Jesus promises that the Holy Spirit will testify of Him (John 15:26), He is speaking of the Spirit bearing witness to Christ, the incarnate Word, through the apostolic testimony that is now the canon of Scripture for the church. In the first clip above, the minister has tried to create relevance of the Word; in the second example, the minister proclaims the Word and thus gives it all authority.

Means: Through the Text, or Through Experience, Mood, and Relevance

Closely related to what we just saw, this second contrast concerns means. In the Reformed pattern, God speaks by the Spirit through the text. Scripture is not illustrative support but the governing instrument. The preacher’s task is not to make the Bible meaningful by attaching it to a prior human framework. It is to open the text so that God’s own meaning confronts the hearer. The passage itself, in its own context and movement, supplies the sermonic logic.

In the modern displaced pattern, the means shift from text to experience. The sermon begins with recognisable life, personal struggle, emotional atmosphere, shared mood, or cultural familiarity. The text is still used, but supportively. It enters a sermonic world already organised by the preacher’s chosen frame. Experience now governs the use of Scripture. The text confirms, decorates, or stabilises what has already been established by humanly managed relevance.

This is not the same as saying that experience has replaced Scripture absolutely. The Bible is still present. But it no longer rules. The text becomes subordinate to the method by which the hearer is brought in. The first three minutes often show this most clearly, because they reveal whether the sermon begins under the authority of Scripture or under the authority of accessibility.

Problem: Sin Exposed, or the Problem Framed in Human Terms

The third contrast concerns the problem the sermon identifies. In the Reformed pattern, God speaking by the Spirit through the text exposes sin. This is not merely the naming of a difficulty or weakness. Properly speaking, it is the uncovering of man before God. The second example above does this very well. Sin is exposed as guilt, rebellion, uncleanness, blindness, covenant breach, and liability to judgment. Conviction is therefore not psychological discomfort but the Spirit’s pressing of God’s truth upon the conscience.

In the modern pattern we are analysing here, the problem is more often framed in human terms. The hearer is addressed primarily as burdened, anxious, confused, weary, disappointed, or relationally strained. These conditions may be real, and preaching must certainly speak to them. Yet when they become the sermonic centre, conviction of sin is softened into felt need. The hearer is no longer first placed before God’s holiness and law, but before his own inner state.

This is one of the most important substitutions in the whole pattern. It allows the sermon to retain seriousness while altering substance. Need is easier to discuss than guilt. Struggle is less offensive than sin. Emotional lack is more manageable than condemnation. Thus the hearer may leave feeling understood without ever being truly brought low before God.

Christ: Christ Proclaimed, or Christ Presented as Helpful Resolution

The fourth contrast concerns the place and function of Christ. In the Reformed pattern, Christ is proclaimed. He is not appended to the sermon as a useful conclusion. He stands at the centre of the gospel as the necessary Redeemer revealed by the text itself. Where sin has been exposed in truth, Christ appears not merely as comfort but as necessity, not merely as example but as mediator, substitute, refuge, and Lord.

In the modern pattern, Christ is commonly presented as helpful resolution. Once the preacher has framed the problem in experiential or psychological terms, Christ arrives as the answer to that frame. He comforts, steadies, restores, and helps. None of these descriptions is false. The difficulty lies in their structural placement. Christ is now functioning as the solution to a humanly defined problem rather than as the Redeemer whom the Spirit-breathed text reveals as necessary because of sin, righteousness, and judgment. In the first example above, Christ is the help we need to discern between “Cake and Real”. In the second example, Christ is the only way of salvation.

This is one of the chief ways in which the displacement of the Spirit becomes a christological reduction. Christ is not denied. He is softened. His saving office is thinned into assistance. He is made serviceable to the sermonic frame instead of governing it.

Response: Repentance and Faith, or a Self-Referential Response

The final contrast concerns the sermon’s intended response. In the Reformed pattern, the Spirit working through the text exposes sin and proclaims Christ to call forth repentance and faith. The hearer is summoned to bow before God, flee to Christ, believe the gospel, and walk in obedient trust. Response is therefore evangelical, not merely reflective. It is generated by divine address, not by inward resonance alone.

In the modern pattern, the response tends to become self-referential. The hearer is invited to reflect, resonate, apply, adjust, feel encouraged, or adopt a practical takeaway. Again, none of these things is inherently wrong. Yet they are often placed where repentance and faith ought to stand. The sermon seeks inward processing rather than an evangelical response. It aims at recognisable movement within the self rather than at submission to God under the pressure of His Word.

This explains why such sermons can feel helpful while remaining spiritually thin. They do not necessarily fail to move the hearer. They move him differently. The response becomes reflective rather than redemptive, practical rather than penitential, encouraging rather than converting.

The Net Effect of the Whole Pattern

Once these substitutions are taken together, the net effect becomes clear. In the Reformed pattern, God speaks by the Spirit through the text. Sin is exposed. Christ is proclaimed. Repentance and faith are called forth. The hearer is brought under the Word.

In the modern pattern for introductions, the preacher manages the hearer through experience, mood, and relevance. The text is used supportively. The problem is framed in human terms. Christ is presented as the resolution. The hearer is invited into a self-referential response. The result is that the sermon may still contain biblical language and orthodox fragments, yet the whole act of preaching has been reordered. Divine agency has been functionally replaced by rhetorical agency.[8]

This has consequences for both the congregation and preacher. The congregation is trained to hear the Bible as help more than authority, as resonance more than confrontation. The preacher, in turn, is tempted to trust technique more than the Spirit’s ordained means. He becomes increasingly conscious of his ability to generate access, shape mood, and produce effects. In that sense, the displacement of the Spirit is not a small homiletical flaw. It is a deep theological alteration in the nature of preaching itself.

This pattern is not merely more precise. It is more faithful to the nature of preaching itself. It refuses to ask the preacher to perform what belongs to the Spirit. It lets the preacher remain a servant of the Word, and it lets the church once again be placed under the living voice of God.

Conclusion

Both sermons used in this essay have their problems. However, this isn’t a sermon review. What I aimed to do was to demonstrate how the first three minutes would set the structure for the entire sermon. If the text is given its place of authority, the sermon will normally conclude with the text. If the sermon introduction is a contrived illustration by the preacher, the conclusion, however neat, is likely to be contrived as well.

This first clip is the final three minutes of “Cake or Real”. The conclusion reached does not appear to align with Paul’s argument in Romans. 

Paul’s movement in Romans 5:1–11 is something more like this: justified by faith, peace with God, access into grace, rejoicing in hope, suffering producing endurance, God’s love demonstrated in Christ’s death, justification by blood, reconciliation to God, salvation from wrath. That is a thick, redemptive, forensic, and covenantal movement. It is not chiefly a meditation on counterfeit versus authentic religious experience.

The conclusion to the second sermon we looked at above, whatever its other weaknesses are , seems to arise more directly from the passage’s own doctrinal force. It stays closer to the actual theological grammar of the text, finishing with a warning echoing 1 John 5:21.

The first three minutes of a sermon often reveal more than style. They reveal agency, means, problem, Christological function, and intended response. In that sense, they reveal the preacher’s practical pneumatology. Much modern man-centred preaching does not merely fail to emphasise the Holy Spirit strongly enough. More seriously, it functionally displaces Him. The preacher’s rhetorical management assumes the practical role that, in Reformed theology, belongs to the Spirit working through the Word.

The table above makes the matter plain. God speaking by the Spirit is replaced by the preacher managing the hearer. The text is subordinated to experience. Sin gives way to need. Christ is softened into helpful resolution. Repentance and faith become self-referential response. The sermon may remain religious, biblical-sounding, and even orthodox at points, yet its operative theology has shifted.

To expose this shift is not to call for homiletical stiffness. It is to insist that preaching remain what Reformed theology says it is: God speaking by the Spirit through the text to expose sin, proclaim Christ, and call forth repentance and faith. When that confidence in the Word is lost, the sermon becomes dependent upon substitutes. When it is recovered, the preacher is freed from pretending to do the Spirit’s work, and the congregation is placed once more under the living Word of God.