What a Preacher Should Know
Text: (no single text — homiletics instruction)
Series: Restoration Sermons
Date:
Speaker: Ed Rangel
Location: Waupaca Church of Christ
Bible Version: NASB 1995
Sermon Type: Expository
Learning Objectives
By the close of this lesson the hearer should be able to:
- State the four categories of essential preacher knowledge: the truth, religious error, general conditions, and the preacher's own responsibilities.
- Explain what it means to "know the truth" in a way that goes beyond familiarity — including knowing how to preach it.
- Describe the approach to error: know it specifically, oppose it specifically, discriminate between sin and sinner, eliminate personality.
- State the preacher's motto from I Tim. 4:16 and identify its two parts.
- Name the three temptations at the conclusion — shine, whine, recline — and explain what each looks like in practice.
Thesis
A gospel preacher who does not know the truth he is preaching, the error that opposes it, the conditions he is preaching into, or his own responsibilities has not simply failed to prepare — he has disqualified himself from the task. Knowledge is not optional equipment for the preacher; it is the foundation on which every other capacity rests.
Burden
This is the second in the series on preaching and preachers. The burden is not academic — it is the protection of the churches and the integrity of the gospel. A preacher who is ignorant of error will be unable to guard the flock against it; a preacher who does not know his own responsibilities will drift toward one of three comfortable failures: shining, whining, or reclining.
Introduction
"Speaking only of gospel preachers; only some of the essential things mentioned." the outline begins with two limitations that are themselves revealing: he is not speaking about all religious communicators, and he will not exhaust the subject. The gospel preacher occupies a specific role — not the lecturer, not the motivational speaker, not the community organizer — and that role has specific knowledge requirements. What follows is not a complete list. It is the essential core.
I. Should Know the Truth
The first requirement is the most obvious and the most demanding. The preacher must know the truth — not be acquainted with it, not have an opinion about it, not be personally comfortable with a version of it.
Must preach what one knows. The limit of authentic proclamation is the limit of genuine knowledge. The preacher who speaks beyond what they actually know — who fills in the gaps of real knowledge with the appearance of confidence — is not preaching; they are performing. The congregation eventually knows the difference.
Should know the whole truth. Selective truth is a form of deception. The preacher who preaches the parts of the gospel that are comfortable and omits the parts that are demanding has not preached the gospel — they have preached a more palatable substitute. Paul's statement to the Ephesian elders is the standard: "I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole purpose of God" (Acts 20:27).
This implies knowledge of the Bible. The truth the preacher is commissioned to proclaim is the truth of the Scriptures. Not the truth of theological tradition, or the truth of personal experience, or the truth of contemporary relevance — though all of these may be useful instruments — but the truth that is in the text. This requires sustained, disciplined, lifelong engagement with the Bible as a whole.
Should know how to preach the truth. Knowledge of content is necessary but not sufficient. The preacher must also know how to communicate it — how to arrange it, how to illustrate it, how to connect it to the lives of the people in the room. The truth that is not communicated effectively has not reached its destination.
Should know the psychology of preaching. People hear in predictable ways; they resist in predictable ways; they are moved in predictable ways. The preacher who understands these dynamics is better equipped to remove the obstacles that prevent the truth from reaching the hearer. This is not manipulation — it is the serious application of attention to how people actually receive what is said to them.
II. Should Know Religious Error
"Error is opposed to truth." This is the ground of the requirement: if the truth is under attack, the defender of the truth must know what the attack looks like.
Should know the error that opposes the truth of each sermon. Every truth the gospel proclaims has a corresponding error that has been preached against it. Born of water and Spirit? The tradition that reduces baptism to an outward symbol knows this text and has an answer for it. The resurrection? The tradition that spiritualizes it knows I Corinthians 15 and has an interpretation ready. The preacher who knows only the truth is in the position of a soldier who knows the terrain on his own side of the line but is ignorant of the enemy's dispositions.
Should know how to oppose error. Knowing what the error is differs from knowing how to address it effectively. The preacher who identifies error and then responds with contempt, condescension, or caricature has not answered it — they have declared themselves superior to it. The goal is not to win the argument; it is to win the person.
Discriminate between sin and the sinner. The error is wrong; the person who holds it is not the error. the insistence on this distinction is consistent with the broader Christian obligation to love persons while opposing falsehood. The preacher who conflates the error with the person has made themselves the enemy of someone they are supposed to serve.
Eliminate personality from error. The address of error should be directed at the idea, not at the individual or institution holding it. The moment the preacher makes it personal — names a person, targets a congregation — they have changed the subject from the truth to the conflict.
"Disagree without being disagreeable." This summary statement from the is the practical test of all the preceding principles. The preacher who cannot disagree without becoming unpleasant has allowed their own temperament to override their commission.
III. Know General Conditions
The third category is contextual knowledge — knowing the world the preacher is preaching into.
Know world conditions. The gospel is addressed to people who are living in a specific historical moment with specific pressures, anxieties, and opportunities. The preacher who is ignorant of the world their congregation inhabits will address concerns that are not theirs and miss the concerns that are.
Know conditions of the brotherhood; the problems in the church. The congregation is part of a larger body, and the body has patterns — recurring struggles, doctrinal questions, practical tensions — that the individual congregation participates in. The preacher who is unaware of these patterns is repeatedly surprised by what the informed preacher anticipated.
Know what is being published in the religious press. The ideas circulating in the publications read by the congregation shape their questions, their doubts, and their assumptions. The preacher who does not read what the congregation reads is preaching in an information vacuum.
Know the congregation with which he works. This is the most specific knowledge of all — the individual families, histories, struggles, and hopes of the people in the room. The preacher who knows these things can speak to specific conditions without naming names; can know which truth is the word the specific congregation most needs to hear; can calibrate the emphasis of the sermon to the actual need, not to the theoretical need.
IV. Should Know the Responsibilities of a Preacher
The final category is self-knowledge: the preacher must know what the role requires of them.
The preacher's motto: "Pay close attention to yourself and to your teaching; persevere in these things, for as you do this you will ensure salvation both for yourself and for those who hear you" (I Tim. 4:16). Two parts, both essential: take heed to yourself (Matt. 5:19 — "whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven"; Acts 1:1 — Jesus began to "do and teach"); take heed to your teaching (Gal. 1:8 — "if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed").
The motto reveals the responsibilities and should be the preacher's guide. The self-monitoring required by I Timothy 4:16 is the sustained discipline of a person who knows that their own character is not separate from their message — that the congregation cannot and does not separate the man from what he preaches.
Responsibility to God: to know, love, preach, and live the truth of God. The quadruple requirement is not redundant — knowing without loving produces coldness; loving without knowing produces sentimentality; preaching without living produces hypocrisy; living without preaching keeps the truth private. All four are required.
People cannot separate a man and his message. This is the practical consequence of the preacher's responsibility to God. The preacher who lives inconsistently with what they preach has already answered the congregation's question about whether the gospel is actually transforming anyone — and the answer is visible every day in how the preacher lives.
Responsibility to hearers: "I am under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish" (Rom. 1:14). The preacher owes the hearer the truth. All the responsibilities of a teacher to a student rest on the preacher — to instruct, to warn, to correct, to encourage, to give what is needed rather than what is comfortable. And to be an example (I Tim. 4:12: "in speech, conduct, love, faith and purity").
Conclusion
The outline ends with a three-word diagnosis of the preacher's besetting temptations: "Temptation to SHINE, WHINE, or RECLINE."
Shine: to make the ministry about the preacher's own reputation — to preach for applause, to choose topics that display learning, to position the sermon as a performance. The temptation to shine is the inverse of "hide behind the cross."
Whine: to make the ministry about the preacher's own grievances — to use the pulpit to process personal frustration with the congregation, the elders, the brotherhood, the culture. The preacher who whines has confused the pulpit with a therapy session.
Recline: to make the ministry comfortable — to avoid the truths that create friction, to settle into the routine that requires no preparation and produces no growth. The preacher who reclines has decided that the ministry is a place to rest, not a place to work.
The preacher who knows the truth, knows the error, knows the conditions, and knows their own responsibilities is the preacher who is equipped to resist all three.
Invitation
The congregation's invitation is implicit in the preacher's commission. If the preacher is obligated to know and preach the whole truth, the hearer is obligated to receive it — not the parts that are comfortable, but the whole. Including the parts about repentance and baptism and obedience that sectarian preaching has softened or omitted.
Believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God. Repent. Confess his name. Be baptized for the remission of your sins (Acts 2:38). This is the whole truth that the faithful preacher is obligated to deliver — and the hearer is obligated to receive.
Word Study
| English Term | Greek Term | Basic Meaning | Usage in This Sermon | Sermon Significance | Key Texts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Take heed | epechō | to hold fast to, to attend to | to hold fast to, to attend to | the verb combines the idea of attention and persistence; it is not a momentary glance but a sustained, deliberate focus; the preacher who "takes heed to himself and his teaching" has made both of these the ongoing object of serious attention. | I Tim. 4:16 |
| Whole purpose | boulē | the will, counsel, plan | the will, counsel, plan | Paul's claim that he declared the "whole counsel of God" is his defense against the accusation of selective preaching; the boulē of God is the comprehensive purpose that Scripture reveals; to preach it wholly is to leave nothing essential out. | Acts 20:27 |
| Debtor | opheiletēs | one who owes | one who owes | Paul is not saying he enjoys preaching to all people; he is saying he owes it to them; the debt is not sentimental; it is the obligation created by the commission to declare what he has received. | Rom. 1:14 |
| Example | typos | a type, a pattern, a mold | a type, a pattern, a mold | the preacher is to be the mold from which the congregation's character is shaped; not a model to be admired from a distance but a pattern to be followed; the word is used for the impression left by a seal — the preacher's life leaves a mark on those who observe it. | I Tim. 4:12 |
Scripture Interlock Table
| Theme | Boles' Outline | Supporting Scripture |
|---|---|---|
| "Take heed to yourself and to your teaching" — the motto | IV.1 | I Tim. 4:16 |
| "I did not shrink from declaring the whole purpose of God" | I.2 | Acts 20:27 |
| "If we preach another gospel, let him be accursed" | IV.1b | Gal. 1:8 |
| Preacher to be an example in speech, conduct, love, faith | IV.5 | I Tim. 4:12 |
| "I am a debtor to all" — responsibility to hearers | IV.3 | Rom. 1:14 |
| "How shall they hear without a preacher?" | I.4 | Rom. 10:14 |
| Baptism for remission — the full truth the preacher owes the hearer | Invit. | Acts 2:38 |
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Converted from H. Leo Boles, Outline 125. Primary text: none stated (homiletics instruction). OCR corrections: "INTRODUCTI ON" → "INTRODUCTION"; "lV." → "IV." Doctrinal audit: "faith only excludes love, repentance, baptism, obedience" (Boles's point from adjacent outline 129) is consistent with the obligation to preach the "whole truth" developed here; the preacher's temptations (shine/whine/recline) applied as a closing diagnostic; invitation retains full obedient response (Acts 2:38).
