This past Sunday, I finished a nine-week sermon series on the story of the Bible. It was a series that required hundreds of hours of reading and listening to trusted teachers to prepare each message. I have not worked this hard mentally for a series in a long time. I spent around 12 hours preparing to write each 30-minute sermon. The last one in the series about the End Times took closer to 20 hours to complete.

With each sermon, I wrote out two or three rough outlines before I landed on what exactly I was preaching. I literally threw away several sermons in the process of editing. One of the messages was about half done when I took my cursor, highlighted a whole page, and hit delete. There is so much more I want to say each week, but the constraints of time only allow me to say so much. Also, studies show us that the more you hear does not equal more retention. A concise sermon is best for both the speaker and the listener, and I know that.

Right before one of the sermons in this series, I sat and prayed quietly, “God, help me say what needs to be said and nothing more.”

If you listen to one of these messages, I am sure you will think, “Why didn’t he say anything about this or that?” Perhaps you will say to yourself, “He should have mentioned this or that passage of scripture.” Believe me, I thought about using those things but chose to say what I felt God was leading me to say to address the needs of my congregation.

No sermon is an exhaustive exploration of any topic or passage; they are an attempt to scratch the surface of the Bible so that people will go home to dig deeper on their own. They are the leaping off point on the things of God that should continue through the week. The goal is never to say everything but to set you up so that your week is learning and living out all the things left unsaid.