Haddon W. Robinson is long-time professor of preaching at three seminaries and one of the few who preaches as well as he teaches it. 

In this work he brings an updated edition to his 1980 blue-chip coup, Biblical Preaching. Having evaluated almost 6,000 student sermons (14), Robinson’s opinion cannot be ignored without great cost to the modern day preacher.

Robinson delivers on the promise of his book’s subtitle: how to develop and deliver expository messages. Power in the Pulpit by Jerry Vines and Jim Shaddix runs in the same league but proves to be a little heavier reading but provides a system for preparing message that is much easier to follow. Michael Fabarez’ Preaching that Changes Lives scores higher in teaching the preacher how to maintain accountability both in improving his communication and enlisting people to pray during his sermon, but is far wordier and contains fewer gold pots of wisdom harvested from decades of experience.

Chapters 3-8 explain how to prepare a sermon, covering the bulk of the book. Chapters 1-2 defend and define expository preaching, and chapters 9-10 are packed with practical gems on how to communicate with excellence.

After making the case for expository preaching in chapter one, Robinson trademarks the “big idea” concept, as synonymous to his name as Welch is to grape juice. In chapter one, this “big idea” crops up even before it gets its named in chapter two, when Robinson gives expository preaching a definition so thorough it’s cumbersome, but, nonetheless, thorough:

Expository preaching is the communication of a biblical concept derived from and transmitted through a historical, grammatical, and literary study of a passage in its context, which the Holy Spirit first applies to the personality and experience of the preacher, then through the preacher, applies to the hearers (21).

The “biblical concept” gets a lot of mileage in chapter two under its new label, “big idea” (34 ff.). I find Robinson’s subject and complement method for spotting the big idea of the passage so well thought out that it’s painfully abstract and hard to grasp (43-46). If he offered more examples on finding the big idea from various Bible texts in different genres, the reader would grasp the method more quickly.

In chapters 3-8, Robinson lays out ten stages of sermon preparation:

Stage 1: Select the passage
Stage 2: Study the passage
Stage 3: Discover the exegetical data
Stage 4: Analyze the exegetical data
Stage 5: Formulate the homiletical idea
Stage 6: Determine the sermon’s purpose
Stage 7: Decide how to accomplish this purpose
Stage 8: Outline the sermon
Stage 9: Fill in the sermon outline
Stage 10: Prepare the introduction and conclusion

Robinson’s stages are logical and fairly easy to grasp. The challenge is the number of questions he tells the preacher to ask as he prepares the message. By the end of chapters 3-8, it’s hard to determine which question goes with which stage. The advice in these chapters is classic, the breakdown for preparing the message cumbersome. His suggested deductive breakdown of sermon outlines into more than one level of sub-points on pages 119-123, I find cumbersome to use when preaching, preferring to keep it to a few points with supporting content. Perhaps, if Robinson distinguished between an exegetical outline and a preaching outline, this would allow the preacher to still do his exegetical work with excellence, but then transfer that raw data into a smooth preaching outline.

In spite of the abstract and choppy approach to pulling the material together, Robinson fills chapters 3-8 with nuggets like, “We must tailor our sermon to our time, and the cutting should be done in the study rather than in the pulpit” (58). He gives helpful tips for using tools like lexicons, concordances, grammars, word-study books, commentaries, and bibliographies (62-64), and priceless insights for knowing one’s audience (141). Another example of his pithy quotations of great help to the preacher is his observation on page 75 that “When we make any declarative statement, we can do only four things with it: we can restate it, explain it, prove it, or apply it. Nothing else.” But I find the actual explanations for each stage slippery and forgettable, with the exception of chapter eight, which offers the best advice for introductions and conclusions I have ever read. As an example of his sometimes slippery stages, in stage four Robinson says we should submit our exegetical data to three questions: What does this mean? (77) Is it true? (80) and What difference does it make? (86). Robinson’s explanations under the first and second questions are clear and to the point. But in his explanation for the third question, “What difference does it make?”, Robinson writes down no fewer than nineteen questions to apply this third step (89-95). By the time you finish the chapter your head is spinning with data and trying to remember which question for which of the three big questions for which stage of the book you were reading about.

On the other hand, Robinson’s eight chapter, “Making Dry Bones Live,” gives direct, clear, and simple advice for putting flesh on the skeleton outline of a sermon. Robinson gives six excellent methods for packaging the sermon: restating, defining and explaining, providing facts, quoting, and illustrating. By restatement, the preacher says the same thing in different words to ensure that his audience understands his message and is impressed with the big idea. By definition and crisp explanation he clarifies concepts so that not a soul in the audience is without doubt of what he is saying (142-143). By factual information the speaker offers examples, statistics, and other data that may be “verified apart from the speaker” (144). By quotations he supports his point for impressiveness and authority (144). By narration he supplies “background by filling in the history, setting, or actions and spotlighting the personalities involved” (149-150), and he also gives people a fresh viewpoint to oft-told accounts. By illustrations, the preacher adds tremendous clarity for restating, explaining, validating, or applying an idea to his audiences’ “tangible experiences” (152). This chapter is immediately applicable, whether the reader be novice or professional. By these categories, Robinson shows how to make a sermon come alive and “fill up” with content and meaning for the present day audience. It is common for preachers to quote an evangelical authority to drive home his point, which is much like “quoting a Muslim on the virtues of the Koran” (147). But Robinson observes that it is much more arresting to quote someone your audience wouldn’t expect, like John Steinbeck on his positive experience listening to a fire and brimstone sermon (147). Concerning illustrations, Robinson adds:

Be as specific as possible. Fill in the details so that people respond, “Oh, I see what you mean!” Sermons cannot always be a “how to” manual, of course, but sermons seldom fail because they are specific. Too many of us preach sermons that are all cork and no pop (154).

Robinson urges the reader to use illustrations to make the sermon more specific and immediately relatable to the audience. “The best illustrations not only appeal to people’s minds, but also touch their emotions” (155). This advice demonstrates that preaching is not only a science but art. It also encourages the preacher to let the text become so much a part of his daily thoughts and decisions that illustrations flow from his life, making it easy for him to help the audience connect the text to real life experience.

Robinson’s final two chapters (9-10) are treasures houses of practical tips on good communication. Without wasting a syllable, Robinson covers miles of speech topics: strong transitions, clear style, direct and personal style, vivid style, the power of nonverbal communication, grooming and dress, movement and gestures, eye contact, vocal delivery, rehearsal, and feedback.

Lacking in this book is any serious discussion on preaching Christ and the dangers of leaving people with truckloads of moral instruction but no Christ without whom obedience is impossible. Robinson only mentions the need in two sentences and then defers to other men like Greidanus and Goldsworthy who have written entire volumes on this topic (32). Although these are great recommendations, preaching Christ and letting the gospel be the foundation of every moral command is too important to treat in a few sentences, and it ignores the centrality of Christ to all of Scripture (John 5:39; Luke 24:27).  

For learning how to prepare a message from text to full manuscript, I find Robinson’s approach a little clogged with sub-points in chapters 3-6, and difficult to apply. But for packaging the sermon (chapter seven), introductions and conclusions (chapter eight), and practical tips on communication methods and other sermon parts like transitions, application, and getting the big idea, this book is a treasure house. Most refreshing is Robinson’s commitment to letting the Scripture passage form the purpose and application of the sermon:

How then do you discover the purpose of your sermon? You do so by discovering the purpose behind the passage you are preaching (108).

Most lacking is any serious encouragement to preach Christ, the centerpiece of Scripture.

Haddon W. Robinson. Biblical Preaching: The Development and Delivery of Expository Messages, second edition. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2001. 256 pp.