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PreachingToday.com: As any pastor knows, listeners have an agenda for our sermons. They have issues they'd like us to address. They have felt needs and questions they want us to talk about. How did Jesus and the apostle Paul treat the listener's agenda? And how is that relevant to what we should do?

Bryan Chapell: They recognized two things. One, listeners had an agenda that might or might not be in accord with God's agenda. Second, Jesus and Paul acted accordingly in that they certainly put God's agenda first, but they recognized God's agenda as seeking the hearts of men and women for Christ.

Therefore, while they had in mind the glory of God, they also had in mind the edification of his people. Keeping those two things together is the goal of good preaching. If preaching is only directed at God's glory, it becomes abstraction and arrogance. If it's only directed at people's edification, it becomes entertainment and in some ways just currying favor. What really serves God's people is when you are considering, How can I glorify God and edify his people at the same time?

In the Bible, the ruler comes to Christ and asks, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus responds. Is preaching similar to what Jesus does when he answers this man's specific question?

Yes, although we don't always have Jesus' insight. In the ruler's case, our ready response would be, "Acknowledge that you are in need of a Savior and confess that Christ is Lord, and you will be saved." But Jesus sees a man who comes with all the accoutrements of riches and self-aggrandizement. The ruler's question indicates what's really in his heart—"What must I do to be saved?"

Jesus penetrates that by answering in a way that shocks us; he says, "Keep the commandments." It sounds like works-salvation to our ears, but you have to hear the question. The man had said, "What must I do to be saved." Jesus penetrates the bubble the man has built by saying: If the question is what you do to be saved, then do everything.

The rich young ruler's response is, "All these commands I've kept from my youth." Jesus had just said that only God is good, and now three seconds later the young man says, me too. In doing so, he gives himself the status of God. What must Jesus do in that situation? He must make the man perceive his inability to be God. So he tells him impossible things to do, and finally the man turns away. What was Jesus doing? To let the man come on the basis of being good enough for God would actually be to damage him.

What Jesus does is speak to the necessities and the capacities of the individuals he is addressing. The necessity: The man must recognize his own insufficiency. His capacity: If Jesus just gives him a simple plan of salvation, he will not be able to understand what he is lacking. So Jesus must address the man at the level of his capacity to understand. Over and over again that is the balance of Scripture. It is not merely dealing with felt need. It's willing to do that at times, but in order that people who have low capacity may hear what is necessary for them to know.

Remember how Paul said to the Ephesian elders, "I have not hesitated to say anything needful to you for salvation." What does that "needful" mean? Paul says it's not just your felt needs. Sometimes I must address that. But I see beyond that to your godly needs, your biblical needs. And what ultimately is needed for your edification and for God's glory, that's what I will address. But that means I must deal with your capacity to hear me, as well as what you need to hear.

We are correct to hear our listeners even as we look at the Word. To say my job is simply to proclaim the Word, while turning a deaf ear to what my listeners are asking, is actually to damage them. What I'm doing is saying the Word does not really apply to their lives. I speak just into abstraction.

The best preachers are always doing two things at the same time. They are exegeting the text and exegeting their hearers. Not only do I consider what my hearers need to hear from this text, but I also consider what they are capable of hearing from this text. Have I put the fruit of the gospel within reach of those that God has given me to minister to? He has not only given me the Word to proclaim to these people, he has given me these people to minister to. I must consider who they are, what they can hear, and what their needs are.

The old preacher's line says we need to remember we are preaching to sheep, not giraffes. If we preach to giraffes, we'll put things at a level we're comfortable with, or that our preaching peers are comfortable with, instead of listening to our hearers and saying, What are you capable of hearing?

If that sounds like compromise, remember that Jesus said to his own disciples: I have more to tell you, but you are not ready to receive it yet. He recognized that even though he had more truth to say, his disciples were not always at a level to receive it. So he had to speak at the level they could receive in order for them to grow in such a way that they could receive what they needed later.

Preachers debate about how to select their preaching texts. Should I preach consecutively through a book? Regardless what people are experiencing they're supposed to receive what they should from this text. Or, Should I identify what the people are struggling with and find a text that deals with that? My answer is both-and. It's not either-or.

Ralph Lewis described it years ago as the web and flow of preaching. Sometimes we flow. We move consecutively through a book or series of verses, knowing we will address issues that might not have come to our minds through our own experience. In this way, we preach the whole counsel of God.

At the same time, if there is the death of an elder in the church, an economic crisis in the community, a natural disaster, for us to say, "I don't care about that. My obligation is to preach the next verse in this passage," is to say the Word of God doesn't really apply to life.

Instead, our preaching should at times have a web effect: when something significant has happened, I need to find the verse that captures it so I can deal directly with what my people are experiencing.

PreachingToday.com: We looked at an example from Jesus; let's focus now on Paul. In Corinthians, Paul the apostle says, "Now, about the things you wrote about." So, he's dealing with questions that they have presented to him. They've said, Paul, what do we do about this? And here he writes a book of the Bible responding to the listener's agenda. Again, how does that relate to our task as preachers?

Bryan Chapell: In 2 Timothy 4, Paul says, "Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season. Correct, rebuke, and encourage." Those are all the straightforward, Just preach it, man. Just do it . But then he goes on to say, but do this "with great patience and careful instruction." There's the wonderful human touch. He says you have to do it with great patience. Be aware of the persons to whom you're talking. Some of them must take the truth out of eyedroppers, and some of them need to take it from fire hydrants. With great patience discern whom you're talking to. And then, with great care, give them instruction.

Now, he quickly follows that human touch by saying: But be careful because there will come a time when people will only want to gather around themselves teachers who say what their itching ears want to hear.

Paul has done two things. He has said God sets the agenda—preach the Word. People don't set the agenda, since they are only able to determine what their own ears want to hear. But even as God sets the agenda, his agenda has in mind the care of his people. So, pastoral care is considering what people need to hear, yes, but it's also considering how can they hear it. How careful, how patient, how gentle, or, conversely, how strong and bold do you need to be in order for this truth to penetrate? It's the people's good as well as God's glory that sets the agenda, not simply the people's desires.

The main goal of preaching is not information; it is transformation.

One definition of expository preaching is that it is letting the Scripture text control the sermon. What should the preacher who is committed to that sort of exposition think about the listener's agenda? How much or in what ways should the listener's agenda control the preacher's agenda?

I love that expository rubric, and I would not do anything but endorse it, because where the Bible speaks God speaks. So, what I'm attempting to do is simply reflect the truth of God as I preach in an expository way from the text. So the text does have to control the truth that we speak. At the same time, as that truth's meaning is given, its significance will vary given the people to whom I am speaking.

For example, if I'm speaking the truth from God's Word that God knows tomorrow, the significance of that truth may vary greatly for the hearers that I'm addressing. If I'm addressing high schoolers that are concerned about where they will go to college next year and whether God will still take care of them, or if he knows tomorrow, I'm saying, even though you don't know where you will be next year, God knows. And that's why you can trust him. But what if I'm speaking to folks in a nursing home, and they don't know if they will draw the next breath tomorrow or next year?

I'm speaking in two very different contexts, so that the significance of God's knowledge of tomorrow is different for the two crowds, but the truth is controlled by the text. So the meaning doesn't vary, but its significance may vary greatly according to the nature of my hearer.

How does this affect the way we structure a sermon?

We typically talk about the difference between the exegetical outline and the homiletical outline. Though there will be some differences in exegetical outlines, they shouldn't vary much from preacher to preacher. But the homiletical outline may vary greatly. Each preacher must ask, Which aspect of the text do I need to mention first to this particular congregation? What illustrations may I use? Of the minor or major points of the text, which needs the most emphasis for this group?

Maybe this group has never heard this before, or maybe this group has heard all of this before. My obligation is to exegete the text, but to be faithful to God's purpose I have to exegete the people as well and say, What do they need to hear? What can they hear? What do they most desire to hear? What do they not want to hear but must hear?

And if that sounds like compromising the text, we should remember what the father of expository preaching, John Broadus, said: the main thing to be done in preaching is application. Now, he wasn't shortchanging exposition, but he was recognizing that the main goal of preaching is not information; it is transformation.

We have truth to say, but there is an end goal, and the end goal is changing the will and behavior of God's people for their edification.

As I heard someone say once, our purpose is not just to get people into the Word; it's to get the Word into the people. So someone can be so ideologically driven toward exposition that they can forget about their hearers and thereby do them a disservice. On the other hand, someone can be almost exclusively driven by the hearer. What do people on that end of the spectrum risk losing by being so listener driven?

What you may lose if you are exclusively listener driven is, ultimately, the Word of God for God's people. The Word of God is meant to bring people the joy that is their strength. But at times people are taking their joy from the idols of the world. If we are not able to challenge, correct, even rebuke, then we will be driven by an agenda that is actually leading people into harm.

So the pastor has to have the objective distance of the Scriptures setting the agenda. I have to say what the Scripture says because it, more than I, knows what is good for God's people. By being faithful to the truth of the text I challenge the idols of the times and the idols in people's hearts, and say at times what their itching ears do not want to hear. If I only follow their agenda, I may be led to issues too shallow. I may be led to issues actually secular and wrong. I may be led to say things in such a way that people, while they are pleased with what I am saying, are not displeased enough with their sin that they will turn from it.

There are certain rights that people have in the pew. One is that the pastor will address what is going on in their lives. But I must do so in a way that is true to the Scriptures more than simply true to their desires.

Bryan Chapell is the senior pastor of Grace Presbyterian Church in Peoria, Illinois.