In his sermon preparation, Mark Dever uses what he calls an “application grid” as a tool to help him think how each point of the sermon relates to the rest of redemptive history, the person and work of Christ, and how it applies to different categories of hearers. Download an application grid: Blank | Completed Sample

Age.  Speak to children, adults, and seniors. Marital status/family situation. What does your text say to singles, young couples, couples with grown children, barren couples, divorcees, single moms, widows, and so on? Employment. Does your text have any application for homemakers, for employers, for workaholics, for people who aren’t happy with their jobs, for the unemployed?

You should strive to apply your sermons to both

Look for ways to teach and affirm biblical commands about what the church does when it gathers. Look for opportunities to teach the congregation about their individual responsibilities to one another in daily Christian living. Look for ways to promote trust in the church’s leadership.

The important thing to consider here is the preacher’s work compared to the Holy Spirit’s work.

Suppose your friend asks you to summarize a two-hour movie you just saw. You could do that in five minutes or less. You would summarize the movie’s contents, emphasize what the movie is about, and by pointing to key moments in the movie.

Not necessarily. An expositional sermon should explain and apply the main point of a passage of Scripture. If a preacher is able to derive his homiletical outline directly from his exegetical outline, so much the better. This often allows the congregation to better see the structure of a passage.

Not necessarily. Do whatever works for you.

The advantage of writing out a full manuscript before preaching a sermon (whether or not you take that manuscript into the pulpit) is that writing is the evidence of thought. Writing down everything you intend to say will sharpen your thoughts and force you to be clearer and more precise than you would have been otherwise.

Different preachers will develop slightly different ways of preparing sermons, which is fine. Do what works for you. That said, here are some steps that should be involved in the preparation of any expositional sermon.

Do no application. Expositional preaching is preaching that takes the main point of a scriptural text, makes it the main point of the sermon, and applies it to life today. Good expositional preaching will apply the text specifically: to different kinds of people in different spiritual states and different situations in life.

Some people today claim that expositional preaching is irrelevant for postmodern people. “People today need narrative and conversation and dialogue and drama! They don’t need expositional preaching.”

In fact, expositional preaching is particularly relevant for postmodern people:

Some people resent expositional preaching’s monological mode. One man stands up for many minutes and preaches while everyone else listens. Isn’t this unfair or even oppressive? What about conversation? Certainly, there should be plenty of venues in the life of the church for conversation, whether through inductive Bible studies, follow-up sermon studies in small groups, or other contexts. 

No, expostional preaching is not the only kind of preaching a pastor should do. But…

Yes. Some of these are more distant historical precedents and some of these are clear examples of expositional preaching—preaching that explains and applies the main point of a biblical text.