Were great sermons delivered to the wrong people.
As pastors we have to remember that the measure of a sermon isn’t just based on the effectiveness of its delivery or its faithfulness to Scripture. Just as essential is that it is designed for the specific group of people God has called us to reach.
The problem usually occurs before the sermon is ever delivered. Every preacher has a galley of people that is sitting in their minds when they are preparing a sermon. The problem is that many pastors have the wrong people sitting in that galley.
Some of us are preparing our sermons for our old seminary professor so our goal is to not make any mistakes or do anything unorthodox. Others of us are preaching to a donor we don’t want to offend by saying the wrong thing. We’re preaching to bloggers who might criticize us and take something out of context. We’re preaching to the person who made us mad and we want to get them back so we bully them from the pulpit.
In each of these cases, the issue isn’t that we’re not faithfully preaching God’s Word. It’s that we’re not faithfully preaching it to the people He has called us to preach it to.
It’s so important that when we are preparing our sermons, we keep two primary audiences before us. First and foremost, God must be the primary person on our minds. Otherwise whatever you preach won’t be worth anyone’s time. But then you have to take the next step and ask yourself the identity of the primary group you have been called to reach or that God has given you this sermon for. Otherwise whatever you preach won’t be worth their time.
God determines your faithfulness to the Word. But your audience determines who receives the focus of the Word.