There are two ditches we can fall into in preaching and in the hearing of preaching.
I would argue that the majority of men who preach want the same thing. They want people to understand the Bible, to feel the weight of what it says, and to have the desire to live according to it.
Intellectual Preaching
The first ditch that preaching can fall into is intellectualism. In this ditch, the preaching is diligent and serious about the text, as it clearly outlines the passage, explains the doctrine, and will often give the hearer something that they may not have known or heard before.
This type of preaching is attractive to the preacher, as it makes him serious about the text and serious about the Word of God. It is attractive to the hearer because they can leave a sermon with some connection in the text that they may have missed before, or be able to articulate what they believe more clearly.
The danger of this type of preaching is that while real connection may be made, it leaves the hearer to figure out what the text has to do with them. To put it bluntly, the hearer may understand justification better when they leave, but may still leave with the same guilt over sin that they came in with, because the sermon never actually directed him to rest in the righteousness of Christ.
To be clear, exegesis and theological depth in the pulpit are important, but they must serve the preaching, without becoming the preaching.
Emotional Preaching
The other ditch in preaching is emotionalism. In this style, the preacher is rightly attempting to move the congregation; however, he is doing it in a way that sidesteps the work of the Spirit and will, oftentimes, become manipulative, even if that is never the intent.
This type of sermon can cause the hearer to be brought to tears and be visibly and emotionally moved; the question is what was the hearer given to believe. Because there was nothing to believe, when the emotions pass, there is nothing left to sustain them.
To be clear, preaching ought to move us. There is something wrong when we can speak about the goodness and the holiness of God with no apparent sense of their weight. But there is also something wrong when the weight comes mainly from the preacher’s delivery and has little connection to the passage.
The problem for many is that they can fall into either ditch while trying to climb out of the other. Someone tired of shallow emotional appeals may tend to go to the extreme and preach sermons that explain everything, while someone tired of cold theology may begin chasing a response.
Experiential Preaching
This is where I think experiential preaching helps us to stay out of both ditches.
Experiential preaching explains and applies Scripture to the hearer. Joel Beeke describes it as preaching that applies the truth of God to the hearts of people.1
For me, that means application must bring the Christ proclaimed in the text to the person hearing it. We explain who Christ is and what he has accomplished, and then address the hearer with that Christ. His finished work stands outside us, accomplished in history, but the gospel presents him to us to be personally received and rested upon by faith.
Let me be extremely clear: Application cannot be reduced to “Here is what to do”; rather, it must be “Here is Christ for you.”
Commands and duties belong in preaching, but we need to show how obedience proceeds from receiving and living upon Christ, which is why applying Christ involves more than finding a connection to him and mentioning it before the sermon ends.
The preacher's duty is to press the Person and the work of Christ upon the hearer’s conscience. When the text exposes guilt, we bring the sinner to Christ for righteousness and forgiveness. When it exposes helplessness, we direct him to Christ for strength. When it calls for endurance, we help him rest upon Christ and his promises as he waits for the inheritance to come.
And in doing this, we call both the unbeliever and the believer to faith. The unbeliever is called to receive the Christ freely offered in the gospel, resting upon him for salvation. The believer is called to do the very same, and to continue receiving the Christ to whom he already belongs.
The conditions of the hearers differ, and our address should recognize those differences, but both need Christ, and both hearers are addressed with a call to do the same thing: trust Him.
J. C. Ryle explains this well, the purpose and the necessity of this application when he writes:
“Personal application has been called the ‘soul’ of preaching. A sermon without application is like a letter posted without a direction: it may be well written, rightly dated and duly signed; but it is useless, because it never reaches its destination.”2
In short, Ryle’s point is that a preacher can become so absorbed in what he has discovered in the text that he forgets the people before him.
As ministers, a sermon must reach the person sitting before us. We must not lower ourselves to the position of teachers only, but understand that we have been given the solemn privilege to proclaim Christ to both the converted and unconverted sinner. Our aim should be to preach the text faithfully and bring the Christ revealed in it to the people before us.
As hearers, we also need to consider how we come to preaching. We should desire to learn, and we should desire to be moved, but we should come as people who need Christ. Every sermon should find us ready to believe what God has said, and rest upon the Christ freely offered in the gospel.
I need the same Christ I proclaim to others
Joel Beeke, Reformed Preaching, 41.
J. C. Ryle, Expository Thoughts on Matthew, 99.