And with many other words he testified and exhorted them, saying, "Be saved from this perverse generation."
Acts 2:40
What is recorded in Acts 2:14-39 is not the entire sermon Peter preached on that most famous of all Pentecosts. It is, rather, a summary of the high points of the sermon. Besides the fact that the 27 verses before (v.40) were not everything Peter said, Luke records in (v.40) that Peter continued after the sermon “with many other words.”
Someone once quipped that “the mind can only absorb what the seat can endure.” Yes, sermons can be too long. How long should sermons be?
Spurgeon is quoted as saying, “Some preachers can speak for an hour and it seems like fifteen minutes; and some can speak for fifteen minutes and it seems like an hour.” True enough. So one factor that should suggest how long a sermon should be is the preacher’s skill as a speaker. Each preacher needs to know how long he should preach and be cautious not to exceed that limit.
One goal for the wise preacher is to “give the people enough that they want more, but not so much that they can’t wait for the preaching to end.”
Less experienced preachers (especially those who do not get to preach every week), may preach too long because they want to tell everything they know in each of their sermons. Hopefully, as they gain valuable experience, they will learn that they do not have tell all they know in every message.
Many texts contain so much about many truths that there is too much for any one message. When this is the case, the preacher has the following options: (a) Stick to a summary overview rather than mining all the truth out of the text. (b) Turn the message into several messages. (c) Limit the message to the main point of the text and say ‘no’ to the urge to “tell all that can be told.”
All that seems to be an argument for short sermons, but while some preachers may be long-winded, it is arguably more common in our day for sermons to be too short! This happens because too many people in too many churches simply do not have the appetite for more of God’s Word. As a result, there are many preachers, who, according to John MacArthur, “preach sermonettes to Christianettes!”
So the length of sermons can be governed both by the skill of the preachers, and by spiritual maturity and appetite for God’s Word in the hearts of the congregants. I thank God every time I preach at GBC that I am so privileged to preach in a church where the people have such a hearty appetite for God’s Word. Because of that, I need only to concern myself with my ability to preach, and not your appetite for the Word. Bless you!
(How’ ya like the long blog post about short sermons?)