Step 1: Select a textual unit with an eye to congregational needs.

Preachers should focus on the question: What need in Israel did this text address? What was the question in Israel which this text sought to answer? What was the issue behind the text? If, upon further study, we find that the text met a different need in Israel than we first supposed, we must either look for a different text or develop the selected text into a sermon that will meet a different need than that which we first intended. The point is that preachers must at all costs do justice to the biblical text and not twist it into responding to a different issue than its author originally addressed.

The reason for selecting a biblical textual unit as preaching-text is to ground the sermon in the written Word of God. Expository sermons seek to expose for the present congregation a word of God originally spoken to Israel or, in case of the New Testament, to the early church. Preachers are like transmission towers who transmit the original biblical message from an earlier generation to the present generation.4 Their calling is not to invent their own messages but relevantly to pass on the divine messages found in the Bible. This calling to be faithful to the biblical text makes proper text selection such a crucial first step. It is almost impossible to preach a sound, biblical sermon from a poorly selected preaching-text.