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The Topical Sermon: How to Preach What the Bible Says About a Subject

June 28, 2026

Topical preaching has acquired a reputation as expository preaching’s less disciplined cousin — prone to proof-texting, thin on exegesis, more driven by what the preacher wants to say than by what the text actually teaches.

Some of that reputation is earned. But topical preaching done well is a legitimate and often necessary mode of proclamation. Some questions are big enough that no single passage can answer them fully. Some subjects — money, suffering, marriage, vocation — require the preacher to think with the whole Bible, not just one corner of it.

The discipline is keeping the texts honest while still addressing the question.

What Makes Topical Preaching Topical

In expository preaching, the biblical text sets the agenda. The structure of the sermon follows the structure of the passage. The preacher’s job is to get out of the text’s way and let it say what it says.

In topical preaching, the question sets the agenda. The preacher identifies a subject the congregation needs to think clearly about, then surveys what Scripture says about it from multiple angles and texts.

	Expository	Topical
Starting point	Biblical passage	Question or subject
Structure	Follows the text	Follows the logic of the question
Primary risk	Missing relevance	Misusing texts
Primary strength	Text-fidelity	Canonical breadth

Neither approach is inherently superior. The worst expository sermons are technically rigorous but pastoral dead ends. The worst topical sermons are pastoral without being biblical. The challenge in both cases is the same: letting Scripture speak, not performing ventriloquism with it.

Choosing a Topic Worth Preaching

Not every subject makes a good topical sermon. The filter to apply:

Does Scripture directly address this? A sermon on “Christians and social media” has almost no direct biblical material — the preacher would be extrapolating from general principles throughout. That’s thin ice. A sermon on “money and anxiety” has substantial direct biblical engagement (Matthew 6, Luke 12, 1 Timothy 6, Philippians 4). Much more workable.

Is this a real question the congregation is carrying? Topical preaching works when it addresses something the room is actually wrestling with. “Should I invest in crypto?” is too narrow. “How do I hold financial uncertainty with trust?” is exactly right.

Are there two to four substantial texts to work with? The goal is not a concordance dump — it’s genuine engagement with a handful of passages that each illuminate the subject from a different angle. More than four texts usually means the sermon becomes a survey rather than a proclamation.

Building the Sermon

Step 1: Narrow the Question

“Prayer” is a category, not a sermon. “Suffering” is a category. “Money” is a category.

Good topical preaching begins with a question sharp enough to actually answer:

Not “prayer” but “what does faithfulness look like when prayer seems to go nowhere?”
Not “suffering” but “is God present in the places where he seems most absent?”
Not “money” but “what does Scripture say about financial generosity when I don’t feel I have enough?”

The more specific the question, the more specific the sermon can be — and specificity is what congregations remember.

Step 2: Map the Biblical Terrain

Before selecting your texts, do a biblical-theological survey. How does this subject develop across the canon?

Where does it appear in the early chapters of Genesis (creation, fall)?
How does the Law address it?
What do the prophets say?
How does Jesus handle it?
How do the New Testament letters develop it?

This survey prevents the common mistake of using only New Testament texts and missing the richer canonical story. It also helps the preacher understand the direction the subject moves across Scripture — which informs how the sermon should land.

Step 3: Select Two to Four Anchor Texts

From the survey, choose two to four passages that:

Address the question most directly
Represent meaningfully different angles on the subject
Together tell a more complete story than any one of them alone

These texts deserve real exegetical work — the same quality of attention you’d give a text in an expository series. Topical preaching doesn’t get to be lazy about what the texts actually say.

The temptation to resist: using texts as quotations rather than arguments. If your sermon could replace “as Paul says in Romans 8:28” with “as someone once told me” without losing anything, the text isn’t actually doing work in your sermon.

Step 4: Find the Unifying Claim

A topical sermon still needs a single central claim — a sentence that captures what all the biblical material is pointing toward when read together. The multiple texts are means, not ends. They converge on something.

Write that claim as a complete sentence before you structure the sermon. It will govern everything else.

Step 5: Structure Around Logic, Not Texts

The structure of a topical sermon follows the logic of the question, not the sequence of the texts. Common patterns:

Question → Misunderstanding → Biblical answer → Application Establish what people typically think about this subject, demonstrate where that’s insufficient, show what Scripture actually says, and apply it.

OT foundation → NT fulfillment → Present application Trace how the subject develops across the canon, arriving at Christ and then at the congregation’s life.

Problem → Principle → Embodiment → Invitation Name the pastoral reality, extract the biblical principle, show what it looks like when lived out (usually through a biblical character), then invite.

The One Rule That Makes Topical Preaching Biblical

Treat each text the way you’d treat a text in an expository sermon.

That means: read it in context. Know what it meant in its original setting. Don’t use it to say something it wouldn’t say on its own. If you quote Romans 8:28 in a topical sermon on suffering, you need to know what Paul is actually arguing in Romans 8 — who he’s writing to, what “works together for good” actually means, what it doesn’t promise.

When topical preaching treats texts as quotations to be deployed rather than arguments to be understood, it eventually produces congregations who think the Bible means whatever the preacher says it means. That’s a formation problem as much as a homiletical one.

Topical preaching, done honestly, lets the whole Bible speak to real questions — and that’s a remarkable thing to offer a congregation. The discipline is ensuring that what speaks is actually the Bible, and not just the preacher’s existing conclusions arranged with biblical furniture.

The method is secondary to the discipline. And the discipline is the same as it always is: let the texts say what they say.

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