Instructive Preaching

In Why Johnny Can't Preach, David Gordon references Dabney's Sacred Rhetoric, from which he draws seven essentials of good preaching.  These were: 1) Textual Fidelity, 2) Unity, 3) Evangelical Tone, 4) Instructiveness, 5) Movement, 6) Point, and 7) Order.  The one that caught my attention was Instructiveness, and specifically Gordon's comments:

Does the sermon significantly engage the mind, or is the sermon full of commonplace cliches, slogans, and general truths?  Is the hearer genuinely likely to rethink his view of God, society, church, or self, or his reasons for holding his current views?  Is the mind of the attentive listener engaged or repulsed?

(T. David Gordon, Why Johnny Can't Preach, P&R: Phillipsburg, NJ, 2009, p. 26)

I find I have to make a conscious effort when preparing sermons to be specific.  It's much faster to give application generally: "And the point is that we should love one another."  It's far more effective to say, "When your son wakes you up crying in the middle of the night, do you love your husband or wife by willingly and quickly getting up to take care of him?"  The first is general and easy to ignore; the second is specific (and for those in that situation, perhaps uncomfortably so).

We must strive to have specific preaching.