A Piece of String

Written by Christopher Mentzer

Ever since the popularity of 30-minute sitcoms on television, people of America have adjusted their lives to sit still no longer than that length of time.  When it comes to Sunday Services, and listening to the preacher, they don’t want the sermon to go past 25-30 minutes.  Once the 30-minute mark hits the credits should be rolling (or the Invitation given) and they can gather up their stuff and go home.  Anything longer and people get antsy in their seats; they look at their watch every two minutes, check to see if someone has stolen their car out of the parking lot, etc.

This then begs the question of ‘How long is a Gospel Sermon?’  Right away people will respond but their answers will be how long they think the sermon should be.  It’s the same as asking the question: ‘How long is a piece of string?’  Again there really is not right answer as you look at string from 3 inches to 10 inches and it’s still a piece of string.

When I first started preaching, my sermons only went about twenty minutes.  Mostly because I was inexperienced and, when I get nervous, I tend to speak faster in front of a group.  I was unhappy because they were so short but there were some members who felt that the length was perfect; given that the average lesson is 45 minutes.  Someone once told me that there is no definite end time, just a start time.  And the start time is, of course, when the sermon begins.

One of the more popular references to long sermons is that of the apostle Paul from Acts 20: 7, “…Paul discoursed with them, intending to depart on the morrow; and prolonged his speech until midnight.” Here we see that there is no mention of a start time but I’ll suggest to you that it was an evening service.  Some people will say, ‘See Paul preached until midnight’.  But that’s not entirely true, look at the next three verses:

“9. And there sat in the window a certain young man named Eutychus, borne down with deep sleep; and as Paul discoursed yet longer, being borne down by his sleep he fell down from the third story, and was taken up dead.  10. And Paul went down, and fell on him, and embracing him said, Make ye no ado; for his life is in him.  11. And when he was gone up, and had broken the bread, and eaten, and had talked with them a long while, even till break of day, so he departed.”

From these verses Paul spoke straight through the night until approximately 6 or 7 am; given that the first hour of the day is 7am.  Did Paul have a lot to talk about? He sure did!  He wasn’t killing time with anecdotes or reading from a travel diary.  He was sharing the gospel with these people and wanted to give them as much information as he could in case he wasn’t able to return this way anytime soon.  Basically you can think of it as a weeklong gospel meeting in one night.

Looking at the different sermons from the book of Acts, a person could read through them in about 5 or 10 minutes.  This does not mean that that was the length of the entire sermon but enough for us to get an understanding of what was being said.  In the first gospel sermon of Acts 2, many people think the conclusion of the sermon was verses 38-39.  But let’s look at verse 40, “And with many other words he testified, and exhorted them, saying, Save yourselves from this crooked generation.” We’re given the bulk of the lesson but that wasn’t the entire sermon as shown here.

As Christians we need to concern ourselves more with the content of the sermon than the length of it.  For it is the gospel that saves our souls (Rom. 1: 16)