How often in your sermon—actually in the midst of your preaching—does your teaching drive you to simply, and vocally, offer up your own doxology? When we study for our sermons, when we pray for our sermons, when we prepare our sermons, when we deliver our sermons . . . we ought to be driven to praise the Lord.

When considering how to preach, we often think about certain words: faithfully, exegetically, expositionally, passionately, clearly. I’d like to take this post to encourage you to preach doxologically. Preach in a way that drives you and your listeners to unbridled worship.

Consider the example of Scripture.

Paul, after discussing the faithfulness of God in using Israel’s hardening to extend salvation to the Gentiles and in preserving a remnant of Jewish people, breaks forth with words of praise:

Oh the depth of the riches of both the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who became his counselor? Or who has first given to Him that it might be paid back to him again? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen. (Rom 11:33–36)

Paul ends the entire epistle, this epic treatise on the gospel, with another doxology:

Now to Him who is able to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery which has been kept secret for long ages past, but now is manifested, and by the Scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the eternal God, has been made known to all the nations, leading to obedience of faith; to the only wise God, through Jesus Christ, be the glory forever. Amen. (Rom 16:25–27)

Paul breaks out into doxological praise in teaching the Corinthians about God’s care for him in hardship (2 Cor 11:31). Many times he opens his epistles (his specific teaching to those local congregations) with doxologies (Rom 1:25; 2 Cor 1:3; Gal 1:4–5; Eph 1:3). He introduces his teaching to Timothy, a teaching directly addressing the form and function of the local church, with an explanation of the Lord’s work in salvation, which leads to lofty doxological praise: “Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen” (1 Tim 1:17).

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