At Oakwood we believe in the sufficiency of Scripture and the centrality of the Gospel. God’s Word will accomplish His work (Isaiah 55:11). The power to change lives is in the seeds of God’s Word that take root in humble, responsive hearts (Luke 8:11). And it is the Gospel itself that is “the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Romans 1:16). 
Our confidence is not in clever presentations or eloquent articulation but in the beauty and simplicity of preaching Christ crucified. “We proclaim Him,” (Colossians 1:28) is the summary of our preaching philosophy.
So every Sunday my primary goal is, quite simply, to lift up Jesus so that he can “draw all people to himself” (John 12:32). My first question to evaluate the effectiveness of a message is – “Did it lead people to worship Jesus?” If the preaching ministry at Oakwood stirs your heart to love God more, to trust Jesus more, to give thanks for all God has done for you in Christ – then we are succeeding. This is the center of our sandbox: to exalt Christ.
The frames of the sandbox provide structure and direction to the preaching. The foundation of the frame is the Bible. To have authority, preaching must be based on and saturated with Scripture, lest it devolve into nothing more than the ideas of a person. Rather, we have been commissioned to speak the oracles of God (1 Peter 4:10) with the full authority of Jesus (Matt. 28:18-20). Therefore my goal is to expound a verse or passage of Scripture, pressing home the words and ideas of the text in its original context (lest it become a pretext for a proof-text).
The top of the frame is theology. A good sermon should teach us something about God and help us orient our hearts and lives toward Him. What significant doctrine was highlighted in this passage? What great truth was revealed or developed here?
The outer frames remind the preacher of the necessity to be both clear and compelling. God is a God of order and He has made Himself known through a collection of wonderfully clear and marvelously motivating speeches and writings. A good sermon should be clear in its goals and structure. The preacher should share from the outset a good reason for people to listen and then expound the truth of Scripture with a strong emphasis on application, lest we be hearers of the Word only and not doers of it.
Howard Hendricks rightly said, “It is a sin to bore people with the Bible.” Scripture is engaging. The preacher needs to pray for what the old preachers called “unction”: urgency, conviction, passion and power. The goal is not emotional manipulation but a sincere appeal to the heart through the mind. We proclaim and expound the truth of God’s Word, using all of the tools of communication and persuasion to help non-believers hear the Gospel and to help believers more deeply trust in the Gospel. All Bible study should move toward application since Jesus clearly stated that to love Him is to obey His commands (John 14:15).
I learned this Preaching Sandbox approach from Pastor Colin Smith at The Orchard Church in the Chicago area. In my view, Colin is one of the most godly leaders and gifted preachers active today – please take advantage of his ministry! You can access his current messages from the church website and his sermon archive here at unlockingthebible.org. Unlocking the Bible also has an App that is very helpful. Through 2019 we will be partnering with The Orchard and UTB as we preach and study through the whole Bible following Colin’s Unlocking the Bible Story materials. You will be encouraged and blessed to see how the whole Bible is one story and it all points to Jesus!