Or, how to be a sermon hack without really trying. I know you'll find these tips helpful:

1. Come fresh to a passage. After all, freshness is best. Make sure that you don't look at a passage before you come to do your Friday or Saturday preparation. Previous study will only hold you back. Let the word sink into you at the same time as you are preparing; it doesn't need to have done so before.
2. Avoid the Old Testament. As someone said to me this week, "The Old Testament is both hard and boring." Stick to the New Testament, and, to be honest, stick to the easier parts. There's plenty there, why waste effort on hard stuff? Your congregation will not cope anyway.
3. Don't get wound up about praying. You know full well that you've preached OK (at least, if not better) when prayer has been slight. Prayer is not an essential ingredient like some magic spell to be cast over your message. 
4. Choose a good story. Everyone loves a good story. It will keep people with you. Select a really good story on which to hang your sermon. Funny too, if possible. Start with it, come back to it at the end. 
5. Read selectively. To be frank, throw out all those commentaries that are of the analytical verse-by-verse kind. The only commentaries worth their salt are those which are based on sermons. Use these copiously. You will find inspiration for both headings and illustrations here, saving you the bother of doing these yourself. After all, if it ain't broke….

And, hey presto, you're a sermon hack. Congratulations. 

Footnotes:

1. irony. n. an expression of meaning by the use of a language of a different or opposite tendency.

2. Read 2 Tim 2.15 again: "Do your best"

More like this:

• Don Carson on Hard Study
• How to avoid being a sermon hack