Homiletics

7 Defining Moments in Your Sermon Preparation – Part Four

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There are multiple defining moments in the sermon preparation process. We have thought about starting the process, shifting from passage study to message formation, becoming conscious of who will be listening, and the unplanned interruptions that seem to prevent a smooth preparation. There is one more defining moment left. It is one to add if it doesn’t happen naturally:

7. The realization of insufficiency.  You want to be a good steward of your opportunity to preach.  You desire to give your best, both in terms of exegetical rigour, and pastoral sensitivity in sermon crafting.  And perhaps the process has allowed better than normal focus, with more clear hours for preparation than you expected.  Maybe nothing broke at home, no hospital visits were necessary, and everything was unusually peaceful and supportive along the way.  Will you go into preaching feeling confident in your preparation, your skill, and your work of sermonic art?  I hope not.  When we feel we have “the best of sermons” then we tend to discover the false promise of self-sufficiency.  If God has not brought you to humble dependency through a log jam, or through an interruption, or through years of preaching experience, then it is totally acceptable to bring yourself to the place of total dependency.  Some combination of “apart from you, I can do nothing” prayer content along with a flat-on-your-face prayer posture is highly appropriate.  One of my teachers always prayed that he had a stick but needed God to come through as he threw it on the ground.  You want to be the most prepared preacher possible, but you must preach with a profound sense of your dependence on God.

What other defining moments do you recognize in your sermon preparation process?

Okay, here is a bonus one as I reflect on the list:

Bonus: The recognition of the coherence of the passage. Thinking back to the study of the passage, it is critical to arrive at the recognition that the passage holds together. It is easy to skip past this once you start to see some points that will preach. But actually, for your message to feel coherent, you need to recognise that the passage is also coherent. What unifies it? How does it hold together? How do the points and details relate to each other? Assume the Bible writer was not jumbled or scattered in his thinking, and keep thinking until you can see how it is a single unit of thought.

7 Defining Moments in Your Sermon Preparation – Part Three

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Defining moments are pivotal decisions that will impact the essential nature of your sermon. So far we have thought about getting started, and about the move from passage to message. Now let’s add a couple of unplanned moments that tend to show up quite often in the process:

5. The moment of breaking through a log jam.  Most messages are not a smooth journey from passage selection, through each sequential step, to a pulpit-ready sermon.  Somewhere along the way, there tends to be a log jam and we get stuck.  It could be the wording of the main idea.  It might be a needed illustration.  Or perhaps the sermon is ready, but the introduction feels bland and in need of a major overhaul.  Sometimes the whole thing might feel okay, but flat.  You are stuck and you feel it.  What can you do?  Sometimes the jam is the necessary reminder to really pray about the message – wrestling with God for some kind of breakthrough.  Sometimes the jam needs to break you free of your computer – stand and preach it out loud, then when it seems to flow better, go back and try to capture what you said into your outline.  Sometimes the jam will break only after you take a break – pray about it and leave the preparation for a walk, a night’s sleep, or a conversation with someone else.  I suspect new preachers will know the panic a log jam can create in your heart.  And I suspect that seasoned preachers will know how often a log jam occurs in the preparation process, and then proves to be a defining moment.

6. The interruption or even, the attack.  Maybe you have a nice predictable rhythm.  Perhaps you start preparing on a certain day, then take X number of sessions to study the passage, move on to shape the message on another day, and then have X number of hours to complete the message.  It may be nicely and neatly regimented by years of practice.  But then there is the interruption.  It is almost predictable.  The washing machine breaks, the family member’s computer goes down, the phone call from the congregant in a crisis, the thing that demands several hours that you do not have to spare.  It happens.  If it happens so often that you feel under-prepared every time, perhaps you need to review your standard plan for sermon preparation.  Perhaps it is time to lift some stress and get further into the process sooner in the week.  At the same time, it is good to recognize that God has used many sermons that felt under-prepared from the preacher’s perspective.  Sometimes the interruption, or even spiritual attack, is the necessary mechanism to push our dependence back onto God, where it belongs.

Do you experience variations of the log jam and the interruption? How often?

7 Defining Moments in Your Sermon Preparation – Part Two

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While the whole preparation process will shape your message, some defining moments will fundamentally change the outcome of the process. We started with two related to starting preparation. Now let’s think about two that tie into the transition between passage study and message formation:

3. The decision to transition from passage study to message formation.  The first half of the preparation process focuses on understanding the passage.  The second half involves formulating and writing a message.  The shift between these two phases is critically important.  If you shift too early, then you will be working on the message without really grasping the meaning of the passage.  If you shift too late, then you will have plenty of exegetical insight to share, but little time to craft a message that lands in real life.  Do you tend to fall in one direction or the other?  It is hard to see a lack of understanding in the mirror – we all tend to think we have a good grip on a passage when it may only be a superficial sense of the meaning.  Or you may be in a rut of sharing exegetical nuggets without crafting a message that is shaped to speak into real life.  And some, sad to say, neither know the joy of being gripped by a passage, nor the pleasure of crafting a sermon that hits home – they just use a passage as a launch point for some standard favourite content.  If that could be you, then it may be time for some candid conversations with some listeners, and for radical surgery on your ministry.  It will be worth it.

4. The realization of who will be listening.  At one level, this moment is fairly straightforward, as long as it happens.  That is to say, after studying the passage to understand the author’s meaning as accurately as possible, then you consciously introduce your listeners into your thinking as you move to crafting the sermon for their benefit.  You don’t want to be thinking too much about your listeners when you are studying the passage, because your concern is the original audience of the text.  Neither do you want to not be thinking about your listeners when shaping the message, because your concern has to be for them as the audience of the sermon.  That moment of introducing conscious consideration of your listeners should be a standard point in the process every time (and essentially the same moment as number 3 above).  But then there will be some sermon-specific moments in this category too.  You might realise how the message could hit very close to home for someone in your congregation.  You might be told that a certain person is going to be present.  You might be at church when someone walks in that you were not expecting (and you realise your message requires some tweaking for their sake – either to be more accessible, less provocative, or whatever.)

As this list continues to build, what defining moments do you recognize in your sermon preparation?

7 Defining Moments in Your Sermon Preparation

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

As you prepare your sermon, there are numerous defining moments.  That is to say, pivotal decisions that will impact the essential nature of the sermon.  The whole process is important, and every little detail of your preparation will build the character of the message.  But the defining moments will fundamentally change the outcome of your process.  Therefore, it is helpful to be especially aware of these key points in the process.

Here are seven defining moments in your sermon preparation:

1. The choosing of the passage.  If we genuinely believe in expository preaching, then the choice of passage will always be a key moment in our preparation.  Why?  Because that passage will be the boss of the message.  We cannot say whatever we want using any passage.  Some preachers do.  We must not.  If it is a series from a book, then the moment will primarily be the selection of the series, although the length of the next section to be covered will also matter.  If it is a one-off message, then the choice of the passage matters for the content of the sermon.  And also the timing of that choice will matter for how much time we can give to the preparation.  Some preachers make a good choice, but they make it so late that the preparation is adversely impacted by lack of time. 

2. The decision to start preparing.  If you have a tendency to procrastinate, and many of us do, then deciding to start preparing is important.  If your routine is established and it works well, then this may not be a key point for you.  However, if you find that life often presses in and the week is often eaten up before you even start the process, then this point is for you.  Decide to start early.  Just the first step.  For me, that means pasting the passage into a document and starting to recognize the shape of the passage.  Once you have started, even if only just, then the brain starts to collect and sort exegetical information, and the heart starts to bow to the truth of the text.  Some helpfully choose to get started, even if only just, more than a week before preaching.  Some even take some time to get started on every series, and even every passage, months before the time comes to preach.

In the next post we will continue the list of seven defining moments in the preparation of a sermon.

At Work in His Word

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As we enter February, there will be many new year Bible reading plans that are fading away.  Perhaps the challenge of a full work schedule, combined with dark mornings, drains the motivation to be in God’s Word.  Or maybe the second half of Exodus and Leviticus is proving too great a challenge.  Whatever the reason, many will settle into a rhythm marked more by guilt than regular enjoyment of the Bible.

It is hard to relate to a God we cannot see, hear, or touch.  And while we know that the Bible is his glorious gift of communication to us, it can often feel distant and disconnected from our everyday lives.  How can we find motivation for a relationship with God that has the Bible at the centre?

The critical issue is right in the question itself.  Do we experience the Bible in the context of a relationship?  Or have we let the relational aspect drain away, leaving the Bible as an optional tool or merely an interesting document for our fascination with religious history?

In 2 Timothy 3:14-17, Paul gives us a critical passage on the nature of Scripture.  In these verses, Paul points to the role of Scripture in our salvation and our growth to maturity.  In these verses, Paul clarifies what Scripture is and how it works in us.  Let’s look again at these verses and remind ourselves that God lovingly works in us as we are in his Word.  To put it differently, the Bible is not just a “past tense” book for our studies.  It is a “present tense” gift for our relationship with God.  God lovingly works (present tense) in us as we are in his Word and as his Word gets into us.

Entering into a relationship with God, 2 Tim. 3:14-15.  As Paul wrote to Timothy to encourage him in the challenges he would face, he wanted him to remember where his ministry all started.  It started by coming to know salvation in the first place.  Timothy had learned and came to believe in the sacred writings of Scripture from his grandmother, his mother, and Paul himself.  His Bible exposure taught him about the wonder of salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.  Without the Bible, we would only be guessing about God, and our guesswork would never have led us into a relationship with him.  God has taken the initiative in our salvation, revealing his character, plans, and great gift.  There is no relationship with God if there were no Bible.  But since there is, let us not lose the relational nature of our connection to him!

So, what is Scripture? 2 Tim. 3:16a.  “All Scripture is God-breathed.”  What a way to describe it!  It comes from the very core of God’s being.  He made sure that the authors wrote exactly what God wanted to be written.  All Scripture, every last Word, was as he intended.  On a human level, the Bible is astonishing – so many authors, different languages, different types of literature, and yet an incredibly coherent and consistent collection of documents.  But the Bible is not written just on a human level – it is “God-breathed!”  That means it is unique – no other book is in the same category.  It also means it is a loving gift – God wanted it written for his people.  It is a purposeful gift – God intended it to achieve something in us.

Based on what we know of God, what might we assume his Scriptures would do?  Would God give us a mindless distraction to pass some time?  I don’t think so.  That does not fit what we know of his character. Indeed, he would want to work in our hearts since that is the core of who we are and the heart of all our problems.  Surely, he would want to instruct our minds since God made us incredible thinking beings.  And he would want to guide us in how to live since God had a good plan and we have so profoundly rebelled against him.  Is it a living communication designed to work in our hearts, heads, and hands?  That seems about right.

How does God work in us through Scripture? 2 Tim. 3:16b. Regarding our beliefs, the Bible is profitable for teaching and rebuking.  We need instruction to understand God, the world, and ourselves.  And since we don’t always think well, we must be rebuked, lest we persist in error and come to harm.  How many newcomers to Christianity put information together and end up with errant thinking, only to be corrected as they read the Bible?  For example, many think they have solved the complexity of the Trinity by assuming there must be one God who dresses up in three different outfits to suit the occasion.  Sometimes, he is a father, but other times, he shows up as a man, and sometimes, what we need is a more empowering Holy Spirit.  But then they might read about the baptism of Jesus, and suddenly, they are confronted by all three persons involved distinctly and simultaneously.  Oh dear.  Rebuked by Scripture.  Taught the truth.  This correcting rebuke might happen with logical ideas about salvation, eternal judgment, or whatever.  If we want “to overcome error and grow in truth … we must turn to the Scriptures!” (John Stott)

Regarding our actions, the Bible is profitable for correcting and training in righteousness.  We need to be set straight at times.  Perhaps we have drifted into an area of compromise and the Scriptures confront us as a mirror.  Or perhaps we have drifted from God and run up against Jesus’ letter to the church at Ephesus.  Maybe you have already been corrected by that passage?  So much about that church is so impressive, but “this I have against you: that you have left your first love!”  It can stop you dead in your tracks.  And then, it instructs you to repent and do the things you did at first.  A way back to the healthy reality of a real relationship with God.  The Scriptures train us in righteousness – growing us up in all areas of character, endurance, maturity, etc.  Do we hope “to overcome evil and grow in holiness?  Then it is to Scripture we must turn, for it is profitable for these things.” (John Stott).

What is God’s goal as he works in us through the Scriptures? 2 Tim. 3:17.  The goal is clear: you will be complete or mature, thoroughly equipped for every good work.  We know that God has good works for us in every stage of life.  But how can we be ready for them?  The answer is easy.  Get your nose in the Bible and get the Bible into you, relationally, so that God’s work will be done in your life.

Two Errors to Avoid.  Some Christians will come from a background that might be labelled “text-optional” – it is a divine-hotline approach to living, with an eager expectation that God will speak through my thoughts, feelings, and circumstances.  The Bible may be sitting there, but so is the red flashing phone that offers direct encouragement along the way.  If this is your background, then be sure to recognize that along with all the perceived blessings comes a tendency to leave the Bible sitting there.  But the Bible Ais not optional.  For a healthy relationship with God, we need to be soaking and swimming in his Word, enjoying the wonder of God at work in us passage by passage, day by day.

Other Christians will come from a background that might be labelled “text-only” – it is the intellectual curiosity approach to living with a Bible.  There may be an eagerness to study the Bible and a hunger to learn more and more, but often, there is too little expectation that God will speak to me as I read and study.  The Bible is open, and the study is focused, but somehow God is not expected to be at work.  If this is your background, then be sure to recognize that along with the blessing of study, there is also a tendency to stop studying before fully responding to God’s Word.  We should look at the text and learn what it says and means and consider how it is stirring us to love God and live for God in this world.  Engaging relationally is not optional. Again, for a healthy relationship with God, we need to be soaking and swimming in his Word, enjoying the wonder of God at work in us passage by passage, day by day.

Let’s move beyond “what is God saying to me through my thoughts and feelings” and “what is this text saying” to the relational reality of “what is God saying to me as I read or study this text?” 

God is at work in us as we are in his Word.  What a privilege.  A present tense, today, privilege.

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The Heart of Hermeneutics – Part 4

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A Relational Responsive Heart Check

The process of Bible study must begin “back then.”  We need to look carefully at the text to see what was actually written.  And we need to learn diligently what the author intended to communicate.  Then we need to appreciate the intended impact of the text “for today.”  That means a careful consideration of the love response that the text should stir in us, as well as the appropriate transformation in how we live our lives.

 

After studying a passage and seeking to interpret it as well as possible, consider the following facets of a relational responsive heart check:

1. God himself.  Since every biblical text is ultimately a revelation of a personal God, ask yourself what this text has revealed about God?  Is it revealing his nature, his character, his heart, his values?  Is it revealing his Son in some way that you can ponder?  The answer is yes.  Every biblical text is a revelation of a personal God, so there will always be value in considering what that revelation should stir in your heart as you read it.

2. The Biblical characters. The Bible is much more incarnated theological truth than it is written code.  That is to say, there are real people on the page.  Theological teaching is usually wrapped up in real people, living in real situations.  There is more narrative than any other type of text, which means lots of characters living out their response to God’s word.  But every text has a narrative nature to it.  Poetry offers a glimpse into a narratival setting, even if you don’t know the details.  Direct communication like speeches and letters were not written in a vacuum.  There was a situation and we are given the glimpse offered by an epistle penned purposefully for the recipients at one moment in their story.  The Bible is ultimately a revelation of God.  And that revelation is wrapped up in the people on the page.  Be mentored by them.  Learn from them.  Allow your heart to engage with them as you watch how they responded to God.

3. The original recipients.  The original author of each book wrote with relational intent.  He wanted to do more than just transfer information.  Each book was written to stir the hearts of the original recipients.  Why not consider them?  What did Moses want Israel to feel as they read his great foundational collection?  What did Paul want to stir in the believers in Galatia, or in his representative Timothy serving in Ephesus?  The text is ultimately about God, it presents itself with characters on the page, and it was written to real people in real situations.  Ponder the intended impact on their hearts as you consider the impact on yours

4. Me.  The original author of each book could not have known about me, but the divine Author has preserved the Scriptures, superintended the collection of the Scriptures, sovereignly overseen the translation of the Scriptures, and graciously provided the opportunity for me to own the Scriptures.  He has given me if I am his child, a new heart that relishes the goodness of God in Christ.  And so, I should look at the Scriptures to see my God, as well as be mentored by the people on the page, considering the impact for the original recipients, and overtly considering how the text should stir my heart as I read it.

5. Others.  As I study the biblical text and consider how it should be stirring my heart, the result will not just be a Godward response.  Yes, there should be wonder, awe, worship, praise, gratitude, devotion, and so on.  But also, a God-stirred heart will be a heart that reflects God’s other-centred heart.  How can what I am seeing in the text, which is stirring my heart in response to God’s revelation, be carried to others evangelistically or pastorally?  At this stage, there might well be a stirring of prayer for others, even if the action of sharing remains in the future from the time I am studying the text.  A truly relational response to the Bible will not just be Godward, but it will also spill over to others because we are relational beings.

Perhaps this five-point checklist can be helpful as we seek to more overtly recognize the role of the heart in the Bible study process.  Look, learn, love, live.

The Heart of Hermeneutics – Part 1

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Something is Missing in our Hermeneutics

Something is missing.  Too much training in Bible handling is missing something critical.  Either we get the technical interpretation elements well: such as recognizing the distance between the world of the text and the world of the contemporary reader, and seeing the gaps that need to be crossed (linguistic, cultural, geographical, religious, etc.).  Or, we dump the technical process and lose both textual accuracy and authority as we treat the Bible like an ancient source of contemporary devotional material.

To put that another way, while some are stronger on the “back then” nature of the text, others are too quick to rush to a “for today” impact.  Good Bible handling requires both a “back then” and a “for today” mindset.

We Must Cross the Divide

The traditional inductive approach to the biblical text requires that we cross the divide.  We begin with Look!  This is the observation stage of seeing what is actually in the text.  What was written?  What does the text say?  Then we progress to Learn!  This is the interpretation stage of making sense of the author’s intended meaning.  What did the text mean?  To look at the text and learn what it means requires that we cross a big gap and go “back then” in our minds.

But then we must also cross that divide to “today” and progress to Live!  This is the application stage of seeing the life impact of the text.  What difference does the text make to my life today?

So, we go back then to ask what does the text say?  And also, what did the text mean?  Then, having understood the meaning of the text, we then need to return to today and seek a biblically appropriate answer to what difference should it make? 

Look — Learn — Live

Each stage is critically important. 

We Tend to Favour One Part of the Process

Some so enjoy the academic pursuit that they dwell in the learn stage and seldom let the text change their lives.  Others are so applicational in their approach that they seldom find out what a text really means before they start landing it in daily life.  (Perhaps fewer get stuck in the observation stage.  It seems like people are drawn to interpretation or application.) However, even when people are well equipped to progress through each stage with a well-grounded “back then” followed by an appropriate and diligent “for today” progression, it still seems like something is missing in our hermeneutics.

Applicational Preaching

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So many people seem to want to listen to preaching that is “applicational.” I understand the impulse. After all, who would want to listen to non-applicational preaching? That sounds like preaching that is not relevant to my life and will not make a difference.

Actually, if we are talking about preaching that is relevant to life and genuinely transformative, then I am completely on board with that desire. The problem is that when we talk about “applicational preaching” it can fall short of what we really need. Here are some of the potential weaknesses:

1. Applicational preaching can place emphasis on action points and to-do lists. Now, there is certainly a place for knowing what is expected of us at the end of a sermon. If a passage gives an instruction that applies to us, then we should certainly note it and look to obey it. However, is the Bible primarily an instruction list for life? Some sermons give that impression, but perhaps that is missing something of the richness and purposefulness of God’s revelation.

2. Applicational preaching can point the listener in the wrong direction. When our preaching emphasizes what we must do, then the focus will tend to move toward our own willpower. Sermons that point the listener to their own discipline, their own choices, their own efforts, etc., are not the best sermons. And I don’t just mean they are not the most theologically impressive sermons. I also mean they are not the most effective sermons. Lives are not transformed by to-do lists. They can help, but they remain mostly on the surface. God is in the business of transforming lives from the inside out.

In order to see the full potential of any preaching or teaching ministry, I would encourage you to think about the ABCs of Application. Here is a brief explanation:

Bible Study Mistakes

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I have recently posted a series of videos on common Bible study mistakes. We have probably all made some, or all, of these mistakes. Please take a look and see if these are helpful to you, or to anyone else you know.

Mistake 1: Proof-Texting – It is just so convenient to find a line of text that says what we want to say. But the danger is that we will not see the richness of the text as it was intended to be understood. It seems obvious once you say it, but it is good to remember that what God made it say is always better than what we can make it say! Click here for this video.

Mistake 2: Collapsing Correlations – When you are reading and you see something that reminds you of something else . . . perhaps a saying of Jesus, or a different epistle, and then you collapse both passages in together, then you are collapsing your correlations together. Easily done, but what if that other passage doesn’t mean the same thing? Click here for the video.

Mistake 3: Ignoring Background – Sometimes it is just easier to read the passage and ignore whatever background may be relevant to your study. Who has the time to think about distant geography, ancient customs, and foreign politics? Well, if we want to understand the Bible, we need to make sure we don’t ignore the background. Click here for this video.

Mistake 4: Genre Override – Apart from sounding like a cool concept, what is genre override? It is when you take some of the rules of interpreting a genre and let those rules run roughshod over your interpretation of the passage. “Since this passage is apocalyptic literature…” is the start of many misleading sentences! Of course, we need to be sensitive to the genre, but that is always a support to our being sensitive to the passage. Click here to find out more.

Mistake 5: Imposing Meaning – Our goal in Bible study is exegesis, that is, drawing out the meaning of the text as intended by the author. But when we impose meaning, we are doing eisegesis. That is, reading into the text what we want to see there. God’s Word is better than yours, or mine! Click here for more.

Mistake 6: Isolationist Confidence – Bible study is something we may do on our own a lot of the time. But we must be wary of isolationist confidence. When it is just me and the Bible, I can easily become overconfident in my own opinion. I may be on the right track, but very superficial. Or I might be wandering off into new (therefore heretical) theological territory. We need to think about the role of the community in our Bible study! Click here for this video.

Mistake 7: Tone-Deaf Reading – The Bible is not just a data store that we are to mine for theological truths or applicational points. It is interpersonal communication and so we need to make sure we are sensitive to the writer’s tone as we seek to make sense of what is written. Here is the link to this video.

I will probably add a few more, in due course. As ever with these things, if you are able to like, share, comment or subscribe to the YouTube channel, it is all helpful in encouraging the algorithm to share this content. Thanks!

Here is the playlist that contains these videos, plus others that are all related!