Homiletics

Preaching One Text

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

I emphasize the need to preach a single text in most sermons.  There are exceptions, but generally one text is the way to go.  I want to be clear why I make this suggestion (today) and address a possible misunderstanding (tomorrow).

I strongly suggest preaching on one text most of the time, because it is so easy to scratch the surface of a passage and yet fail to preach the text.  Multiplying texts only multiplies the likelihood of missing the point and failing to really preach the text at all.  It takes a lot of work to wrestle with a text and have a text wrestle with you.  It takes a lot of prayerful thought to engage with historical and written context, to recognize rhetorical structure, to analyze each detail of content, to ascertain authorial intent (purpose as well as meaning) and to synthesize the core idea of a passage.  I don’t think I’m being lazy when I suggest taking multiple passages multiplies the workload beyond what most of us can bear (if we are to really preach rather than scratch the surface, or scratch some itchy ears).

What is Preaching Primarily About?

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Just a short teaser of a post today, then a break tomorrow (because you really shouldn’t be reading about preaching on Christmas day!)  I’ve just been writing a longer article for another blog.  I’ll link to it once it is posted there.  But in it I address the real foundation of homiletics. While some may consider the field of homiletics to be all about communication techniques – “mere rhetoric” if you like, this is missing the point.

Preaching is a complex subject with many vital tributaries.  I would suggest that the technical stuff has to be built on a solid foundation of the hermeneutics and the spirituality of the preacher.  There are other critical foundational elements too . . . but the article is already too long!

Have a great Christmas!

Dealing With Personal Inadequacies in Preaching

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Yesterday I made a passing comment about inadequacy in preaching.  We all feel inadequate in some area.  Perhaps it relates to our lack of training.  Or our lack of understanding the many elements of the expository preaching process.  Or perhaps we feel lightweight in the arena of theology.  Or maybe our delivery lacks that certain something.  Or maybe we feel inadequate in the area of pastoral awareness and connection with our listeners.  The list could go on.  Here are some thoughts on this matter:

1. Feelings of inadequacy are appropriate. As I wrote the other day, we are out of our depth.  We should be feeling inadequate as we handle God’s Word, as we prepare to present the Word of God to people who need it so desperately, as we participate in a ministry with such eternal ramifications.  Inadequacy should be the name of the game on one level.

2. Feelings of inadequacy should not be avoided. There are ways to hide from our feelings of inadequacy.  For instance, rationalizing approaches that circumvent our areas of weakness.  One example was presented yesterday – just waiting on God to give us what to say rather than facing the challenge of studying the text to see what God has said there.  We naturally find ways to avoid inadequacy and protect ourselves.  This is not a faith approach.

3. Feelings of inadequacy should not undermine faith. When we stand to preach, we stand in faith.  We have to trust God.  We have to trust in His Word.  We have to trust in the power of His Spirit.  So feelings of inadequacy may be a prompt to doubt, which we should address by prayer-fueled faith.

4. Feelings of inadequacy might be a prompt to faith-filled action. I deliberately didn’t put this first, but it does belong on the list.  That is to say, perhaps our feelings of inadequacy should prompt us to prayerfully strengthen in those areas of weakness.  Is it time to take a course of study, attend a training day, read a book, work through a systematic theology text or whatever?  We should not try to strengthen weakness as a means of fleshly self-reliance, but rather as good stewards of the ministry God has entrusted to us.  Let us prove to be faithful stewards, rather than fearful stewards.

Feelings of inadequacy – not all good, not all bad, not the end of the story.

Beware Special Revelation Preaching

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I need to be careful how I phrase this post.  Depending on our theology, we all have slightly differing views of how much God directly communicates with us.  Some are very hesitant to hint that God “spoke” to them, while others freely assign such labels that give the impression of a hotline from heaven.  I don’t intend to weigh in on the issues of guidance or prophecy, etc.  My concern is with biblical preaching.

We need to be careful that we don’t undermine our approach to preaching by means of a “special revelation” approach to sermon preparation.  The process is fairly simple to explain: you spend time prayerfully considering the text and the occasion until you sense that God has “given you something to say.”  Then you preach that.  I am not dismissing this approach out of hand, but I do want to raise some warning flags.  First though, let me affirm the intent in this approach:

Affirmed – The desire to say what God is saying. This should be the desire of every true preacher.  We want to say what God wants us to say, nothing else.

Affirmed – The reliance on God through prayer. May we never advocate or practice prayerless preaching.

Affirmed – The desire for contemporary relevance.

However . . .

Warning Flag – There is an inherent risk that the text God inspired will be abused as merely a point of departure for other thoughts, which may or may not be from Him.

Warning Flag – The process can be a shortcut taken to avoid the prayerful work of understanding the passage and planning how to best present the truth found there.  (Perhaps also a safety measure to avoid feeling personal inadequacy in the area of Bible study, preaching, etc.  It is better to bring our inadequacy to God, rather than finding ways to avoid the issue.)

Warning Flag – This approach can undermine the congregation’s view of the Bible. It fails to demonstrate that when the Bible is understood properly, God is speaking.  It gives the impression that we need something new and fresh, rather than the “old stuff” in the Bible.  A truly dangerous impression to give.

The reality is that we can and must commit to prayerful study of the Bible in order to understand its meaning and then present that meaning emphasizing its relevance for our listeners on a particular occasion.  Perhaps Don Sunukjian’s simple definition of expository preaching is a good place to end – “Listen to what God is saying . . . to us!”

Application is Not About Benefits

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In the understanding of expository preaching espoused on this site, application is central.  Expository preaching must involve the explanation of the meaning of the biblical text while emphasizing the relevance of that text to the contemporary listener.  This is born out of an understanding that the Bible is highly relevant to us all.  However, there is a danger of misunderstanding this emphasis on relevance and application.

The danger is that people may take away the thought that we are advocating a strong view of the benefits associated with applying the Bible to our lives.  In reality, we are saying much more than that.  Paul House, in his article in Preach the Word, gives Christopher Wright credit for identifying the opposite reality.  We do not apply the Bible to our lives, but rather, “through the power of the Holy Spirit we must learn and help others to learn to ‘apply our lives to the Bible.’  God and his Word – not our lives and minds – comprise the horizon of reality and authority.  We are required to conform to the Scriptures; they are not required to conform to us.”  (Preach the Word, p25)

Only in this way do we protect listeners from getting the impression that they can pick and choose those parts of the Bible that appear most valuable.  As Tozer said, “Nothing less than a whole Bible can produce a whole Christian.”  So application is not primarily about the benefits for our lived reality.  Application is about conforming our lives to reality.

Never Bore With Shocking Truth

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During the dark days of World War 2, the BBC asked writer Dorothy Sayers to write a series of radio plays on the life of Christ.  This spawned a series of feisty letters back and forth between the writer and the corporation, with members of parliament trying to intervene and protestant pressure groups adding their voice.

The series of 12 plays was writted by Sayers and produced by Val Gielgud, entitled, “The Man Born to be King.” In December 1941 the plays began airing (one every fourth week) on BBC Home Service.  The story remained in its ancient setting, but characters spoke in contemporary English rather than the conventional King James.

Many were shocked by the story, but Sayers affirmed that they should be shocked. She felt that the inherent drama of the Gospel had become muffled by familiarity and by the failure to think of its characters as real people with human emotions and motivations.  The Christian faith is the “most exciting drama that ever staggered the imagination of man.”  Sayer’s famous quote that Christ was no “household pet for pale pale curates and pious old ladies, but God made flesh, a shattering personality, a dangerous firebrand, hero and victim, finally gibbeted as a firebrand and a public danger.”

While I don’t agree that Christ was a victim in every sense of the term, I do appreciate the desire to bring back the shock of the Maker of all in a manger, the Maker killed by those He made, and the glorious wonder of the empty tomb.

As we come to “Christmas service Sunday,” let’s be sure not to present this episode in the most exciting drama with muffled familiarity or two-dimensional characters.  In fact, every week, let’s preach so that we never bore our listeners with the shocking truth of the Gospel!

Out of Our Depth

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Charles Haddon Spurgeon once made this very true statement, “The best man here, if he knows what he is, knows that he is out of his depth in his sacred calling.”  How true that is.  Only with a keen awareness of that reality will we avoid a ministry empowered by the flesh.  Let me probe this issue briefly with some rhetorical questions:

Do I feel confident in my ministry based on previous experience, ministerial training or affirmation received? This is a dangerous confidence to lean on.  We need to lean on Him only when we step up to preach.

Do I feel stirred to worship, to confess, to pray, to focus on the Lord as I prepare to preach? If these responses and similar are missing in preparation, something is missing for the preaching too.

Do I concern myself more with what people will think of my message, than what God will think of it? Surely we preach to our listeners, but we ultimately answer only to One (consider 2Tim.4:1 in light of verse 2).

Let’s never allow ourselves to forget the simple fact that we are out of our depth when we stand to preach God’s Word.

Unusually Careful

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Just a brief thought since it is the season for non-regular attenders at church.  When preparing evangelistic sermons it is worth being unusually careful.  Apparently, Martyn Lloyd-Jones would always write out his evangelistic sermons, rather than his edification sermons.  Remember that the real “risk” when preaching the gospel is not the preacher’s, but the church folk who’ve invited their friends.  It is so easy to inadvertently offend in the wrong sense of the term.  So with all the extra visitors in our churches this Sunday, let’s be unusually careful in preparing the messages.

With the Time You Have

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As I wander through Preach the Word, I am taking advantage of little nuggets here and there to prompt posts.  Today I’m influenced by Wayne Grudem’s article on “Right and Wrong Interpretation of the Bible.”  He makes a point that I have probably made before, but it bears repeating.

Grudem writes, “It is possible to do a short or long study of any passage.  Do what you can with the time you have, and don’t be discouraged about all that you cannot do.”

Study time is not prescribed. I’m often asked how long sermon preparation should take.  A standard question, to which I give a probably standard answer – “as long as you have.”  It doesn’t help to feel bound to a ten-hour minimum study phase if you simply don’t have ten hours to study the passage.  Grudem gives the example of having to give a devotional talk with ten minutes warning.  Can it be done?  Of course.  He doesn’t suggest it is a good idea to prepare for ten minutes, but it can be done.  On the other hand, the same passage might be studied for twenty hours in anticipation of a Sunday sermon, for two or three hundred hours in the preparation of an academic article, or for a full year or more for the sake of a PhD.

Don’t be discouraged by time you don’t have. Seems obvious, but it’s so easy to get discouraged when we think of all that we have not done in our preparation.  Resources not checked, words not fully studied, verbs unparsed, syntax not diagrammed, cross-references not referenced, etc.  If you didn’t have time, God knows that, and we need to know that too.

Don’t be disqualified by time you didn’t use. I would add this to the mix.  Often there is not enough time.  But sometimes we fail to use the time we have.  Obviously that is not good.  Often it is inexcusable.  Who was it that referred to time-wasting as the greatest sin of the younger generation?  Anyway, when you know your time is running out and you can’t honestly say you used every moment as you should have, what should you do?  You shouldn’t carry a weight of guilt and self-recrimination that steals your heart away from the privilege of knowing God and preaching His Word.  It is important to do what you preach – keep a short account with God, confess, repent, accept forgiveness.  We don’t sin so that grace may increase, but praise the Lord that there is plenty of grace in His character . . . we need it!

Fullness, Not Dipping – Narratives

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I’d like to share another post in light of the chapter by Leland Ryken in the book he co-edited entitled Preach the Word (in honor of Kent Hughes).  In writing of the importance of understanding the Bible literarily and not just theologically or historically, he states the following:

A biblical scholar who caught the vision for a literary approach to the Bible has written regarding Bible stories, “A story is a story is a story.  It cannot be boiled down to a meaning,” that is, adequately treated at the level of theological abstraction.  A person listening to an expository sermon on the story of Cain should be aware from start to finish that the text being explicated is a narrative, not a theological treatise.  The text exists to be relived in its fullness, not dipped into as a source of proof texts for moral and theological generalizations. (Ryken, quoting John Drury, Preach the Word, 43)

A couple of comments from me:

I agree with the general thrust of this, particularly what is affirmed. I fully agree with Ryken’s qualified version of the Drury quote – a story cannot be “adequately treated” at the level of theological abstraction.  However, this is not to say that there is no place for theological abstraction in the preaching of stories.  Listeners should know they are hearing a narrative preached, rather than a theological treatise.  In fact, discerning listeners should, over time, recognize that very little in the Bible is best described as theological treatise – most of the Bible is highly “occasional” in nature, but still highly relevant to our “occasion” or situation.  Certainly, let’s not treat any Bible passage as a source of proof texts!

I would slightly disagree with what is denied. Listeners listening to a narrative explicated will either consciously or sub-consciously be looking for both unity and relevance in the message.  This puts the onus on us as preachers to make sure the main idea is identified and relevance is emphasized.  This is not about abstracting from a narrative to create some sort of literary-less set of propositions.  It is about making sure people don’t simply hear a story and make of it what they will.  By working toward a statement of the main idea in a narrative, we are forced to study and seek to understand not only the content, but also the intent of the author.  For a story is certainly a story, but Bible writers didn’t waste papyrus on entertainment alone, they were also theologians seeking to communicate about God by means of the highly effective literary form of story.

So let us preach texts in their fullness, let us make sure the stories we study are still stories when we preach, but let’s not think the hard work of defining the main idea is unnecessary with biblical narratives.