Homiletics

Pointers for Preaching Epistles Effectively – Pt.4

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Still pondering pointers for preaching the letters.  Here are five more:

16. Aim for clarity in your explanation – You will dig up masses of information if you study properly.  Sift and sort so that your sermon isn’t packed and dense, but engaging and on target.  You could offer a subsequent audio file of out-takes (bonus material!) and notice that most people don’t take you up on the offer!

17. Be alert to different levels of application – Not every application has to be an instruction to action.  Sometimes the text’s application is at the level of belief rather than conduct.  Sometimes the take-home should be a heart stirred by truth, by Christ, by the gospel.  Affections, belief and conduct all matter.  If we make application purely about conduct, then we are missing a goldmine of genuine life change.

18. Keep your message structure simple – An easy message outline will remember itself.  If you need extensive notes to keep track of your message, don’t expect first time hearers to get it (you’ve had hours of thought and study and practice and prayer, they’re getting one shot only!)

19. Preach the message of the text, not a message from the text – There are any number of potential homiletical outlines, thoughts and applications in a passage.  Some are closer than others to the actual message of the text.  If you preach clever messages derived from texts you will get lots of affirmation.  If you actually preach the message of the text, and you preach it well, you will be a gem of inestimable value in the church!

20. Begin your relevance in the introduction – The old idea of explain for ages and then apply briefly should become a relic of an idea.  You can demonstrate the relevance of a passage before you even read it.  Get the relevance into the introduction, then continue to show the relevance of the passage and seem relevant as a preacher throughout the message.

Just one more post, not because that is all there is to say, but because I don’t want the series to go long in the hope of being exhaustive – that doesn’t work in preaching, so I probably shouldn’t do it here either!

Pointers for Preaching Epistles Effectively – Pt.3

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Continuing the list of pointers for preaching epistles effectively, since they aren’t the automatically easy genre to preach well!

11. Preach, don’t commentate – Don’t offer your listeners either a running commentary or a labelled outline of the text.  Make your points relevant to today, put them in today language, then show that from the “back then” as you explain the text.  Don’t preach “back then” and then offer token relevance once people are disconnected and distracted.

12. Describe vividly, engage listener with letter – If you can do a good job of painting the original situation, the emotions of the writer, the potential responses of the recipients, etc., that is, if you can make it seem full colour, 3-D and real, then your listeners will engage not only with you, but with the letter.  Suddenly it won’t seem like a repository of theological statements, but a living letter that captures their imagination and stirs their hearts.  The theological truth will hit home when it is felt in the form God inspired!

13. Be sensitive to implicit imagery – Often the writer will subtly or overtly be using imagery to explain himself, pick up on that and use it effectively.  Our first port of call for illustration should not be external to the text (i.e. the books of supposedly wonderful illustrations – they are the last resort option.  Start with the text, then move to the experience of your listeners trying to combine the two.  Go elsewhere only if necessary.)

14. Keep imperatives in their setting – Some of us have a tendency to use an imperative magnet.  We cast our eyes over the text until we spot a command, and bingo!  Now we think we have something to preach.  We don’t.  Not until we get a real sense of how the whole passage is working.  It doesn’t take much skill to turn every epistle into a command collection.  Certainly don’t avoid the instructions, but don’t ignore everything else too.

15. Tune your ear to the tone of the writer – This is so important.  Some tone deaf preachers make every instruction, implication, suggestion, encouragement or exhortation into a shouted command.  I think Paul and company would look on with consternation if they heard how their letters were preached by some.  Be sensitive to the writer’s tone and develop sensitivity in your own tone.

Tomorrow we’ll touch on another, well, five, of course.  Add your own by comment at any time – the list is not intended to be exhaustive!

25 Pointers for Preaching Epistles Effectively – pt.2

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So, the next five pointers:

6. Grasp the flow of the whole – As a preacher you need to be able to explain the flow of the epistle.  Some of us are better at the details, others at the big picture, but we all need to work on both.  Preaching that just methodically explains the details without a good sense of the whole will be tedious, atomistic and disjointed.  Preach so the whole epistle can hit home.

7. Study the sections in light of their detail and the big picture – So as you look at a particular section, you will need to wrestle with the tiniest detail.  That may or may not need to be explained when you preach.  But don’t forget to keep thinking about the big picture, the broad flow of thought – that will need to be explained!

8. Study details and structure – Close reading of a passage is not just about word studies, it is also about sentences, and how sentences connect, and how transitions are made, and how paragraphs link.  Be sure to recognize repeated terms and themes, as well as patterns in flow of thought.  We have to study and hold understanding of the text at multiple levels of elevation at the same time.  A fun challenge!

9. Let the shape of the text shape your message – Or to put it another way, stop trying to find a list of three equal points in every text.  Sometimes a text will offer a negative example, then a positive example and then five instructions.  This is not three equal points.  Sometimes a text is essentially in two parts.  Preach a two-part message, you’ll be fine, don’t worry 🙂  (You don’t have to preach the sermon in the shape of the text, and there may be reasons not to, but as a default, its not a bad way to go.)

10.Compare and contrast situations – The original audience and their situation is not going to be the same as your listeners.  Compare and contrast the two.  What need do your listeners have for this passage?  Adjust how you present it accordingly.  But don’t adjust its original situation or meaning accordingly, that will weaken the message.

Another five next time…

25 Pointers for Preaching Epistles Effectively

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Most beginner preaching classes use the epistles as the foundational preaching genre.  We can end up thinking that preaching epistles is easy.  After all, a passage in an epistle will tend to fall into “chunks.”  Voila!  Sermon.  Hang on, there is more to preaching epistles than that.  Nine nudges, ten tips, well, how about 25 tips?  That should keep us going for the week!

1. Drill into the occasion – Why was the letter written?  Remember that epistle writers weren’t just letting their pen meander over papyrus for the sake of it.  They were prompted to communicate by some situation.  Therefore a letter is a snapshot of a narrative.  Be sure to read through the letter itself and look for all the clues in the text.

2. Check other biblical background – With ten of Paul’s epistles, you also have the fertile territory of Acts to explore.  What background is available by a close study of the relevant Acts material.  Its good to know which journey each letter was written on, as well as what other letters were also written at that time.  Fill in the background for your own benefit, and maybe also for the listeners.

3. Fill in your background knowledge – The biblical text is your main source, but be sure to check out whatever else might be helpful to understand.  What was the geography of Ephesus at the time, what does an incipient Gnosticism look like, why do dualists tend to end up at one or both of two extremes?  Other good reference material will be helpful.

4. Keep re-reading the epistle – That is the beauty of epistles: they are relatively short.  So keep re-reading as you study background and the flow of thought will become clearer and clearer.  Read the epistle so much that it isn’t just the famous verses that stand out, but until the whole text starts to sing.

5. Become familiar with the letter-frame – Too many Bible studies and sermon series skip the beginning and end of the epistle.  Don’t.  Dwell on every detail – author, recipients, greeting, thanksgiving, biographical prologue, main idea . . . what are the added details, what is missing?  And how does it end?  Why does he say that?

Five more tomorrow…

Preaching New Covenant and Fellowship with the Trinity

/ Peter Mead / 6 Comments

I have been pondering the New Covenant and what might happen if we were to dwell on it as the New Testament writers do.  We’ve thought about the wonder of sins forgiven, the profound work of God in the hearts of believers, and now for the last post . . . God in the hearts of believers.  Or to put it another way, fellowship with the Trinity!

There are many New Testament passages that seem to point to the believer being “in Christ” or “abiding in Him” and the indwelling presence of God, by His Spirit, in the believer, causing us to cry out to our Abba.  This mutual indwelling motif is not uncommon.  Sadly, nor is our tendency to treat these notions as some sort of technical truth, a legal reality, as it were, and then focus our reading or teaching on our self-driven effort to live good lives, as if only marginally connected to God.

If we go back to the promises of the New Covenant, there is plenty to rock the original recipients back on their heels.  Ezekiel 11 looks forward to when “they shall be my people and I shall be their God.”  Good stuff, but what is key to this reality?  “A new spirit I will put within them.”  Later, in chapter 36, after references already in the preceding chapters, God gets more overt on the indwelling Spirit theme; “I will put my Spirit within you” – this is not normal fare in Old Testament times!  Remember that a key theme of Ezekiel is that of God’s special presence (or absence) from the temple.  The stunning hope of the city, is the reality of the New Covenant believer – The LORD is there. (Eze.48:35)

In Jeremiah God looks back to the Old Covenant, which was also marital in nature, but the New Covenant is different.  They will be His people, He will be their God.  Meaning?  Well, they will all know the LORD.  (Jer.31:34)

In Isaiah there is already the marital motif, the indwelling Spirit and the close relationship.  In Joel we read of the pouring out of God’s Spirit on all flesh, and a mutual calling – the LORD calling the people, and the people calling on His name.  In Zephaniah there is the hope of the LORD being in the midst of Zion, exulting over her with loud singing, quietening her with his love.  In Malachi we look forward to the coming Lord of the future covenant.

I suspect that if we spent time pondering the New Covenant, both in its predictive descriptions, and with sensitivity to the New Testament texts, we would find ourselves preaching more a message of wonder than a message of pressure.  More a message of delightful description, than a message of demanding duty.  More a message pointing to God, than a message pounding on us.

Perhaps we are just so familiar with the New Testament texts that we miss what they are saying.  Perhaps our theology somehow overrides what our eyes could see if they looked carefully.  The Christian life doesn’t just include fellowship, it is fellowship.  And that isn’t just with each other, it is profoundly with God, through His Christ, by His Spirit.

Preaching, New Covenant and Heart Transformation

/ Peter Mead / 3 Comments

Yesterday I pondered the familiar but radically exciting truth of having sins forgiven. This core feature of the New Covenant has to drive us deeper, to the issue of the heart. Sin is not just behavioral error, or contravention of legal codes. Sin springs from where it is born: the human heart.

A solution to the problem has to address the problem as it is. If the issue were merely a failure to obey, then God could simply provide empowerment to obey. A better battery. Simple. But what if sin goes deeper than external obedience? What if the very problem Christ came to address was the problem of human hearts?

Then something along the lines of the New Covenant would be needed. Not just a power supply to enable obedience, but a change of heart from death to life. And what would that new heart, new inner life, also point toward? An inner living desire to please God.

Believers in the days of David, of Daniel, or whoever, could only dream of the day when God would do a work in the heart of all his people. They could only imagine what it would be like for God’s people to have heart-stirred inner motivation for fulfilling the moral requirements of a just and holy God.

Speaking of moral requirements, Jesus was asked what was the greatest commandment. He pointed to a matter of the heart – the requisite of love for God and for neighbour. Such a love would leave the whole legal corpus unbroken. That’s an amazing thought. In fact, Paul said the same thing, in Romans 13 for instance. Love fulfills the Law.

So its fairly simple then, we’ve just got to preach and pressure people to produce love from their own inner being, right? Tell ‘em to love God and love others, and hey presto, we’ll have communities of law abiding Christian citizens?

Every parent, every pastor, every preacher knows that telling people to love God and love others doesn’t quite seem to work. Its almost as if we aren’t in control of our own hearts, but they are in control of us. We do what we love, right?

So there has to be a better way than pressure. Most pastors and parents tend to fall back on that, because in the absence of a clear alternative, it seems better than saying nothing. But God doesn’t seem to be groping for a solution to the self-loving human heart.

He brings about the transformation of the New Covenant, in which our hearts are made alive and the requirements of righteousness are written there, rather than externally. How? Well, we love God (and we love at all), because we are loved first. He demonstrated His own love for us in this, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us! It is the cross that presents the powerful love of our loving God – it is His love that ignites in us a love that is nothing other than response to His great love.

So what does this mean for preachers? Well, for one, perhaps we need to put more preaching effort into presenting Christ and Him crucified, and less effort into pressing Christians to copy Christ and His character exemplified.

And if God is doing a work on the heart, surely there’s another level to plumb too. Tomorrow.

Preaching, New Covenant and Sin

/ Peter Mead / 6 Comments

Sometimes we need to be contradicted.  For instance, we assume that if we are going to take the issue of sin seriously, then we need to give some significant attention to it.  Perhaps by implementing some self-controlled, self-disciplined approach to sin control in our lives.

On the contrary.

Hang on, am I suggesting that we shouldn’t take sin seriously?  Am I suggesting that we should go and sin freely?  Of course not!  Why do some people automatically assume that a turn from focusing on virtue is to turn in pursuit of vice?  The opposite of moral effort may not be immoral action.

I would suggest that the New Covenant takes sin more seriously than we do or think we do.  God takes sin seriously, which is why He promised the New Covenant.  Jesus Christ takes sin seriously, which is why He inaugurated the New Covenant with his own blood.  The writers of the New Testament took sin seriously, which is why they pushed the New Covenant so strongly.

And we need to take sin more seriously.  We need to stop thinking it is something we can handle by our own effort, our own discipline, our own practices.  This is true for the not-yet-saved, and it is true for the believer.  The foundation of the New Covenant is sin forgiven.

Sometimes it is hard to realize just how much we don’t grasp something we think we’ve known for so long.  Take grace, for instance.  At the core of God’s dealings with us is this issue of grace – His character, His glory, His self-giving.  Yet we turn grace into a commodity and preach grace-plus, or grace-but, or grace-however.  We don’t need to preach some sort of grace-balanced message.  We need to present to people, believers or not, the wonderful glorious extravagant imbalanced grace of a God who gives himself to deal with our sin.

If our listeners think that grace means license to sin, then we haven’t preached grace clearly enough.  Maybe we’ve offered a halfway house kind of grace, a grace that addresses guilt but doesn’t capture the heart.  A grace-as-thing that pays for guilt, but not a grace-as-person that captivates our hearts.

The solution to a license type of response is not to balance grace with guilt, pressure, codes and laws.  The solution is to do a better job of preaching grace.

At the foundation of the New Covenant is this wonderful truth that God has promised to remember sins no more, and that truth is presented like a vivid 3-d billboard to our hearts in the death of His Son on the cross.  It is there, in shocking shame and agony that we see God’s glorious grace made manifest to us.

Tomorrow let’s push this deeper and recognize the heart of the New Covenant.

Preaching and the New Covenant

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

I can’t help pondering the implications of the New Covenant on the ministry of preaching. After all, if we are living under the blessing of the New Covenant, then it would make sense for us to ponder what it might mean for us today.

Interestingly, an alarming number of Christians don’t seem to ponder the New Covenant much, if at all. But surely anyone reading their Bible with hearts open will spot the significance of this issue.

After all, there are more than one or two New Testament passages that engage with a contrast between some aspect of Old Covenant and the New. There’s 2Corinthians, and Galatians, and Hebrews, not to mention Romans, Colossians, Philippians, and others.

But it isn’t just in the New Testament that the Old Covenant is critiqued in favour of the New Covenant. Consider the prophets too. In their bleakest pronouncements against a collapsing nation, what is the focus of the hope offered? There New Covenant is that which the coming Messiah will bring into force – consider Ezekiel 11 and 36, Jeremiah 31, Isaiah, well most of it, but certainly 40-66. Then there are others like Joel and Micah too.

But actually we can go back even further. Even within the Law (Pentateuch), we find hints that the Old Covenant would one day be replaced. The man of faith, Abraham, succeeded where the man under law, Moses, failed.

So what are the key features of the New Covenant? After all, serious minded Jews memorise extensive passages, even including all 613 specifications of the Law. I wonder why we don’t have the key features of the New Covenant on the tip of our tongues?

Let me list the five core features of the New Covenant, although I’d encourage you to chase the passages and formulate your own list. Then tomorrow I will start to ponder the significance of these features of the Christian life to our preaching. So, five core features:

1. Sins forgiven. Fully. Finally. Freely. Forever. Not temporarily covered.
2. Hearts of flesh. Enlived, brought to life, alive . . . from the inside out.
3. Law on the hearts. Not on external stones, nor written guidelines, inner desire to please God.
4. Indwelling Holy Spirit. Not on some for certain tasks at specific times. Spirit poured out on us all.
5. Personal knowledge of the Lord. Not just knowledge about the Lord, but personal relationship with God Himself.

That little list alone should get our hearts pumping! What might these core features mean for our preaching? Let’s ponder that tomorrow.

Saturday’s Thought: Preaching for Response

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No preacher would admit to preaching in order to fill time, or to fulfill an obligation, or to fill a pulpit.  We say we preach for response.  After all, what other motivation could we cite?  I know, some will quickly rush to language of glorifying God.  But God isn’t pleased by time filling or untouched listeners.  So what do we mean?

Do we mean that preaching should get more than a polite thank you from the gathered listeners?  Sure.  Do we mean that preaching should get a positive or exuberant statement of reception from the listeners?  I don’t think so.  The Lord’s preaching certainly seemed to polarize rather than please all.  Some will be stirred and drawn, others will be offended and withdraw.

This is where it gets interesting for me, and here’s the thought for the day.  What is the division or polarization created by our preaching?  Simplistically we might assume that it is a sorting of sinners and saints.  You know, those in sin pushed away by how seriously we address sin and the godly encouraged; the culture upset and absent while the churchy folks pleased and present.  But that didn’t seem to be the result of Jesus’ preaching, did it?

What if we realize that the gospel is not about preaching a message of pressuring responsibility?  That is, what if we preach the glorious loving grace of God that stirs and warms and draws hearts to Christ?  Instead of whipping our listeners with burdens, what if we preach the One who was whipped for them?

This kind of preaching typically offends the religious who feel responsible for their own goodness.  These are the people who don’t see their own efforts and diligence and pride and self-centredness as being at all sin-stained.  This kind of preaching typically draws the broken and hurting and weak.

When we switch from preaching responsibility to actually preaching for a response we may find that the polarization both switches and increases.  When we recognize the difference between responsibility and response, then certainly our preaching will change.  It is so easy to preach to pressure people to be good.  It takes something more to preach how good Christ is, so that listeners might be drawn to Him.  What is the something more?

I suppose it comes down to me on my own with my Bible and my Lord.  Is it all about me?  Or about Him?  Is it about what I must do (responsibility)?  Or about what He is like (response)?

Preaching for response requires clarity on the distinction between response and responsibility.