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The Very Words of God

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Monday’s a good time to pause for thought.  Perhaps you preached yesterday.  Perhaps you’re preaching again next Sunday.  Let’s always remember that God, in His grace, has given gifts to every believer.  To some of us He has given “speaking” gifts.  In 1Peter 4:10-11, Peter urges everyone to invest their lives in each other through the gifts they’ve been given.  Some gifts are “up-front” while others are “behind the scenes” – my understanding of the two terms he uses, “speaking” and “serving.”  None of us have a right to boast in our gift, but all of us have a responsibility.

We have a responsibility to study God’s Word to the very best of our ability, wrestling with the text and allowing the text to wrestle with us.  Thus the first half of the sermon preparation process is so important.  Then, with the humble confidence that we have something to share from God’s Word, then we move on to the second half of the process – formulating the sermon.  The whole process really matters.  The church is a community that may currently or soon be called on to suffer for their faith.  One critical resource for enduring such struggle is the earnest love for one another within the community of believers, and one example of such love is the effective stewardship of our spiritual gifting.  After all, when we speak, we are to speak as one who speaks the very words of God!

Complicated Passage, Clear Preaching

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

I’m scheduled to preach on of those tricky ones.  You know, one of the crux interpretum of the New Testament.  There’s the end of 1st Timothy 2, the end of 1st Peter 3, the end of James, the end of 1st John, Hebrews 6, etc.  A passage that begs every exegetical skill you possess, or if you’re rushing, a passage that just checking two or three commentaries doesn’t resolve.

It is important not to avoid the complexity as we preach.  If your listeners can see the verses, but are confused by them.  Just avoiding them in your sermon is not the solution (tempting as it may be!)  You have to address them if you’re preaching through the book, or if they’re in your preaching passage.

It is helpful to acknowledge the difficulty. Just giving a simplistic explanation may satisfy a few, but many will be left wondering what the passage really means (and they will be left with less respect for your ability to handle and explain the Word to them!)  If it is hard to interpret, don’t pretend otherwise.  Nobody should expect you to find everything super simple.

It is important not to let the complexity overwhelm the main idea. Often the main idea of a passage is still clear, even with the complicated element present.  Be sure that your main idea is clear so that the sermon is a preaching of the text with applied relevance, rather than a pulpit lecture in theological method (a lived out excursus in the pulpit section of daily life).

Pray for me as I preach one of these tricky passages.  Pray not that I’ll stun people with my brilliance, but that I’ll handle the Word well and be sure to preach the Word, not merely lecture or present an exegetical curio for their passing interest.  Let’s pray for each other to always preach the Word with accuracy and applied relevance.

Why Was the Text Written?

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

In a general sense everything written in the Bible was written for our instruction (Rom.15:4).  Yet as preachers we can fall into the trap of looking for a sermon in a text, rather than fully pursuing the process of allowing the text to be boss of the sermon.

Yesterday I was discussing Genesis 3 with a friend.  I’ve heard sermons that essentially ignore everything after verse 7 in order to give a how-to guide to resisting temptation.  Was that why the chapter was written?  This was not merely an example of temptation, it was the Fall.  While there may be a place for noting the steps Eve took that led to disaster, surely this cannot dominate the message to the extent that the passage becomes a mere instructional piece.

Why was it written?  There is instruction about a one-off event with lasting implications that face us all everyday.  There may be passing lessons to learn about the way the enemy works in our response to God’s instruction.  There also is significant space given to explanation of the consequences of the Fall.  There is also hope interwoven with judgment in the seed of the woman to come.

When we pause and ponder enough to recognize that the passage is not an instructional anecdote, but one of the most significant events of history, and that the reverberations of that event are wobbling our world moment by moment right until this moment, and that the solution is not in our ability to implement lessons from Eve’s conversation, but in the hope of the seed of the woman who would come and crush the serpent’s head.  When we spend enough time in the text and see why it was written, then we are in a better place to preach the Word.  After all, it was written for our instruction, so that through the encouragement of Scriptures we might have hope!  (Rom.15:4)

Think Through The Reading

/ Peter Mead / Leave a comment

It is easy to take the reading of the Bible for granted.  It is easy to make a mess of it too!  For example, consider Joshua 6:16-19.  The narrative has built to a climax.  The Israelites are about to complete their silent march attack strategy with the great shout.  As you are reading through this section, if you have engaged your own passion and imagination, then you will be excited to read Joshua’s command.

“SHOUT! FOR THE LORD HAS GIVEN YOU THE CITY!”  Naturally at this point you will find your voice raised and your lungs tight.  The problem is that his shout command turns out to be a somewhat detailed instruction.  What appears at first to be a 9-word exclamation turns into a 104-word detailed instruction on what to destroy, who to save, where to put the treasures, etc.

If you were to read this passage without thinking through the reading ahead of time, you might need a paramedic!  104 words at the intensity of the initial 9 words and you’ll have tight lungs, a raspy voice, a new color of face and about three minutes of recovery time before you can preach on!

It’s a small thing, but length and intensity of speech, along with difficult pronunciations or potential Freudian slips can really derail the message!  Think through any text reading ahead of time.

Preaching Longer Narratives

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Nathan asked about preaching longer narratives, such as the narratives of Daniel.  Last week I preached Daniel chapter 2 and the book of Esther (10 chapters!), so I’ve been thinking about this recently.  Here are my thoughts, I’d love to hear anything you would add:

Even if it is long, preach a literary unit. Longer narratives can stretch through many verses and multiple scenes.  Unless the scenes are really sub-plots that can stand on their own, I would suggest trying to preach the whole narrative.  While this may create some challenges, it is still better to deal with an entire narrative than risk misunderstanding and misapplying a part-narrative.

Tell the whole story, but perhaps read selectively. In the case of the Daniel 2 message, the leader of the service had a major chunk of the passage read before I got up to preach.  In the case of Esther, I read certain paragraphs and verses as I told the story.  While we want to honor the text and certainly encourage people to read it through later, the weakness in extended reading is actually our reading rather than the text itself.

The challenge is actually the same as for any passage. The challenge we face in preaching a longer narrative is, in one respect, no different than any other passage.  Which details will receive in-depth attention, and which elements or sections can be summarized to maintain flow and unity?  A longer narrative calls on our skill in big picture exegesis and compelling story-telling, but in many ways the process remains the same – study the passage, determine the main idea and purpose, define purpose and main idea for the sermon and shape it strategically, etc.

Preaching Narrative

/ Peter Mead / 4 Comments

When you are preaching a narrative, I think it is healthy to begin with a default approach of tell the story, highlight the main point and then apply that main point.  With many narratives, this approach works perfectly well.  Last week I preached Luke 19:1-10 and found that telling the story of Zaccheus with explanation along the way worked well.  That story flows through the plot, then has a twist at the end (in verse 10).  So I told the story, made the point and applied it to our lives.

Yesterday I preached Mark 2:1-12.  I could have told the story, made the point, then applied it.  However, this approach didn’t feel right this time.  The tension of the story comes in the middle.  The men bring their paralytic friend to Jesus to take care of his physical need.  Jesus then addresses the deeper spiritual need, which causes a stir, before proving his ability to do so by healing the physical need.  I wrestled with how to preach this and decided on essentially two movements.  First there is the bringing of the needy guy to Jesus (vv1-4) and Jesus’ healing act (vv11-12).  Having made the point of this element and applied it to us, I then moved us into the “missing” part of the story (vv5-10).  This made the crowd’s response more clear, but it also allowed me to build the tension more for this “forgiveness” core of the story.  I could have told the story and pointed out how Jesus is the only one able to do the amazing feat of total forgiveness.  Yet in this case the story told straight might have lacked something of the wonder and tension.

I am not saying I chose the right way.  What I am saying is that when we preach a narrative, we may start with the approach of tell the story, make the point and apply it, but sometimes we may change that approach.  Yesterday I changed it to “tell part of the story, make the point thus far and apply it, then tell the rest of the story, make the main point clear and apply it.”  I did this for the sake of heightening the wonder of the core of the narrative.  Sometimes this approach makes sense simply because the biblical narrative is so long (and people need it to touch down in their world before too much time passes by!)  There are no set rules for preaching narrative, but don’t overlook the simple option of telling the story!

Discourse is Not Just Epistles

/ Peter Mead / Leave a comment

When I teach preaching courses, I tend to refer to the three types of Scripture: discourse, narrative and poetry. The various genre fit within these categories and so they give a good overview of different Biblical text types. So the principles of narrative interpretation would apply in the Gospels, Acts, historical books and so on. The principles of poetry would apply in Psalms, of course, but also other wisdom literature and poems found in historical books (eg.Exodus 15). The principles of discourse interpretation naturally work in the epistles, but that is not the only place we find discourse.

As direct communication, discourse is often the easiest type of passage to interpret, and it is usually one of the easier ones to preach. While narrative and poetry have real advantages for sermon formulation (for instance we could mention tension and imagery respectively), discourse tends to be direct instruction. With a sensitivity to the original context and audience, appropriate progression through exegetical, theological and recontextualization stages of sermon preparation, the preacher is able to formulate an attractive preaching plan for the text.

Other New Testament Discourse – Obviously the Epistles tend to be the preacher’s favorite in the Bible churches of the western world. But consider the other discourse possibilities in the New Testament. In each of the Gospels we have recorded speeches by Jesus – direct instructional communication. His Sermon on the Mount, or Olivet Discourse, or instructions to the seventy-two, etc., can all make for great preaching. Then in the book of Acts we have the speeches of Peter on Pentecost, Stephen on his promotion day, Paul in Athens and so on. In Acts it seems that the speeches do not supplement the action, but actually are the action, moving the broader narrative forward time and again.

Old Testament Disourse – Consider Joshua 1, for instance. God’s instructions to Joshua at that key moment of transition. It is part of history, part of a broad narrative, but actually those first nine verses are not a plot to trace, they are a discourse. Then you’ll find discourse in the wisdom literature, such as Job and Ecclesiastes, but arguably in poetic form throughout.  Likewise many of the oracles in the prophets bear features of discourse-driven communication, along with poetic structuring.

As preachers we may easily fall into the trap of thinking anything outside the epistles will be either narrative or poetry. This is not true, and tomorrow we’ll consider what this means in our preparation.

Getting to Grips with the Genres: Poetry (1)

/ Mike Roth / Leave a comment

Poetry is different from narrative and it is very different from discourse. How though is our preaching of poetry different from our preaching of narrative and discourse? To answer this question, today we will consider how poetry works and functions. Then tomorrow we’ll consider some implications for preaching poetry.

How Poetry Works – Besides employing literary devices such as imagery, metaphor, allegory, simile, wordplay, irony, hyperbole, etc., the prevalent literary device in Hebrew poetry is parallelism. There are many ways to describe parallelism. One common way is to discern between four kinds of parallelism – antithetical parallelism, synonymous parallelism, synthetic parallelism, and emblematic parallelism. In antithetical parallelism, the first line of a sentence is in contrast to the second line (Ps 34:19). In synonymous parallelism, the first line of a sentence is similar to the second line (Ps 49:3). In synthetic parallelism, the second line of a sentence builds upon the idea of the first line (Ps. 49:5). In emblematic parallelism, the two parts of a sentence connect through simile or metaphor (Ps 49:20).

How Poetry Functions – Parallelism insists that the reader slow down, mull over, and consider how each sentence functions. More than that, because each sentence is laced with metaphor, allegory, simile, wordplay, irony, hyperbole, etc., poetry insists that its content be felt. Rhetorically, poetry connects affect to ideas.

Preaching Easter (Pt4): Resurrection Implications

/ Peter Mead / Leave a comment

NT Wright made an interesting comment this week. He suggested that the New Testament presents many implications that come from the resurrection. However, the one that most preachers tend to emphasize is not really presented in the New Testament. Namely, “Because Jesus rose from the dead, we can go to heaven when we die.” I mention this not to affirm the comment, but to prompt our thinking and Bible study.

Before preaching the resurrection this Sunday, check your text for the implications that are present. For instance, in 1st Corinthians 15 we read that His resurrection gives us hope of our own (v16-20), the fear of death is removed (v26, 54-57), there are ethical implications (v32-34), motivation for ministry (v58), and even prompting to practical help for the poor (16:1, note Galatians 2:7-10).

Let’s preach the truth of the resurrection, let’s even allow our excitement to show, but let’s also try to be specifically clear in presenting the implications. It is easy in our excitement about the event to fall short in our relevance and application. Truly, everything is changed because Jesus rose from the dead. Part of our task is to help people see how that is true.

Preaching Easter (Pt3): Harmonization and the Gospels

/ Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Whenever we preach from the gospels we need to be aware that there may be up to four accounts of the story before us. In the past a great deal of emphasis was placed on harmonizing the gospel accounts. That is to say, placing all four side by side and seeking to combine them in order to have the “full” story. There is certainly a place for this practice, but how much of this should we concern ourselves with as preachers?

There are many elements in the Gospels that only appear in one gospel. In this case the issue of harmonization is largely irrelevant. But then there are events found in all of the gospels. The passion narrative, obviously, is found in all four.

Check all four gospels for accuracy in your preaching. If you are preaching from, say, Luke’s account, then it is helpful to check the other three. You wouldn’t want to undermine your preaching by telling the story in such a way that you make errors because you forgot to check the other gospels.

Preach the text rather than the event. Having checked the other gospels to make sure you are not presenting an error in your sermon, be sure to actually preach Luke’s account (or whichever you have as your preaching text). The gospel writers did not simply recount a transcript of a video taken the first Easter. They selectively chose the details to include in order to write an historically accurate theological presentation. Seek to preach the emphasis of the text you are in.