Stage 3 – Passage Purpose

Speeding the Process

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A couple of other ideas that can be added to yesterday’s post:

“Sermon Ideation Groups to plan a series through a book.” John suggested this and I heartily concur.  Mapping out passages and initial ideas can be a great headstart to the sermon series planning process.  Anything that helps to avoid the “from scratch” sensation each week is helpful.  I would add a couple more thoughts related to this:

Phone a Friend and Talk it Through. There are times when sermon preparation is moving forward at a pace, then other times when things seem to grind to a halt.  Being able to talk with someone who understands the process, the concept of good Bible study, etc. can be the kickstart the process needs to get going again.  Such a friend is worth their weight in gold.  If you don’t have one, train some!

Allow Margin to Plan When Productive. I was really productive on planning a series for next January . . . all within a window of 24 hours at the end of May.  That is a significant headstart, which also allows me to collect useful material, illustrations, etc., over the next six months.

The goal is not to speed up the process of preparation, but it doesn’t hurt to be able to be prepared in the limited time that we have.  Cutting corners doesn’t honour the Lord, but thinking it through so we can give our best, even with all the pastoral and personal crises that will come between now and preaching time, is a worthwhile endeavour.

Biblical Worldview and Ours

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Throughout Scripture God is seen as sovereign and providentially involved in all aspects of life.  When there were natural disasters in Israel, the prophets called the people to respond to the God who created everything.  When war or famine hit, they interpreted it in light of the covenant they were under, but also always recognizing and promoting the reality of a God who is present and immanent and involved.

Today we see two concerning alternatives:

Alternative A – God is Absent. In this view of things we preach about a God who was involved in history, and a God who will intervene again in the future, but a God who is essentially silent today.  The greatest intersection of earth and heaven today is essentially my preaching, and yours.  In many churches Christians live as if God is only slightly more engaged than the God of the Deists . . . that is, He was engaged for longer in the past, and He will be again in the future.  This is a problematic position.

Alternative B – God is Speaking and I Can Give Specific Interpretation. This is the hotline to heaven approach where certain preachers have sufficient anointing to be able to speak with an authority that is theirs, rather than an authority resting in Scripture.  It is the kind of authority that says “I know exactly why this disaster has occurred, and the reason is XYZ” (typically the cause would be their own pet peeeve issue).  This sensational approach to preaching undermines the credibility of all legitimate biblical preachers.

We need to stand in between these two.  We can’t give exact revelation on specifics in a sensational way, neither should we relegate God to history.  Let us instead live out a biblical worldview in which God is providentially shaking the world in order to get our attention.  Volcanic ash clouds, oil disasters, wars, economic crises, the price of fuel . . . let’s be, and let’s preach, a responsive Christianity that has the worldview presented throughout Scripture.  God matters, today.  It is our privilege to respond to Him.  Then what?  Then we go to His Word, where we can hear His heart clearly.

Purposeful Selection Then Forgotten

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The first logical step in preparing a message (once you’ve been asked to preach, which is presumed), is to select your passage(s) on which to base the message.  Sometimes the invitation comes with the passage, sometimes with a theme, sometimes an open invitation.  Select then forget.  What do I mean?

1. When you’re invited to preach with a passage assigned. You may be tempted to skip the Passage Selection phase of preparation altogether, after all, job is already done, isn’t it?  Well, not fully.  You need to double check that you are handling a full unit of thought (i.e. not half a story, half a proverb, half a psalm, half a paragraph, etc.)  Whatever you are asked to preach, you have to study the full unit of thought in its context, so there is a need to check the selection.  In doing so, especially if a title has been assigned, you may get a clear indication of what they are wanting from the message.  Great, a church or ministry being purposeful is a good thing. But for the study phase (stages 2-4), you need to forget that purpose and seek to dwell in the text.  Reintroduce that purpose in your thoughts for message purpose, stage 5.

2. When you’re invited to preach with a theme assigned. You go on the hunt for an appropriate passage on which to preach that theme (or a combination of passages).  Once you’ve selected your passages, forget the theme for a while.  The text has to be free to speak for itself.  Any imposed message makes it something other than truly biblical preaching.

3. When you’re invited to preach and free to choose. This is hard work.  You can easily waste a lot of time pondering where to go.  You may go where you go for a variety of reasons, but once you’ve gone there, forget your motivation (for now) and allow the text to speak for itself.

What if it is different? At times I’ve been faced with a passage that doesn’t do what I thought it would, or doesn’t do what a title suggests.  Well, then, either preach the passage or pick another.  Simple really, but vital.  When we are studying passage (stages 2-4), we need to let the text be boss, and then let that authority linger through the message formation phase of the process.

Falling Short of Unity, Order and Progress

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Can I offer three ways in which we can have unity, order and progress, yet still fall short in each area?

Unity – We often fall short when we just tie together the sections of the text by means of a keyword or subject.  In many passages it is relatively easy to make the two or three or four points somewhat parallel and addressing aspects of a subject.  I’m being hypothetical now, but the type of outline that goes through The Problem of Prayer, The Power of Prayer, The Perspecuity of Prayer.  (Commentary labels fall short on numerous levels, perhaps another post for that one!)  Did the writer really intend a list of fully parallel and equal thoughts?  Or was the writer actually building a case to say one main thing?  Unity should be pursued at the level of main idea (subject and complement) not just at the level of subject.

Order – I think we fall short of a well-ordered message when we simply progress through the text in the order it is found in Scripture.  Often this is the most effective order to present the passage, but why?  Is it purely for ease of following?  If the writer had shuffled the pack of paragraphs, would it have been the same another way?  If not, if there is a development of the thought, or a progression toward a climax, or an addressing of objections, etc., then let’s recognize and reproduce a more deliberate order than just, “now onto the next verse…”  (Again, often the order is a good order to preach, but ask yourself why?)

Progress – We fall short when our progress is simply a moving toward the end of the passage.  Listeners will generally feel relieved when they get that sensation of nearing the end, but that doesn’t mean the message has moved anywhere, or moved them at all. Progress should give a sense of moving forward, going somewhere, building, arriving, etc.  Consider how the thought in the passage does more than just slide past, but actually engages the reader, creates tension, resolves it, anwers concerns, etc.

A Classic Contrast Revisited

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In Between Two Worlds (I Believe in Preaching), John Stott contrasted the typical weakness in more liberal churches from the weakness in the preaching in more conservative churches.  One connected with the audience, but had no rooting in Scripture.  The other started with Scripture and built straight up to heaven, without ever touching down.  Timothy Ward’s book Words of Life revisits this contrast.  Allow me to paraphrase:

Some churches aim to give hope and inspire faith, but do so by proclaiming a Christ different from the Christ presented in the New Testament.  This is achieved by honouring the purpose of a text without being shaped fully by the content.  (Incidentally, this also happens in more conservative churches where a particularly elevated value is given to passion and emotion.)

On the other hand, some churches are driven by content, but seemingly unaware of the purpose for which that content was communicated.  In the more conservative churches there is a tendency to see the preacher as primarily a “Bible teacher.”  True biblical preaching should neither by-pass, nor settle for, faithful exegetical and doctrinal instruction.

Let me quote Ward’s conclusion to the section: “Properly faithful biblical preaching involves the preacher deliberately seeking to fashion every verbal (and indeed physical) aspect of his preaching in such a way that the Spirit may act through his words in the lives of his hearers, ministering the content of Scripture in accordance with the purpose of Scripture.” (p165)

Without wanting to critique Stott’s great book in any way, I have to admit I am really excited by what Ward has done here.  Scripture is not just a repository of truth which the preacher must purposefully land in the lives of the listeners.  The preacher’s task includes sensitivity to the original author’s purpose (or intent) as well as content, which must be effectively and sensitively communicated to the contemporary listeners.  What Stott would probably affirm (and I’m not checking the book, so he may overtly state this), Ward does overtly state.  Preacher, in your passage study, be sure to recognize the author’s intent as well as content.  Then preach so as to appropriately do what the passage did, as well as saying what the passage said.

“The Spirit is again graciously present in the preached message, if what is preached now is faithful in purpose and content to what he once inspired.” (p.165, italics original)

Table Talk

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Today’s post isn’t one.  It’s a 35-minute interview I did with Mike Reeves over at theologynetwork.org in their Table Talk series.  It’s all about preaching and how our view of God influences our view of the Bible and therefore our approach to communicating it.  So, here’s the link and I hope this is helpful: theologynetwork.org – Table Talk.

Going Deeper Than Instruction

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In a lot of preaching situations it is easier to simply present the text and press home the imperatives.  Whether or not there is technically an imperative in the grammar, we can easily turn a passage into an instruction and press for change through our words.

I wonder how often we miss the opportunity to go a step or two deeper and recognize the “why” behind the “should”?  Typically the epistles offer lists of instructions, but in the context of the letter, these instructions are very much set in the context of theological truth.  We are to present our bodies as living sacrifices, but it is in view of God’s mercies that we are to do so.  We are to walk in a manner worthy, but specifically it’s in a manner worthy of the calling we have received.  We are to set our hearts on things above, where Christ is, but this is in light of the Christ presented in the first two chapters.

Instruction and imperative don’t just sit on their own as burdens to place on people, but as appropriate response to the captivating truths of who God is, what He has done and so on.

As a preacher it is much easier to simply give instruction and apply pressure, but we must consider how to make sense of those instructions so that instead of pressured compliance, we might see captivated response.

Tailored to a Token Level

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The desire to be relevant to our listeners might sometimes undermine our preaching. What I am thinking about is the count the costs, take up your cross, radical discipleship kind of passages.  You know, the ones that seem to be so demanding and so absolute.
It’s not that we don’t believe them, or don’t want to preach them.  But sometimes we might desire to be relevant so much that we turn a cannonball of application into a little pea of attempted relevance.  We want to connect with people where they are at . . . living normal lives, with normal worries and normal stresses.  So we preach a cannonball passage with mushy pea force.
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Perhaps what people need is the full force of the passage brought to bear on their normal lives, instead of scaled down to fit in their normal lives.  Be sensitive, be wise and be careful how you say what you say and when.  But also be bold, be faithful and be willing to pass on the full force of what the Bible invites us to as followers of Christ.
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Don’t tailor application down to a token level.  Preach the Word, and be sure to let God preach to you through that Word first.  We all need our lives exposed to the full force of Christ’s call on our lives.

Ponder the Passage Purpose

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As a preacher studying a passage it is tempting to be purposeful, but ignore the purpose of the passage.  So you are studying the passage because you are trying to prepare a sermon, or perhaps because you are intrigued by the theological content of the text, or perhaps because you are pondering whether you should preach that passage at all!  It becomes normal for a preacher to look at a Bible text and wonder how they would preach it.

However, while it may be inevitable that we look at passages through preaching lenses, it is important to not miss something that is fundamental to accurate interpretation of that passage.  What was the author’s purpose?

1. Look at the context – It is vital to look at any passage in its context.  What is going on around the text you are focused on?  What is the flow of thought or logical progression in the book?  What does the book generally say about its purpose (perhaps in the introduction, conclusion or “letter-frame”)?  If you’ve ever studied hermeneutics at all, you should be committed to the importance of context.

2. Look at the content – For most people who are deliberate in their interpretation, this is the element to which they give the most attention.  What words are used?  What are they referring to?  How are sentences structured?  Etc.  Content is very important, especially when it is understood in context.

3. Don’t forget to consider the intent! – Content in context will do a lot to explain the “what” of a passage.  But unless we are deliberate, we can fail to recognize the “why” of a passage.  But unless we are alert to the “why” then we can’t fully grasp the “what.”  Look for clues in context, in content, in tone, in attitude, in the presence of imperatives, etc.  Some of this is hard objective analysis, some of it requires more of a subjective feel . . . which is not license to impose intent, but recognition that we must really listen to a text and be gripped by it, rather than merely passing it under the microscope of our expectations.

Passage purpose is easily neglected, but if it is, our preaching may feel like analysis . . . without vitality.

Exhort, Educate . . . Manipulate?

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Some preachers think that there are two legitimate options in preaching, but to go further would be wrong.  Legitimate would be to exhort listeners – that is, to appropriately pressure their will to obey the Lord, respond to the gospel, etc.  Legitimate would be to educate the listeners – that is, to feed information to their minds so that they know more and can therefore make better decisions.

But the next step?  Well, many people think the next step beyond the will and the mind is to address the emotions, and that, of course, would be wrong.  It must be wrong to address the emotions since that can so easily seem like manipulation.  I would agree that it can become manipulation.  I would agree that manipulation is wrong.  But I still think our preaching has to go deeper than mind and will.  How?

My sense is that manipulation occurs when I, as a preacher, utilize my ability to make a mark in the emotions that is disctinct from the content of the biblical text.  After all, the text is boss in an expository sermon, so if I am representing that text appropriately, then it should not be manipulation.  But when I resort to “techniques” – stand-alone tear-jerking stories, turns of phrase, emotional outbursts of my own, etc. – that aren’t representing the message of the text, then I am on dangerous ground.

If we remember that our role is to herald the Word of God, then we represent (re-present) the text of Scripture.  In so doing we need to represent a Word that targets the heart very often, and is seldom focused purely on exhortation or education.  We should be wary of manipulation, but not so that we ignore any textual targeting of the heart.  If we fall into the trap of performing, then manipulation creeps in so easily and we can corrupt the pure Word of God.

Preach to the will, certainly.  Preach to the mind, of course.  But be sure to preach to the heart, the Bible does!