17. If You Don’t Talk to Your Bible, Your Bible Might Not Talk to You
If You Don’t Talk to Your Bible, Your Bible Might Not Talk to You
When the Lord commanded Joshua, “Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth,” He was encouraging him to meditate on the Word. The Hebrew word translated “meditate” in Joshua 1:8 means “to mutter”; for in their study of the Law, the Jews would read the Scriptures aloud and talk to themselves as they meditated (see Acts 8:26-31). In daily conversation, they would talk among themselves as they discussed the Holy Word (Deut. 6:4-9). “The reading of all good books,” wrote Descartes, “is like conversation with the finest men of past centuries”; and that especially applies to the reading of the Word of God.
If you happen to be present in my study or library when I’m at work on a message, you’ll hear me talking to the Lord, to myself, to my emerging message, and especially to my Bible. (Occasionally you’ll hear me talking rather stridently to my computer, but that’s another matter.) I’ve learned that if I don’t talk to my Bible, my Bible isn’t likely to talk to me. God’s Word is supposed to be a companion that speaks to me, not just a “textbook” that I study (Prov. 6:20-22). When we read the Word of God, we must hear it and respond to it as we would to a friend who is conversing with us.
But conversation isn’t the only picture of Bible study in the Scriptures. Studying the Bible is like going on a pilgrimage, with the Word as a lamp that leads us from one truth to another (Ps. 119:105). Bible study is also like mining treasures (Prov. 2:1-8; see Ps. 119:14, 72, 127) and discovering rich spoils after the battle (Ps. 119:162).[1] Passages such as Matthew 4:4, 1 Corinthians 3:1-3, Hebrews 5:12-14, and 1 Peter 2:2 remind us that Bible study means getting nourishment from the Word and preparing a “spiritual meal” for others. Too many of our sermons share the recipe, or the menu, but not the meal; and our people go away hungry.
It isn’t enough simply to exegete a passage, find a theme, and then develop an outhne on that theme, based on the truths in the passage. This process is usually called “building a sermon,” and the resultant outhne is usually preachable and the Spirit of God can use it to help people. But sermons are not only “built,” they’re also “born.” The preacher’s imagination is impregnated with a “truth-in-metaphor,” and the message grows like a baby in the womb, coming to birth when it’s ready. This is why the preacher or teacher must devote adequate time to message preparation; otherwise, the “baby” might be aborted or stillborn.
“Building a sermon” is too often a mechanical process that focuses so much on analysis, content, and organization that it minimizes synthesis, intent, and motivation. “Giving birth to a sermon” is an organic process that grows out of the life of the minister in contact with the life of the Word. Sermons that are “born” don’t ignore content and organization, but they allow the “baby” to decide what it will look like and how it will be dressed. Two tables, constructed by carpenters following the same blueprints, will be similar if not identical; but two babies, conceived in the same time-honored fashion, will be similar and yet vastly different. Tables are built; babies are conceived and born.
“The problem in Art,” wrote Anne Morrow Lindbergh, “is that of extreme freedom encased in extreme discipline.”[2] No matter how creative we are, if freedom isn’t disciplined, what we do isn’t likely to succeed. The river that ignores its banks becomes a swamp. It’s this tension between form and function, craftsman and artist, priest and prophet that helps make people creative. That’s why I suggest you ask yourself these seven questions as you prepare your messages. They’ll help you keep the river of creativity in its banks without robbing the river of either power or depth.
Keep in mind that these questions are only guides to help us stay on track in our preparation. They don’t guarantee results. Apart from the enlightening ministry of the Holy Spirit, nobody can understand and assimilate the truths of the Word of God and make them meaningful to others. The ability to use the tools of Bible study and to apply the principles of biblical hermeneutics is invaluable and indispensable; but it is still the Spirit who guides us into all the truth, and we must depend on Him. We need to ponder the words of Thomas Merton: “If we are merely speculative students of Scripture, breaking the words of God up into scientific fragments and deafening our spirit with the noise of human argument—which is too often the noise of human ‘flesh’ with its spirit of factions and divisions—then we cannot hear the word who speaks to us silently in the words of God.”[3]
One more piece of counsel: I think the questions are listed in logical sequence, but that doesn’t mean you must “complete” one question before you move to the next one. Preparing a sermon isn’t like baking a cake, an enterprise that requires sequential actions. (I’d hate to have to add two eggs after the batter is in the oven.) My experience tells me that, once you get past the first three questions, you’ll be considering all of them simultaneously as you study and ideas come to you. When the “art” and “science” of sermon preparation start to blend, then the discipline of the science will help to release the creativity of the art; and you’ll become like the jet pilot or the surgeon, naturally doing the right thing, sequence or no sequence.
1. What Does the Text Say?
One summer Sunday evening, while on holiday, Campbell Morgan worshiped in a nearby town and subsequently recorded in his diary: “Heard a capital sermon with which I did not at all agree on a text which had no relation to the subject. Text, Proverbs 9:5. Subject, ‘Holy Communion.’ ”[4] The village preacher had used a pretext and not a text, for Proverbs 9:5 says, “Come, eat my food and drink the wine I have mixed.” The only connection with Holy Communion is the mention of bread and wine, but the context relates the verse to the getting of wisdom.
Sermonic pretexts are heard even in famous pulpits. George W. Truett preached a sermon entitled “Life’s Middle Time,” and based it tangentially on the phrase from Psalm 91:6, “the plague that destroys at midday.”[5] James S. Stewart used Acts 27:29 to preach about the “four anchors” that sustain the believer in the storms of life: hope, duty, prayer, and the cross of Christ.[6] Willard L. Sperry preached at Harvard on “Larger Ideas of God,” and his text was Isaiah 28:20, “The bed is too short to stretch out on, the blanket too narrow to wrap around you.”[7] Frank Boreham based his sermon “William Knibb’s Text” on Jeremiah 3:4, “My father, thou art the guide of my youth” (KJV), and described how God had directed the heroic missionary. But the text has to do, not with guidance, but with Israel’s marriage to Jehovah and her unfaithfulness to the “guide of her youth,” i.e., her husband.[8] Even the great Charles Haddon Spurgeon occasionally ignored the context and “spiritualized” his text, such as the time he preached from Judges 16:20-21 and held Samson up as a picture of the “consecrated man.”[9]
All who preach and teach the Word have as their first responsibility learning what the biblical text actually says, not what they want it to say. “To interpret and apply his text in accordance with its real meaning, is one of the preacher’s most sacred duties,” wrote the dean of American homileticians, John A. Broadus.[10] He went on to warn that the preacher “is verily guilty before God if he does not honestly strive to understand that which he interprets, and give forth its real meaning and no other.”[11]
Early in our ministry, perhaps all of us go through an adolescent phase during which we try to display our abilities by preaching from obscure texts or about obscure truths from familiar texts, things that nobody has ever heard before or cares to hear again. But the more we mature in ministry, the more we desire to preach the great truths of the Bible and permit the texts to speak for themselves.
The best way to find out what the text is saying is simply to read it repeatedly and meditatively, using different translations and studying the original text.[12] Ask yourself the basic questions that help to unlock the passage:
(1) Who is speaking or writing?
(2) To whom was the passage addressed and why?
(3) Where and when did it all take place?
(4) What message was the writer or speaker trying to convey?
(5) Are there any parallel passages elsewhere in Scripture that can help me understand the passage?
(6) Do I understand the context?
(7) Are there any repeated words or phrases that indicate the major theme?
(8) What pictures are found in the text?
Homileticians call this body of material “the factual data,” and it’s important that we gather it and understand it. For one thing, we want to be accurate in our understanding of the passage; and the first step toward accuracy is knowing the facts.[13]
Misunderstanding the words and ignoring the context are two of the chief obstacles to discovering what a passage is really saying. A third obstacle is raised when we bring to our studies our own preconceived notions about the text. Unfortunately, floating around in every preacher’s mind is an assortment of homiletical and theological flotsam and jetsam that has accumulated over the years and is difficult to get rid of. This nebulous, subjective “body of divinity” can get in the way of our objective study and sometimes hinder us from really understanding the text.[14] This doesn’t mean we abandon our personal convictions about doctrine; it only means we try not to squeeze every text into our own preconceived mold and so rob it of its unique impact. While it’s difficult to look at a text as though we’d never seen it before, that ought to be our goal.
As we read the text and seek its message, we must beware of going off on homiletical detours every time we get an idea. If a striking thought or exciting insight comes your way, write it down; but stick with your reading and meditating, and save the possible development of that idea until later. The idea may turn out to be the truth that “impregnates” your imagination and leads to the birth of the sermon. But if that’s true, the longer you read and think, the more obvious it will become, and the healthier the baby will be when it’s born.
By the time you’ve finished answering this first question (What does the text say?), you ought to have a body of material to work with, plus an idea of what the passage says. No doubt you’re developing a “feeling” for the passage, and you’ve probably written down several ideas that could become propositional statements for a message. But don’t get in a hurry; there’s still much work to be done.
2. How Does the Text Say It?
Here we enter the field of literary theory, sometimes foggy, sometimes frightening, often frustrating, but always essential to the task of understanding the text; for if we ignore the literary genre of the text, our interpretation is sure to be suspect. Is the text a parable or an allegory, a proverb or a narrative? And if it’s a narrative, is it fiction, history, myth, or a combination of all three? What are the figures of speech employed—hyperbole, apostrophe, simile, metaphor?[15] The careful student has to deal with these matters honestly and with spiritual perception.
You don’t address the arguments of the Epistle to the Romans in the same way you approach the poetry of the Psalms or the imagery of the Apocalypse. People who affirm that “they take the Bible literally” need to face the fact that there are things in the Bible that obviously can’t be taken literally, such as John’s description of Christ in Revelation 1:12-16 or the account in Psalm 114 of Israel’s exodus from Egypt.[16] These two descriptions refer to real (literal) entities; but the authors didn’t write in literal terms, because they had something to express that could be better conveyed by the use of symbols.
The old adage is still valid: when the plain sense of Scripture makes good sense, seek no other sense. However, we must be sensitive to the fact that more than one literary genre might be found in a given passage of Scripture, and this could modify the “plain sense” that seems obvious to us.[17]
It’s here that the preacher must be alert to the “pictures” in the text. Sometimes they’re obvious, but often they’re hidden in a Greek or Hebrew word or in an idiomatic expression. Having found the pictures, the next step is to identify the “semantic domains” to which they belong—agriculture, building, jurisprudence, and such.[18] By using your concordances and lexicons, and by tracing cross-references, you can locate other passages containing material belonging to that same domain; and you can relate the passages and perhaps generate something new and exciting. Remember the “rainbow sermon” in chapter 6.
Paul’s admonition to the Galatians to reject the legalistic doctrines of the Judaizers (Gal. 5:1-12) is teeming with pictures: the yoke, slavery, and freedom (v. 1); profit, loss, and debts (v. 2); falling (vv. 3-4); running (vv. 7-8); baking (v. 9); stirring things up, causing a riot (v. 10); surgery (vv. 11-12).
3. What Did the Text Mean to the Original Hearers?[19]
“What did it mean?” must precede “What does it mean?” because the biblical revelation is progressive and cumulative. To read into an Old Testament text truths that weren’t revealed until centuries later is to rob that text of the message it had for the original writers, speakers, or hearers. At the same time, to ignore the Old Testament context of a New Testament truth is equally damaging to our studies. From the messianic promise to the doctrine of the resurrection of the human body, the truths of Scripture were revealed gradually and progressively; and as we study the Word, it’s important that we know where we are on the road of revelation.
For example, when David prayed, “Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me” (Ps. 51:11), he wasn’t reflecting on eternal security so much as remembering the terrible judgment that God sent to his predecessor, King Saul (1 Sam. 16:13-14). Nor was he contradicting John 14:16, because he had never heard John 14:16. But when the disciples heard the Lord’s words in the Upper Room, they must have been thrilled; for they knew that, in the old dispensation, the Holy Spirit’s constant and certain presence wasn’t guaranteed to His servants. Imagine having God’s Spirit abiding with you forever!
A respect for biblical theology is essential for accurate interpretation of the Word of God. What does Genesis say about man? What does Leviticus say about sin? What do the Psalms reveal about creation? What does the Gospel of John tell us about divine sovereignty and human responsibility? It’s exciting to discover the unfolding of divine revelation in the Bible and to see unity come out of diversity in the revelation of God and His works.[20]
4. What Does the Text Mean to the Church Today?
Here we enter the field of historical theology.[21] The doctrines treasured by the Christian church were, for the most part, won on the field of battle as the church defended its faith against the paganism around it and the heresy within it. It’s good to know what the church believes, but it’s also good to know how the church came to believe it and what battles were involved in defending “the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints” (Jude 3).
We have nearly twenty centuries of church history behind us; and even though the historians give us an unsetthng and sometimes conflicting record of disagreements, disputes, and divisions, as well as concordats and compromises, the careful preacher is helped by gaining this historical perspective. As the philosopher George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” I like to balance that quotation with one from Alfred North Whitehead: “How the past perishes is how the future becomes.”[22]
But when we speak about “the church,” which “church” do we mean? I suppose we mean “the church of Christian church history.” While different communions disagree on some of the finer points of doctrine, there’s a body of truth that belongs to all of us who claim to follow Jesus Christ. It does us good to find out where and why we disagree and to discover that God blesses people we disagree with! “He who knows only his own position doesn’t even know that.” I don’t recall who said that, but it’s true.
Historical theology forces us to move Bible doctrine out of the serene ivory tower into the noisy battlefield. It also forces us to learn the hard way how dependable our own personal doctrinal weapons are and whether or not we’re able to wield them skillfully. The First Council of Nicea and the Diet of Worms may seem light years away from the pastoral problems you face in your church today, but they’re not. Human nature is the same, spiritual needs are the same, and the better we know God and obey His will, the better the church will be.
Harry Emerson Fosdick used to remind his listeners that astronomers and systems of astronomy come and go, but the stars remain.[23] I don’t agree with Fosdick’s theology, but I think that here he makes a valid point. We study church history in order to see the stars. But as we read church history, we’d better interview the astronomers and check their equipment to see if they have the authority to describe the stars to anybody. Church history records lies as well as truths, and we need discernment.
Someone has described historians as “people who catch up with the past.” But some preachers have never caught up with the past. After graduating from seminary, they gleefully sell their textbooks and get busy running from seminar to seminar, learning how to duplicate the latest religious fads. Having scuttled the past, they become like boats without rudders or compasses, adrift on a sea of pragmatism, always hoping to land on the nebulous Island of Success.
There’s not a heresy or religious novelty today that hasn’t appeared in some form or another somewhere on the stage of church history. Historical theology and systematic theology work hand-in-hand to assist the preacher in the interpretation of the text. Theologians need to be preachers to keep doctrine personal and practical, and preachers need to be theologians to keep doctrine accurate and authoritative.[24]
Reading historical theology can be depressing when we see religious leaders attacking each other in the name of Christ and acting very unlike the Christ they claim to defend. But even that’s a part of life, including the life of the church today. “The divisions of Christendom,” wrote Philip Schaff, “bring to light the various aspects and phases of revealed truth, and will be overruled at last for a deeper and richer harmony, of which Christ is the keynote. In him and by him all problems of theology and history will be solved. The nearer believers of different creeds approach the Christological center, the better they will understand and love each other.”[25]
5. What Does the Text Mean to Me?[26]
Biblical preaching must be witness as well as proclamation, and the congregation has a right to believe that something good happened when their pastor confronted the text, wrestled with it, wooed it, and received from the encounter spiritual nourishment for their hearts. (I apologize for the mixed metaphors, but that’s what’s involved in preparing a sermon.) “Truth through Personality is our description of real preaching,” said Phillips Brooks in his famous Yale lectures;[27] and that oft-quoted definition is a valid one. If the truth of the Word bypasses the personality of the preacher, then the sermon may become a lecture, and the preacher may become a hypocrite. If the text isn’t real to me, I’ll have a hard time making it real to others.
It’s often been said that what we get out of an experience largely depends on what we bring to it. That may not apply to every area of life, but it certainly applies to preaching. As we study the text, we bring to it a mixed bag of beliefs, hopes, fears, desires, failures, joys, and other experiences that help to keep us human. The preacher who isn’t vulnerable isn’t likely to be accepted as credible, although there’s no place in the pulpit for turning God’s truth into “true confession.” Do your serious confessing in the secret chamber, but by all means tell your people what God has done for your soul.
Somewhere Luther says that “prayer, meditation, and temptation make a preacher.” We have little difficulty with “prayer” and “meditation,” but the “temptation” part we’d rather escape. One reason why God allows preachers to suffer is that they might have opportunities to grow spiritually and therefore to preach better. Even our Lord had to go through suffering to prepare Him for His heavenly ministry (Heb. 2:14-18), so why should we escape? “The true preacher can be known by this,” said Emerson, “that he deals out to the people his life—life passed through the fire of thought.”[28]
The preacher’s study is a sacred place, not just because of the person who works there or the work that’s done there, but because of what happens there. We meet the Lord as we study His Word, and in meeting Him, we find the message He wants us to share. We also meet ourselves, and that can be a painful experience. However, it’s the only way we can receive from the Lord what He wants us to declare when we meet His people in the place of divine worship.[29]
I like what Andrew Bonar wrote about Robert Murray M’Cheyne.
From the first he fed others by what he himself was feeding upon. His preaching was in a manner the development of his soul’s experience. It was a giving out of the inward life. He loved to come up from the pastures wherein the Chief Shepherd had met him—to lead the flock entrusted to his care to the spots where he found nourishment. . . . His heart was filled, and his lips then spoke what he felt within his heart. He gave out not merely living water, but living water drawn at the springs that he had himself drunk of; and is not this a true gospel ministry?”[30]
Sermon preparation ought to be an exciting personal adventure, with God teaching us the truth for which He has prepared us by His providence. There is a difference between preaching because you have to say something and preaching because you have something to say. Congregations can usually tell the difference, and they will eventually let you know.
One of the best ways to make sure you confront the text personally is to turn it into a matter of prayer. Pray as a sinner needing forgiveness, as a worshiper expressing praise, as a servant accepting the Master’s will, as a pilgrim seeking companionship and guidance, and as a disciple asking for truth. In other words, make the text your own until, as happened to the Emmaus disciples, your heart burns within you. Then you will hardly be able to wait to tell somebody that you have walked with the Lord Jesus and He has opened to you the Scriptures and changed your life (Luke 24:13-35). It will transform your preaching.
The preacher must be concerned with feelings as well as facts, experiencing the text as well as examining the text and letting the text examine him. What Thoreau wrote in his journal about writing can be applied to preaching: “The forcible writer stands boldly behind his words with his experience. He does not make books out of books, but he has been there in person.”[31]
6. What Does the Text Mean to the Congregation?
It’s here that the pastor and the preacher meet; for if you don’t know your people, how can you successfully apply the Word to their needs? Granted, human nature is pretty much the same from church to church; but happy is that congregation whose pastor, like the Jewish high priest, carries the members collectively on his shoulders and individually over his heart (Ex. 39:1-21).[32]
In your mind’s eye, survey your congregation and try to imagine how various people will respond to the teachings in the text. What does the passage say to the abused child, the struggling teenager, the out-of-work breadwinner, the retired businessman, the lonely widower, the weary housewife, the new believer, the young bride and groom? We never take intimate confidences into the pulpit, no matter how we disguise them; but we do bring these confidences into the light of the Word to see what kind of medicine the Great Physician would have us apply.
Each congregation has a “preaching history”; and if you remain on the field long enough, you’ll learn what it is. Perhaps one former pastor so emphasized missions that everybody felt intimidated for not applying for a visa and heading overseas. Another pastor walked with Moses, while his successor preached the grace of God with such zeal that he almost became an antinomian. Even if your predecessor was on the field a long time, giving a consistent ministry of the Word, you will still find people in the church family who misunderstood some things he said or, perhaps, objected to the way he said them.
I’m not suggesting that we become ecclesiastical dilettantes who tiptoe through the theological tulips and try to keep from stepping on anybody’s corns. We must be “as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves” (Matt. 10:16), especially when we tell our people things they may not want to hear. It’s not so much what we say as how we say it. If we know what our people are thinking, we can deal with their objections in a fair and loving way and accomplish much more with the sermon.
But something more is involved. The people who sit in the pews have been exposed, consciously or unconsciously, to the numerous “myths”[33] that influence the thinking of society; and our preaching somehow has to break through those barriers and introduce people to truth.
The “American myth” that excited the Pilgrim fathers was that they were the “new Israel” establishing a “new Canaan” in the new world. They were “a city set on a hill.” When it turned out that their accomplishments didn’t quite measure up to those of Joshua in the Promised Land, they altered the myth and began to expand the frontier westward. The new “American myth” defined the United States as God’s chosen “messiah nation” to lead the world and deliver other nations from bondage.[34] Both myths are still with us, along with several new ones that especially excite the younger generation, not the least of which is the age-old “New Age” myth that says, “You shall be as God!”
No matter how much counseling and visiting we do, our best opportunity for pastoral work is from the pulpit.[35] After all, we don’t preach to congregations; we preach to individuals. God’s Word is “boundless” (Ps. 119:96) and meets the needs of people in ways that would amaze us if we knew all about them. It’s impossible for us to prepare messages that deal with every problem in every life; but if we are true to the Word and point to Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit will apply the truth and help God’s people. If this were not true, I would have quit preaching a long time ago.
7. How Can I Make the Text Meaningful to My Hearers?
At this point, your sanctified imagination must pull everything together and help you in several areas.[36] To begin with, your imagination must help you move your thinking from the particular to the general. What happened to David or Jeremiah is past history, but their experiences have relevance to our lives today as we see the principles behind the events. The factual data that we’ve collected would be useful for a Bible lecture; but unless we see the spiritual truths behind those facts, we’ll never grow ourselves a message that will magnify the Lord and help His people.
For example, David’s experience at Ziklag, recorded in 1 Samuel 30, shows us how God can help us when we’re going through severe trials. We can give up (v. 4); we can look for somebody to blame (v. 6); or we can get our encouragement from the Lord (vv. 6-8). David sought God’s will, depended on God’s guidance, relied on God’s strength, and glorified God in the victory. While we don’t have an ephod to consult, we do have an interceding High Priest to whom we can pray and the inspired Word of God with all its precepts and promises.
The sermon is based on historic facts, but it points to spiritual truths and principles that transcend history. Unless we move from the particular to the general, we’ll not be preaching a sermon; we’ll simply be telling a Bible story and making some “practical applications” at the conclusion, hoping that somebody is still listening.
Imagination also helps us move our thinking from the past to the present. This doesn’t mean we “modernize” the text and describe the Prodigal Son speeding out of town in a souped-up Jaguar, heading for Las Vegas. The Bible doesn’t need to be “made relevant”; it already is relevant. People can see themselves in Aaron, making excuses for the golden calf; in Elijah, nursing his wounded pride and looking for sympathy; in Abraham, giving to God what was dearest to his heart; in David, covering up his sins and then confessing them with a broken heart; and in Peter, going out to weep bitterly. The people and the events recorded on the pages of the Bible are contemporary, except when we make them religious history instead of present reality.
Imagination helps us to move from the impersonal to the personal. I read about a photographer who was taking nature pictures in a park where several children were playing. The children watched him for several minutes, and then one of them called out, “Mister, when are you gonna get us in the picture?” The people to whom we preach would probably like to interrupt us as we preach and ask us the same question. But if our people aren’t “in the picture” as we prepare, they’ll never get there while we preach.
If the preacher has honestly answered the other six questions, especially questions four through six, there shouldn’t be any problem getting the people into the picture. Remember that the purpose of preaching is to achieve an object, not explain a subject. We want something to happen in our hearts and in the hearts of our people. We want the Spirit of God to use the truth to make Jesus Christ real and to transform us to become like Him.
This is a good place to say something about introductions and conclusions, because these two parts of the sermon must be very personal. The shorter the introduction, the better, especially when you’re preaching to your own congregation. They’re expecting you to preach and they want to listen, so why delay? After all, the main purposes of the introduction are to declare the text (which should have been read earlier in the service) and to tell the people why they ought to listen to what God has to say in the text. It shouldn’t take ten minutes to do that! In this day of fast food and five-minute oil changes, people don’t have the patience to listen to the traditional sermon introduction that explains the context, gives the background, and deals with all the problems in the text. If you take too long aiming your rifle, the game may disappear.
If I were to introduce a sermon about David at Ziklag, I might say something like this:
You’re driving home from work, looking forward to seeing the family and enjoying a good dinner. You imagine yourself sitting in your lounge chair, reading the paper, and listening to good music. But then you hear sirens screaming, and as you turn the corner, you discover that your street is blocked off and that the police are in charge. “Sorry, pal; you can’t get through!” a policeman shouts. “A house is burning down!” Then you discover that the house is yours. How do you respond in the crises of life?
Of course, the crisis may not be a fire. It might be a death in the family, or losing your job, or having your grandson tell you he’s got AIDS, or having the doctor explain that you have cancer. But the question still has to be answered: How do we respond in the crises of life?
It’s an easy transition into the three responses found in the text, and you can work in the necessary background material as you develop the message. Please note also that the pronoun changed from the first stating of the proposition (“How do you respond?”) to the second (“How do we respond?”). The preacher isn’t a lecturer on a pedestal, shaking his finger and telling his people what to do. He’s a fellow pilgrim, going through the same valley with them, sharing what God has helped him to learn and to do.
Most books on classic homiletics list numerous ways for us to bring the sermon to a close, but they all say to do one thing for sure: make an application. I used to interpret that to mean, “Tell them what to do!” But I’ve changed my mind.
The English word apply comes from a Latin word that means “to fold,” hence, “to bring together.” When you apply paint, you bring a brush and a surface together. When you apply truth, you bring people and truth together. To “apply” a sermon doesn’t mean to review all the points and “hammer them home.” It means to bring together God’s truth and God’s people in such a way that the people’s hearts feel the truth, their minds understand the truth, and their wills want to act on what they’ve heard from the Word. The “application” is their opportunity to experience personal changes within as they are “folded together” with God’s truth and ministered to by God’s Spirit.
The application, then, is an opportunity, a situation in which the Spirit of God can work. It might be created by a few minutes of silent meditation and prayer, or the singing of a song, or the corporate reading of a litany. The giving of an opportunity to come forward and pray, though perhaps overdone in some churches, is still a valid way to apply the Word. Some of the saints will want to confess; others will rejoice; still others will affirm their love for Christ and vow to obey what He’s told them to do. And some will trust Christ for salvation for the first time.
One afternoon, when I should have been studying, I was looking around in the basement stacks of the seminary library. I came across a bound set of old magazines devoted to Bible study. While paging through one volume, I found this gem:
All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for:
doctrine—what is right
reproof—what is not right
correction—how to get right
instruction in righteousness—how to stay right
Isn’t that what preaching is all about? A sermon isn’t a picture on the wall, hanging there for folks to admire. It isn’t even a window in the wall, giving people a glimpse of a beautiful life that’s beyond their reach. The sermon is a door that opens onto a path that leads the pilgrim into new steps of growth and service to the glory of God. What a privilege we have to be called to preach the Word! Now let’s think about the mechanics of “imagineering” a sermon.
“Where there is an original sound in the world, it makes a hundred echoes.”
“Creativity is a by-product of hard work.”
“In the creative state a man is taken out of himself. He lets down as it were a bucket into his subconscious, and draws up something which is normally beyond his reach. He mixes this thing which his normal experiences and out of the mixture he makes a work of art.