Biblical Preaching: A Pastor’s Look at Homiletics HR503 LESSON … · 2019-09-13 · and...

Biblical Preaching: A Pastor’s Look at Homiletics

Transcript - HR503 Biblical Preaching: A Pastor’s Look at Homiletics © 2019 Our Daily Bread University. All rights reserved.

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LESSON 16 of 20HR503

The Practice of Preaching I: Sincerity and Humility (cont.) and Sermon Preparation

Biblical Preaching: A Pastor’s Look at Homiletics

Our heavenly Father, we bow before you in thanksgiving that you have called us into the ministry of Your church and to be teachers and preachers of Your Word and to be Christ’s ambassadors. We confess to you the greatness of the task to which You’ve called us and ask that you will equip us not just now in seminary but throughout our preaching and teaching ministry to become more effective as communicators of what You have communicated to us. We ask it in Christ’s name, amen.

Well, I didn’t quite finish last week the second lecture on characteristics of biblical preaching. We had talked in the previous session about accuracy, relevance, and courage. We continued then with authority. And I think I had just begun to speak about sincerity. Well I suggest that the two marks of this sincerity are (a) consistency of conduct and (b) earnestness of manner. And I’d like to say something about both of them.

(a) The first is consistency of conduct. I imagine it’s obvious that nothing will convince the people we serve of our sincerity like the scrupulous conformity of our lives to what we teach. Whereas nothing will so quickly destroy our credibility as teachers and preachers as our failure to practice what we preach. Hence, the apostle’s commands, for example, to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20:28, “Take heed to yourselves and to your flock” and his command to Timothy in 1 Timothy 4:12 and 16, “Take heed to yourself and to your teaching.” “Set the believers an example in speech and conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.” I’d like to give you a couple of examples of this from different writers. One is from Baxter. I’m going to quote him several times today because I earnestly hope that at some time all of you will read The Reformed Pastor. He says, “What a great hindrance there is to the work if we contradict ourselves, and if our actions give our tongue a lie, and if we build up an hour or two with our mouths [that is, in preaching on Sunday] and all the week pull down with our hands.” Then he goes on like this,

John R. W. Stott, D. D.Experience: Founder, Langham

Partnership International



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He that means as he speaks will surely do as he speaks. It is a palpable error in those ministers that make such disproportion between their preaching and their living that they will study hard to preach exactly and study little or not at all to live exactly. All the week long is little enough to study how to speak two hours. And yet one hour seems too much to study how to live all the week. Practical doctrine must be practically preached. We must study as hard how to live well as how to preach well.

Well that’s from the seventeenth century. I’d like to bring it up-to-date with the modern world with another quotation from Cardinal Suenens, the Roman Catholic cardinal of Brussels in Malines, who when speaking of Trinity Institute here in New York City said, “Today youth emphasizes that the words of Christ are life. It insists that Christianity must be practiced, that it must be lived, that orthodoxy must be orthopraxis. The young are challenging us, and it is good to hear their voice, good to be forced to ask ourselves, ‘Are we truly integrated Christians? Are our words really our life?’ We’ve been often led to consider doctrine as one part of existence and living as another part. But the doctrine of Christ is like the sun. You cannot separate its light from its warmth. I cannot bring a gospel which is only light. It must at the same time be something that warms the heart and soul and heals human wounds.” I think that’s well said that the light and the warmth go together. And this is the importance then of consistency of conduct. Now I speak of course as a pastor who’s been in the job for a number of years. And one becomes, I think, increasingly aware how much people are not only listening to us but watching us just as they did Christ. They watched Him. And the critics of our message are of course watching for the least inconsistency between what we say and who we are, so that’s A.

(b) Is our earnestness of manner. We must be seen to mean what we say not only by the way we do it, but also by the way we say it. I’ll give you a bit more Baxter.

How few ministers do preach with all their might. Alas, we speak so drowsily or gently that sleeping sinners cannot hear. The blow falls so light that hardhearted persons cannot feel it. What excellent doctrine some ministers have in hand and let it die in their hands for want of close and lively application. It says, how plainly, how closely



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and earnestly should we deliver a message of such nature as ours is when the everlasting life or death of men is concerned in it. What? Speak coldly for God or for men’s salvation? Such a work as preaching for men’s salvation should be done with all our might that the people can feel us preach when they hear us.

He says of his own preaching,

I marvel how I can preach slightly and coldly, how I can let men alone in their sins and that I do not want to go to them and beseech them for the Lord’s sake to repent however they’d take it and whatever pains or trouble it should cost me. I seldom come out of the pulpit but my conscience smiteth me that I’ve been no more serious and fervent. It accuseth me not so much for want of human ornaments or elegance, nor for letting fall an unseemly or uncomely word, but it asketh me how couldst thou speak of life and death with such a heart? Shouldst thou not weep over such a people? Shouldst not thy tears interrupt thy words? Shouldst not thou cry aloud and show them their transgressions and entreat and beseech them as for life and death?

Now this is Baxter’s sense, you see, of the great solemnity of the message and of the earnestness with which we should therefore deliver it. Now many modern writers have written of this element of earnestness in preaching. Moffatt defined preaching as “relevant truth powerfully urged.” I think that’s a good definition, “relevant truth powerfully urged.” There are the elements you see of truth, relevance, and earnestness.

Well Campbell Morgan listed three characteristics of preaching: truth, clarity, and passion. Now you may ask, if we’re to be earnest in manner, what is the place of humor in the pulpit? Now I wouldn’t myself suggest that humor is invariably out of place in the pulpit but only that it is alien to some subjects. I don’t think we can joke about the cross of Christ. I don’t think we can joke about hell or about the judgment of God. But I do think that there are other moments that we can joke, especially about ourselves. And there’s no reason why we shouldn’t laugh at ourselves and



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at the foibles of human nature. And in saying that humor is not always out of place, I’m not advocating either some kind of feigned gravity. On the contrary, I think much of the time there should be almost a gaiety rather than a gravity about our preaching, because the truths that we are declaring are so glorious and so exciting. And when we are handling this aspect of the truth, there should be gaiety rather than gravity about our whole demeanor. So certainly an artificially contrived sincerity is not sincerity at all but hypocrisy. And when associated with sermons, it leads to what Dr. Lloyd-Jones rightly calls “pulpiteering” rather than preaching. And the only way to grow in sincerity, I think, is to get on our knees before God and before Scripture until the message really grips our heart and our mind. And there is no dichotomy between what we are convinced about deeply within us and what we’re saying, that it comes from the very depths of our being. So much for sincerity.

Now the third characteristic, or the sixth if you’re taking the two lectures together, is humility. Now if sincerity is not an artificially contrived quality, the humility of a preacher should not be artificial either. The kind of humility you expect in preaching should arise naturally out of the nature of preaching of what it is, namely the exposition of God’s Word to God’s people in the power of God’s Spirit. When you see that, I think we shall understand that our humility should take various forms.

(c) There will be a humble determination to be submissive to Scripture. This is the first part of the preacher’s humility. The true preacher is determined to subordinate his opinions to God’s Word. He’s not going to pontificate about his own opinions. He wants to submerge himself in Scripture so that what is seen and heard is God’s Word and not his own. So the preacher conceives his task not at all in terms of the ventilation of his ideas but entirely in terms of unfolding what God has revealed. That is the first and obvious aspect of a preacher’s humility, a humble determination to be submissive to Scripture.

(d) A humble desire not to come between the Lord and His people. That is, the preacher knows that the medium that God has chosen through which to communicate to His people is His Word that God speaks today through what He has spoken, as we’ve seen previously on several occasions. And the preacher sees himself as a middle man. He is a middle man. We’ve looked at these metaphors: the steward, the ambassador, the bridge-builder. He’s a middle man bringing God’s Word to God’s people. Now this



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position of being a middle man is a very dangerous position to occupy, because we should have a genuine desire to get out of the way in order that God’s voice is heard and that God’s people are blessed so that although we do stand there by the appointment of God to bring God’s Word to God’s people, we want to bring it in such a way that it comes directly to them and we don’t hinder it from coming to them.

I forget if I’ve given you this quotation from Gustaf Wingren in The Living Word. I know I quoted him several times earlier in the course. But he writes, “The expositor is only to provide mouth and lips for the passage itself so that the Word may advance. The really great preachers are in fact only the servants of the Scriptures. When they have spoken for a time, the Word gleams within the passage itself and is listened to. The voice makes itself heard. The passage itself is the voice, the speech of God. The preacher is the mouth and the lips; and the congregation the ear in which the voice sounds. Only in order that the Word may advance, may go out into the world and force its way through enemy walls to the prisoners within, is preaching necessary. But we’re only the mouth and the lips. And we want the ear of the congregation to hear the voice direct.”

I think an even better example perhaps is taken from the great conductor Otto Klemperer who, as far as I know, is still alive although in his mid-80s. But at the time of his eightieth birthday, there was an interesting article about him in one of our British papers in which he was described as the foremost living conductor. And the music critic wrote this: “Otto Klemperer has never been a prima donna conductor. Never in his long life has he thrust himself between the music and the listeners. He has maintained a sort of visible invisibility on the rostrum, classic anonymity.” I’ve always loved that phrase “a visible invisibility.” That is, what the conductor wants is that the people who’ve come will hear the music, will listen to the music and the message of the music. He doesn’t want to get in the way and draw attention to himself as a flashy conductor. He doesn’t want to distract people’s attention from the music to himself. So the conductor maintains this visible invisibility that’s classic anonymity. But he’s not a prima donna. And it’s the same, it seems to me, for the preacher. What he wants more than anything else is this visible invisibility not to come between the Lord and the people.

(e)There is a humble dependence on the power of the Holy Spirit. I hope to talk about this in the last lecture on our dependence on the



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power of the Spirit. But I just mention it here as an essential part of a preacher’s humility. I believe, as I hope has been evidenced in this course, that our preparation of ourselves and of our message cannot be too thorough. I believe that shoddy preparation of our sermons brings disgrace to Christ and damage to His people. And yet, having said that, it is also and equally clear that the greatest industry and preparation and the greatest forcefulness in our delivery will do no deep or lasting good unless we prepare and preach in the Holy Spirit and unless the Spirit takes our Word and carries it home to the mind and heart and conscience of the hearer. Now this truth is at its clearest in gospel preaching to the unconverted. For example, you know these words. (I’ll probably repeat them in my last lecture.) But in 1 Corinthians 12:3, “No man can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit.” And John 6:44, “No man can come to me except the Father draws him.” Now I’ve often brought together these two “no man cans.” We all know the doctrine of human inability with regard to conversion that nobody can come to Christ. But I wonder if we apply this equally to the task of the preacher that whatever we do in preaching, nobody can say “Jesus is Lord” in response to our preaching. Nobody can come to Christ unless the Father draws him. So only the Spirit can reveal Christ to men, and only the Father can draw men to Christ.

I love those three monosyllables “no man can.” I often say them to myself before preaching or sitting on a platform before speaking. “No man can.” I can’t make them. They can’t do it themselves. And I can’t persuade them. It’s only the Holy Spirit who can do these things. So Paul could write, “Our gospel came to you not in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with much assurance” (1 Thessalonians 1:5). My speech and my preaching were not in plausible words of wisdom but in demonstration (the apodeixis) of the Spirit and of power. That is the Holy Spirit proving, demonstrating the Word with His power in the hearts and minds of the hearers.

Listen to Spurgeon on this: “The gospel is preached in the ears of all, but it only comes with power for some. The power that is in the gospel does not lie in the eloquence of the preacher, otherwise men would be converters of souls; nor does it lie in the preacher’s learning, otherwise it would consist in the wisdom of men. We might preach till our tongues rotted, till we should exhaust our lungs and die, but never a soul would be converted unless there were mysterious power going with it, the Holy Ghost changing the will of man. Those souls, we might as well preach to stone walls as to preach to humanity unless the Holy Ghost be with the



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Word to give it power to convert the soul.” Well, that is the third aspect of humility, this humble dependence on the power of the Spirit, this recognition that none of our learning, our eloquence, our personality, power, none of these things can have a lasting effect unless the Spirit is working through them in carrying the Word home.

Well, let me just—before I come to what is really our subject today—look back over these six characteristics and suggest in conclusion that it is a question of balance of combining hard work with spiritual freshness. That is, if we are to preach with accuracy, relevance, and courage (the first three characteristics), we need hard work in our study both of the biblical Word and of the contemporary world. But if we are to preach with authority, sincerity, and humility, we need above all else spiritual freshness. I don’t think there is anything that can give these things to us but being fresh spiritually and walking with God ourselves. And if all this is too much of a bore—too boring to give ourselves to these two things of maintaining spiritual freshness and working hard—then I think we simply have to say no wonder the congregation is bored. If we are bored with our preparation, they’re certain to be bored with our delivery. And I think we need, as I find constantly, to remind ourselves they are God’s people committed to our trust. It’s God’s Word that is committed to our trust. And no diligence is too great when God’s people and God’s Word are involved. So much then for the characteristics of biblical preaching.

We come on now—today and tomorrow¬—to the practice of preaching, the preparation of the sermon, and the delivery of the sermon. I don’t think I’ll finish the preparation of the sermon today. But I have less to say about the delivery. So it won’t matter. I think I shall be able to finish both this week.

Firstly then, the preparation of the sermon. Now I’d like to introduce the subject like this, that in one sense, the preparation of every sermon takes a whole lifetime. Because every sermon is the distillation of all one’s understanding on a given text or topic up to the moment of delivering that particular sermon. Hence, all the time one is preparing to preach, since all the time one is continuing to learn. And if we come down now to some of the details of preparation, I hope we won’t forget that we’re to see it in the context of a lifetime of learning and, therefore, a lifetime of preparing. Well the actual preparation of a particular sermon has to begin at some particular point. And I want to give you today and tomorrow six stages as I see them in the preparation of a sermon.



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And the first is choosing the subject. We’ve got to make this decision as to what we’re going to preach about. Now as stewards of the mysteries of God to whom has been entrusted the biblical revelation, we’re committed of course to teach the whole counsel of God. And, therefore, our short span of life and of ministry isn’t nearly long enough to share with people all the riches of God’s revelation. Our biggest headache in choosing our topic or text, therefore, arises not from the lack of material but from the very abundance of it. It’s not because our cupboard is bare but because it is overstocked. I hope that’s true of all of us. So how are we going to decide from this abundance, this abondance des richesses, what to preach about? Well, before coming to some guiding factors which may help to determine our choice, I want to say a couple of preliminaries about when the choice is to be made and by whom.

When do you choose your subject? Answer, preferably six months in advance. Now the reason for long-distance planning in our sermons is the need for ample time in which to study. If we choose our topic or our text only one week in advance, let alone two days in advance, well we may have time to consider it a little bit. But we shall not have time to study it adequately, still less to digest our study and reflect upon it. So let’s try to choose our topics six months in advance. Now I’ll talk about that more a little later.

Next preliminary: by whom is the choice to be made? Answer, not by the pastor alone. Ideally, the choice will be a team choice made jointly by all those who are sharing in the pastoral responsibility for the congregation. That is, if there’s more than one pastor, then the pastors together plus the leading laity, the board of deacons or whoever they are, who I believe should be drawn into this vitally important subject. Now putting these two together, that is when the choice is made and by whom. Let me speak to you from our own experience in London. We’re very blessed with a larger staff team; and we spend about a half day together about three or four times a year during which we pray for this particular purpose. Mind you, we spend longer together for other purposes. But for this particular purpose, we go away for a half day at a time, maybe a whole afternoon and evening, and we pray and discuss the courses of sermons, the subjects, and topics that we think ought to be taken for the next six months or indeed for the six months beyond what has already been arranged. And we do this in the light of our pastoral experience, and we work out these courses together. Now we keep a bit of flexibility. I think it’s very important not so to impose upon yourselves an inflexible pattern that there is no opportunity to put in a sermon on some



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immediate topic which needs to be tackled. I think there ought to be some breaks here and there in the courses that you’re giving. But nevertheless, to give you some examples, during the summer we took a longish course on the person and work of the Holy Spirit because of the near Pentecostal movement and a great deal of confusion on this subject. We felt it right to go fairly carefully into this whole doctrine. At the moment in London, my colleagues are giving a whole series on prayer in the mornings, and they are working through the epistle to the Colossians in the evenings. Now I have already known for four months what I’m going to preach about between January and Easter next year in London. I gave a course on the first 15 chapters of the Acts under a year ago. And when we last met to discuss our preaching, I suggested that it might be good for me to take the rest of Acts, Acts 16 to 28, under a life of the apostle Paul; because as you know, Paul is the great hero of the second half of the book of Acts. Now this was agreed, and it’s given me an opportunity to do some preliminary study and thinking and praying and working on it. I would very strongly commend this to you, that, as I say, even if you leave Sundays here and there that are free so that you can put in what is needed at the time, try to plan six months in advance the main courses that you’re going to give. So that’s my answer to the questions, when is the choice made and by whom?

Now how is the choice to be made? Well three factors will help the team to decide.

(a) I will call this the pastoral factor. That is, it is in the regular course of our pastoral counseling that we discover things about the congregation that will guide us in our preaching and teaching. We discover the context in which the people are living: their homes, their families, their jobs, their backgrounds. We discover where they are in their spiritual pilgrimage, what stage they’ve reached. We discover what some of their major problems and hang-ups are: their doctrinal confusions and misconceptions, their ethical failures and negligences, and the causes of their immaturity. All these things emerge naturally in the course of our pastoral counseling ministry. Hence, every preacher must be a pastor. He must be listening and learning as well as speaking and teaching. If you want biblical warrant for this, then Scripture says, “Let every man be quick to hear and slow to speak” (James 1:19). If you want any further warrant for this, one might say that since God has given us two ears and one mouth, he evidently means us to listen twice as much as we speak. And it’s a great thing to listen to people and let them give us the topics for our preaching. That’s



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the pastoral factor.

Just one thing under this which may be a slight digression: If the topic on which we feel we should speak is controversial—because in our pastoral counseling ministry we discover some area of controversy that is bugging or bothering people—then although we need sometimes to be negative in condemning some error or evil, especially when the controversy is an open one and the thing concerned is evidently evil or erroneous, I think it is a good general principle to be positive usually. I’ll give you an example in a moment. But listen to this wise word of Baxter writing to preachers and telling them of the need to maintain Christian and brotherly unity and communion. And regarding people who start a controversy, he writes this, “See that you preach as little as may be against them in the pulpit in any direct manner opposing their sect by name or by any reproachful titles. For they are exceedingly tender, proud, passionate, and rash ordinarily that are entangled in a schism. And they will but hate you and fly from you as an enemy say you rail. The way, therefore, is without naming them to lay the grounds, that is, the foundations of proof, to lay the grounds clearly and soundly which must subvert their errors. And then the error will fall of itself.” In other words, if you lay the foundations of truth so firmly that, without naming the error, the error topples by itself. If I may give you an example, take those who teach a stereotyped, two-stage Christian experience—whichever holiness group they may happen to belong to, whether the Pentecostal people who teach birth of the Spirit followed by a second and subsequent baptism of the Spirit. Just in passing, I’m not denying that there may be second blessings as long as you say that there can be third, fourth, fifth, and sixth blessings.

My concern is when people stereotype a two-stage thing, which the New Testament does not stereotype. Now when people do that, I think it would be wise not to speak against this movement but to lay foundations of truth like this, to take a text like Ephesians 1:3 that God “has blessed us . . . with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places” in Christ. Now when people get hold of this truth that God “has blessed us in Christ with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places,” well there isn’t any room, you see, for this stereotype of a second thing that you’ve got to await: you’re in Christ now, but there’s something further to come. No, in Christ all spiritual blessings are ours. And spiritual blessings are blessings of the Spirit. Or take a verse like Colossians 2:9, “You are complete in Christ.” When you are in Christ, you are complete. You’re not incomplete so that you need to wait for the second and



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subsequent experience. Now you see if you preach positively on our Christian completeness in Christ, people will see themselves the error of this kind of stereotype. Or one may want to preach about sanctification as a gradual growth into Christlikeness. That’s only just a suggestion in passing about the pastoral factor.

(b) Now the second factor that will guide us in our choice of subject is the personal factor. By personal here I mean ourselves for the lessons that God is teaching us on a natural subject for transmission to others. Now of course sometimes we have to preach objectively on themes of which we have little or no personal experience. Many of us have to preach on suffering before we may have had to endure any acute suffering ourselves. All of us are obliged to preach on death before we’ve died. And some of us are compelled to preach on marriage from the detached objectivity of bachelordom. And I think we mustn’t shrink from subjects in which we know our inexperience. But we must preach on these biblically and sensitively and humbly despite the disadvantage which our lack of experience gives us. Nevertheless, having said that, it is easier and safer to lead the congregation along paths which we ourselves are treading. There’s a ring of authenticity about sermons that are born in personal experience and personal conviction; that we begin with our experience, because we’re called to expound Scripture not to expound ourselves but that we are expounding a Scripture that has come to mean something in our own lives. And these, I have no doubt, are the most powerful sermons we ever preach, which are born of Scripture, yes, but born of our personal conviction about and experience of the truth of Scripture.

There is also a biblical principle involved because Jesus said, “Take heed (how or) what you hear; the measure you give will be the measure you get, and still more will be given you” (Mark 4:24; Luke 8:18), which seems to mean that one of the conditions on which we receive more truth from God is that we’ve shared with others what we have already received. “Take heed how you hear; the measure you give will be the measure you get.” That is, hear, listen, learn in order to communicate. And the more you give what you have received, the more you will go on to receive.

Hence, the importance of recording what we learn: the importance of capturing our moments of inspiration, of getting our luminous thoughts on paper before our minds become fog-bound again. Perhaps I’m only describing myself, not you. But I find my mind is usually in a pea-soup fog, and occasionally the fog or the smog



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lifts and the light breaks through. And when that happens, seize this moment of illumination and write down what comes to you. Always have pen and paper handy in your pocket so you’ll always have something on you that you can write things down on. And in your bedroom, I find dressing and undressing is a time when luminosity comes to me. And then transfer probably to some loose-leaf notebooks what you have got. I mean, if you’re writing on bits of paper, it’s very difficult to file bits of paper in your own filing system. But personally, I find loose-leaf notebooks are helpful here. I have a couple, one going from Genesis to Revelation and the other from A to Z. And I like to file these luminous thoughts. Now it may be of course only a reference one has written down maybe under a topic that two or three verses of Scripture have come to your mind associating. I am rather naughty and find these ideas come to me often when somebody else is preaching, and my mind then begins to wander because they’ve started a train of thought. I don’t know if that ever happens to you. But the great thing then is that when these things become associated in your mind, you may want to write them down under a certain heading, maybe only a stray thought, a sentence, maybe the analysis of a whole chapter or paragraph in Scripture, sometimes the development of a theme you know. Some idea you’ve been wrestling with for months suddenly clarifies. Write it down, and write it down where you can find it. And every such entry becomes a seed from which a sermon may later sprout. Well that’s the personal factor, the pastoral factor, the personal factor.

(b) I’ll call this the national factor. That is what’s going on in the life of the nation and in the wider world around. For if our preaching is to be heard, if it is to be characterized by truth and timeliness, then this factor is of course absolutely vital. What is happening in the secular world? What are these people who come to church on Sunday thinking about the rest of the week? What are they reading about in the newspapers? What are they viewing on television? What is occupying their minds? Now this will include—although it may seem a strange heading under which to put this, I think it’s right. It will include religious festivals. Because when you get to Christmas, I mean everybody is thinking about Christmas. There are some preachers I’ve known who take so literally the New Testament teaching about observing days and seasons that they ignore Christmas even and preach on something completely different. I don’t think you can do that. Whatever your views may be about a church calendar and religious festivals, there are certain festivals on which we’ve got, it seems to me, to preach on what other people are thinking about.



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Indeed I would take this opportunity of commending to you the whole idea of a church calendar, especially when the church’s year is divided, as it so easily can, into three major periods. The first is Christmas to Pentecost. You’ve got Christmas, the birth of Christ at the end of December. And you know you’ve got Easter some time at the end of March or the beginning of April. So it seems natural during that period (January, February, March) to be having some kind of a series of sermons which has to do with the life of Christ—going from His birth through His life, to His death, resurrection, ascension, and on to the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost. Now this is still in post-Christian Europe and America. We’re still aware of this first third of the year.

Now post-Pentecost—that is from June to we say through the summer—is a natural time to think of the life of the Christian, that is, what does it mean to be filled with the Spirit and to be led by the Spirit? What kind of life does a spiritual Christian lead in the light of the birth, life, death, resurrection, ascension, Spirit gift of Jesus? Here you see we’ve thought of these great facts, these events in the life of Christ. Now what sort of life are we to live in the light of this?

Well then that leaves you with the third period. I’ll call it the fall or the pre-Christmas period. Well the harvest festival normally comes at the end of August or in September or maybe the very beginning of October. And that is a natural time to begin talking about creation. And, therefore, to go on through the Old Testament from creation may be something in the Old Testament preparation for the coming of Christ, which you come to at Christmas.

Now in this sense, you see in these three seasons you’ve got in effect the whole of Scripture. From October to December, you’ll go from creation to the coming of Christ. From January to June, you’re going from the birth of Christ to His gift of the Spirit; and from June on to October, the life of the Christian ending, if you like, with the hope of the Christian and eschatology. Now I’m not suggesting that you should keep strictly to that, but it’s a very helpful scheme and one which a number of churches actually are adopting, not just Episcopal churches today.

Well I include then those religious festivals under the heading of the life of the nation. But I’m especially thinking of events in the life of the nation such as the election you’ve just had; some disaster that is filling the newscasts like a flood or earthquake or an air crash, something that is causing people to question



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the providence of God or doubt His love. Now we ought to be so sensitive to these things, what the people are thinking about, that we may have the courage to tackle these big problems. Or it may be topics of public discussion in congress or in the press like abortion that’s going on now or euthanasia or pollution, war, race, violence, poverty, etcetera; maybe some book like B. F. Skinner’s Beyond Freedom and Dignity, you know, just published that everybody’s talking about and reading reviews in the paper; maybe a movie that’s been released or a television program that, where these issues are being debated in the nation, Christian people are asking, is there a word from the Lord? The question King Zedekiah asked Jeremiah. In other words, what light does Scripture throw on these perplexing issues? Well those seem to me to be the three factors: the pastoral, the personal, and the national, that whatever our choices may be and whatever factors determine our choices, let them be team choices, and let them be made in good time. Well that’s stage one, choosing the subject.

That brings me to stage two, studying the text. Now if the choice is a topic, that I’m given a topic like pollution or whatever it is, then I still have to choose the text from which to handle the topic. And the greater our familiarity with the whole of Scripture, the easier this responsibility will become; one of the great arguments for soaking ourselves in the whole of Scripture and reading the whole of Scripture every year. I’ll come to that when I come to our discipline in study.

Now once our text is chosen, then we begin to study it well in advance. Now if, for example, we’ve decided that we’re going to expound on one of the books of the Bible, then we need well in advance to buy the commentaries. We need to perhaps ask advice as to which are the best commentaries on this particular book and to begin to study them well in advance and not to live from hand to mouth so that I’ve got five or six commentaries I’ve got to get through before next Sunday. And also, if it is a topic, then there are books relating to the topic; and I think we all of us need again to ask advice and not be afraid to call somebody on the telephone and say, “I feel it right to be preaching on such and such a subject in a few months’ time. Could you tell me the basic book or books I ought to read?” There are people who are experts in this subject who will help us; a great thing to help each other in these matters. So that’s distant preparation, and it is so important you know; I mean, if one has got to preach on again—I’ll take pollution—you want to read one book or two on the subject, it’s no good reading it the previous week. But you can probably get through it all right.



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But you can’t ponder it. You can’t digest it. And you need time for that.

Now immediate preparation should begin at least, I would suggest, on the Monday afternoon. Indeed, I give you that bit of very practical advice that however busy you are, try to keep an hour on Monday morning or afternoon. I say afternoon, because in our case we always have a staff meeting all Monday morning. We don’t take Monday as our day off. Of course some ministers do. We tend to take Tuesday or Wednesday in the middle of the week. Personally I don’t like Monday as a day off, because there are so many things to do immediately after Sunday. I find you know during the course of Sunday there may be twenty or thirty people who have asked one to do something. And you’ve undertaken to do it, you know, something or other that they want. Well one wants to get that done on Monday. So personally I like to spend that day, the first working day as it were after Sunday and give, if it’s even only half an hour or an hour, some time to begin the more immediate preparation. Because then the text and your theme will maturate during the week. And there’s nothing to mature or maturate unless you’ve begun your preparation on Monday. This is what L. J. Tizard in his book on preaching has called “the subconscious incubation of sermons.” He says he’s a great believer in it, and I think I am too.

But in addition to some time on Monday afternoon, personally I would keep the whole of Saturday morning clear. I would commend this to you. Of course everybody has to work out his own method. And you may think Saturday morning too late to do your final preparation. But if you’ve done your preliminary preparation, then I don’t think it is too late. But I find it helpful. I remember having a battle with myself some years ago, because I think I’m an activist by disposition that I like to get at my mail and deal with it. And I like to get at the paper and read it. And I used to find sometimes if there was a large morning mail on Saturday, that it was 11 or 12 o’clock before I got down to sermon preparation. And I took a fairly clear decision of principle some years ago that I wouldn’t open my mail on Saturday until lunch time. So I leave it on the mat or wherever, you know. We have it delivered through the door and it falls on the doormat. I leave it there all morning. And I have a rule: I do not open the paper either on Saturday morning. In fact I don’t usually have breakfast and go straight from getting up and having a shower and washing, shaving, etcetera, and dressing to this: to a quiet time, to getting right with the Lord, meditating, getting right into this and letting



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nothing else interrupt it. I won’t answer the telephone on Saturday mornings either. I get somebody else to answer it for me or let it ring. The telephone is a terrible nuisance, and I can’t see why we are obliged always to answer it. If it’s inconvenient, don’t answer it. Let it ring. It can wait. They’ll call again. I’m serious. It’s first things first.

Well then in studying the text, we have to keep asking ourselves two separate questions which I’ve already mentioned: (a) is, what does it mean? And (b) is, what does it say? And I’ll finish with this for a few minutes. What does it mean? What does it say?

(a) What does it mean? This is struggling under God by study and prayer to get at the meaning of the text. Now that means getting on our knees and staying there a while with the Bible open before us praying for illumination, and not just praying but read, reread, reread, and reread. Turn it over and over and over in your mind. Meditate upon it. Ponder it. Worry at it like a dog with a bone. Suck it like a bee with the nectar of a flower until it yields its sweetness and until you’ve sucked it dry. And go on sucking it until there are no more juices to suck. And savor it in your mouth, the mouth of your mind like a candy. Now all these are perhaps just illustrations of how we need to go on ruminating, turning it over and over in our mind.

Now during this stage, you may need to consult other translations. You’ll have probably your Greek or Hebrew if you know the languages. You may want several translations. You’ll probably refer to a lexicon for factual help about the meaning of a word. You may even consult a commentary for factual information. But I strongly advise you in this first part, don’t consult commentaries for any other reason. Do your own prayerful meditation and only later turn to the commentaries for correction and to supplement what you have learned. What does it mean?

(b) What does it say? Every text has a meaning in and of itself and a message for contemporary man. Now it’s not enough to elucidate the meaning. We’ve got to go on to struggle to discern its message for today. And this is the exhilaration of bridge-building, of communication that we’ve been talking about before. And for it we need an imagination. Ask God to kindle your imagination. Just as we use our minds to penetrate the biblical world in asking, what does it mean, we need to use our minds to penetrate the contemporary world while asking, what does it say? How does this relate to that? Here are these people. I can imagine sitting in their


Christ-Centered Learning — Anytime, Anywhere

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The Practice of Preaching I: Sincerity and Humility (cont.) and Sermon PreparationLesson 16 of 20

ranks in the pews tomorrow or the next day or the next week. There’s old Mrs. Buggins and old Mr. So and So, you know, with all their needs and their problems. How does this relate to that or to them? How does what God said these centuries ago, what will He speak today, tomorrow, through what He spoke then? You have to picture them and think ourselves into their situation. We begin to feel their burdens, their sins and sorrows and fears and responsibilities and the pressure of the secular world upon them as they try and live for Christ. We need to envisage their hopes and ambitions and aspirations and joys. We think of the young people, the middle-aged people, and the disorientation of middle life. We think of the elderly people, the sick people, the frightened people, the men, the women, the employers, the employees, the Christians, the non-Christians, the semi-Christians. And we keep asking ourselves, what does this Scripture say to their condition? What does it mean? What does it say? So let’s study in the text; and I’ll go on from there tomorrow with stage three. Thank you.

Biblical Preaching: A Pastor’s Look at Homiletics HR503 LESSON … · 2019-09-13 · and...

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