Bible-Based

True fishermen never stop looking for just the right combination of bait and technique to catch a fish in any given pond or stream. Lure, minnow, worms or stink bait? Spinner, jig, or fly? They study fish and habitats endlessly, to make the best possible choices, and increase their chances of catching the “big one.”

I’m no fisherman, but I think I understand their drive. As a preacher, I’m always looking for the “big one” — the big idea of a given passage. But each passage is unique, and it swims in a particular pond or stream. Different kinds of texts work differently and communicate their truths in distinctive ways. If I am to coax the right truth consistently out of every text, I must learn to read each text according to its own rules. Like a fisherman who never stops studying fish and habitats, a preacher must make a life-long endeavour of studying literary genres and forms.

Once you have chosen a text and gotten the big picture of the story around the text and the story behind the text, it’s time to have your own dialogue with the text. Resist the temptation to jump right into the verse by verse discussion in your favorite commentary, or listen to a sermon from your favorite preacher on the same passage. This will only give you second-hand information. You need to have your own conversation, your own encounter.

Politicians and marketers may deliberately take words out of context to serve their own purposes, but could preachers do the same thing? We should give one another the benefit of a doubt. We need not assume deliberately malicious intent. But we should acknowledge that we sometimes pluck words, phrases, and verses out of their context to make a point that we want to make, regardless of their actual meaning.

Here’s the good news: Ignoring the literary context of a passage may be the most frequently-committed exegetical error among preachers, but it is also the easiest to correct. Here are some steps you can take to get the context right.

Not knowing the story behind a text can be like walking blindly into the middle of a conversation. There’s a very good chance you could miss the meaning altogether. This is why we begin to gain an understanding the big picture of a biblical text by studying its historical context.

The temptation of any busy preacher is simply to listen to the voices of trusted guides (study helps, commentaries, other preachers, etc) in our journey from the biblical text to the sermon. In most cases, they can get us from “A” (the words of the text before us) to “B” (the meaning of the text before us) efficiently and accurately. However, our goal is not just to get from “A” to “B,” but to guide others in their own journeys from the text to its meaning, and to the demands, encouragement, and perspective it brings to their lives. For this, we need to know the terrain, to explore the lay of the land, to have the big picture.

Where do you begin your sermon preparation – with a contemporary need, or with a biblical text? This is a trick question, and you should not fall for it. Be careful neither to emphasize human need to the neglect of the text, nor to emphasize the text to the neglect of human need. To do the former is to wallow in a quagmire of questions with no real answers. To do the latter is to try to preach the Bible while missing the point of the Bible.

I used to have a cartoon clipping on my desk portraying the weekly evolution of a pastor. It was a chart, patterned after those old “evolution of man” illustrations. On Monday, the pastor was collapsed like a puddle on the floor. On Tuesday, he was crawling. Each day he progressed a bit more until Sunday, when he was erect, composed, dressed and in his right mind, ready to take on the world. Then, on Monday, he was a puddle again, and the whole thing started over.

If you’re like me, you’ve experienced those Mondays. The highs and lows of Sunday have left you physically, mentally, emotionally, and perhaps even spiritually depleted. I’m pretty sure Jeremiah wrote Lamentations on a Monday. A lot of preachers I know take Monday off, but I never did — just because I didn’t want to spend my day off feeling so worn out. Besides, taking Monday off just postpones the inevitable. Yesterday’s sermon is history, but Sunday is only six days away. Better to go ahead and get back to work.

Maybe your pastor, for a reason clear to him but a mystery to you, has asked you to preach. Or you are going on a mission trip, and every member of the team must be prepared to speak. Or you are the designated preacher for your family reunion. Or perhaps you are a new pastor, suddenly overwhelmed with the responsibility of preaching at least once each week.

Whatever the reason, you are faced with the daunting task of bringing a word from God to the people of God. Where do you begin?

No evangelical preacher I know would think of making a list of “qualities of a good sermon” without including “Biblical” at or near the top of the list. But what do we mean when we say the sermon should be biblical? We may not have such a ready answer for that one!

What would make your list of qualities of a good sermon? For some, the priority is on the substance of the message. Others recognize that it doesn’t matter what you intend to say if you can’t say it clearly enough for the message to be understood. For others, interest is paramount — whatever the sermon is, it should not be boring!

Which perspective is correct? Like many either-or questions, the answer is “yes!” All of the above! So, here is my current list …