Big Picture Study, Part I: It’s All About Context

What did we ever do without GPS? The experience of driving out of an airport in a rental car in a new city without the security of “Siri” spoon-feeding me every turn in the road seems like a distant and nightmarish memory. I can barely remember the stress of fumbling with maps, searching for street signs, finding myself trapped in an urban maze after taking one wrong turn. I’m grateful for the calm, reassuring voice coming from my cell phone, keeping me on track even if I make a mistake.

I have noticed, however, that if I rely completely on the play-by-play instructions of my GPS, I can spend days in a city without having any real sense of where I am, or where I am going. I need to zoom out in the map on my device screen, or even get an old-fashioned paper map of the place, to get my bearings and to understand the lay of the land. The GPS may keep me from getting lost, and help me get from “A” to “B,” but if I want to know the city I’m in, I need to get the big picture.

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.

So the starting point for our study should not be to pick up a weighty commentary and start wading through what scholars say about the text, or to jump right into the details of technical exegesis with word studies and syntactical analysis. Nor should we begin by listening to our favourite preachers’ sermons on the same text. We should begin by zooming out, climbing the tallest tree in the forest, scaling the highest mountain — getting to a place of perspective where we can see the big picture that is behind and around the text.

This “big picture” is what we call “context,” and it is the single most important aspect of your study. I believe that at least nine out of ten serious errors of interpretation that preachers make could be avoided by giving due attention to context. By “context,” I am referring to both historical context (the concrete historical circumstances surrounding the text) and literary context (the place of the text within the flow of its book, and of the Scriptures as a whole). If you have time for only one step in your study of the text, you should study the context. Here’s why:

Context Points to the Big Idea.

In any given text, you are likely to find a number of interesting ideas, most of which are secondary ideas, there to support the main idea the biblical writer is trying to get across. Every preacher is tempted merely to rummage through the list and find the idea that seems closest to what we would like to talk about, and make this the main idea of the sermon. A good grasp of the historical and literary context will help us to major on the author’s intent, and not the preacher’s preference.

Without context, you can get lost in the details.

Biblical scholarship has yielded so much helpful and detailed information on virtually every phrase of the Bible that the preacher could very easily miss the forest for the trees. Stepping into the sea of exegetical data available to us today without a big-picture “anchor” to put it all in perspective can be bewildering, overwhelming, and defeating. In fact, I think this is what leads some preachers to bypass exegesis altogether. A grasp of the context gives us the perspective we need to maintain focus in our study.

Context helps you navigate forks in the road.

If you study diligently, you will find in every passage that there are interpretive decisions you must make. Words have different shades of meaning, phrases could be understood in more than one way, interpreters might disagree on the implications of the train of thought in a particular paragraph. How do you choose between the perspectives of two equally trusted guides on your journey? In most cases, your understanding of the context will be the key to your understanding of the text itself.

Context gives you your best direction for application.

Bridging the chasm of time and culture between the ancient text and contemporary hearers is a big part of your task as a preacher. How do you even begin to discern the current relevance of words written thousands of years ago? The better you understand the context, the more clearly you will see the fundamental human need that the text was written to meet. This discovery becomes the bridge for seeing how the same truth addresses the same fundamental human need in the contemporary world. Context, then, is not only the key for understanding the text, but also the key for applying the text.

Knowing the context builds confidence as you study, prepare and preach.

Will you be a preacher who tentatively and timidly parrots the conclusions of others, or will you speak from your own clarity and conviction, founded in a thorough understanding of the what the text is about? The confidence you need to preach the inspired word of God boldly and accurately begins with your understanding of the context in which He inspired it. When you know what it meant then, you can proclaim with greatest certainty what it means now.

Step one, then, in studying the text for preaching is to get a firm grasp on the historical and literary context of the passage you will preach.