What Kind of Literature?
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.
Examine the Text
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.
The Story Behind the Text
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.
Big Picture Study, Part I: It’s All About 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.
Which Comes First — The Need or the Text?
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.
Review: Biblical Theology and Preaching
Must Christ be preached from every text? Is it realistic, or even right, to expect that every sermon should proclaim the Gospel? Can you be true to the original intent of the human author behind the text while also tying it to the grand intent of the divine author over the text? Graeme Goldsworthy would answer each of these questions with a resounding “yes!”
Bible-Based
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!