The Story Around the Text
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.
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.