Here are three messages I heard at the Together for the Gospel (T4G) Conference this last week that I would like to share with you. These messages have spurred me on to evangelize the lost, articulate the gospel, and pray about mission work. I hope they do the same for you.
Tag: Sermon
How To Be More Pointed with Your Application
Is your application reaching the entire city?
Peter Adam’s provides 8 ways we can be more pointed in our application of Scripture in our preaching ministry. These are good to think through as you prepare your sermon. If you are not a preacher, and most of you reading this blog are not, feel free to forward this along to your pastor. I believe these are helpful tips.
Here is what Adam’s says:
(1) Ask: What message does God want to give these people from this text?
(2) Focus upon four or five representative people in your congregation (one old, one young, one single, one married, one male, one female, etc.) and think through what difference you want this text to make to their lives.
(3) Work out the main ideas, preconceptions, movements, and theological strands in the congregation, and apply the text to each of them (the conservatives, the charismatics, the progressives, etc.).
(4) Meet once a week with various members of the congregation, talk with them about the text you plan to preach on next Sunday, and ask them what they make of it.
(5) Meet every Monday night with a small group to discuss the sermon you preached yesterday, and the text you will preach on next Sunday.
(6) Imagine you are counseling an individual. How would you apply this text to that person?
(7) Pray for your people more, and learn to love them more. Love is quick-eyed.
(8) Spend only half your preparation time one the meaning of the text, and then spend the rest of the time working on the application.
Resource
Quoted from Peter Adam Speaking God’s Words, 133.
Why Preach Expository Sermons?
Today I am reading through Peter Adam’s book Speaking God’s Words, and I came across a section on why we need to preach expository messages. I would like to share with you what Adam’s says.
Reasons For Preaching Expository Messages:
(1) Expository sermons help us to let God set the agenda for our lives.
The danger of topical preaching is that it implies that we know what is important! Expository preaching lets God set the agenda in an obvious and public way.
(2) Expository preaching treats the Bible as God treated it, respecting the particular contexts, history and style of the human authors.
God chose to have the Bible written in books, each by a human author, and not as a collection of useful but disconnected sayings. We should follow God by preaching the way He wrote.
(3) This kind of preaching gives ample time for us to make clear the context of the Bible passage from which we are preaching.
If the Bible passage follows on from last week, the congregation will understand the context clearly. If I change the context each week, and include three or four Bible passages in my sermon, it will be very hard for the congregation to hear any text in context. This is not a model we should encourage. Expository preaching helps us to take each text in context, as God causes it be written.
Resource
Quoted from Peter Adam, Speaking God’s Words, 128.
Book Recommendation: Preaching with Variety
Today, on the blog, I want to recommend a book I have been reading, and will be reading for a long time, not because it is a thick book, but because its content is so rich. The book is Jeffrey Arthurs’ Preaching With Variety.
I know you are probably wondering, I am not a preacher, why is he recommending a preaching book to me? And I understand not all my readers are preachers, but I believe this book is not only helpful for preachers, but also for the average congregate. The reason is because Arthurs spends half of every chapter talking about the literary genre used in the Bible, then he spends the other half of the chapter talking about how to preach that specific literary genre, which, even if you are not a preacher, is helpful in understanding how the biblical text applies to your life.
So, if you have ever wondered how to interpret the Psalms, how to read an Epistle, how to get at the meaning in a Parable, how to understand the pithy sayings of Proverbs, what strategies are employed by the biblical author in the Narratives, which by the way make up about 70-80% of the Bible, or how to read Apocalyptic literature like Daniel or Revelation, then this book is for you.
You can purchase it on Amazon by clicking here.
Illustrations and Their Benefits
Last time, I wrote about the necessity of using illustrations in our sermons. You can read that post here. Today, I want to talk about the benefits of using illustrations. The first one will be obvious, but the others you may not have thought about.
Benefits
(1) Illustrations help the audience understand the theological point
Through stories, listeners are able to come to a deeper more full understanding of the theological point because we learn best when the abstract is made concrete.
(2) Illustrations connect the preacher to the audience in a way pure exposition cannot
The preacher connects and bonds with the audience because his personal perspectives are revealed through the stories he chooses to use as his illustrations.
(3) Illustrations reveal the character of the preacher
Behind every illustration, the personal story of the preacher lies. Bryan Chapell says, “Your own personal story always shimmers in the background of any story you tell, witnessing to your own character, principles, and priorities.[1] In essence you are saying, “This is what I think this means in my world.” [2]
(4) Illustrations reveal your personal trustworthiness
Depending on the illustration you select your congregation will determine if you are trustworthy. If you select an illustration that holds out ideals or expectations one cannot hope to attain, then your audience will lose trust in your judgment. On the other hand, when you select illustrations that apply directly to the context of your audience and which contain ideals and expectations that are attainable, the audiences’ trust in your judgments grow.
(5) Illustrations have the power to reveal your personal integrity
If you consistently give credit where credit is due, not using others stories as your own, and give proper facts, then your personal integrity will grow. A preacher who consistently and knowingly passes stories off as his own, when they are not, proves he has an integrity issue.
(6) Illustrations help the audience see “themselves in the contexts of Scripture’s realities” [3]
When the audience hears of someone facing the same struggles they are, they realize they are not living in isolation. They also realize there is an answer to their problem that exists in Scripture.
Resource
[1] Bryan Chapell, Using Illustrations to Preach with Power, 133.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.,136
Illustrations and their Necessity
For most preachers (including myself), providing more than one illustration in a sermon is difficult, if it is done at all. But no matter how difficult it is, it must be done because it helps the listener process the principles, providing more clarity to the meaning of the text.
The Difficulty
Illustrations are difficult because they require preachers to shift gears from excavating the text and laying it out systematically to discovering how the texts principles relate to life situations, whether it be theirs or someone else’s. This “shifting of gears” is often difficult for those who think in logical patterns and systems, which are taught and re-enforced through their reading patterns. By spending more time reading theological treatises, which present material systematically and logically, rather than works of literature, which reveal its truths through stories, preachers are training their minds to follow logical patterns and lay out systematic grids, which is not a bad thing, as long as you recognize the intellectual development that is occurring. As a result, preachers (myself included) find it difficult to make the shift to thinking in terms of narratives and stories. This difficulty of shifting from one job to the next is often why preachers neglect the task of illustrating.
Going further, illustrations are also neglected because they require the preacher to “delve to that level of being where mind, soul, body, world, and psyche are real. Until he has done so – until he has plumbed the depths of his emotions, relationships, and experience and integrated what he discovers in those oceans with what he knows intellectually – his own understanding is not complete.” [1] To delve to this level takes work. It takes hours of thinking, working, and re-working an illustration until it is just right. It requires one to go the extra-mile intellectually. Neglecting this extra work may prove one to be intellectually lazy.
The Purpose of Illustrations
The purpose of illustrations is to make the abstract, real, or to make the foreign, familiar. Truth is best understood when it is observed in the context of a human situation. This does not mean truth is only understood through experience, like many post-moderns would claim, but it does mean we best understand a truth when we are able to work with it, see ourselves in the situation, or relate it to an experience we have had. Illustrations allow us to do just that, they “provide the mechanism for this life-specific understanding and are thus indispensable to effective preaching.” [2]
As preachers, we must understand people do not make decisions simple because they have the intellectual knowledge. Rather people make decisions when they can see themselves in the situation.
If you have ever been hesitant to move to another town for a job, even though you knew it was a better position for your career and the town was better for your family, you know what I am talking about. You may have had all the facts in front of you, but until you actually met your colleagues, toured the facility, and walked the streets of your new neighborhood, you were not really convinced the new job and town were better. Why?
“Because we best learn and make decisions when the abstract is made concrete.”
Bringing what is abstract into the concrete is the purpose of illustrations. As preachers, we want our people to be able to see themselves in the situation, to experience the principle of the text at work, so they will understand how their lives need to change, or how the principle relates to their world. Bryan Chapell says, “Because life-situation illustrations provide this experiential data, allowing individuals to “live through” the implications of their spiritual choices, they well serve life-changing preaching.” [3]
Conclusion
Illustrations are difficult to incorporate into a sermon, but they are necessary. Without illustrations, our people in the pew will not fully comprehend the meaning of the text, nor will they understand how the text applies to their lives.
In other words, without illustrations we are not providing full-fledged communication. By linking the text to experience, illustrations “make the Gospel real, fleshly, and interpretable.” [4]. This means illustrations are not a side-show used to make the text simple for simple-minded folks; rather, illustrations are a necessity for communicating the whole idea of the text. They are what add depth to our ideas and motivate our people to change.
So the next time you think about skipping out on an illustration because it would require too much effort, think again. Your extra effort may just be what you and your people need to fully understand the text and be motivated to change.
Resources
[1] Bryan Chapell, Using Illustrations to Preach with Power, 59.
[2] Ibid., 49.
[3] Ibid., 62.
[4] Ibid., 59.
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