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Verses That Have Helped Me In Preaching |
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A Pocket Paper Robert J. Morgan Some time ago I found a cache of old audiocassettes I’d recorded in college, some of them containing a handful of my earliest sermons. I took a deep breath and punched one into my player. As I listened, I was struck by three things: How good the content was (I realized my core message of the Victorious Life in Christ hasn’t changed over the years), how terrible the delivery was, and how little I’ve improved! Through the years, I’ve read book after book in an effort to become a better preacher, and maybe in reality I have gotten a little better. All the books have helped, as have the advice, the critics, the practice sessions, and the benefit of doing something several times a week, year after year. But one book has helped more than any other—the best homiletics text of them all—the Bible. Tonight I’d like to share some verses that have helped me be a better preacher. I’m doing this for two reasons. First, it will help you understand the pulpit ministry of this church a little better; second, many of the things I’ve learned are transferable to you in your own professional or spiritual situation. Nehemiah 8:8 My
favorite verse in all the Bible on the subject of preaching is Nehemiah
8:8. In this passage, the
remnant of the Jews who had returned to Jerusalem assembled before the Water
Gate for a service of reading and preaching the Word of God. Ezra the scribe stood on a high
wooden platform built for the occasion (verse 4). Verse 5 says:
Ezra opened the book. All the people could see him because
he was standing above them; and as he opened it, the people stood up. Ezra praised the Lord, the great God;
and all the people lifted their hands and responded, “Amen! ‘Amen!” Then they bowed down and worshipped the Lord with their
faces to the ground. The
Levites… instructed the people in the Law while the people were standing
there. And
how did they do it? What was
their method? How did they go
about this craft of preaching?
Verse 8 says: They read from the Book of the Law of God,
making it clear and giving the meaning so that the people could understand
what was being read. In
this instance, my favorite translation is the old King James: So
they read in the book of the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and
caused them to understand the reading. Ruth Bell Graham, when asked for advice about preaching, once said, “Preach expository sermons, keep them short, and use a lot of illustrations.” When I heard that as a newly-committed Christian I wasn’t sure what expository sermons were, so I began doing some investigating. An exposition sermon, in its classic sense, is taking a paragraph of the Bible, reading it distinctly, giving the sense, and causing the people to understand it. The early Bible translator William Tyndale wrote, “I had perceived by experience, how that it was impossible to establish the lay people in any truth, except the Scripture were plainly laid before their eyes in their mother tongue, that they might see the process, order, and meaning of the text….” Why a paragraph? Because in literature the paragraph is the shortest segment of contextualized content. If you preach from only a verse, it is easy to take it out of context. You cannot accurately interpret a sentence or a verse of Scripture except with an awareness of its context, which is the paragraph in which it’s contained. By exposing (giving exposition) the paragraph as a whole, we increase the likelihood of accurately interpreting and explaining the individual verses and sentences. Why a paragraph instead of a chapter or a book? It’s short enough to cover in a careful way. Through the years, I’ve primarily been a “paragraph preacher,” for that lends itself to exposition, but I’m in the minority. Few preachers still embrace paragraph exposition as their “default” method of preaching, and many people in the pew do not have a clue as to what an expository sermon really is. I remember when, in my first pastorate, I announced I was going to preach expository sermons. Afterward one of the men came to me very confused. He thought I’d said “Suppository sermons” and he wanted to know how I was going to deliver them! Since then I’ve tried to use the term “Expositional Sermons.” How do we prepare an expositional sermon? No one has ever put it better than Stephen Olford, who divides the process into five steps. We must: (1) Memorize the Scripture; (2) Crystallize the Subject; (3) Analyze the Structure; (4) Organize the Substance; and (5) Finalize the Sermon. Well, actually, one person did put it better than that. The writer of Nehemiah 8:8 said, So they read in the book of the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading. It’s as simple as that. 1 Samuel 17:38-39 Another passage that has helped
me is 1 Samuel 17:38-39: Then Saul dressed David in his own
tunic. He put a coat of armor on
him and a bronze helmet on his head.
David fastened on his sword over the tunic and tried walking around,
because he was not used to them.
“I cannot go in these,” he said to Saul, “because I am not used to
them.” So he took them off. Then he took his staff in his hand,
chose five smooth stones from the stream, put them in his shepherd’s bag and,
with his sling in his hand, approached the Philistine. This has been one of my most difficult lessons, but I’ve slowly learned through the years that I cannot preach like any other person. I cannot preach using another’s style or delivery. I have to be myself and do it the way that it comes naturally for me. I don’t know why this has been so hard; but I know that as a young man, both insecure and impressionable, I became a composite of the handful of preachers I most admired. I preached like whoever I’d heard most recently. Only slowly have I developed the ability of sliding off the armor of another and going forth with my own method and style of delivery. One of the preachers I’ve appreciated through the years has been the Southern Baptist giant, W. A. Criswell. When he died recently, I saw an interview in which he told of his call to the First Baptist Church of Dallas. His predecessor, Dr. George Truett, a pulpit giant, had pastored that church for decades. No one thought that anyone could take Dr. Truett’s place. But young W. A. Criswell came and led First Baptist into its greatest days. In this interview, Dr. Criswell explained one reason why he had been successful. He said something to this effect: Dr. Truett was a proper and dignified preacher who quietly stood in the pulpit and, with well-modulated tones, delivered profound messages. Criswell then said, as I remember it, “When I came I was not at all like that. I screamed and shouted and hollered and waved my fists and beat the pulpit. I’d ramble across the platform and down onto the floor. It wasn’t a dignified “city” delivery, but one thing is for sure—no one ever accused me of being a ‘Little Truett.’ And that’s why I lasted 48 years.” I hope there is never another preacher like me (a sentiment shared by others). Every preacher is an original. God has never been in the cloning business. Everyone and everything that He makes is unique. God has never made two snowflakes alike, or two planets, or two daffodils, or two preachers. Of course, this presents a difficulty. How can we learn from others, how can we listen to them, how can we study them, how can we benefit from them without running the risk of unconsciously picking up their specific methods or mannerisms? We must deliberately and consciously avoid any tendency toward imitating the style of another. I wish that early in my training someone had said to me, “Listen to the greatest preachers in the world, but make sure that you don’t stylistically pattern yourself after them. Don’t adopt their distinctive mannerisms, voice modulations, particular pronunciations, or characteristic phrases or gestures. By yourself!” In his autobiography, hotelier Conrad Hilton told of being elected to the state legislature as a young man. He was nervous about giving his first speech, and he invested much time in study and practice, complete with pre-planned dramatic gestures. One evening, his mother overhead him practicing as, with a flourish, he ended with a dramatic recitation of “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” hands flying through the air like trapezes. “Very nice,” she replied, “for poetry. But… you’ll have to unlearn all this.” “But Mother,” he protested. He reminded her that all the great speakers of the day were filled with rhetoric and oratory. “Connie,” she replied, “all those trimmings are sinful. You are hiding yourself behind a lot of gestures. If you’re afraid to be you, son, you’re throwing dust in God’s face. He made you. If you have confidence in Him, you’ll relax and be just what you are. You’d do better to pray about it than to practice this.” Whereupon she walked off with his oratory textbook. Hilton later said, “On the opening day of the legislature, I did pray about it. I faced the crowd, kept my hands at my side and my mouth in a normal line, and said simply what I had to say and sat down. It worked out very well that day. It has ever since. And any time, if I’ve been tempted to phony it up a bit, I remember that that’s lack of confidence in Him, and I’ll look pretty silly throwing dust in the face of the Infinite.” May God give us all such mothers, wives, friends, or critics. Our preaching should not be unlike our natural conversation. In his book, A Preacher’s Life, the old British pulpiteer, Joseph Parker, told of a beloved preacher of his era, a man named Norman Macleod, who was older and somewhat of a mentor. Dr. Parker, 32 at the time, asked the venerable Dr. Macleod to come to his church in Manchester and preach one Sunday. That morning when Dr. Macleod opened the vestry door and saw the great size of the building, he stepped back into the vestry and said, “In what tone must I speak in order to fill that space?” Parker replied, “Adopt a conversational base, and rise and fall just as you feel your sentiment requires.” Later, in recalling the sermon, Dr. Parker said, “The great man talked to us, talked straight into our hearts.” “Preaching,” said Joseph Parker, “should be conversation at its best.” Charles Spurgeon said the same thing to his students: “Just go into the pulpit, and talk to the people as you would in the kitchen, or the drawing-room, and say what you have to tell them in your ordinary tone of voice…. Nothing can succeed with the masses except naturalness and simplicity.” Now, of course, there is considerable difference between having a discussion with two people and presenting a discourse to two hundred or two thousand. But, in general, one’s preaching style should not be too different from his or her conversational style, and a conversational sort of delivery, it seems to me, is always the most natural. I can improve, of course. I can grow. I can get better. I can mature. But I can’t be someone that God didn’t intend me to be. I need to like myself and to be confident in the gifts and personality and preaching style that God has built into me. We’ve got to be natural in the pulpit. If a person seldom gestures in normal everyday conversation, you probably wouldn’t expect many gestures in the pulpit. Or vice versa. There’s a story about an old Jewish peddler who was ambling down a street in Tel Aviv carrying two large watermelons. A tourist stopped him to ask, “Where is Ben Yehuda Street?” The peddler answered, “Please hold these two watermelons.” The tourist managed to get them in his arms, and that allowed the peddler to make an expansive gesture with his hands and exclaim, “How should I know?” Acts
26:1 in the Living Bible says, Then Agrippa said to Paul, “Go ahead. Tell us
your story.” So Paul, with many
gestures, presented his defense… Fight in your own armor, preach in your own
style, and be an original.
That’s the only kind of effective preachers there are. Matthew 13:34 There
is one preacher, however, whom we should
emulate. Matthew 13:34
says: Jesus spoke all these things to
the crowd in parables; He did not say anything to them without using a
parable. There are three good reasons to season one’s sermons with parables,
stories, and illustrations. First, they wake up people who have drifted off
during the more didactic portions of the message. Second, they keep children
tuned in. Third, illustrations
enable people to see the practicality of what is being preached. Through the use of stories,
illustrations, and quotes people see themselves as in a mirror and are better
able to personalize the truth of Scripture. Spurgeon said: “Don’t forget to give them a few
anecdotes. Anecdotes are very much objected to by critics of sermons, who say
they ought not be used in the pulpit. But some of us know better than that;
we know what will wake a congregation up.” 1 John 2:20 There
is an old word, disdained by newer translators and ignored in homiletics
books, but beloved in olden days.
The King James rendering of 1 John 2:20 says: But
ye have an unction from the Holy One.
The Greek word, crivsma (chrisma, khris´-mah)
literally means an unguent
(ointment) or smearing; it conveyed
the idea of rubbing an ointment into the skin. In terms of preaching, it is a special anointing of the
Holy Spirit on the message and on the messenger of God, the power, the
life-transforming endowment, the unction. “This
divine unction,” writes E. M. Bounds, “is the feature which separates and
distinguishes true gospel preaching from all other methods of presenting the
truth and which creates a wide spiritual chasm between the preacher who has
it and the one who has it not.” Bounds
devotes a chapter in his classic Preacher
and Prayer to this subject, pointing out that earnestness is often mistaken for unction.
“Earnestness and unction look alike from some points of view…. Earnestness may be sincere, serious,
ardent, and persevering. It goes
at a thing with good will, pursues it with perseverance, and urges it with an
ardor; puts force in it. But all
these forces do not rise higher than mere human effort….” Unction,
on the other hand, “…is the sweetest exhalation of the Holy Spirit. It impregnates, suffuses, softens,
percolates, cuts, and soothes.
It carries the Word like dynamite, like salt, like sugar; makes the
Word a soother, an arraigner, a revealer, a searcher; makes the hearer a
culprit or a saint, makes him weep like a child and live like a giant.” Genuine unction, says Bounds, “comes to the preacher not in the study but in the closet.” Luke 6:45 Finally, I’ve recently taken Luke 6:45 as my golden rule of preaching: Out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks. In other words, preaching is overflow. I shouldn’t go to the Bible looking for sermons; I go for my own refreshment, enjoyment, and benefit. I drink from on rivers of God as recorded in His revelation, and the congregation gets the overflow. This is Psalm 23 preaching, when our cup overfloweth. The other day during my quiet time, I found two verses I’d never before connected. In John 4:14 Jesus told the Samaritan woman, “…whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water, welling up to eternal life.” Sometime later, Jesus added to His metaphor: “Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him” (John 7:38). The water of life wells up within us, then spills over and becomes rivers of living water, irrigating and refreshing a drought-stricken world. That is preaching! Paul loved this concept of the overflowing life: ·
For if the many
died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the
gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many!—Romans 5:15 ·
May the God of
hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of
the Holy Spirit—Romans 15:13 ·
For just as the
sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our
comfort overflows…—2 Corinthians
1:5 ·
All this is for
your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may
cause thanksgiving to overflow to
the glory of God—2 Corinthians 4:15 ·
…so that through
my being with you again your joy in Christ Jesus will overflow on account of me—Philippians 1:26 ·
…overflowing with
thankfulness—Colossians 2:6 ·
May the Lord make
your love increase and overflow for
each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you—1 Thessalonians
3:12 As it relates to preaching, this is beautifully expressed in Francis Ridley Havergal’s 1872 hymn, the prayer of all who wish to be expositional, natural, illustrative, anointed, and overflowing bearers of the Word: Lord, speak to me
that I may speak O lead me, Lord,
that I may lead O teach me, Lord,
that I may teach O fill me with Thy
fullness, Lord, O use me, Lord, use
even me, Copyright StatementWe grant permission for any edition of The Pocket Paper to be photocopied for use in a local congregation or classroom, provided no more than 1,000 copies are made, the material is distributed free, and the copies include the notice: "Copyright (year) The Donelson Fellowship."For any other use, advance permission must be obtained from The Donelson Fellowship church office. |
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