Stages in the Development of Expository Messages
New Concepts
Restatement
Three developmental questions
Expository sermons consist of ideas drawn from the Scriptures, but the ideas of Scripture must be related to life. To preach effectively, therefore, expositors must be involved in three different worlds: the world of the Bible, the modern world, and the particular world in which we are called to preach.
Up to now, in our study we have entered the world of the Bible. God chose to reveal himself within history to nations that can be located on a map. These nations were enveloped in cultures as developed as our own. They used languages that can be described in grammars. We must first try to understand what the revelation of God meant for the men and women to whom it was originally given.
A second world we must consider is the modern world. We must be aware of the currents swirling across our own times. Each generation develops out of its own history and culture and speaks its own language. We may stand before a congregation and deliver exegetically accurate sermons that are scholarly and organized, but they are dead and powerless because they ignore the life-wrenching problems and questions of our hearers. Such sermons, spoken in a stained-glass voice using a code language never heard in the marketplace, dabble in great biblical concepts, but our audience may feel that God belongs to the long ago and far away. We must answer not only the questions our fathers and mothers asked; we must wrestle with the questions our children ask. Men and women who speak effectively for God must first struggle with the questions of their age and then speak to those questions from the eternal truth of God.
A third world in which we must participate is our own particular world. A church has a postal code and stands near Fifth and Main in some town or city. The profound issues of the Bible and the ethical, philosophical questions of our times assume different shapes in rural villages, in middle-class communities, or in the ghettos of crowded cities. Ultimately we do not address everyone; we speak to a particular people and call them by name. The Bible speaks of the gift of pastor-teacher (Eph. 4:11). This implies the two functions should be joined, or else an irrelevant exposition may emerge that reflects negatively on God. As one bewildered churchgoer expressed it, “The trouble is that God is like the minister: we don’t see him during the week, and we don’t understand him on Sunday.” J. M. Reu was on target when he wrote, “Preaching is fundamentally a part of the care of souls, and the care of souls involves a thorough understanding of the congregation.”1 Able shepherds know their flock.
In the following stages we endeavor to bring the ancient world, the modern world, and our particular world together as we develop the sermon. In doing this we do not make the Bible relevant as though we were drawing an apt illustration from an old story. Modern men and women stand under God in the same position as did their counterparts in the Bible, and they hear the Word of God addressing them now. “Yahweh our God made a covenant with us in Horeb.” This affirmation comes from a people hearing the law a second time decades after it was originally given. Yet they declared through Moses, “Yahweh our God made a covenant with us in Horeb. Not with our fathers did Yahweh make this covenant, but with us, who are all of us here alive this day” (Deut. 5:2–3). The community of faith, looking back at an event that had occurred at a distant time and different place, experienced that history as a present reality. God’s word spoken at Sinai continued to speak to this new generation of people and not only related them to God but also spelled out what God expected in their relation to one another.
To expound the Scriptures so that the contemporary God confronts us where we live requires that we study our audience as well as our Bible. It also means that some very nuts-and-bolts questions must be asked and answered to discover how the exegetical idea and its development can expand into a sermon. We relate the Bible to life as we enter the next stage of our study.
Stage 4 Submit your exegetical idea to three developmental questions.
The exegetical idea can lie in our notes like a bowl of soggy cereal. Having stated it, we may wonder if we have anything to preach. How can we bring snap, crackle, and pop to the exegetical idea so that it develops into a sermon that is vital and alive? To answer that practical question, we must be aware of how thought develops.
When we make any declarative statement, we can do only four things with it: we can restate it, explain it, prove it, or apply it. Nothing else. To recognize this simple fact opens the way to understanding the dynamic of thought.
By the use of restatement an author or speaker merely states an idea “in other words” to clarify it or to impress it on the reader or hearer. Restatement is used in every kind of discourse, but it occupies a major place in the parallelism of Hebrew poetry. “I will sing unto Yahweh as long as I live,” the psalmist informs us in Psalm 104:33: “I will sing praise to my God while I have any being” (ASV). He has stated, then restated his idea in different words. The apostle Paul, infuriated by false teachers who substitute legalism for evangelism, uses restatement to emphasize their condemnation. “Though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach unto you any gospel other than that which we preached unto you, let him be damned!” But he restates it: “As we have said before, so say I now again, if any man preaches unto you any gospel other than that which you received, let him be damned” (Gal. 1:8–9).
Jeremiah hammers home his denunciation of Babylon by restating the same thought in at least six different particulars:
“A sword against the Babylonians!”
declares the LORD—
“against those who live in Babylon
and against her officials and wise men!
A sword against her false prophets!
They will become fools.
They will be filled with terror.
A sword against her horses and chariots
and all the foreigners in her ranks!
They will become weaklings.
A sword against their treasures!
They will be plundered.
A drought on her waters!
They will dry up.
For it is a land of idols,
idols that will go mad with terror.”
Jeremiah 50:35–38 NIV
The restatement emphasizes that the Babylonians are in deep trouble!
Restatement takes up a great deal of space in written and especially oral communication, but restatement does not develop thought. It simply says the same thing in other words. To develop a thought, however, we must do one or more of three things. We must explain it, prove it, or apply it. To do this, we can use three developmental questions.2
1. We Explain It: “What Does This Mean?”
The first developmental question centers on explanation: What does this mean? Does this concept, or parts of it, need explanation?
The question, “What does this mean?” can be pointed at different targets. First, it can be directed toward the Bible: “Is the author in the passage before me developing his thought primarily through explanation?” When Paul wrote to his friends at Corinth, he explained how the diversity of gifts granted to its members should work for, and not against, unity in the congregation. He sums up his idea in 1 Corinthians 12:11–12: “But one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually just as He wills. For even as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ” (NASB). In the verses surrounding this statement Paul explains the concept either by breaking it down into particulars, such as enumerating spiritual gifts, or by illustrating it through the example of a human body. By that analogy he explains that a church, like a body, consists of many different parts, but each one contributes to the life and benefit of all. A preacher handling this section of the Corinthian letter should be aware that Paul expands his thought primarily through explanation, and that explanation will probably be the major thrust of a sermon from this passage.
When the apostle Paul wrote to his young associate Titus, he wanted him to appoint elders in Crete. In Titus 1:5–9 Paul explained to Titus what he was to look for in appointing overseers in the churches. He wrote:
The reason I left you in Crete was that you might put in order what was left unfinished and appoint elders in every town, as I directed you. An elder must be blameless, faithful to his wife, a man whose children believe and are not open to the charge of being wild and disobedient. Since an overseer manages God’s household, he must be blameless—not overbearing, not quick-tempered, not given to drunkenness, not violent, not pursuing dishonest gain. Rather he must be hospitable, one who loves what is good, who is self-controlled, upright, holy and disciplined. He must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it. (NIV)
Paul’s subject is “What are the qualifications for a leader in the church?”
His complement is “The candidate must be ‘blameless.’”
Paul states that twice. The apostle explains what “blameless” means in three concrete frameworks: the candidate’s family life, his personal life, and his ministry. A sermon based on this passage will do a great deal of explaining of the particulars that Paul lays down. (In addition, you might want to consider other characteristics that might go into a “blameless” leader today.)
Second, the developmental question, “What does this mean?” may also probe the audience. It takes several forms. If I simply stated my exegetical idea, would my audience respond, “What does he mean by that?” Are there elements in the passage that the biblical writer takes for granted that my audience needs explained to them? When Paul advised the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 8 about meat offered to idols, idolatry and sacrifices were as familiar to his readers as shopping centers are to modern audiences. On the other hand, people today are as bewildered about the practices of idolatry as a Corinthian would be in a supermarket. Therefore, when we talk about “food sacrificed to idols,” we must do some explaining. The passage may be misunderstood or, more damaging, misapplied unless our listeners understand the background out of which the problem developed. They must enter into the psychological, emotional, and spiritual tensions posed by eating meat previously offered in sacrifice to heathen gods.
As a case in point, when Paul speaks of a “weak brother,” he does not necessarily mean someone who is easily tempted to sin. Instead, he has in mind an overscrupulous Christian who has not applied theology to experience. The weak Christian does not fully appreciate that “no idol is anything in the world” but is only a creation of superstition. In modern churches, therefore, many overscrupulous people who consider themselves “strong” would, in Paul’s mind, be “weak.” In a treatment of this passage, therefore, what Paul took for granted with his readers requires extensive explanation today.
In 1 Corinthians 12:13 the apostle observes: “We were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink” (NIV). Here again Paul assumes that his readers understand the baptizing work of the Holy Spirit. We cannot necessarily assume that our congregation has that knowledge. A reference to “the baptism of the Holy Spirit” now causes some noncharismatic listeners to shift uneasily in their pews and wonder: “What does that mean?” “What do people in my denomination think about it?” “Isn’t that an experience important to charismatics, and doesn’t it have something to do with speaking in tongues?” In a charismatic congregation listeners may assume that they know what the baptism of the Holy Spirit is but wonder what it has to do with Paul’s argument. If we were preaching on this passage, therefore, we could not ignore those responses. Instead, we would anticipate them in our preparation, and we might decide to devote some time in the sermon to expanding on the baptism of the Holy Spirit even though Paul did not.
Napoleon had three commands for his messengers that apply to any communicator: “Be clear! Be clear! Be clear!” Clarity does not come easily. When we train to be expositors, we probably spend three or four years in seminary. While that training prepares us to be theologians, it sometimes gets in our way as communicators. Theological jargon, abstract thinking, or scholars’ questions become part of the intellectual baggage that hinders preachers from speaking clearly to ordinary men and women. If we entered a hospital, a television studio, a printer’s shop, a locker room, or a local garage and wanted to understand what goes on there, we would persistently ask, “What do you mean?” Experts in other occupations seldom have to make themselves understood to those outside their profession, but preachers are different. No one is an outsider to religion. Everyone must understand what God says. In fact, it is a life-and-death matter. Therefore, we must anticipate what our hearers may not know and, by our explanations, help them understand.
The developmental question “What does that mean?” then, deals with both the passage and the people. If you imagine some courageous soul standing up in the middle of your sermon to shout, “Pastor, what exactly do you mean by that?” you will become aware of matters that must be talked about to make yourself clear as your sermon develops.
2. We Prove It: “Is It True?”
Our second developmental question centers on validity. After we understand (or think we understand) what a statement means, we often ask, “Is that true? Can I really believe it?” We demand proof.
An initial response of those of us who take the Scriptures seriously is to ignore this question. We assume that an idea should be accepted as true because it comes from the Bible. That is not necessarily a valid assumption. We may need to gain psychological acceptance in our hearers through reasoning, proofs, or illustrations. Even the inspired writers of the New Testament (all of whom believed that the Old Testament was a God-breathed witness) sometimes established the validity of their statements, not only by quoting the Old Testament but by referring to common life as well.
When Paul wanted to prove to the Corinthian congregation that he had a right to receive financial support for his ministry, for example, he argued not only from the Mosaic law but from the experience of farmers, shepherds, and soldiers. In a series of rhetorical questions, he laid out his case:
Or is it only I and Barnabas who lack the right not to work for a living? Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat its grapes? Who tends a flock and does not drink the milk? Do I say this merely on human authority? Doesn’t the Law say the same thing? For it is written in the Law of Moses: “Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.” Is it about oxen that God is concerned? Surely he says this for us, doesn’t he? Yes, this was written for us, because whoever plows and threshes should be able to do so in the hope of sharing in the harvest. If we have sown spiritual seed among you, is it too much if we reap a material harvest from you? If others have this right of support from you, shouldn’t we have it all the more? (1 Cor. 9:6–12 NIV)
Paul appealed for proof first to the logic of experience. After all, if soldiers, grape growers, shepherds, and farmers receive wages for their work, why not an apostle or teacher? Then Paul reasoned from an all-embracing principle found in the law against muzzling oxen when they tread out corn or other grain. A worker—be it animal or human—should be rewarded for working. In using this developmental question, therefore, we should note how the biblical writers validated what they had to say.
The apostles used every legitimate means available to them to win assent from their audiences. When Peter preached his Pentecost sermon, he reasoned from both experience and Scripture to prove that “God has made Him both Lord and Christ—this Jesus whom you crucified” (Acts 2:36 NASB). Jesus’s miracles, the crucifixion, the resurrection, David’s tomb, the phenomena of Pentecost: those verifiable events carried the weight of Peter’s argument. Joel and David, both honored by the Jewish audience as inspired prophets, were quoted as witnesses to interpret what the people experienced. In both writing and preaching the apostles adapted themselves to their readers and listeners to establish the validity of their ideas.
When Paul addressed the intellectuals on Mars Hill, he discussed natural theology—the fact of creation and its necessary implications. Although he set forth biblical concepts, the apostle never quoted the Old Testament because the Bible meant nothing to his pagan Greek audience. Rather, he supported his arguments by referring to their idols and poet-philosophers and by drawing deductions from common life. In quoting the Greek poets and philosophers, of course, Paul was not endorsing Athenian philosophy. The Old Testament was the authority for both his major and minor assertions (as the references in the margin of the Nestle Greek text demonstrate). In quoting the pagan sources, Paul merely took advantage of insights consistent with biblical revelation that were more easily accepted by his hearers.3
While competence requires that we understand how the biblical writers established validity, it also demands that we wrestle with listeners’ questions such as, “Is that true?” and “Can I really believe that?” In a past generation, perhaps, we might have counted on a sense of guilt lying on the fringes of a congregation’s thought. Today we can count on an attitude of questioning and doubt. Our educational system and the mass media contribute to this pervasive skepticism. Advertisers have created an audience of doubters who shrug off dogmatic claims and enthusiastic endorsements, no matter who makes them, as nothing more than a pitch from the sponsor.
We do well, therefore, to adopt the attitude that a statement is not true because it is in the Bible; it is in the Bible because it is true. The fact that an assertion is in the pages of a leather-covered book does not necessarily make it valid. Instead, the Bible states reality as it exists in the universe, as God has made it and as he governs it. We would expect, therefore, the affirmations of Scripture to be demonstrated in the world around us. That is not to say that we establish biblical truth by studying sociology, astronomy, or archaeology, but the valid data from these sciences second the truth taught in Scripture.
How does a preacher handle the developmental questions, “Is that true? Do I really believe it?” Imagine that you were to state to a modern congregation the mighty affirmation of Paul, “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Rom. 8:28 NIV). Most people greet that statement with raised eyebrows: “Is that true? Can we believe that?” What about the mother who was killed by a hit-and-run driver and who left behind a husband and three children? What about those Christian parents whose four-year-old son has been diagnosed with leukemia? How is that good? What’s “good” about a young missionary drowned in the muddy waters of a jungle river before he has witnessed to even one national? To work with this passage and fail to address those perplexing questions is to miss the audience completely.
Donald Grey Barnhouse works with the question of validity while expounding John 14:12: “Greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father” (KJV). He uses an analogy to establish the truth of his explanation:
Aboard a United States submarine in enemy waters of the Pacific, a sailor was stricken with acute appendicitis. The nearest surgeon was thousands of miles away. Pharmacist Mate Wheller Lipes watched the seaman’s temperature rise to 106 degrees. His only hope was an operation. Said Lipes: “I have watched doctors do it. I think I could. What do you say?” The sailor consented. In the wardroom, about the size of a Pullman drawing room, the patient was stretched out on a table beneath a floodlight. The mate and assisting officers, dressed in reversed pajama tops, masked their faces with gauze. The crew stood by the diving planes to keep the ship steady: the cook boiled water for sterilizing. A tea strainer served as an antiseptic cone. A broken-handled scalpel was the operating instrument. Alcohol drained from the torpedoes was the antiseptic. Bent tablespoons served to keep the muscles open. After cutting through the layers of muscle, the mate took twenty minutes to find the appendix. Two hours and a half later, the last catgut stitch was sewed, just as the last drop of ether gave out. Thirteen days later the patient was back at work.
Admittedly this was a much more magnificent feat than if it had been performed by trained surgeons in a fully equipped operating room of a modern hospital. Study this analogy and you will know the real meaning of Christ’s words. “Greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.” For Christ, perfect God, to work directly on a lost soul to quicken and bring out of death and into life is great, but for Him to do the same thing through us is a greater work.4
C. S. Lewis comes at validity by identifying himself with a question that thoughtful people have about the gospel:
Here is another thing that used to puzzle me. Is it not frightfully unfair that this new life should be confined to people who have heard of Christ and been able to believe in Him? But the truth is God has not told us what His arrangements about the other people are. We do know that no man can be saved except through Christ; we do not know that only those who know about Him can be saved through Him. But in the meantime, if you worried about the people outside, the most unreasonable thing you can do is to remain outside yourself. Christians are Christ’s body, the organism through which He works. Every addition to that body enables Him to do more. If you want to help those outside, you must add your own little cell to the body of Christ who alone can help them. Cutting off a man’s fingers would be an odd way of getting him to do more work.5
Whether you fully agree with Lewis or not, he raises a classic question, deals with it, and turns it back upon the questioner.
J. Wallace Hamilton, preaching on the providence of God, understands the serious questions that are raised when we are told that we live by the providence of God every moment of our lives. He quotes an anonymous poet as he begins to deal with the doubts:
“Oh, where is the sea” the fishes cried,
As they swam the Atlantic waters through;
“We’ve heard of the sea and the ocean tide
And we long to gaze on its waters blue.”
All around us are little fishes looking for the sea; people living, moving, having their being in an ocean of God’s providence, but who can’t see the ocean for the water. Maybe it’s because we call it by another name. The ancient Hebrews from whom the Bible came were a religious people. They thought in religious patterns, they spoke in religious phrases, they saw in every event the direct activity of God. If it rained, it was God who sent the rain. When crops were good, it was God who yielded the increase. But that is not our language, nor the pattern of our thought. We think in terms of law—chemical, natural law. When it rains we know it is the natural condensation of vapor. When crops are good we credit it to the fertilizer. An amazing thing has happened in our way of thinking. In a world that could not for one moment exist without the activity of God, we have conditioned our minds to a way of thinking that leaves no room for him. So many of our wants are provided by what seem natural and impersonal forces that we have lost sight of the great Provider in the midst of providence. Some of us who were brought up in the country and then later moved to the city remember how easy it was to get out of the habit of returning thanks at the table, partly because the food on it came not directly from the earth but from the grocery store. A physician in New York City said, “If you ask a child where milk comes from, he won’t think of saying ‘From a cow.’ He will say ‘From a container.’”6
Merely to ask, “Is that true? Do I and my hearers believe that?” does not produce instant answers. But failing to contend with those basic questions means we will speak only to those who are already committed. Worse, because we have not been willing to live for a time on the sloping back of a question mark, we may become hucksters for a message that we do not believe ourselves. A congregation has the right to expect that we are at least aware of the problems before we offer solutions. Work your way through the ideas in the exegetical outline and deal honestly with the question, “Would my audience accept that statement as true? If not, why not?” Write down the specific questions that come and, if possible, the direction of some of the answers. Before long you will discover much that you and your hearers have to think about as the sermon develops.
3. We Apply It: “What Difference Does It Make?”
The third developmental question relates to application. While it is essential that you explain the truth of a passage, your task is not finished until you relate that passage to the experience of your hearers. Ultimately the man or woman in the pew hopes that you will answer the questions, “So what? What difference does it make?” All Christians have a responsibility to ask these questions because they are called to live under God in the light of biblical revelation.
Mortimer J. Adler classifies books as either theoretical or practical. A theoretical book may be understood and then put away on the shelf. A practical book, however, must not only be read; it must also be used. Taken in this way, the Bible is an intensely practical book because it was written not only to be understood but to be obeyed.
Homileticians have not given accurate application the attention it deserves. To my knowledge no book has been published that is devoted exclusively, or even primarily, to the knotty problems raised by application.7 As a result many church members, having listened to orthodox sermons all their lives, may be practicing heretics. Our creeds affirm the central doctrines of the faith and remind us what Christians should believe, but they do not tell us how belief in these doctrines should make us behave. That is part of the expositor’s responsibility, and you must give it diligent attention.
Basic to perceptive application is accurate exegesis. We cannot decide what a passage means to us unless first we have determined what the passage meant when the Bible was written. To do this we must sit down before the biblical writer and try to understand what he wanted to convey to his original readers. Only after we comprehend what he meant in his own terms and to his own times can we clarify what difference that should make in life today.
In order to apply a passage accurately, we must define the situation into which the revelation was originally given and then decide what a modern man or woman shares, or does not share, with the original readers. The closer the relationship between people now and people then, the more direct the application. James wrote to Jewish Christians scattered across the ancient world and facing hard situations, “My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires” (James 1:19–20 NIV). That counsel applies to believers in every age because all Christians stand in identical relationship to God and his Word when they face trials.
When the correspondence between the twenty-first century and the biblical passage is less direct, however, accurate application becomes more difficult. An expositor must give special attention not only to what modern men and women have in common with those who received the original revelation but also to the differences between them. For instance, Paul’s many exhortations to slaves had direct application to Christian slaves in the first century and those throughout history. Many of the principles touched on in the master-slave relationship can also govern employer-employee relationships today, but to ignore the fact that modern employees are not slaves to their employers would lead to gross misapplication of these passages. For example, denouncing membership in a labor union because slaves are to “obey” their “masters” (Eph. 6:5) would be to ignore completely the distinction between employees and slaves.
The problems multiply when we apply texts from the Old Testament to contemporary audiences. Indeed, misapplication of the Old Testament has had an embarrassing history. One unsatisfying approach lies in using these passages like a sanctified Rorschach test. Interpreters allegorized Old Testament stories to find in them hidden meanings that were buried not in the text but in their own minds.
Origen, for example, allegorized the account of the battle for Jericho (Josh. 6). He maintained that Joshua stood for Jesus, and the city of Jericho represented the world. The seven priests who carried trumpets around the city represented Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, James, Jude, and Peter. Rahab, the harlot, stood for the church, which is made up of sinners; and the scarlet cord that she displayed to deliver herself and her household was the blood of Christ.8 Commentators who use allegory deserve high marks for creativity but low marks for approaching the biblical account as literature.
Another inadequate method of handling the Old Testament uses it only as an example or illustration of New Testament doctrine. Here the authority for what is preached comes neither from the theology of the Old Testament nor from the intent of the Old Testament writer, but entirely from the reader’s theology read back into the passage. Should those who do this be challenged about their interpretation or application, they appeal not to the passage before them but to some passage in the New Testament or to a theology that they assume they share with their audience.
How then can we proceed as we answer the third developmental question, “So what? What difference does it make?” Application must come from the theological purpose of the biblical writer. John Bright states the case for determining the author’s intent: “The preacher needs to understand not only what the text says, but also those concerns that caused it to be said, and said as it was. His exegetical labors are, therefore, not complete until he has grasped the text’s theological intention. Until he has done this he cannot interpret the text, and may egregiously misinterpret it by attributing to its words an intention quite other than that of their author.”9
We cannot understand or apply an individual passage, whether in the Old Testament or in the New, until we have studied its context. For instance, plunging into an analysis of a paragraph or chapter of Ecclesiastes without first gaining an appreciation for the thrust of the entire book might lead to many heretical ideas and devastating applications for people today. Only after mastering the larger passage do we find the clues for understanding what the smaller texts mean and why they were written.
Here are some questions that help us discover the author’s theological purpose:
There are other questions we must ask in order to apply God’s Word to a contemporary audience living in a situation different from that of the people to whom the revelation was originally given.
Ordinarily you begin your study with a single passage of Scripture, and your application comes directly or by necessary implication from that passage. If you begin with a specific need in your congregation and turn to the Bible for solutions, then you must decide first which passages address the questions being raised. Through your exegesis of those separate passages, then, you explore the subject. When the Bible speaks directly to those questions in a variety of texts, application and authority still come directly from Scripture.
Application becomes more complex, however, when we must deal with problems that biblical writers never encountered. Because Jesus Christ stands as Lord over history, Christians must respond to current ethical and political concerns from a divine perspective. We assume that the Holy Spirit has a will for such matters as abortion, test-tube babies, protecting the environment, hunger in the world, the use of technology, or government welfare programs. But the Bible cannot and does not speak directly to all moral or political situations, and as a result, how we believe, vote, or act is not mandated directly by the Scriptures. Whether we can say, “Thus saith the Lord” about particular issues not dealt with in the Bible depends on our analysis of the issues and our application of theological principles. How we state the question and what parts of the issue we emphasize may shape our conclusion. Several questions help us test the accuracy of our application:
In the forming of these moral and political judgments, Alexander Miller offers helpful insight: “A valid Christian decision is compounded always of both faith and facts. It is likely to be valid in the degree to which the faith is rightly apprehended and the facts are rightly measured.”13 Because our analysis of facts and our interpretation of the faith may differ, Christians disagree on ethical and political issues. Yet unless we struggle with the facts in the light of our faith, no decisions we make can legitimately be called Christian.
God reveals himself in the Scriptures. The Bible, therefore, isn’t a textbook about ethics or a manual on how to solve personal problems. The Bible is a book about God. When you study a biblical text, therefore, you should ask, “What is the vision of God in this passage?” God is always there. Look for him. At different times he is the Creator, a good Father, the Redeemer, a rejected Lover, a Husband, a King, a Savior, a Warrior, a Judge, a Reaper, a vineyard Keeper, a banquet Host, a Fire, a Hen protecting her chicks, and so on.
As you study, then, there are at least four questions you want to ask of a passage.
Not only is it important to look for the vision of God in a passage, but you will also want to look at the human factor. How should people in the biblical text have responded to this vision of God? How did they respond? Should this vision of God have made any practical difference in their lives? This human factor is the condition that men and women today have in common with the characters in the Bible. The human factor may show up in sins such as rebellion, unbelief, adultery, greed, laziness, selfishness, or gossip. It may also show up in people puzzling about the human condition as a result of sickness, grief, anxiety, doubt, trials, or the sense that God has misplaced their names and addresses. It is this human factor that usually prompted the prophets and apostles to speak or write what they did.15
To apply a passage, therefore, you need to see what your passage reveals about God and the way people responded and lived before God. Look for those same factors in contemporary life. How does the condition of people today reflect the sins, fears, hopes, frustrations, anxieties, and confusion of women and men centuries ago? What vision of God do they need? How do they respond or not respond to that vision? In this way, you can move with integrity from the biblical text to the modern situation.16
Think about specific ways this biblical truth about God and people would actually work out in experience. To do that, ask yourself questions like
To be effective sermons must relate biblical truth to life. The most effective sermons are those that do this in a specific, not a general, way. If you do not apply the Scriptures to people’s life experience, you cannot expect that they will do it. James warned us about the danger of “hearing the Word” but not acting on it. Listeners are deceived if they simply know God’s Word but do not practice it. As preachers we dare not contribute to that delusion. Our hearers need both truth to believe and specific, life-shaping ways to apply it.
These three developmental questions, then, prod our thinking and help us decide what must be said about our passage. Take these questions and direct them toward the details of your text, and then direct them toward your audience. Write down what must be said to answer the questions. You will soon know whether you have a sermon and what kind of study you will have to do to make your sermon effective.
Note that the questions build on one another. Only when we think we understand a statement do we question its validity. And only when we understand and believe a statement will it make a positive difference in our lives. While you may deal with all three questions in the development of your sermon, one of the three predominates and determines the form your message will take. All this probing leads you toward your homiletical idea, which occupies you in the next stage of development.
Three developmental questions
DEFINITIONS
Restatement—the statement of an idea in different words to clarify it or to impress it upon the audience.
Questions and activities for this chapter can be found in the student exercises section at the back of the book.
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1. J. M. Reu, Homiletics: A Manual of the Theory and Practice of Preaching, 129.
2. H. Grady Davis has developed these questions extensively in relation to the sermon. I am indebted to him for this approach to thinking. It is beyond the scope of Davis’s book to apply the questions to the study of Scripture.
3. N. B. Stonehouse, “The Areopagus Address,” in Paul before the Areopagus and Other New Testament Studies (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1957), 1–40.
4. Donald Grey Barnhouse, Let Me Illustrate: Stories, Anecdotes, Illustrations (Old Tappan, NJ: Revell, 1967), 358–59.
5. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan, 1952), 50.
6. J. Wallace Hamilton, Who Goes There? What and Where Is God? (Westwood, NJ: Revell, 1958), 52.
7. The new hermeneutic, to its credit, has embraced application as well as exegesis, but in the effort to apply the Bible creatively, it sometimes seems less concerned with understanding Scripture correctly.
8. Arthur Wainwright, Beyond Biblical Criticism: Encountering Jesus in Scripture (London: SPCK, 1982), 87.
9. John Bright, The Authority of the Old Testament (Nashville: Abingdon, 1967; repr., Grand Rapids: Baker, 1975), 171–72.
10. For a splendid development of this theme and its application, see Ronald M. Hals, The Theology of the Book of Ruth (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1969).
11. See also Robert L. Hubbard Jr., The Book of Ruth, New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988).
12. J. Daniel Baumann, An Introduction to Contemporary Preaching, 100.
13. Alexander Miller, The Renewal of Man: A Twentieth-Century Essay on Justification by Faith (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1955), 94.
14. To see this spelled out in some detail, look at H. Edward Everding Jr. and Dana W. Wilbanks, Decision Making and the Bible (Valley Forge, PA: Judson, 1975), chap. 5.
15. Bryan Chapell (Christ-Centered Preaching, 48–54) refers to this as the “Fallen Condition Factor” (FCF).
16. To pursue this pattern further, read Harold Freeman, Variety in Biblical Preaching, 41ff. He offers another way to approach application. You may also want to look at my article “The Heresy of Application,” in Leadership (Fall 1997): 20–27.