Stages in the Development of Expository Messages
New Concepts
Measurable results
Purpose
Homiletical idea
Let’s take a moment to review. In the first two stages of your preparation, you study the text to determine the exegetical idea and its development. You want to state the subject and complement of what the biblical writer wrote to his readers. Also make a rough outline, or sketch, of the passage. How did the author develop his idea?
Having done that, you still face the question, “Do I have anything to preach?” While every good sermon is the development of a central idea, not every idea in the biblical text can be turned into a sermon. In the next stage, therefore, you submit your exegetical idea and its development to the three developmental questions:
These questions deal with the meaning, validity, and implications of any idea. The questions should be addressed not only to the main idea but to the supporting ideas and the details of the passage as well. This helps you decide what kind of supporting materials you will need to communicate the message of your text.
You also keep your audience in mind as you answer these three primary questions:
“What does this mean?” What has to be explained so that my listeners will understand the passage?
“Is this true? Do I really believe it?” What needs to be proved?
“So what? What difference does it make?” How should this concept be applied?
As you work through these questions, jot down what you must explain, prove, or apply to your hearers. You will soon know whether you have anything to preach and what research you must do. You will see the general direction your sermon must go and what you must deal with in your sermon.
Stage 5 In light of the audience’s knowledge and experience, think through your exegetical idea and state it in the most exact, memorable sentence possible.
In stage 5 state the essence of your exegetical idea in a sentence that communicates to your listeners. This sentence is your homiletical idea. Remember that you are not lecturing to people about the Bible. You are talking to people about themselves from the Bible. This statement, therefore, should be in fresh, vital, contemporary language.
Advertisers know that while we do not remember abstractions, we do remember slogans. Although advertising slogans are usually “much ado about nothing,” we should not underestimate the power of an idea well stated. People are more likely to think God’s thoughts after him, and to live and love and choose on the basis of those thoughts, when they are couched in memorable sentences.
Some statements of the homiletical idea may be identical to the statement of the exegetical idea. That is the case when you are dealing with universal principles that apply to anyone at any time: “Do not commit adultery,” “Do not steal,” or “Love your neighbor as you love yourself” need no translation into the twenty-first century. They are already there. “A soft answer turns away wrath, but a grievous word stirs up anger” is timeless. Habakkuk declared, “The righteous [person] shall live by his faith” (Hab. 2:4 ASV). This foundational idea of Scripture doesn’t need to be made contemporary. It needs only to be explained and applied.
Other exegetical ideas, however, are turned into homiletical ideas when you make them more up-to-date or personal. The exegetical idea of 1 Thessalonians 1:2–10 might be “Paul thanked God for the Thessalonians because through the apostle’s ministry, God had brought them to himself and made a noticeable difference in their lives.” The preaching idea should be more direct and personal: “Thank God regularly for the Christians you know because of what God has done for them and is doing through them.”
An exegetical statement of 1 Timothy 4:12–16 might be “Paul exhorted young Timothy to win respect by being an example to others both in his personal life and in his public ministry of the Scriptures.” Were this passage the basis of a sermon to seminary students, the idea might be stated: “Win respect for yourself by both the way you live and the way you teach.”
Your homiletical statement can be more contemporary and less tied to the words of the text. Don Sunukjian preached a sermon on Exodus 13:17–18:
Now it came about when Pharaoh had let the people go, that God did not lead them by the way of the land of the Philistines, even though it was near; for God said, “Lest the people change their minds when they see war, and they return to Egypt.” Hence God led the people around by way of the wilderness to the Red Sea; and the sons of Israel went up in martial array from the land of Egypt. (NASB)
Sunukjian’s preaching idea was “The shortest distance between two points may be a zigzag.” That was true to the text, and it is also true to life.
When James Rose expounded Romans 12:1–17, his homiletical idea was “When the effect of the gospel is all-important in the church, the force of the gospel is unstoppable in the world.”
In preaching Romans 2:1–19, you might have as your central concept, “If you use the law as your ladder to heaven, you will be left standing in hell.”
The exegetical statement of Romans 6:1–14 might be “Through their union with Jesus Christ in his death and resurrection, Christians have died to the rule of sin and are alive to holiness.” Here’s a more striking statement for that idea: “You are not the person you used to be; therefore, don’t handle life as you used to handle it.”
The central lesson from the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37) might be “Your neighbor is anyone whose need you see, whose need you are in a position to meet.”
As you can see, the homiletical idea is simply the biblical truth applied to life.
Here are some general suggestions for framing a homiletical idea:
The Power of Purpose
The noted preacher A. W. Dale was evidently a man who was as secure as the Rock of Gibraltar. Every Saturday evening he delivered his sermon to his wife. One day, after he had gone through this exercise, his wife asked, “Tell me, why are you preaching that sermon?”
That obvious question faces all of us as we prepare, and it receives many inadequate answers. For example, “When 11:25 comes on Sunday morning, I’ll be expected to say something religious.” Or “Last week I covered Genesis 21, so this week I’ll preach on Genesis 22.” Sometimes our response to the question, “Why are you preaching that sermon?” is as clear as a thick fog: “I’m preaching this sermon because I want to give the people a challenge.” Such answers, usually implied rather than stated, produce sermons that resemble a dropped lemon meringue pie—they splatter over everything, but hit nothing very hard. They lack a definite purpose!
No matter how brilliant or biblical a sermon is, without a definite purpose it is not worth preaching. We have no adequate idea of why we are speaking. Imagine asking a hockey coach, “What is the purpose of your hockey team?” He had better know the answer. All kinds of activities take place on the ice—skating, stick handling, checking, passing—but the purpose of a hockey team must be to outscore the opponent. A team that does not keep that firmly in mind plays only for exercise. Why preach this sermon? We do an assortment of things when we face our congregation. We explain, illustrate, exhort, exegete, and gesture, to list a few. But we are to be pitied if we fail to understand that this particular sermon should change lives in some specific way. A. W. Tozer speaks a perceptive word to all of us:
There is scarcely anything so dull and meaningless as Bible doctrine taught for its own sake. Truth divorced from life is not truth in its Biblical sense, but something else and something less. . . . No man is better for knowing that God in the beginning created the heaven and the earth. The devil knows that, and so did Ahab and Judas Iscariot. No man is better for knowing that God so loved the world of men that He gave His only begotten Son to die for their redemption. In hell there are millions who know that. Theological truth is useless until it is obeyed. The purpose behind all doctrine is to secure moral action.1
The purpose behind each individual sermon is to secure some moral action. We need to know what that action is.
Stage 6 Determine the purpose for this sermon.
The purpose states what you expect to happen in your hearers as a result of preaching your sermon. George Sweazey maintains that a purpose distinguishes a sermon from an essay: “An essay looks at ideas, but a sermon looks at people.”2 A purpose differs from the sermon idea, therefore, in the same way that a target differs from the arrow; as taking a trip differs from studying a map; as baking a pie differs from reading a recipe. Whereas the idea states the truth, the purpose defines what that truth should accomplish. Henry Ward Beecher appreciated the importance of purpose when he declared: “A sermon is not like a Chinese firecracker to be fired off for the noise it makes. It is a hunter’s gun, and at every discharge he should look to see his game fall.” That presupposes, of course, that the hunter knows what he is hunting.
How then do you determine the purpose of your sermon? You do so by discovering the purpose behind the passage you are preaching. As part of your exegesis, you should ask, “Why did the author write this? What effect did he expect it to have on his readers?” No biblical writer took up his pen to jot down “a few appropriate remarks” on a religious subject. Each one wrote to affect lives. For instance, when Paul wrote to Timothy, he did it “so that you may know how one ought to conduct himself in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and support of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15 NASB).
Jude changed purposes for his letter after he sat down to write. “While I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation,” he confessed, “I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3 NASB). John designed his account of Jesus’s life to win belief in Jesus as “the Christ, the Son of God” and to secure in believers “life through his name” (John 20:31 KJV). Whole books, as well as sections within books, were written to make something happen in the thinking and the actions of the readers. An expository sermon, therefore, finds its purpose in line with the biblical purposes. You must first figure out why a particular passage was included in the Bible, and with this in mind decide what God desires to accomplish through your sermon in your hearers today.
The inspired Scriptures were given so that we could be “adequate, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16–17 NASB). It follows from this that you should be able to put into words what beliefs, attitudes, or values should change or be confirmed, or what quality of life or what good works should result from the preaching and hearing of your sermon. You accomplish that purpose, Paul told Timothy, through (1) teaching a doctrine, (2) refuting some error in belief or action, (3) correcting what is wrong, and (4) instructing people on the proper handling of life.
Educators realize that an effective statement of purpose goes beyond procedure and describes the observable behavior that should come as a result of teaching. A purpose statement not only describes our destination and the route we will follow to get there but, if possible, tells how we can know if we have arrived. If we are not clear about where we are going, we will probably land someplace else.3
Roy B. Zuck has drawn up a list of verbs valuable for stating course objectives. These verbs are useful for dealing with the purpose of giving knowledge and insight (the cognitive domain) and changing attitudes and actions (the affective domain). This list is reproduced in table 1.
Table 1
| If the goal is | Knowledge | Insight | Attitude | Skill |
| Then the verb can be | List | Discriminate between | Determine to | Interpret |
| State | Differentiate between | Develop | Apply | |
| Enumerate | Compare | Have confidence in | Internalize | |
| Recite | Contrast | Appreciate | Produce | |
| Recall | Classify | Be convinced of | Use | |
| Write | Select | Be sensitive to | Practice | |
| Identify | Choose | Commit yourself to | Study | |
| Memorize | Separate | Be enthusiastic about | Solve | |
| Know | Evaluate | Desire to | Experience | |
| Trace | Examine | Sympathize with | Explain | |
| Delineate | Comprehend | View | Communicate | |
| Become aware of | Reflect on | Plan | Assist in | |
| Become familiar with | Think through | Feel satisfied about | Pray about | |
| Become cognizant of | Discern | |||
| Define | Understand | |||
| Describe | Discover | |||
| Recognize |
While preaching differs significantly from lecturing, stating the purpose of a sermon as though it were an instructional objective makes the sermon more direct and effective. Here are some purposes stated in measurable terms:
Framing purposes that describe measurable results forces you to reflect on how attitudes and behavior should be altered. That, in turn, will enable you to be more concrete in your application of truth to life. After all, if a sermon accomplishes anything, it must accomplish something.
David Smith, a Scottish preacher, describes a sermon as “a speech concluded with a motion.” One effective means of incorporating the purpose into the sermon, therefore, lies in writing out a conclusion with the purpose in mind. State in a rough way what you are asking the congregation to do as a result of what you have preached. Be as specific as possible. If someone came to you next week and said, “I have been thinking about what you preached last Sunday, but I don’t know how what you said applies to my life,” would you have an answer? Picture the truth you have preached being acted upon in some specific situations. Then put that into your conclusion. Here are some examples:
You may change the conclusion later in your preparation, but you have determined where you purpose to go. You concentrate your thought with greater efficiency if when you begin, you know what you intend to accomplish.
Homiletical idea—the statement of a biblical concept in such a way that it accurately reflects the Bible and meaningfully relates to the congregation.
Measurable results—the purpose of the sermon stated in terms of observable behavior.
Purpose—what one expects to happen in the hearer as a result of hearing this sermon.
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. A. W. Tozer, Of God and Men (Harrisburg, PA: Christian Publications, 1960), 26–27.
2. George E. Sweazey, Preaching the Good News (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1976).
3. For a discussion of instructional objectives helpful to any teacher, see Robert F. Mager, Preparing Instructional Objectives, 2nd ed. (Belmont, CA: Fearon, 1975).