his short guide is intended to provide the pastor with a handy format to follow in doing exegetical work on a passage of Scripture for the purpose of preaching competently on it. Each section of the guide contains a suggestion of the approximate time one might wish to devote to the issues raised in that section. The total time allotted is somewhat arbitrarily set at about five hours, the minimum that a pastor ought normally to be able to give to the research aspect of sermon preparation. Depending on the particular passage, the time available to you in any given week, and the nature of your familiarity with exegetical resources, you will find that you can make considerable adjustments in the time allotments. If you are new to exegetical preaching, you will need to increase the time allotments substantially.
As you become increasingly familiar with the steps and methods, you may arrive at a point where you can dispense with reference to the guide itself. This is the intention of this primer—that it should get you started, not that it should always be needed.
Most pastors who are theologically trained have been required to write at least one exegesis paper during their seminary days. Many have written OT exegesis papers based on the Hebrew text. But few have been shown how to make the transition from the exegetical labor and skills required for a full term paper to those required for a sermon. The term paper necessitates substantial research and writing, is in many ways narrow and technical, and involves the writer in the production of a formal printout to be evaluated by a single professor, with special attention to methodological competence and comprehensiveness, including notes and bibliography. The sermon is usually composed in ten hours or less (total—although pastors of the largest churches report spending in excess of twenty hours a week on their sermons), must avoid being excessively narrow or technical, does not require a formal manuscript, and is evaluated by a large and diverse group of listeners who are mostly not scholars and who are much less interested in methodological competence than in the practical results thereof.
Because the format and the audience are so radically different, is it any wonder that pastors find it hard to see the connection between what they were taught in seminary and what they are expected to do in their office and in the pulpit? Is it any wonder, too, that the average Sunday sermon is so often either devoid of exegetical insight or sprinkled with exegetical absurdities that countless congregations across the land long in vain for “simple preaching from the Bible”? The pastor, having long ago abandoned any hope that his or her weekly schedule would allow for all those hours and all that effort to produce the same sort of high-quality exegesis involved in writing the term paper, has nothing to put in its place. As a result, no real exegesis is done at all! The sermon becomes a long string of personal illuminations, anecdotes, truisms, platitudes, and whatever general insights the commentaries may provide.
Commentators are usually far removed from the specific comprehension level and practical concerns of the congregation hearing the sermon. This is a great shame, because the pastor stands in the ideal position to make the connection between the insights of scholarly research and the concerns of practical living, but cannot bring the one to bear upon the other. After all, how can the time be found week by week to devote oneself to the extensive research on which a truly exegetical sermon would be based? Both pastor and congregation suffer for want of a method to bridge the gap, a method that is, amazingly enough, almost never taught in the seminaries.
This short guide for sermon exegesis is both an abridged and a blended version of the full guide used for exegesis papers of chapter 1. Although the process of exegesis itself cannot be redefined, the fashion in which it is done can be adjusted considerably. Exegesis for sermon preparation cannot and, fortunately, need not be as exhaustive as that required for a term paper. The fact that it cannot be exhaustive does not mean that it cannot be adequate. The goal of the shorter guide is to help the pastor extract from the passage the essentials pertaining to sound hermeneutics (interpretation) and exposition (explanation and application). The final product, the sermon, can and must be based on research that is reverent and sound in scholarship. The sermon, as an act of obedience and worship, ought not to wrap shoddy scholarship in a cloak of fervency. Let your sermon be exciting, but let it be in every way faithful to God’s revelation.
Note: The more familiar you are with the full process described in chapter 1, the more successful will be your use of the shorter process described here. It is not therefore advisable to skip over the one in order to try to profit immediately from the other.
3.1. Text and Translation (Allow about one hour.)
3.1.1. Read the passage repeatedly
Go over the passage out loud, in the Hebrew if possible. (Research shows that oral-aural memory is stored in the human brain differently from visual memory, so reading out loud will speed and enhance the process of becoming comfortable with the content of the passage.) Try to gain a feel for the passage as a unit conveying God’s word to you and your congregation. Go over the passage out loud in English as well. (Use a modern translation, unless you and your congregation have determined to use an older one, such as the King James Version. In the latter case you must be doubly careful to pay close attention to step 3.1.4, below.) Try to become sufficiently familiar with the passage that you can keep its essentials in your head as you carry on through the next five steps. Be on the lookout for the possibility that you may need to adjust somewhat the limits of your passage, since the chapter and verse divisions as we have them are secondary to the composition of the original and are not always reliable guides to the boundaries of true logical units. Check by starting a few verses before the beginning of the passage and going a few verses past the end. Adjust the limits if necessary (shrink or expand the passage to coincide with more natural boundaries ifyour sense of the passage so requires). Once satisfied that the passage is properly delimited and that you have a preliminary feel for its content and the way its words and thoughts flow, proceed to step 3.1.2, below.
3.1.2. Check for significant textual issues
Refer to the textual annotations in the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS, or BH3 or BHQ) at the bottom of the Hebrew page. Look specifically for textual variations that would actually affect the meaning of the text for your congregation in the English translation. These are the major textual variants. There is not much point in concerning yourself with the minor variants—those that would not make much difference in the English translation. By referring to one or two of the major technical commentaries that address issues of text and translation (see 4.12.4), you can quickly check to see if you have correctly identified the major variants. Finally, you must evaluate the major variants to see whether any should be adopted, thus altering the “received text” (the Masoretic Text as printed in the Hebrew Bible). If you cannot make a decision—often the commentators cannot either—then you may wish to draw this to the attention of your congregation. In this regard, see also steps 3.1.4 and 3.1.5, below.
3.1.3. Make your own translation
Try this, even if your Hebrew is weak, dormant, or nonexistent. Whenever necessary, you can easily check yourself by referring to two or more of the respected modern versions. Avoid referring to the nonliteral paraphrases (even though some are called “versions” or “translations”) since they will tend to confuse you without helping much. They are confusing because they do not usually represent a direct rendering of the Hebrew original and thus are hard to follow. They will not help much because they are useful primarily for skimming large blocks of material to get the gist— rather than for close, careful study where, to some degree, each word (and just the right word) is important. For translating help, you may also refer to an interlinear version (see 4.2.2) or any of the computer concordance versions such as Accordance and BibleWorks (4.4.2).
Making your own translation has several benefits. For one thing, it will help you recognize things about the passage that you would not notice in reading, even in the original. It is a little like the difference between how much you notice while walking down a street as opposed to what you can see while driving down it. Much of what you begin to observe as you prepare your translation will relate to steps 3.2-6. For example, you will probably become especially alert to the structure of the passage, its vocabulary, its grammatical features, and some aspects of its theology; all these are drawn naturally to your attention in the course of translating the words of the passage. Moreover, you are the expert on your congregation. You know its members’ vocabulary and educational level(s), the extent of their biblical and theological awareness, and so forth. Indeed, you are the very person who is uniquely capable of producing a meaningful translation that you can draw upon in whole or in part during your sermon, to ensure that the congregation is really understanding the true force of the word of God as the passage presents it.
3.1.4. Compile a list of alternatives
If the passage does contain textual or translational difficulties, your congregation deserves to be informed about them. The congregation can benefit from knowing not just which option you have chosen in a given place in the passage, but what the various options are and why you have chosen one over the other(s). They can then follow some of your reasoning rather than accepting your conclusions merely “on faith.” The best way to prepare this for the sermon is by way of a list of alternatives for both the textual and the translational possibilities. Only significant alternatives should be included in each list. You may expect your list to contain at most one or two textual issues, and a few translational issues. In the sermon itself, you can easily work these alternatives into the discussion of what the text says by such introductions as these: “Another way to read this verse would be .. .” or “In the original this part of the verse seems to be speaking of. ...” A short summary of why you feel the evidence leads to your choice (or why you feel the evidence is not decisive) can be provided or not, depending on the demands of time.
3.1.5. Start a sermon use list
In the same manner as you compiled the list of alternatives mentioned in 3.1.4 above (and perhaps including that list), keep nearby a sheet of paper or an open computer window on which you can record the observations from your exegetical work on the passage that you feel might be worth mentioning in your sermon. This list should include points discovered from all of steps 3.1-6 and will provide an easy reference as you construct the sermon itself.
What to include? Include the very things that you would feel cheated about if you did not know them. They need not be limited to genuine lifechanging observations, but they should not be insignificant or arcane either. If something actually helps you appreciate and understand the text in a way that would not otherwise be obvious, then put it down on the mention list.
Maximize at first. Include anything that you feel might deserve to be mentioned because your congregation might profit from knowing it. Later, when you actually write or outline your sermon, you may have to exclude some or most of the items on the mention list, by reason of the press of time and space. This will be especially so if you choose to make your sermon dramatic, artistic, stylized, or the like, thus departing more or less from a rigidly expository format. Moreover, in perspective you will undoubtedly see that certain items originally included for mention are not so crucial as you first thought. Or conversely, you may find that you have so much of significance to draw to your congregation’s attention that you will need to schedule two sermons on the passage to exposit it properly.
Your sermon use list is not a sermon outline, any more than a stack of lumber is a house. The list is simply a tentative record of the exegetically derived observations that you initially think your congregation ought perhaps to hear and may indeed benefit from knowing.
3.2. Grammatical and Lexical Data (Allow about 50 minutes.)
3.2.1. Note any grammar that is unusual, ambiguous, or otherwise important
Your primary interest is to isolate grammatical features that might have some effect on the interpretation of the passage. Anything that can be explained, at least in some general way, is fair game for the congregation. But do not address yourself to minutiae. Find the major, significant anomalies, ambiguities, and cruxes (features crucial for interpretation), if any. Few passages contain many of these, so the task should not take long.
Ambiguities deserve special explanation. If a prophet reports that Yah-weh has a word Ml# ל־ירו־(, for example, your congregation will profit from knowing this can mean “about Jerusalem,” “on behalf ofJerusalem,” or “against Jerusalem.” The translations must choose one of these options—they cannot include all three and thus cannot accurately represent the ambiguity in the passage, which in many cases is a purposeful, suspenseful ambiguity. The audience of the ancient prophet could not always tell whether Yahweh’s word was good or bad until the prophet ended the suspense by further words. Cruxes certainly deserve special attention: If the interpretation of the passage (or a doctrine mentioned by the passage) depends on taking some grammatical feature a certain way (e.g., “You shall have no other gods before me”), this should be explained clearly. For example, only confusion can result if the hearer remains uncertain about the proper interpretation of this commandment in terms of whether “before me” refers to the spatial (in my presence) or the temporal (earlier than me) or the devotional (above me in importance) or whether the use of “gods”— a plural, after all—might imply actual polytheism. People need to know that הים l), “gods,” had a range of meaning that included “false gods,” “idols,” “supernatural beings such as angels,” and so forth.
3.2.2. Make a list of the key terms
As you go through the passage, write down all the English words (sometimes phrases) that you consider important. These may include verbs, adjectives, nouns, proper nouns, and so forth. Include anything that you are not sure that a majority of your congregation could define, as well as any terms they might want to know about. A typical passage of ten or fifteen verses might yield a dozen words or more. In the example at 2.4.1, the story of Abijah’s speech and battle against Jeroboam in 2 Chronicles 13 yields more than twenty key words and phrases that the average congregation might either know relatively little about or might benefit from having exposited to them (Abijah, thousand, Mount Zemaraim, all Israel, covenant of salt, servant of Solomon, consecrate, no gods, burnt offerings, showbread, God of their fathers, etc.).
3.2.3. Pare down the list to manageable size
Because of the demands of time, you must be selective. Decide whether you can include five, ten, or perhaps more of the key terms in your inclusion list. Retain the terms that you are sure your congregation needs to learn about. (From the sample list above, this might include: “covenant of salt,” “consecrate,” “no gods,” “God of their fathers,” etc.) Eliminate what is not central to the needs of your sermon, as well as you can predict this. You may find that some important points of your sermon will suggest themselves in the process of deciding what to comment on and what to leave alone with minimal or no comment. From the sample passage above, for example, you might pick “A Covenant of Salt” or “What in the World Is a Covenant of Salt?” or “Do We Have a Covenant of Salt with God?” as your sermon title. That ought to arouse at least a little advance curiosity about the sermon.
3.2.4. Do a mini-word study (concept study) of at least one word or term
Any sensibly chosen passage will contain at least one important word or wording (concept) worthy of investigation beyond the confines of the passage. Force yourself to follow the weekly discipline of picking a word or term and sampling its usage and therefore its range(s) of meaning first in the section, then the book, then the division, then the OT, then the whole
Bible. Use the techniques for word (concept) study described in 4.4.3, but use your time wisely. Check the various contexts in English if you wish; know what to look for by seeking guidance from the lexicons and published word studies. But whatever you do, get beyond the immediate context of the passage. Let your congregation hear something about that word or wording as it is used throughout the Bible as best you can summarize the evidence in the short time you have. Again, remember that there is a difference between a word and a concept, and the actual concepts of the passage convey its message, not so much its individual words as isolated units of speech.
3.3. Form and Structure (Allow about half an hour.)
3.3.1. Identify the genre and the form
Your congregation deserves to know whether the passage is in prose or poetry (or some of both), and whether it is a narrative, a speech, a lament, a hymn, an oracle of woe, an apocalyptic vision, a wisdom saying, and so forth. These various types (genres) of literature have different identifying features and, more important, must be analyzed with respect to their individual characteristics lest the meaning be lost or obscured. For example, consider the preaching of Jonah, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh will be overthrown!” (Jonah 3:4). Your congregation will likely be puzzled as to why Jonah, the Nineveh hater, should have wanted to avoid preaching such an obviously negative message of doom unless you explain to them that the possibility of repentance and therefore forgiveness is implicit in this warning of delayed punishment: “yet forty days.” The knowledge of the form and its characteristics leads to the knowledge that Jonah is actually, though reluctantly, preaching a message of hope to Nineveh. It is certainly not essential that you identify every form by its technical name, but you should try to be sure that you identify the overall type of literature— the genre (e.g., prophetic) and then the specific form used in the passage (e.g., the warning oracle), since in most cases such an identification will serve to enhance the appreciation and the interpretation of the passage.
3.3.2. Investigate the life setting of forms where appropriate
If any discernible links exist between the form(s) used in the passage and real-life situations, identify these for your congregation. The “watchman’s song” used to describe the destruction of Babylon from the vantage point of a sentry (Isa. 21:1-10) has its greatest impact when the congregation is reminded that in ancient times the watchman or sentry on the city wall was often the first person to see something coming and thus to announce news of significant events. Since the prophet, too, is Yahweh’s announcer of news or events, the imagery of Isaiah’s oracle in chapter 21 is especially appropriate. A knowledge of the original life setting from which the form is borrowed for reuse is often crucial to grasping its significance. Explain these factors to your congregation, and the prophetic message can come across to them with much the same force with which it came across to Isaiah’s original audience. You do not need to give a detailed form-critical analysis of the text to your congregation, but you should at least go by the principle that they ought to hear anything about the form(s) that would enhance their grasp of the message. To do less is to leave the congregation partly “out of the loop.” Where possible, let your congregation in on anything that helps you follow the meaning.
3.3.3. Look for structural patterns
Outline the passage, seeking to discover its natural flow or progression. How does it start? How does it proceed? How does it come to an end? How does the structure relate to the meaning? Is the message of the passage (or the impact of the message) at least partly related to the structure? What are the stages of the “logic” of the passage, and what interpreta-tional clues can you discern in its logic? In not a few instances, the outline of the passage can serve virtually as the outline of the sermon itself. In most others, the two ought certainly to interrelate in some way.
Then look specifically for meaningful patterns. Are there any repetitions of words, resumptions of ideas, sounds, parallelisms, central or pivotal words, associations of words, or other patterns that can help you get a handle on the structure? Look especially for evidence of repetitions and progressions that may help you understand what the passage is emphasizing. How exactly has the inspired writer ordered the words and phrases, and why? What is stressed thereby? What is brought full circle to completion? Is there anything especially beautiful or striking in the structure, especially if the passage is a poem? Remember that the structure not only contains the content but is also to some extent part of the content. Structures can be quite prominent (as in Gen. 1) or quite unobtrusive (as in some stories of Israelite kings), but they are usually significant.
3.3.4. Isolate unique features and evaluate their significance
Form criticism and genre criticism emphasize the typical and universal features that are common to all instances of a given form or broad category of literature. Structure criticism and rhetorical criticism, on the other hand, are concerned more with the unique and the specific in a particular passage. Both are necessary. You need to appreciate a passage for what it shares in common with similar passages, but also for what it alone contains that specially characterizes it, that makes it different. In terms of the general structure, and also in terms of the repetitions and progressive patterns, what do you find in the passage that gives it a distinct flavor— that describes the passage itself on its own terms and according to its own topics and concepts? What particular revelatory content is communicated within and beyond just the general form(s) and genre(s) which the passage contains or is part of?
3.4. Literary-Historical Context (Allow about one hour.)
3.4.1. Examine the background of the passage
There usually is considerable overlap between the literary context and the historical context of an OT passage. Nevertheless, it is helpful to try to identify whether some feature is primarily literary or primarily historical. Accordingly, you should first try to identify the general literary background of the passage. Refer to OT introductions (see 4.12.3) and commentaries (4.12.4) as necessary. If it is narrative, what preceded it in the narrative? If it is one of a group of stories, which stories came before, and how do they lead up to the passage? If it is a prophetic oracle, which oracles serve to introduce or orient the passage in any way? Try to isolate both the immediate background (preceding paragraphs or sections of the book in which the passage occurs) and the general background (the relevant OT literary materials from any earlier time in OT history).
Proceed in the same manner with the historical background, referring to the OT histories (see 4.7.2) as needed. Look first for the immediate background and then for the overall background. Be sure your congregation has a sense of what happened before—of what related events and forces God superintended that set the stage for the passage. Some passages do not have much of a discernible historical background. Psalm 23, for example, cannot easily be tied to any specific events in the psalmist’s (or Israel’s) past. This psalm, however, does have features that are important with regard to its setting (see 3.4.2, below).
You cannot expect to be exhaustive in your analysis of the literary-historical background of the passage in the modest time available to you for your sermon preparation. Therefore, you must be selective in two ways. First, concentrate on the highlights. Select the literary features and historical events that seem to be most clearly and obviously important for the congregation to be aware of. Eliminate from consideration aspects of the passage’s literary and historical background that, if omitted, would not materially affect the ability of your congregation to understand or interpret the passage. In other words, you are searching for the essentials—the things that need to be pointed out in order to represent the background of the passage fairly. These must be representative rather than comprehensive. Second, summarize. In some cases, you may not be able to spare more than a minute or two of your sermon to discuss the background of a passage. Try, then, to construct a brief summary of the background information that sets the scene for the passage in its immediate and then its overall contexts according to the broad sweep of things.
3.4.2. Describe the literary-historical setting
To have described the background (3.4.1, above) and the foreground (3.4.3, below) of your passage is a major aspect of describing the context, but there is more. You should also be sure that your congregation has some sense of the literary setting in terms of placement and function as well as authorship, and of the historical setting in terms of social, geographical, and archaeological coordinates, as well as actual chronological coordinates (i.e., the date when the events of the passage took place).
Placement and function. Where does it fit in the section, book, division, OT, Bible? Is it introductory? Does it wind up something? Is it part of a group of similar passages? Is it pivotal in any way? What sort of a gap would its absence leave? It need not take long to discern this, and it need not take long in a sermon to pass what you have learned on to your congregation in summary form.
Authorship. Who wrote it? Is it clearly attributed to someone, or is it anonymous? Is there dispute about the authorship? Does (or would) knowing the authorship make any difference? If the author is known, what else did that author write? Is the passage typical or atypical of the author’s work? Are there known characteristics of the author that help make the passage more comprehensible? To a listener, a passage of Scripture often seems more real if its author has been identified and the general character of his or her writing perhaps described just a bit.
Social setting (including economic and political setting). What in the life of Israel at this time would help your congregation to appreciate the passage? Does the passage touch on or reflect any social, economic, or political issues, customs, or events that should be mentioned? Under what personal, family, tribal, national, and international conditions and circumstances were the events or ideas of the passage produced?
Geographical setting. Where was it written? Where did the events take place? Do these make any difference in understanding the passage? Would the passage be different if it were written or its events had taken place elsewhere? How important is the geographical setting—marginally or centrally? If no setting is given, is this fact significant or merely incidental? Many preachers report that the results of this part of the process especially produce the sorts of remarks in a sermon that cause members of a congregation to say that they felt like they were “right there,” able to imagine themselves in something of the same relationship to the biblical material that the original audience presumably was.
Archaeological setting. Consult the Scripture quotation index of one or more of the OT archaeologies (4.7.5), histories, and commentaries. Is anything specifically available from archaeological research that relates to the passage itself or to its relatively immediate context? If there is, does it provide a helpful perspective in any way?
Date. Wherever possible, give the absolute and relative dates for any event(s) or person(s) in the passage, or for the literary production (original publication) of the passage. Most churchgoers know few dates. They usually are not sure whether Ruth comes before or after David, or whether Esther comes before or after Abraham, or in what century to locate any of them. The more often you take the time to explain the dates related to a passage (it need not take long), the more clear the interrelationships of people, books, and events will become to your congregation. God’s revelation to us is a historical one: do not neglect chronology.
3.4.3. Examine the foreground of the passage
What follows immediately, both literarily and historically? What comes next in the chapter(s) following? Is it something that relates closely to the passage or not? How does it relate, and what help, if any, does it give for understanding the passage? Are any events known to have taken place soon afterward that may shed light on the passage? Using the OT histories, check to see if there are aspects of Israelite or ancient Near Eastern history that are not covered (or not covered in detail) in the Bible that nev-
ertheless may help to show the import of the passage. Does anything occur relatively soon afterward that might be significant for your congregation to know? Even though an event might not be a result of, or affected by, something mentioned in the passage, are any events similar or logically (even if not causally) related? Follow the same process with the longer-range literary and historical foreground. Try to describe what follows in the book, division, OT, and Bible that may be of genuine relevance to the passage. Do the same for the historical aspect. Do not hesitate to bring matters right up to or beyond current times, if legitimate. (For example, an OT prophecy about the kingdom of God might well include ancient Israel, the current church, and the heavenly, future kingdom.)
In general, you want to avoid talking to your congregation about the passage in isolation, as if there were no Scripture or history surrounding it. Doing so is unfair to the sweep of the historical revelation; it suggests to your congregation that the Bible is a collection of atomistic fragments not well connected one to another and without much relationship to the passage of time. That is surely not your conception of the Bible, and it should likewise not be the impression that you leave with your parishioners. Try to pay attention to the things (even in summary) that will help them realize that God has provided us with a Bible that can be appreciated for the whole as well as the parts, and that God controls history now, thus controlling our history with the same loyalty that he showed to his people in OT times.
3.5. Biblical and Theological Context (Allow about 50 minutes.)
3.5.1. Analyze use of the passage elsewhere in Scripture
Evaluate the cases where any part of the passage is quoted elsewhere in the Bible. How and why is it quoted? How is it interpreted by the quoter? What does that tell you about the proper interpretation of the passage? The significance of a passage is always elucidated by analysis of the way it is used in another context.
3.5.2. Analyze the passage’s relation to the rest of Scripture
How does the passage function? What gaps does it fill in? What is it similar or dissimilar to? Is it one of many of similar types, or is it fairly unique? Does anything hinge on it elsewhere? Do other Scriptures help make it comprehensible? How? Where does it fit in the overall structure of biblical revelation? What values does it have for the student of the Bible? In what ways is it important for your congregation?
3.5.3. Analyze the passage’s use in and relation to theology
To what theological doctrines does the passage add light? What are its theological concerns? Might the passage raise any questions or difficulties about some theological issue or stance that needs an explanation? How major or minor are the theological issues on which the passage touches? Where does the passage seem to fit within the full system of truth contained in Christian theology? How is the passage to be harmonized with the greater theological whole? Are its theological concerns more or less explicit (or implicit)? How can you use the passage to help make your congregation more theologically consistent or at least more theologically alert?
3.6. Application (Allow about one hour.)
3.6.1. List the life issues in the passage
Make a list of possible life issues mentioned explicitly, referred to implicitly, or logically to be inferred from the passage. There may be only one or two of these, or perhaps several. Be inclusive at first. Later you can eliminate those that, upon reflection, you judge to be either less significant or irrelevant.
3.6.2. Clarify the possible nature and area of application
Arrange your tentative list (mental or written) according to whether the passage or parts of it are in nature informative or directive, and then whether they deal with the area of faith or the area of action. Though these distinctions are both artificial and arbitrary to some degree, they are often helpful. They may lead to more precise and specific applications of the Scripture’s teaching for your congregation, and they will help you avoid the vague, general applications that are sometimes no applications at all.
3.6.3. Identify the audience and categories of application
Are the life issues of the passage instructive primarily to individuals or primarily to corporate entities, or is there no differentiation? If to individuals, which? Christian or non-Christian? Clergy or lay? Parent or child? Strong or weak? Haughty or humble? If to corporate entities, which? Church? Nation? Clergy? Laity? A profession? A societal structure?
Are the life issues related to or confined to certain categories, such as interpersonal relationships, piety, finances, spirituality, social behavior, family life?
3.6.4. Establish the time focus and limits of the application
Decide whether the passage primarily calls for a recognition of something from the past, a present faith or action, or hope for the future; otherwise, perhaps a combination of times is envisioned. Then set the limits. Your congregation would be well served by suggestions of what would be extreme applications, lest they be inclined to take the passage and apply it in ways or areas that are not part of the intentionality of the Scripture. Is there an application that is primary while others are more or less secondary? Does the passage have double applicability as, for example, certain messianic passages do? If so, explain these to your congregation and suggest where their responsibilities to respond to the informing and directing nature(s) of the passage lie.
In suggesting applications, it is generally advisable to be cautious. Especially avoid the fallacy of exemplarism (the idea that because someone in the Bible does it, we also can or ought to do it). This is perhaps the most dangerous and irreverent of all approaches to application since virtually every sort of behavior, stupid and wise, malicious and saintly, is chronicled in the Bible. Yet this monkey-see-monkey-do sort of approach to applying the Scriptures is widely followed, largely because of the dearth of good pulpit teaching to the contrary. To be cautious involves staying with what is certain and shying away from the questionable (possible but uncertain) applications. You are not required to suggest to your congregation all the possible ways in which a passage might theoretically be applied. You are required to explain the application that is clearly and intentionally the concern of the passage. Unless you are convinced that it is the intention of the Scripture that a passage be applied in a certain way, no suggestion as to application can be confidently advanced. It would be far better to admit to your congregation that you have no idea how the passage could be applied to their lives than to invite them to pursue an application devoid of legitimate scriptural authority. In all likelihood, however—if your passage is sensibly chosen and your exegetical work properly done—in your sermon you will be in a position confidently and practically to suggest not only what the passage means but also what it should lead you and your congregation to believe and do.
There are many ways to prepare sermons and to deliver them, as well as many different types of sermons and books about them. Still, some general advice can be given about creating a sermon that is exegetically sound.
3.7.1. Work from your sermon use list
Organize the various notes on your list into categories. See how many fit together. Do some groups seem especially weighty? For example, does much of the list seem to center on theological terms and themes? If so, perhaps your sermon ought to be especially theological. Does the list contain many elements that are part of a story? If so, might not the sermon as a whole or in part take a story form? Will you need to explain a good many lexical items? If so, perhaps a number of illustrations will be required, and so on. Generally the material on the sermon use list (3.1.5) should at least suggest what some of the major blocks for building the sermon will be, whether or not it suggests a particular format for the sermon. Remember, too, that you probably will not be able to include (or at least adequately cover) in the sermon everything you placed tentatively on the sermon use list. Discard what you must. A single sermon cannot do everything.
3.7.2. Do not use the twelve- or six-step exegesis outline as the sermon outline
You will surely not last long in the pastorate if your congregation hears every sermon begin with “Let us examine the textual problems of the passage.” The six-point exegetical outline suggested above (3.1—3.6) provides an orderly and incremental format for covering the exegetical issues of a passage. It is not a sermon outline. You must organize and incorporate the results of your exegesis into the sermon according to an order that has as its primary concern to educate and challenge the congregation. It is up to you to decide what sort of a sermon—containing what elements and in what order—will best convey this to the listeners, and no one is in a better position to make such a decision than you are.
3.7.3. Differentiate between the speculative and the certain
Let your congregation know which exegetical “discoveries” are possible, which are probable, and which are definite. Suppose you are excited by the possibility that a particular poetic couplet in Micah seems to be adapted from Isaiah, but you would be irresponsible to present this as a given, since equally plausible cases can be built that Isaiah did the borrowing, or that both prophets drew upon a common repertoire of prophetic poetry, or that they were independently inspired with a similar message, and so forth. There may be no harm in alerting your congregation to any or all of these options as long as you identify them as speculative.
3.7.4. Differentiate between the central and the peripheral
The sermon should not give equally high priority to all exegetical issues. The fact that you may have spent a half hour trying to get straight a particularly tricky historical problem of Israelite-Assyrian chronology does not mean that 10 percent of the sermon should therefore be given to an explanation of it. You may well choose not to mention it at all. Try to decide what the congregation needs to know from the sermon passage, as opposed to what you needed to know to prepare the sermon. There is much they can do without. Your two best criteria for making this decision are the passage itself and your own reactions to it. What the passage treats as significant is probably what the sermon should treat as significant; what you feel is most helpful and important to you personally is probably what the congregation will find most helpful and important to them. Every passage properly identified is about something: it has a main subject. If your preaching is faithful to the passage, your congregation should be able to go away from church able to state what the “big idea” of the passage is. And by all means, that “big idea” should be something that helps them understand God and their relationship to him, or you did not think through the exegesis and its culmination in application as carefully as you should have. By the way, if you do a proper job with the supporting ideas, the big idea will be better clarified from the passage itself and fixed in people’s minds; so do not assume that you can slight the smaller exegetical details and simply concentrate on the big idea and have a biblical sermon.
3.7.5. Trust the homiletical commentaries only so far
Most pastors rely far too heavily on the so-called homiletical commentaries (which emphasize suggestions for preaching) and not enough on their own scholarly exegesis. This can be counterproductive, since for the most part the homiletical commentaries are exegetically shallow. In addition, the commentator has no personal knowledge of you and your congregation and thus cannot possibly provide other than all-purpose observations and insights. The commentator can hardly speak to the controversies, the special strengths and weaknesses, the hot topics, the ethnic, familial, social, economic, political, educational, interpersonal, and other concerns that constitute the particular spiritual challenges for you and your congregation. The commentator has no idea how much or how little your congregation knows about a given topic or passage, how much ground you intend to cover in your sermon, or even the size of the units of the passage you have chosen to preach on. Accordingly, you are advised to refer to homilet-ical commentaries for the supplemental insights they may offer you after, not before, you have done the basic work yourself.
3.7.6. Remember that application is the ultimate concern of a sermon
A sermon is a presentation designed to apply the word of God to the lives of people. Without application, a talk is not a sermon; it may be a lecture, a lesson, or the like, but it is not a sermon. Be sure that the sermon you construct provides your people with an absolutely clear, practicable, and exegetically based application. This does not mean that most of the time given to the sermon must be spent on the application. The major proportion of time may actually be spent on matters that are not strictly appli-cational, as long as they help to lay the ground for the application. Indeed, you can hardly expect your congregation to accept your suggested application of a passage solely on your own authority. They need to be shown how the application is based on a proper comprehension of the passage’s meaning; they will probably not take the application to heart unless this is clear to them. Likewise, you must not merely explain to them what it says while avoiding what it demands. The Bible is not an end in itself: it is a means to the end of loving God with one’s whole heart and loving one’s neighbor as oneself. That is what the Law and the Prophets are all about.
Reference to the secondary literature is always necessary. There are too many specialized issues and sources for interpreting those issues for the student (or the professional scholar, for that matter) to rely only on one’s personal methodology. To properly interpret a portion of the book ofJob, for example, one must have some understanding of the special ways in which Canaanite myths are used, reused (albeit sanitized), and otherwise employed in the service of the message of Yahweh’s sovereignty over all creation. Likewise, some aspects of the special (old Edomite) dialect used in Job are simply beyond the ken of the seminary student or pastor whose only Semitic language is standard Hebrew. One must of necessity turn to the specialists for help and often even for an awareness of what the exeget-ical issues are.
No one’s work may be accepted uncritically, however. Specialists display poor judgment and a willingness to accept unlikely conclusions as often as anyone else. They are capable of giving plausibility to their poor judgments and unlikely conclusions by surrounding them with large amounts of related data, erudite verbiage, and ponderous footnotes. Nevertheless, your own common sense and your right to remain unconvinced, until such time as you are shown facts and arguments that seem to you convincing, will serve you well. When facing difficult and specialized issues that require expertise beyond your own, your main concern is not to originate something, but to evaluate it. Look critically at what the specialists are saying, compare their logic and their data, and choose from among them what seems most convincing. No one can ever ask more of you.