I’m in the final stages of editing my manuscript, Preaching With Greater Accuracy, and will soon send it off to Kregel Publishing. I have come to appreciate the fact that exposition of Scripture often involves answering questions that are implied in a preaching portion. Implied, but not spelled out. If the preaching portion doesn’t have an answer, that means the rest of Scripture must provide an answer. That process is what I refer to as theological thinking. An example is Psalm 139:23-24
“Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!”
One implied question in v. 24 is, if perchance God finds some grievous way in me, what does He do about it? How does God lead me in the way everlasting after searching deep within my sinfulness and seeing what’s there? The Psalmist doesn’t answer that. I believe, as expositors, we need to answer that. An important segment of the sermon involves showing how Scripture provides an answer. I want to allow the theology of the rest of Scripture to inform my understanding of the Psalm.
How would you complete this sentence: “After searching my heart and finding some grievous way in me, God can lead me in the way everlasting because…”?
Lord willing, in future posts I’ll show other examples of this from Luke’s gospel.
Randy,
Your post raises the issue of what questions do I answer in my message. We don’t have time to answer every question that may occur to our listeners during a given sermon. I faced this dilemma several weeks ago. My message was from Acts 13:42-52. The main question of my sermon was, “Why were these disciples experiencing such joy (52)?” I had four points/moves: 1. They were filled with the Holy Spirit. 2. They believed the gospel. 3. They saw the gospel’s success. 4. They were suffering with Christ. In v.49 we read, “and all who were appointed to eternal life believed.” This verse raises the whole question of predestination. I didn’t what to go there. It would have taken too much time to explain (the message was already getting long) and would likely have become the main question for people. I ended up giving it a few sentences, something to the effect that predestination assures us of the gospel’s success, but I may have created more questions than I answered. It’s a dilemma. Any suggestions for deciding which questions to address and which to leave for another day (and text)?
Great question, Chris. I think the implied questions that should be answered are those that flesh out how the Text can function for the Church. In your example, you made a judgment call on how much you would explain a theological concept, “all who were appointed to eternal life believed.” Another theologically loaded phrase is in v. 46 “judge yourself unworthy of eternal life.” You probably had to decide how much time you would take to explain that, too. First, I think your approach of a few sentences and moving on with the intention of Acts 13 is a good one. I realize we’re always creating more questions each Sunday and my hope is that some keep coming back and learning/responding. I’m counting on the cumulative affect of preaching week after week to both create and answer questions. Second, I choose to answer the questions that my Text might not deal with, but that the Gospel Story does explain. Our example in Psalm 139 tells me that a sermon that doesn’t answer the question will not adequately explain the Christian life. Exegesis will force me (maybe better, urge me) to explain what a “grievous way” is. Only theology/the Gospel will explain how God can see my sin and still lead me in the way everlasting. I know that’s not clearing up your question, but I’m hoping future examples will help. Let me know if you have any thoughts on how to decide what to cover and what to skim through.