It’s not too late for you to check your sermon notes and see how you have done connecting the dots in your preaching portion. I am learning that this might be the most significant exegetical skill for an expositor. It’s the ability to trace the argument of your text. Or, you might see it as showing how each major thought block in your text interrelates. This means we are looking for meaning beyond the sentence level.

I have been up to my neck in this aspect of discourse analysis for several weeks and months. Most recently, I had the privilege of teaching a Doctor of Ministry cohort (From the Study to Pulpit) at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. Here’s a look at that fine group:

A couple of weeks before that it was my privilege to talk about connecting the dots in apocalyptic literature with another D.Min. cohort at GCTS (Preaching the Literary Forms of the Bible):

And then, months ago, I was blessed to spend time talking about the importance of tracing the author’s argument with a group of Master’s level students at Lancaster Bible College/Capital Seminary & Graduate School (Advanced Homiletics).

In every case, we were amazed to see how meaning is formed in the Bible through the interrelationship between ideas in a selected preaching portion. Nothing makes us better expositors than starting by tracing the argument of a text. That is possible with the following steps:

1. identify the major thought blocks in your text
2. summarize each identified block in one sentence
3. write out the logical transition that causes the writer to move out of block one into block two, etc.

In Luke 15 this might look like:

#1 Religious leaders grumbled because Jesus was eating with sinners (vv. 1-2)

Transition: So Jesus told them a parable to correct their grumbling about Him eating with sinners

#2 Jesus told the parable of the lost sheep to correct their grumbling (vv. 3-7)

#3 [you can finish it…]

And, because you understood the interrelationship between the opening narrative and the three-fold parable, you know you would end your sermon focused, not on the prodigal, but on the older brother! And that would drive your primary application away from calling prodigals home.

May our Lord receive glory in the church and in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3;21) as we identify and communicate the interrelationship between ideas that exist in our preaching portions each Sunday.

Randal