Category Archives: sermon development

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How Much of Your Sermon Is Original?

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I believe that but also know of other preachers who have preached this text better!

In the middle of the week I began thinking about how much of my sermon-in-the-making is the result of my own thinking. I know about the debate surrounding whether or not anyone can ever have a truly original idea. And I’m not talking about plagiarizing either.

I guess I’m asking you to think about what parts of your sermon development and delivery are your work.

Let’s begin with some thoughts about using someone else’s material:

On one side of the spectrum, think about those times when you rely on an English dictionary, thesaurus, or original language lexicons and theological dictionaries. Now go all the way to the other side of the line and think about borrowing someone else’s sermon title and structure.

In the middle I put quotes or paraphrases from our favorite authors, like Jonathan Edwards, Augustine, or William Goldman (author and screenplay writer of The Princess Bride).

So, what do I bring to the equation? Every week by the grace of God I…

  • trace the argument of my preaching portion and discover how meaning is made before I know what that meaning is.
  • determine how this text intends to elicit worship (I complete the sentence: “We worship the Lord this morning by…”).
  • know enough about my congregants to know this text is relevant.
  • create a structure that leads to the theological meaning of the text.
  • talk to my listeners about their Christian experience from the text while I write out my sermon manuscript.
  • make critical word-choices that affect how the sermon sounds (an ora-script within the manuscript).
  • smile at them to let them know I love them.
  • show them how the Christ-event makes this text come true for those who believe.

What did I miss?

May our Sunday “originals” continue to give God glory in the church and in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:21),

Randal

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Anticipating, “I doubt that”: What I’m Learning From Reading Jonathan Edwards’s Earliest Sermons

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The, Convince-me-this-is-true, look!

It didn’t take long reading Jonathan Edwards’s earliest sermons to learn that he learned early in his preaching ministry to anticipate push-back from his listeners as he taught biblical doctrine.

In his sermon, Wicked Men’s Slavery To Sin, based on John 8:34 (“Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin”), Edwards begins his “Doctrine” section with this statement:

“Wicked men are servants and slaves to sin.” (p. 340 in Kimnach)

After the heading he wrote, “We shall explain and clear up this doctrine by answering these two queries… [emphasis added]”

What Edwards wants to “clear up” in the early goings of the message is the fact that many of his listeners don’t agree with that statement. He writes, “Perhaps you may think with yourself, ‘I don’t see but that wicked men are happy, and live as free as the best men in the world.'”

Edwards anticipates a reaction from his listeners. He knows some doubt the doctrine and he immediately goes to work addressing their thoughts. He also directly addresses those listeners who “object” to the idea that they are wicked and believe themselves to be free.

The slide below shows some of the rhetorical strategies preachers use to create message minutes. If you listen to a preacher or teacher you will hear them doing these things. Notice the contrapuntal circle. It’s a word I encountered years ago from Buttrick’s, Homiletic. A contrapuntal occurs when a listener doesn’t agree with what you’ve said; they have a different opinion about the matter. Edwards knew how important it was to anticipate push-back.

So, one of the ways Edwards crafts this sermon is by proving that the doctrine is indeed true, that wicked men are slaves to sin. It takes careful thinking, plus the ability to correlate the doctrine with other key Scripture.

In the next post I will show you some of the keys to Edwards’s approach.

As you work on your next sermon/lesson, consider the doubtability of your doctrine, address it, and God will receive glory in the church and in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:21).

Randal

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“most powerful arguments”: What I’m Learning from Reading Jonathan Edwards’s Earliest Sermons

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Edwards’s, The Value of Salvation

The second sermon recorded by Kimnach in his tenth volume of The Works of Jonathan Edwards is, “The Value Of Salvation.” The text is Matthew 16:26

“…what is a man profited, if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul…?”

It is clear that Edwards followed God’s lead in creating a sermon full of “most powerful arguments” for making one’s soul utmost priority.

I learned from the way Edwards described our tendency to get earthly things: “If he hugs them [bags of gold and silver] ever so close, he must leave them forever and ever when once he leaves the world” (p. 313, emphasis added).

Then, as I’m seeing so many times in his sermons, Edwards is a master at creating powerful images to illustrate truth. Speaking of Alexander Magnus [The Great] when he was dying:

“he whom the whole could not contain must at last be confined to only a narrow grave. A few square feet of ground is large enough for him now, whom the earth was not broad enough for before” (p. 314)

Ouch!

When he turns to the inestimable worth of salvation, among several statements he wrote,

“They shall be perfectly delivered from sin and temptation. The saved soul leaves all its sin with the body; when it puts off the body of the man, it puts off the body of sin with it. When the body is buried, all sin is buried forever, and though the soul shall be joined to the body again, yet sin shall never return…” (p. 323)

Anyone in the house that realizes their sinfulness will surely smile at the thought of our bright, sinless future.

Edwards begins to wrap up the sermon with these these exhortations:

“We have now heard the most powerful arguments in the world to persuade us [to] take care of our souls….let us take no thought for this present any otherwise than as the means of the good of our souls.” (pp. 329, 330).

Finally, speaking of the Christian life in terms of a race or fight, “men don’t use [to] stop sometime and run sometime when they were upon a race; men, when they are engaged…in a battle, don’t use to stand still now and then to rest when their enemies are about them, for if they so do they are in danger every minute of being killed” (p. 333).

I hope that these excerpts from Edwards will fuel your desire to preach and teach God’s Word so He receives glory in the church and in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:21).

Randal

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What If You Were Being Charged $0.65 Per Word?

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How much would your sermon manuscript cost?

This past week I had the unfortunate privilege of helping to write my Dad’s obituary. The fine folks at the Kennebec Journal in Augusta, Maine informed me that each word would cost $0.65 and each picture an additional $15.

That information changed the way I wrote the final draft. [Just to let you know, our family agreed that the cost was not a factor in what we decided to include or exclude. However, knowing the cost per word did affect my editing.]

So, what if you wrote out your sermon, word-for-word and then edited it knowing you would be charged $0.65 per word and money was tight? Do you think that final draft would be better or worse because of it?

I think you know what I think. Your sermon would become more concise. You would find that lots of the words in the first draft were unnecessary and unhelpful. The discarded words and phrases would gain you valuable pulpit time, especially those precious minutes near the end.

Some of you know I’m a big fan of manuscripting-with-a-view-toward-preaching-without-notes for lots of reasons. Manuscripting provides an opportunity for me to be more concise. Editing as if I were being charged $0.65 per word gives me a final draft I can confidently “take” to the pulpit.

Most of my students don’t believe me when I extol the virtues of manuscripting. They confess that they usually write out an outline and some key thoughts. Then I usually protest in my evaluations of their final sermons that they could have been more concise! (*smile*)

Before Sunday edit your manuscript as if I were charging you $0.65 per word and may our Lord receive glory in the church and in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:21) in part because of your concise communication of His Word.

Randal

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Never Study Without Typing Out Your Sermon. Ever. Period.

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That’s you writing out your sermon from minute one of your study!

This was supposed to be another, What I’m learning from reading Jonathan Edwards’s early sermons post. It still is in a way.

Kimnach’s general introduction to volume 10 (The Works of Jonathan Edwards) includes a section called, The Making of Sermons. It’s a gold mine for anyone interested in Edwards’s homiletical method. For instance, Edwards changed the way he took notes as he gained preaching experience.

In the early years Edwards’s sermon notebook contained Scripture that might be preach-able. Later “the notebook becomes a workbook, perhaps indicating an increasing devotion to the art of making sermons, but more likely indicating an effort to eliminate the need for a full first draft, separate from the pulpit draft of the sermon” (p. 67).

That means Edwards began writing out his sermons much earlier.

I can’t remember when I started the practice of writing the sermon from the moment I begin my studying on Monday mornings. But it’s one of the best practices I’ve learned over the years.

It means not separating studying for a sermon from the actual writing of the sermon. Sermon studying = sermon scripting.

Try this: copy and paste your preaching portion for Sunday onto a Pages or Word document (for me it’s Psalm 3 in the morning and Psalm 4 in the evening), begin at verse 1 (or whatever your first verse is; of course you’ve confessed your sin if you have wormed your way into the middle of a pericope!), and begin preaching to your congregants.

You don’t need to select one or two; preach to them all just like you’ll be doing on Sunday, Lord willing. You’ll find that you’ll preach some, study some, then preach some more, then study some more, etc. That is, you’ll write down what you’ll say to your folks, visit your favorite helps in Logos or commentary, and write out what you found and want to convey. That rhythm occurs repeatedly for the duration of your sermon preparation.

If you combine this practice of writing your sermon while you study with my ABIT approach to your first hour or two of study, you’ll find your sermon comes together quite nicely.

May our Lord be glorified in the church and in Christ Jesus as you work hard for Him and your flock this week (Ephesians 3:21).

Randal

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The Connection Between Shallow Sermons and Too Much Content

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I saw this caption on what is supposed to be a funny t-shirt. I said, “supposed to be,” because it’s describing the practice of a surgeon. Yikes!

But according to Carrell’s analysis in, Preaching That Matters,

“the reluctance to eliminate content seems to be the primary preparation obstacle for most who preach wide sermons” (p. 109).

Evidently many of us struggle with cutting anything out of our sermon preparation notes. And it hurts us and our hearers.

Carrell records the different ways preachers rationale keeping everything in and delivering it all on Sundays:

“It’s such good material!”

“The more material the better!”

“The more material, the better chances there will be something for everyone!”

The problem: the more material, the greater the risk you will lose your listeners. Listeners simply get worn out trying to keep up with all that good stuff.

A few weeks ago I had the privilege of sitting down with one of our Elders who was going to preach on a Sunday morning. We met to go over his sermon notes. We talked about the best way to accomplish his goals for the sermon–the preaching portion’s goal for the worshiper. Apart from rearranging a few key segments, we spent most of our time deciding on what to leave out. We did that because cutting some things out would allow him to stay focused on what the preaching portion intended to do to the church.

Before Sunday, begin to look for some of the good, biblical information that may keep true transformation from taking place. And God will receive glory in the church and in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:21).

Randal

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How Did He Think Like That?!?!: What I’m Learning From Reading the Early Sermons of Jonathan Edwards

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Christian Happiness, a sermon based on Isaiah 3:10, may be Edwards’s earliest sermon on record. The verse reads,

“Say unto the righteous, it shall be well with them: for they shall eat the fruit of their doings.” (emphasis added)

The sermon begins with,

“Reasonable beings, while they act as such, naturally choose those things which they are convinced are best for them, and will certainly do those things which they know they had better do than leave undone.” (p. 296, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol. 10)

In typical Edwards fashion, he methodically unloads his logic on his listeners (two propositions of “doctrine,” five inferences of “use,” and two exhortations). Surely, every listeners is convinced that it’s in their best interest to be righteous!

But what caught my attention was the fourth inference:

“Hence learn the great goodness of God in joining so great happiness to our duty.” (p. 303)

How did Edwards think of this? What got him to this inference? And is it important for you and me that we figure this out?

Edwards thinks that there can be no happiness in this life if that happiness does not include doing the things righteous people do.

He states as Gospel fact:

“…the thing required of us shall not only be easy but a pleasure and delight, even in the very doing of it. How much the goodness of God shines forth even in his commands!” (p. 304)

Imagine a God–Edwards refers to Him as “a master of extraordinary goodness”–who only desires our happiness and out of His goodness commands “us to do those things that will make us so” (p. 304)!

Well, not only do we imagine our God like that, we praise Him because He is like that. And we evaluate whether our attitude towards doing the will of God–“a pleasure and delight”–reflects that reality.

May that kind of deep thinking be a part of our weekly preparation and result in God receiving glory in the church and in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:21).

Randal

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Building Your Sermon (part 3): What I’m Learning From Reading Jonathan Edwards’s Early Sermons

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My mentor, Haddon Robinson, used to say there were three things you could do to an idea: you could explain it, prove it, or apply it.

[Look at the manuscript you’re creating for your next preaching/teaching assignment and locate these segments.]

That rhetorical strategy has been around for a while. Jonathan Edwards didn’t invent it, but used it in his day (early 18th century). His words were explication, confirmation, and now application.

Now, I know you’re familiar with application, but Edwards might help you; it has helped me and continues to do so. Here’s how.

First, before Sunday, check to see if your Scripture is either doctrinal or practical.

If it’s doctrinal, plan on showing the effects that believing this doctrine has on the Christian life (thinking and acting). It’s tempting to only explain or prove a doctrine, but Edwards moved from those two to application. “Since I believe in God’s sovereignty as expressed in this Scripture, it affects me by…”

Last evening while teaching through An Orthodox Catechism Q&A on the providence of God, I asked the folks what our day would be like if we began with affirmation about this wonderful ability of our God to uphold every facet of our lives.

If your Scripture is practical, does it provide reproof, or consolation, or exhortation? Edwards was a master at providing motives either from “Profit” or “Danger” that would “excite the affections”  He was meticulous in providing the “Meanes to direct the actions” (p. 31 in Kimnach).

I quickly realized that I do not spend near enough time providing motives to move the affections. I am too quick to direct the actions from the text without explaining and proving why such application is the right thing to do. That was new to me: combining all three in the application of the sermon.

May our Lord help you build your sermon/lesson so He continues to receive glory in the church and in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:21).

Randal

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How To Structure Your Sermon (part 2): What I’m Learning From the Early Sermons of Jonathan Edwards

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These posts are designed to give us a look at how Jonathan Edwards crafted his sermons. You can compare this to the way you do it.

Last week I began with Edwards first major sermon section, explication. This week we move to his second section, confirmation. Edwards confirmed the truths he explicated by:

positive proofs from Scripture or reason and also by providing solutions to some major doubts and questions that arise from the text. (cf. Kimnach, p. 30 for more details, including the weird spelling below).

Edwards divides his time between what he called “notionall”, “doctrinall” and “practicall” truths. His powerful logic works thr0ughout the sermon to convince his listeners that what God says is true. And since his third major sermon section is application, you can see that the “practicall” truths he presents already bleeds into the application section.

Edwards is relentless in his attack of the mind of his listeners to grasp the meaning, proof, and implications of Scripture. He literally argues with his audience and their thought-patterns along the way in his second major section of the sermon.

So, before Sunday, see if you have some places in your message where you can confirm the faith and challenge to the doubts and questions of your listeners. See if you are taking them on a logical journey that is impossible to deny (provided they start with your presuppositions about Scripture, God, and the plight of sinful man, of course).

My mentor, Haddon Robinson, used to say that there were only three things you could do with an idea: explain, prove, or apply. These three certainly piggyback onto Edwards distinct Puritan sermon form of explication, confirmation, application.

May our Lord receive glory in the church and in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:21) due to the way you structure your sermons.

Randal

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How You Structure Your Sermon: What I’m Learning From Reading Jonathan Edwards’s Early Sermons

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I didn’t know Cox’s book existed, but virtually everyone has heard about sermons crafted with three points and a poem. It’s almost always said in jest (and that’s no slam on Cox).

One of the things I’m learning from reading Jonathan Edwards’s early sermons is what Kimnach refers to as “the seventeenth-century Puritan sermon” (p. 27). Edwards loosely followed a three-point structure of explication, confirmation, and application, borrowed from a seventeenth-century author, Wilkins (Ecclesiaastes, Or, A Discourse Concerning the Gift of Preaching as it falls under the Rules of Art (London, 1646)).

Kimnach provides a detailed look at each of the three and I will summarize the first one, explication, in this post (p. 29). He writes,

“Explication is either of the text…or of the doctrines deduced from it.”

If you decided to develop your sermon from the text, then that would include three things:

First, an “Unfolding [of the] difficulties” of that text. This involved unraveling the difficulties of a phrase, the circumstances surrounding that text (to whom it was written), and the Analogy of Faith (other similar Scriptures).

Second, “Distinguishing ambiguous…words [and/or] phrases.”

Third, “dividing of the Text, which must not be…Needlesse [sic.] [or] Obscure.”

If you decided to develop your sermon from the doctrines within your text, then you would:

One, Clearing their inference (meaning, I think, that you make a clear connection between your text and the doctrine you are expounding).

Two, “Showing the latitude of every…Truth [or] Duty…According to their severall [sic.]…Branches [or] Degrees.”

Let me quickly say two things that might help our own sermon development.

First, Edwards (through Wilkens) did not divide the Text needlessly. That means he only showed divisions that were important for establishing meaning and application. Before Sunday, check how you’ve divided the text and eliminate any unnecessary divisions (those that do not highlight critical flow of thought/argument).

Second, from the second, Two, above, Edwards has made me realize I need to spend more time meditating on the range that a particular doctrine has in life, both truth and duty. Before Sunday, see if you have explored the far-reaching effects of your doctrine.

And may God be glorified in the church and in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:21).

Randal

P.S. Next time, Lord willing, we’ll explore the confirmation and, then, application sections.