Dear Sovereign Redeemer and other friends,
Recently, a friend of mine and fellow pastor from Kentucky, Scot Chadwick, interviewed me for his new podcast, “Diligent Pastors.” It is broad-ranging, including my testimony, our church planting experiences, and various elements of church life.
Dear Sovereign Redeemer and other friends,
Early Sunday mornings, after the sermon is completely written, I print it and go back over it thoroughly, making additional hand-written notes and highlighting certain places to draw my attention to them as I preach.
On an average week, this represents 1 hour of work. For those keeping track, that brings my total time to prepare a sermon to a range of 11-15 hours.
As an example, here is what I carried into the pulpit for a recent sermon:
The entire file is accessible here.
Here are some additional thoughts related to actually delivering the sermon.
If you have the time and inclination, print out the sermon notes and listen to the sermon with those in hand.
I hope you find it to be a sound, expository sermon, and that this series of posts helps you grow in your ability to prepare and deliver the same.
Dear Sovereign Redeemer and other friends,
A daunting task: writing a sound, expository sermon to be delivered to the Lord’s people. That’s why it’s so daunting. They are His people. He bought them with His own blood. It is His word. He gave it as a good gift, without a jot or tittle of imperfection. And yet it is also exhilarating work, where so often the preacher can sense being helped in a unique way.
Without question, the hours I spend writing a sermon are among my favorite hours of the week, usually including Saturday evening and then early Sunday morning. Here are a few thoughts about how I spend these hours:
Most of these have little or no theological importance, and I’m confident there are better preachers who use very different approaches. Again, I offer what I do to stimulate thought.
For this series of posts, I continue to use a recent sermon that I preached on Nehemiah 13:10-14 titled “Forsaking the House of God” as an example. Here is what my sermon file looked like:
If you want to see the whole file, you can access it here.
On an average week, writing the sermon requires 3-4 hours of work.
One post remains: “Thoughts on Preaching”.
Dear Sovereign Redeemer and other friends,
This post assumes you have already read this, this and this. The Bible work is done, the study Bibles perused, the commentaries considered. Now I have an orderly and sometimes hefty study file.
The earlier in the week I can reach this point the better. I like to have a few days in this condition before I start writing. Whether consciously or not – sometimes I am purposefully thinking about it, often not – I am percolating on the information and turning the sermon text over in my mind again and again. Constructing a sound, expository sermon is more than picking out the particularly quotable nuggets from the experts and stringing them together in an organized way. It involves thinking. A lot of thinking.
Either the day I write the sermon, or preferably the day before, I print out my study file and read through it, making notes, highlighting the most significant portions, and starring the parts I want to make sure to use. By the end, that pack of papers is almost always a mess, and that’s how I like it!
Working back through my study file in this way usually requires 1 hour.
Now I am ready to write.
Dear Sovereign Redeemer and other friends,
The first stop on the road to preparing a sound, expository sermon should definitely be the Bible work. Once that has been given lavish attention, there is most certainly a place for consulting a variety of sources about the text. God has given tremendous insight into His word to various ones throughout the centuries, and we are well served to consult them, especially in areas of difficultly or controversy. Exclusively trusting our own insights is the height of arrogance and folly.
Let’s divide our consideration into two categories: study Bibles and commentaries.
Study Bibles
I prefer to start by reading through the notes of multiple study Bibles, since the content in a study Bible is by nature limited and more high level. A study Bible helps unpack the meaning of a text without going into extreme detail, and when several are consulted, a number of different perspectives emerge.
Here are the four that I consult on a weekly basis, usually in this order:
At the time of this post, all four of these study Bibles can be acquired for a total of just in excess of $100, so the costs aren’t prohibitive at all.
The genius of these four study Bibles is found in the distinctions. They are different enough to all be indispensable in the grouping. The last thing a studying pastor should want is to sequester himself in an echo chamber with only sources which never contradict his own inclinations. Having a diversity of sources with at least slightly different perspectives is beyond a good idea. It is safe. And beginning with these more limited, summary level sources actually helps me to be ready for what comes next.
Commentaries
After having gotten my feet wet, so speak, with the study Bibles, more comprehensive commentaries then provide greater depth and breadth. They provide more information and more fully treat the difficulties and controversies in the text.
Here are a few of my favorites:
As I read the notes in the study Bibles and the content from the more comprehensive commentaries, I highlight what I find to be the most important, relevant, and insightful sentences and then put them in my study file. Here is what my study file looked like after having done that, using a sermon on Nehemiah 13:10-14 as an example:
If you want to see the whole file, you can access it here.
On an average week, this represents 3-5 hours of work.
At this point in the process, the reading I intended to do is complete. The topic of the next post will be preparation for writing the sermon.
Dear Sovereign Redeemer and other friends,
Does it even need to be said that sermon preparation should start with the Bible work? By “Bible work” I mean the direct study of the sermon text itself, and the related cross-references, as opposed to what others say about the sermon text.
It is a great temptation to just skip to what Matthew Henry says (for instance), but a temptation which must be resisted. What quicker way can we imagine to quench the Spirit than an unhealthy – borderline idolatrous – reliance on men? Sermon preparation should begin with a quiet room and a Bible. The most important work in preparing a sound, expository sermon happens then.
Week in and week out, this describes my Bible work:
– Men’s Bible study. At Sovereign Redeemer, the men and boys who are willing and able meet for an hour on Monday morning to discuss the text that will be preached on the upcoming Sunday. Leading that discussion gets me into the text at the start of the week, and gives me exposure to the thoughts of a variety of men regarding the text. If there are particular interpretive challenges, I become aware of them right away.
– Searching out the best cross-references. The most important principle of Bible interpretation (or hermeneutic) is that Scripture interprets Scripture. Other related texts of Scripture are always the best commentary on the sermon text, and always the best source of explanation for difficulties in the sermon text. Always. So, after reading the sermon text slowly several times, and earnestly seeking the Lord for help, this is where I start. I look up every cross-reference from four sources (three study Bibles and Matthew Poole) one by one, looking at each in context and considering the bearing of each on the sermon text. My guess is that 75% of the finished sermon comes from this exercise. I cannot stress enough how invaluable this step is.
– Comparing translations. Years ago, at an expository preaching conference, Dr. Andy Davis gave a message in which he said that if a preacher hasn’t studied the original languages (Hebrew in the Old Testament, Greek in the New), the next best thing is a comparison of reliable English translations. At points of translational agreement, the English word uniformly selected by the translators is a close equivalent to the word in the original language. At points of translational variation, the underlying Hebrew or Greek word is worth researching. Having never studied Hebrew or Greek, this has been very valuable advice for me. I use Bible Gateway, an online tool which allows for side-by-side comparison of selected translations. Here is the link that I use, which compares NKJV, KJV, NASB, ESV, and NIV.
– Looking at the original language. For very prominent, important words in the text, and for places where significant translational variation exists, I look at the Hebrew or Greek. I use the online tool Blue Letter Bible. By entering the text, then selecting the verse, then selecting the Strong’s number for the word in question, a multitude of information is made available. Not only is information from the Lexicon very valuable, but the other places where the same word is used is displayed. Looking at the other usages of the same word is often pure gold.
– Creating a basic outline. At this point I make a first attempt at creating a high level structure for the sermon. Having done the Bible work, I should have begun forming a view of how the text could or should be preached, and this forces me to begin articulating that. This first outline usually represents no more than fifteen minutes of scribbling on a legal pad, but it moves my thinking from what I am learning to how I might communicate what I am learning, which are vastly different things.
When all of this is complete, I have the beginnings of my study file, which I continue to populate throughout the week. For this series of posts, I am going to use a recent sermon that I preached on Nehemiah 13:10-14 titled “Forsaking the House of God” as an example. Here is what my study file looked like after having completed the Bible work I have been describing:
If you want to see the whole file, you can access it here.
A few things to point out:
In my next post, I will discuss the outside helps – the study Bibles and commentaries – that I utilize to help me better understand the sermon text.
* As a side note, fantastic Bible study tools exist that are not even referenced in this post. I have not invested in these yet, but I have no doubt of their tremendous value. If you are interested, here is a detailed review of two of them.
Dear Sovereign Redeemer and other friends,
In my last post, titled “A Preacher’s Building Blocks,” I argued that every time a preacher undertakes the painstaking task of preparing a sound, expository sermon, that preacher gains a rich deposit for his use in the future, a “building block” so to speak. I closed that post by threatening to write about the methods I use to prepare and then deliver what I hope are sound, expository sermons. I now attempt to make good on that threat.
Two preliminary comments:
1. I know that I have many, many superiors in this category.
2. None of this is “secret sauce” which should be employed by everyone or which guarantees success.
Still, these are methods employed by one man (me) who has been doing this week in and week out for several years now, and I hope that many will find that this stimulates thought, whether or not the methods themselves are emulated.
These are the posts that will follow:
Stay tuned.
Dear Sovereign Redeemer and other friends,
Every sound, expository sermon becomes a building block for the man who preached it. What I mean is that the preparation required to preach a sound, expository sermon becomes a rich deposit which is then at the disposal of the one who did that work.
Having preached most Sundays for the last four years, I know this is true. You can listen to my early sermons and my later sermons and tell that I have more building blocks at my disposal now than I did then. Every week that a text of Scripture is studied to the depth required to give a faithful exposition, so much is learned, so many connections in Scripture are uncovered, so many applications are considered. And this accumulates week by week, and all things being equal, causes sermons to have more depth and breadth over time.
Here are a couple of implications:
– Preaching rotations have their “cons”. There are some “pros” to ongoing preaching rotations, but a definite disadvantage is that each preacher has less building blocks. Any preacher will tell you that only a fraction of what is learned in preparing to preach a sermon can possibly be learned in the hearing of it. The preparation for a sermon might easily consume ten to fifteen intensely focused hours, while the hearing of it rarely exceeds a partially focused one. When one man has the primary responsibility to preach sequentially through a book of the Bible, he has the definite advantage of acquiring building blocks all along the way, and building blocks that are closely related to upcoming sermons at that. For each new sermon, he is reaching back and pulling forward things learned in the preceding weeks and months.
– Setting aside a man reaps a harvest. Consider again my opening premise: “Every sound, expository sermon becomes a building block for the man who preached it.” A lot goes into that premise. A sound (careful, faithful, precise), expository (true explanation of the Scripture text) sermon doesn’t drop out of the sky. It comes from diligence, prayer, study, thought. It comes from time. When a church buys a man’s time and sends him off to go deep into the text, in order for him to bring them into the depth of it on Sunday, week after week, month after month, and year after year, that church is looking to reap the benefits of that, and they generally do. The ministry of the word is one of the core needs of a local church, and it is hard to imagine that it could be too lavishly provided for.
– Church planting multiplies this effect. When Hope Baptist planted Sovereign Redeemer over four years ago, the number of men who were acquiring a new building block each week doubled from one to two. What is the value of that over time and many church plants? Priceless. That is the tragedy of short-circuiting that effect through satellite campuses which pipe in preaching over the jumbotron. Depth that could have been added to the Lord’s people is lost, and we become more dependent on personality and the most gifted communicators. Don’t get me wrong. There is no virtue in bad preaching, and we should praise God for gifted communicators if they are also leading godly lives, but the sound preaching of a truly local shepherd is to be preferred to John Piper on the jumbotron every time.
I hope these thoughts are useful, and I plan for them to be the introduction of a short series of posts titled “The Anatomy of a Sermon,” where I will outline the methods I use to prepare and then deliver what I hope are sound, expository sermons.
Dear Sovereign Redeemer and other friends,
The title is essentially the post. I have been reading Richard Baxter’s classic work for pastors, “The Reformed Pastor,” with a friend, and we just came across a gem. Baxter exhorts pastors to throw themselves wholeheartedly into sermon preparation:
“Study hard, for the well is deep, and our brains are shallow…”
I don’t know a preacher who disagrees.
Dear Sovereign Redeemer and other friends,
One of the outstanding messages from the NCFIC “Worship of God” conference included some observations by Joel Beeke about Puritan preaching. I found two to be especially inspiring and helpful:
1. They detested “exposing their learning.”
Most of the Puritan preachers were very learned men. Reading them and gaining a sense of what they themselves had read is very humbling. It isn’t a stretch to say that modern preachers pale by comparison as a whole. But well-studied as they were, and hard as they worked in preparation for preaching, Puritan preachers labored to speak plainly and directly. They worked to pierce the heart, as well as to enlighten the mind. They wanted power in their preaching, not polish or flourish. They wanted to be faithful to the text and to be thoroughly understood, not to be thought smart. Every preacher should aspire to this.
2. They preached that the natural man was sinning with every tick of the clock.
Puritan preachers pressed on their hearers that every person was created by God for His glory, and so every second living for self and unreconciled with God was an utterly sinful second. This allowed them to lift up the remedy – our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ – in a beautiful and unparalleled way. It helped them to batter down the walls of self-satisfaction erected by those outside of Christ who needed to be convinced of their desperate need to fly to the cross for mercy.
Preachers of the gospel, join with me in aspiring to follow our Puritan forefathers by preaching to the heart as well as the mind, and by pressing the sinfulness of the unrepentant state on our hearers. These hearers will be better served as we do.