The Development Of Expository Sermons (Steps 1-4)

Sermon Transcript

We want to begin right now the subject of “The Development Of Expository Sermons.” I want to note that the development of an expository sermon is a subjective matter, which means that there’s different ways to do it. There’s not the law of the Medes and the Persians. There’s no specific way that must be done and must be followed. I look at developing your skill and ability of being an expository preacher as kind of like learning to ride a bicycle. When you sometimes learn to ride a bicycle, you put on training wheels, and eventually the training wheels drop off. When you’re young, and just getting started, many times the “training wheels” would be following another pastor’s model or what a pastor does.

I think the first influence that I had in expository preaching would be my introduction to Warren Wiersbe’s “BE” series. I was around then at the time when they were just being issued. I think James was the first one he ever did, but I was introduced by Romans, BE Right. I would highly recommend that if you ever teach the book of Romans, that you read his BE Right. It’s masterful. His Philippians is masterful. His Colossians, so you want to be able to buy the “BE” series and use those, especially if you’re just getting started, pay attention to how he introduces, transitions, packages, outlines, and be able to have that greatly influence you. Eventually, the training wheels drop off, and you’re on your roll and you kind of got a habit of how to outline and package and put it together. Warren Wiersbe’s “BE” series are phenomenal. Aaron said we had him at the church I pastored previously for two days, and what a blessing that was. I got to spend a lot of time with him, and what a wonderful man of God he was.

I want to talk about the development of expository sermons. This is not delivery, but I’ll intertwine some of like Terry Hlebo did, so there’s going to be repetition. You’re going to hear some quotes that you’ve heard me say before or other teachers have said before. I’m going to give you step 1, step 2, step 3, step 4, step 5 right straight through for this session and tomorrow. It would be from now until we wrap things up.

Here’s step 1, choose a text. Choose your text. An old recipe for rabbit stew starts, first catch the rabbit. I love that. First, catch a rabbit. You’ve got to have a text, you’ve got to pick a text, and you do that, of course, by prayer. Maybe you’re asked to preach on a text, maybe you’re praying about a text. A lot of questions I’ve gotten in just the last few moments about guest speaking and what I should speak on or not speak on, but you have to pick a text. So, why use a text? Let me ask that question. The answer is because we’re expositors, not speculators. We’re expositors, we preach a text. We always have a text. No matter what I’m doing, if I’m asked to speak to an elementary school group or some kind of a social group, I always have a text to spring off of or to use to segue into what I want to say. I’m not a public speaker. I’m not a talker. I’m not a TED talker. I’m not a public speaker. I’m an expositor. All I do is preach the Word, so whenever I go somewhere I’m invited to speak, and the situation may be a little different, all I know is open my Bible, read a text, and preach.

I get some interesting invitations. I was asked to speak at chapel for Seventh-day Adventism at Loma Linda, over a thousand students, the main campus, main chapel, Loma Linda University chapel service, and there’s like over a thousand people in this chapel. I said, “Open your Bibles,” they looked at me like I just came from Mars. I’m in a church, it’s a chapel, and I’m supposed to speak. I’m a pastor, and I said, “Open your Bibles,” and they looked at me like, “What did he say? Open, what Bible? What’s a Bible?” I couldn’t believe it. I went ahead and just preached the text, but they were flabbergasted that he had actually preached from the Bible. It was unbelievable. But that’s what we want, we want to pick a text because we’re not speculators, we’re expositors.

Real quickly, and I’ve got my opposite side of the page that I’m jumping over to, so this is kind of like fill in, why use a text? Because we’re expositors. Let me give you these five points, otherwise there’s no authority. We use a text otherwise there is no authority. The authority is in the text, and if you don’t have a text, then there’s no authority. If the authority is the Scriptures, and you don’t have Scriptures, then there’s no authority. Secondly, so we will not infringe on the Christ headship of the church. Jesus said, “ . . . I will build my church,” we think we can build His church? No, Jesus is going to build His church, so we use His Word. Thirdly, why use a text? So that our preaching is in concert with the Holy Spirit. Fourthly, so that people learn how to handle the Scriptures themselves. I love this. I really believe with all my heart the way I preach the Bible, the way I read the text, the way I interpret the text, the way I apply the text is training the congregation with how you study the Bible, how you apply the Bible. You’re mentoring your people and modeling for them how to study the Word of God. Your people learn how to handle Scripture. Fifthly, to protect the church from false teaching. Why have a text? To protect or guard the church from false teaching. That’s why we pick a text.

Now, how to pick a text. Boy we could talk forever about this, how to pick a text. Well, it all depends upon just your philosophy of ministry, what you’re doing. If you’re a pastor and you’re preaching on a regular basis, and some have already asked, “Do I start Genesis 1:1 and preach all the way to Revelation 22,” I don’t know what the last verse of the Bible is, how many verses in chapter 22, “to the end of the Bible? Do I start with Matthew? Do I start with Mark? Where do I start? How do I pick a text?” Well, it’s up to you, the church, the needs, what the situation is, and you pick a text based on just what the circumstances are that you’re preaching in. The question I wanted to also deal with is how long of a text do I pick? Do I pick one verse? Do I pick one paragraph? Do I pick one chapter? Again, it depends upon your approach, what you’re trying to do, how much time you have, and where the text breaks up.

I look for texts that are a unit, a unit of thought. I look for texts that create one unit of thought so that you have it all in context. You do need to remember the text is going to be the master. It’s going to dictate your topic, and the text is the authority. When you preach, you should practice variety in types of text that you preach. That’s why sometimes I’ll break away from a series through a book of the Bible and I’ll do a topical series because it’s something that’s on my heart, yet it’s still textual and taken from the Scriptures.

Do you understand the difference between a topical series and preaching systematically, consecutively through a book of the Bible? Any questions on what a topical sermon is? You pick a topic, you take different assorted verses and preach from those that support that topic, arrange that. Preach devotionally, you mainly preach to the heart, it’s usually a shorter text, short or long length. Again, the definition and description of different kinds of sermons is subjective. Different teachers will describe them differently, so you can’t really put it in a nice little neat box.

(Question asked) I do that. What I do, I tend to do that by topic. One of the things I wanted to kind maybe do, maybe we’ll do it tomorrow, is to actually fire up my topical series on the screens so we could show it to you or you can get it on your computers. But I did 1 Corinthians 15, and I took seven or eight weeks and called it “Hope Beyond The Grave.” It’s kind of like some pastors in the past have preached great chapters of the Bible. There are books, more than one book. Chris Wall, the famous Baptist preacher of First Baptist has done a book, Spurgeon has a book, Great Chapters Of The Bible. There’s several great books on great chapters of the Bible—John 3, John 17, Ephesians 2. That could be a series, “Great Chapters Of The Bible,” with John Miller or whatever your name is. You can do that. I’ve done that, and they’re some of my favorite.

By the way, if you’re ever going to take your sermons and put them in book form, that’s a great way to go. We’re pretty far along and, Lord willing, pretty soon going to have a new book out titled, Blessed Assurance. Do you know what the book is? They’re the sermons on Romans 8, but they weren’t taught in Romans series, they were just taught as a topical series in Romans 8. I started in Romans 8:1. It’s all under the heading of “Blessed Assurance.” I set the chapter in the context of the book of Romans, but all I taught for eight, nine, or ten weeks was Romans 8, all under the subject of “Blessed Assurance,” and we’re putting it in book form. It’s going to be a whole book just on Romans 8. That’s what John MacArthur’s done before. Some of his books are based on sermon series.

Or, you can take, if you’re teaching through the book of 1 Corinthians, and you find that you spent a lot of time in chapter 15, you could pull it out, do the editing, and produce it as a book. When I did that, 1 Corinthians 15, I called it, “Hope Beyond The Grave.” A lot of my sermons on Psalm 23, one of the topical series I did that I wanted to do for years and finally did, and none of my ideas are original, I get them from some other source or there’s other books already done is, “Night Scenes In The Bible.” That was a fun series. All the night scenes of the Bible, and you can preach it as a series, and then that can be produced as a book as well.

Anyway, your text is basically however the Lord leads you, and maybe it’s Easter, so you’re preaching an Easter sermon, that’s your text. Maybe it’s anticipating Advent. I preached that as a series leading up to Christmas, and that became a book as well. So, you can pick a series out of any portion of the Bible. Another series would be the seven churches in the book of Revelation, and by the way, that popped in my brain this morning at 3:30, and I wanted to mention it. I’m glad I’m kind of going down this track right now. I’m rabbit trailing, forgive me. A great series is simply the seven churches in the book of Revelation, letters to the seven churches. John Stott calls it, and I mention that because that’s the book you want to get, and you want to read, What Christ Thinks Of The Church, by John R.W. Stott, a great study of the seven churches. There’s others that are real great, and Pastor Tim can maybe recommend some others as well. There’s a series on the Ten Commandments you can do. I’ve got a whole shelf of books or sermons on the Ten Commandments, so you don’t just have to teach a book in the Bible, chapter 1:1 straight through, you can spice that up. You ought to do a little bit of everything, and preach single text as well.

I’m using for my teaching right now, abbreviated notes on this development series that I put together for a workshop I did at Calvary Golden Springs years ago, so it’s a little bit abbreviated, otherwise we’d be here forever. Anyway, that’s step 1, you pick your text. You pray, you read, you decide where the Lord wants you to go. I’m already stirring on what I do when I finish Luke, and I have a long ways to go. I want to preach through Romans on Sunday morning here at Revival. I haven’t done that. I’ve done it on a Wednesday, but not on Sunday. That stuff stirs in your heart. Any questions on that, how to pick a text? You pick a text based on just the Lord’s leading, and you kind of look for the division.

What do you do with your text once you pick your text? Let’s say we’re going to study Ephesians and we’re going to start in chapter 1:1. You decide how far you go, how deep you go into the chapter. You look for the natural breaks and divisions. What I do is I look at different outlines, books that have outlines of the books, and kind of start getting an idea. You study the texts and you see the “but,” “and,” “for,” “wherefore,” and “therefore,” and you come to your own conclusion how far you want to go and what you want to cover.

Step 2 is read your text and meditate on it. You’ve got your text, then you start reading and meditating on your text. You don’t want to wait until Saturday night to start preparing for your message. Now, that’s if I’m speaking to pastors. If you’re preaching Wednesdays or Thursdays, you’ll want to start it, so you read your text.

I heard the story of a Presbyterian minister that was overconfident and kind of thought he was hot stuff. He said that he could actually put together a sermon in just a couple of minutes it took him to walk from the church’s parsonage to the church, which the parsonage was right next door to the church, so he could just walk out of the parsonage, walk into the sanctuary, and just that short little walk he put his sermon together. Do you know what the elders did? They bought a new parsonage five miles away from the church. He needed some help.

So, you pick the text, you read over the text. Let me read John R.W. Stott’s, Between Two Worlds. He said, “Read the text, re-read it, read it again, and read it again. Turn it over and over in your mind like Mary the mother of Jesus who wondered at all the things that the shepherds told her, pondering them in her heart. Probe your text like a bee and spring blossom or like a hummingbird probing at a hibiscus flower for its nectar. Worry at it like a dog with a bone. Suck at it as a child sucks an orange. Chew it as a cow chews the cud.” To these similes Spurgeon adds, “You should be like a worm and the bath. ‘It’s great to pray one’s self into the spirit and marrow of a text; working it by sacred feeding thereon, even as a worm bores its way into the kernel of a nut.’ Again, let us, dear brethren, try to get saturated with the gospel. I always find that I can preach best when I manage to lie and soak in my text. I like to get a text, find out some of its meaning and bearings, and so on; and then, after I have bathed in it, I delight to lie down, soak in it, and let it soak into me.”

You’ve heard this already—read it, re-read it, read it, and read it. So, after I’ve preached on Sunday, many times when I’m crawling into bed, I’ll reach over my nightstand and grab my Bible, turn on the light, and before I go to sleep I’ll look at my text ahead of me for the next week, and I’ll already start trying to think about where it’s going to cut off, how far I’m going to go, so I want to get a real jump on reading it over and looking at where I’m going to stop and where the divisions are going to be. I do cheat quite a bit. Sometimes I’ll just grab a commentary and where did they go? What verses did they cover? What verses did he cover? I’ll kind of start getting an idea where other men have gone.

G. Campbell Morgan had four rules for studying a Bible book. He said, “Read and gain an impression. Think and gain an outline. Meditate and gain an analysis. Sweat and gain an understanding.” When you read the text, let me give you four recommendations on reading a text. Read it in a variety of translations. I don’t know why Pastor Terry mentioned just a book of translations when you have a Bible app on your phone, and I’m not even a computer guy, but I go to the Bible app, or whatever it’s called. You go to the Bible app and you have all the different translations right there on your phone. I’ll use that to consult other translations. I usually don’t read another translation until after I’ve read my King James translation. People wonder why I preach from King James, it’s because I was raised on it. I learned it as a boy in Sunday school. I’ve learned to quote it. It’s in my brain. It’s what’s going to come out of my mouth. If I’m going to quote a Scripture, it’s not going to come out New Living Translation, that’s for sure, or NIV or whatever it might be. So, I read it in my King James translation, and then I might read it in another translation, but you need to read a variety of translations.

Then, you read it observantly. You do your observation as Pastor Tim was talking about, and I’m so looking forward to sitting in on his class this afternoon and tomorrow. So, you look at key words, phrases, highlight it. This is where you get your notebook out and write at the top of the notebook, this is what happens to me almost weekly when I’m going through a book of the Bible such as Titus right now, I’ll write down Titus 1. I know the verse I’m starting with, and I’ll put a dash, but I don’t know where I’m going to stop so I’ll just put a question mark. I’m using a pencil so I can erase it. Or, if I put a verse, I’ll put a question mark above it or I’ll put more than one verse and put question marks above them because I don’t know. I don’t know where I’m going to break it off. But, as I read, I start developing where the text is going to break.

I read a variety of translations. I read observantly—key words, phrases, look for the divisions. A lot of translations of the Bible have the breaks, but they’re not always what you would preach or inspired. Then, thirdly, read prayerfully. So, first, read variety; secondly, read observantly; and third, read prayerfully; fourthly, read obediently. It has to be something that you apply to your own life.

Okay, here’s step 3, you begin to study the passage. After you’ve chosen a passage, then you read and soak in the passage. Like Spurgeon said, “Just soak in it.” Thirdly, you study the passage. Study the historical background of the book. What I do, and I don’t have the table, I don’t have all my books, I’ve got some at home, some in my office here, and it’s been a busy week and hard to kind of bring them all together, but if I’m going through Titus right now, I’m going to teach a passage, I’ve already read introduction and background. Now, it comes a different way, that’s early on, I’ll read, Talk Through The Bible. I’ll read Gromacki’s, New Testament Survey, and each commentary that you have on that book of the Bible will have an introduction for that book.

By the way, by way of the introductions and by way of the commentary, one of my favorites, and I was going to bring them and I forgot to bring them from home because they’re at home, is Charles Erdman’s Commentaries On The New Testament. They are pure gold. They’re very, very good. They’re hard to find in hardback, but they’re very, very valuable. So, I’ll read the introduction there. Barclay’s Commentaries have great introductions. Hiebert, if you can write this down, please write this down. It’s called An Introduction To The New Testament, by D. Edmond Hiebert, Moody Press. Why do I give you that information? Because it is unbelievably good, very good. It’s three volumes. You say, “Well, what is it? What is it?” Introduction. It’s just New Testament. You say, “Pastor Miller, three volumes of books that have just introduction?” Yes, and I would sell a surfboard to buy these things, and that’s pretty radical. They are so good. By the way, write down the name, D. Edmond Hiebert, anything and everything, the commentaries, written by him, buy them, buy them; read them and read them. You won’t be disappointed. There’s three volumes, and one of the cool things about that three-volume set of introductions is it contains masterful outline of the books of the Bible. It’s pages of just outline, which are expository sermons just waiting for you to preach, ready to go. You want to cheat? That’s a cheat.

Do you know what else it has? At the end of each book in the Bible, New Testament, that it introduces and outlines, a bibliography of commentaries and study helps for those books. It is a treasure, treasure, treasure, treasure.

(Question asked) I don’t know. It doesn’t come to mind. I’m sorry about that. We can look in my office. Talk Through The Bible, because it’s the whole Bible. It’s the whole Bible, or you can use Halley’s Bible Handbook, or the commentary itself. In my office down the hall, I actually have all my commentaries all set up, and the first shelf leading into Old Testament is introductions. The first shelf leading into my section on my New Testament commentaries are introductions. The Hiebert is a set of just New Testament. That’s a great question. Sorry I don’t have any better recommendation. What The Bible’s All About covers that really well, beautiful outlines.

You start to study the passage, but what I do, and forgive me, I’m kind of rabbit trailing and scatter braining, but what I do is when I’m starting to study, step 3, the text, is I’ve already read the introduction to the book, I’ve already read the book through…by the way, too, before you start preaching a book of the Bible…you see, here’s the frustration, I’m talking about preaching a text, but I’m also talking about preaching through books of the Bible, and how to go about that systematically. So, you pick the book, then you start working on the whole book. You introduce the whole book; you study the whole book. You want to read the whole book in its entirety, if you can, before you preach, at least once. You ought to try to read it more than once. Tim could actually tell better than I can. G. Campbell Morgan would read it multiple, multiple times. Before he would start at chapter 1, verse 1, he’s read the whole book many, many times.

Here’s it real simplified, J. P Miller, I don’t want to lose the forest for the trees. I don’t want to lose the forest for the trees, so say if I’m going to study Galatians, I want to get a big picture of it’s New Testament, it’s Pauline epistles, what category it’s in as far as its genre literature in the New Testament. Then, I want to read general introduction to the whole book, get the big picture. I want to see the forest, I don’t want to just go in and start examining the trees, so I start way out here, and then I start zeroing in closer and closer until I get to my actual text, and I’m looking at words within the text. So, you want to get the general layout. I’ll read Gromacki’s for New Testament, Gromacki’s New Testament Survey, is totally the best you could ever get. They’re right in front on my desk. I’m using them all the time. So, that’s what I start with, the historical background of the book.

Then, you pick your text. As I’m reading these notes I’m thinking, What was I thinking when I wrote these notes? Look for the thought unit and then you start outlining the book. So, I’m looking at the big picture, I’m starting to narrow it down, getting the background, where am I going to break off the text, outlining the text, and I’m taking all notes in my notebook as I go along, how many verses I will cover.

Then, relate your passage to the book the chapter is found in and ask yourself about the genre. Secondly, zero in on key words. So, first you’re starting with the historical background, getting the big picture, my substep four now, you’re studying key words and grammar. I like to use Word Pictures In The New Testament by A.T. Robertson, and then also Word Meanings In The New Testament by Ralph Earle. It’s like a five-volume set of books. It’s based on books of the Bible, chapters and verses, so it’s easy to access and use, and it takes key words and unfolds their Greek meaning.

Step five, this is under step 3. Am I totally confusing you?

(Question asked) Yeah, Word Pictures In The New Testament by A.T. Robertson. I think that’s…how many volumes is that, Tim? Six. He’s a book man. Tim knows. A.T. Robertson was considered the greatest New Testament Greek scholar ever produced in America. He has a grammar, a volume on grammar of the Greek New Testament, it’s about that thick and about this big. If you dropped it on your foot, you’d be in a cast for six months. It’s gnarly. As far as scholarship, it’s insurpassable.

I love Word Meanings In The New Testament. Ralph Earle is a Nazarene. We won’t hold that against him, but he is quite a Greek guy. It’s super, super easy for the English reader. A.T. Robertson’s a little higher up, a little more tech. You need to almost know a little Greek to use him, but Ralph Earle’s Word Meanings, he doesn’t cover every word of the New Testament, the ones he does are key words. He really gets the cookies down where the kids can eat them, real simple, real helpful.

Okay, I’m still on step 3, and here’s my fifth point about studying a passage, study the passage to determine the exegetical idea. Study the passage, historical background. Look for the main thought unit. Relate your passage to the book or chapter that it is found in. Study key words and grammar. Study the passage to determine the exegetical idea. Read good exegetical commentaries first. Usually when I’m starting to read my commentaries, I confess I turn to them probably quicker than pastors should because I’m a wimp. I need help, so I jump into them commentaries early, and I thank God for them. They’re my friends. They help me, and I consult.

Here’s the procedure. You know how Paul’s epistles are doctrine then practical? That’s kind of how I approach it, so I want to exegete the text first. I want to know what it means and what it says. I don’t read homiletical commentaries that are more sermonic, I read commentaries that were written by scholars that are exegetical, and we could stop right now and just talk those commentaries, of course there’s Lenski, William Hendrikson, Gromacki. They are some of my favorite. These are guys that weren’t preaching in a church, they were writing in their offices of the seminary. Why do I do them first? Because the first thing I want to know is what the text means. I want to know what it says, I’ve read it and I’ve analyzed it. I’ve done my observation, now I want to know what it means, so give me the scholars. Give me the Greek and Hebrew scholars. Exegete the text, and you should read both.

After I’ve done that, and I’ve taken all my notes and I start getting pretty stoked. I’m getting all excited, an idea for the sermon is starting to come along, and I’m getting it down. Then I want to add the cherry on top, I get the R. Kent Hughs out, I get the Harry Ironside out, I get the James Montgomery Boice out. These are guys who preached the text from the pulpit in their own church, and they’re masters. I want to see how they did it. I personally think that you’re pretty arrogant and foolish to neglect that thinking, I don’t need them. I can do it myself. I want to slap the guy who says that because you’re losing so much rich, good stuff by not accessing those individuals. This is why sometimes in frustration if I haven’t gotten to read enough homiletic commentary on a text and I preach it, when I come home Sunday or Sunday night or Wednesday night, I get those commentaries out, and I read them before I go to bed because I just want to see just what I might’ve done better, how I missed stuff that could’ve been really good, and it’s food for my own soul. That’s kind of what I’m going over.

I hope I’m not totally confusing you guys and boring you stiff because I’m just kind of a babbling pastor right now. But you read first, you read the exegetical commentaries, then you read the homiletical commentaries and you learn which ones help you, which ones are good. Sometimes you’ll just hit on one, “This guy’s helped me a lot,” then maybe a few weeks later, “He’s not helping me much anymore. I’m going to go over to this guy. Please help me. Please help.” There’s times, “Oh, Warren, oh Warren Wiersbe, please help me. It’s Saturday night, I need help,” and you pull him off the shelf. I would classify Warren Wiersbe’s “BE” series as devotional or homiletical.

R. Kent Hughes’ Preach The Word series is very, very, very good. Keep a notebook. Write it all down.

Let me rip off without going into them, these eight hermeneutical principles that you need to keep in mind as you’re studying your text, exegeting the text. First, literal meaning, plain and normal meaning. You first start with just the plain sense, makes good sense, seek no other sense—literal meaning. Secondly, authorial intent, there’s only one meaning—what the original author meant. Someone said it like this, “What the text means is what the author meant it to mean.” It means what the author meant it to mean.

A.T. Robertson, who we were just talking about, said, “Never get out of a text what was never in it.” I love that. Never get out of a text what was never in it. So, first, literal meaning; second, authorial intent; thirdly, Lexical principle, meaning of the words. That’s why you get the Ralph Earle, that’s why you get the A.T. Robertson, that’s why you go to seminary and learn Greek and learn Hebrew, if you can. If you can’t, then you just, “Ralph Earle, please help me. I need help.” You grab him off the shelf.

Then, there is grammatical structure. Again, I was horrible at English in school. Grammar was not my strong point, to say the least. Nothing academically was my strong point, but grammar. I just wish I understood English better and grammar. You want to pay attention to grammatical structure.

The next is historical background. A lot of good books will help you there. Literary genre —is it poetry, prophecy, parable, allegory, history, didactic, gospel. What kind of literature am I in? If you’re preaching through a book of the Bible, you’re there, you’re comfortable, you’ve built…one of the benefits of teaching through books of the Bible systematically is you live in that book, you’ve already studied its history, its background, its genre. You know all of that. You’re not just jumping into a book and finding a text and, “Oh, I need to learn a little bit about the book it appears in.”

Then, figures of speech, you take and consider that; and then progressive revelation. All those are just eight quick hermeneutical principles.

Step 4, and I’ll probably wrap it up here because I have a lot of steps still to go and we have tomorrow. The fourth is determine the big idea. So, you’re finally at the point where, “Okay, I’ve got to start getting this ready and figure out how I’m going to preach it,” what my big idea is, which is the authorial intent. What’s the purpose of the text. Your goal is to preach the meaning of the text. Your sermon should have a single, dominant idea supported by other ideas all drawn from the text. I’ve heard it quoted by Terry, and it’s been already said a lot, your sermon should be a bullet and not buckshot. What I’ve heard so often is a sermon is preached and then you would ask somebody five minutes later, “What was the topic?” And they don’t know. They don’t really know what the topic was.

Last night, after I preached, hopefully when people left church and said, “What was the sermon about? What was the sermon on?” They could very easily say, “It’s about the rapture,” right? How hard would it be after last night’s service to say, “Pastor Miller preached on the rapture.” It was pretty clear, so determine the big idea. What’s the meaning. Someone said it like this, Lucas O’Neill, in his book, Preaching to be Heard, which is a great book on preaching, said, “Our task in Bible interpretation is discover the agenda of the text,” I like that, ‘agenda of the text,’ “rather than fostering our own upon it. We seek to discover the main idea, the heart of the passage.” We want the main idea, the heart of the passage.

I think we’ll stop right here, and what we’re going to start with tomorrow morning is step 5. It will be “Outline Of Your Sermon,” not an outline of the book of the Bible, but the actual outline of the sermon—all the issues involved—and there’s a lot to deal with under that point. Amen? Let’s pray.

Sermon Notes