How do you prepare your sermons?
Apr 27th, 2010 by ljkim
I never know how to answer that…because if I just tell you your eyes will glaze over and fall into a coma before I’m halfway through. But I suppose it’s best to compare it to writing a paper or lecture. I’d say the main difference is, with a sermon it’s more a process of discovery, whereas with a lecture I can focus on whatever interests me. Here’s what I mean: during the research part of my prep, I want to understand the text (whatever Bible text I’m expounding on) in its original context to the best of my ability. But then I ask five simple questions to dig further… I’ve grown so attached to these five questions that I ask them any time I look at a passage of Scripture – and I recommend them for Bible studies. Some of the questions are easier for some passages, but with a different passage another question is easier to answer, but every passage has a fairly unique answer to these questions:
The first two questions are: “What does this tell us about God? And what does this tell us about man?” So if this passage was all that we knew about what God told us about God and Man, then what would we know?
Proposition: “what is this passage telling us to do?” Some passages have direct commands that apply to all God’s people, those are easy because they tell you the proposition (e.g., “love your enemies” “in all things with prayer and supplication, present your requests to God…” “rejoice always, I’ll say it again, rejoice!”) But other passages don’t have imperative verbs, just information. Ask, “given the passage and context, why is God telling me this? What does He want me to do?”
Fallen condition focus (FCF): “what sin or fallen condition is this passage addressing?” God tells us things in order to address some kind of sin or fallen condition. The FCF for “You shall not bear false witness” is that we tend to bend and distort the truth… But an FCF doesn’t have to be a “sin” – it can also be the outcome of sin in the world. For example, sadness or depression is not a sin, but it’s a fallen condition… The command “Rejoice!” is telling us something about our fallen condition.
One more, the big idea… “What is this passage about?” So in one word, what’s the passage about? In a couple of words what is the subject of the passage, or life question that the passage is addressing? And what is the answer? This one is the hardest to learn – but I can’t prepare a sermon without it…
Anyway, that’s probably more than you wanted to know. I like to take time with this discovery part…and it’s when prayer is the most useful because when I often don’t know the answer to a question – so I pray, and some time (sometimes a day or two) later it becomes obvious. But anyway, once again TMI!
Related posts: