Transcript

Hello and welcome back to our masterclass

My name is Ian White and right now we’re going to take another step towards crafting a sermon.

We’re likening the crafting of a sermon to creating a bridge

(here’s our bridge)

On one side we have between the world of the Bible and on the other we have the world of today

So far we’ve considered how to read and pray through the passage

• to soak our minds and hearts in it

We’ve talked about how important it is to grasp the context of the text we’re preaching

• and considered some of the pitfalls of not doing it

and in this film we’re going to be thinking about the content of the Biblical text.

What are the best ways of discovering what the Bible is actually saying through our passage. (your passage …)

and our aim is to allow the inspiration for God which flowed through the Bible to reach the hearts and minds of people today as we preach to them.

So let’s assume you have in front of you a passage of the Bible you’re going to preach on.

Ask questions of the passage

Fundamental to this step in our wrestling with the Bible passage is asking questions

I’m sure you recognise the face of Albert Einstein

He said this:

“If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask… for once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes.”

You’re not Einstien – neither am I! But asking the right questions helps us get into what the Bible is saying – and therefore into what God wants us to know and to be.

Asking questions is essential to biblical interpretation, so I often write questions down in a notebook or scribble around my version of the text.

In fact I often find it valuable to write out or print out the text in a format that I can scribble on

Questions about origin

Origin of the passage

Why did the author spend so much time writing it?

This is the motive question. No word of scripture was written without a motive.

It’s important that we do our best to assess why the author wrote it at the time of writing

• Many scriptures have a later significance – like prophecies which prefigure the events of Jesus’ life.

• But for every prophecy pointing to Jesus, there was a reason it was written in the first place – at the time of writing.

Exercise – Consider this verse, Isaiah 7:14 “the Lord himself will give you a sign: the virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.”

• very familiar Christmas reading because it speaks so powerfully about the significance of Jesus’ incarnation.

Why did Isaiah write Isaiah 7:14?

(you might like to pause the video and try working it out)

Looking at the paragraphs surrounding it we can see this verse is set in the context of a military threat to King Ahaz and Israel.

• They’re going to be invaded.

• But, through the prophet, God wants Ahaz to know that he is with him all the way.

• God says “Choose a sign for me to give you – anything you like!”

• But Ahaz protests back to God “… This sounds to me like testing God – I ain’t gonna do that!”

It’s almost as if God becomes exasperated with him!

Through the prophet God says

“OK, if you’re not going to choose a sign, I’ll give you one anyway! … here it is!

A virgin will conceive and bear a son

You will look at that baby and go “wow! God really is with us! (and not with them!)”

That might put a slightly different complexion on your Christmas sermon – I hope it does!

Because it’s telling Ahaz, and therefore us, that God is with us even when we’re under threat

and he may well choose to do things in our lives that confirm He is with us – whether we ask for it or not!

What did it mean to the person who heard it first?

What did they take away from it?

We can do this at broadly two levels:

What was he/she meant to think (= the question of understanding and meaning)

• It targets our minds – our cognitive capacity

What was he/she intended to feel (= the question of emotion and being moved)

• It targets my soul – the emotional/spiritual part of me

For me, Neither is complete without the other.

We’ll say more about this in next segment on heartbeat.

I often reflect on the fact that only a few people in the history of Biblical writing could read and write, like we can.

For the most part Biblical text was created with the expectation it would be spoken – out loud.

So, at this point, make a not of what you think the initial hearer took away from the passage you’re about to preach from.

A couple of principles are helpful here:

A text is unlikely to mean today what it never could have meant to its author or his or her hearers.

Saying this to ourselves will help us avoid being fanciful and seeing things in the text that really aren’t there – and were never intended to be!

Of course prophecy is a bit of an exception to this as it has a dual purpose.

• To speak to them in their day, and for us to see its later significance

• and this gives us confidence that the Bible is not just a fairy story, but God’s work to mankind throughout the generations.

Whenever we share comparable experiences with the first century hearers, God’s Word to us is most likely to be the same as his Word to them.

This is one of the methods we use when crossing the bridge from the Bible’s day into our own.

Some aspects of human life had not changed through the centuries

• our need for love and acceptance

• our need for a moral compass to guide us.

And that leads us to our overarching subject for this segment

how can we establish what the text is actually saying.

I’m assuming here that you’re not a scholar of Greek or Hebrew and can’t therefore go back to the original text!

Although I want to say – if you get a chance to learn the original languages of the Bible it will transform your appreciation of the scriptures and open up a new world of Bible study! (I’m biased)

For me, getting into the Greek NT was like looking at the Bible in colour instead of black and white!

Let’s assume you’ve not had the chance to do this:

how can we establish what the text is actually saying.

Ask the obvious questions

Here’s a piece of doggerel I’ve picked up somewhere.

I had six faithful friends

they taught me all I know

Their names are How and What and Why

and When and Where and Who.

And jot down the obvious answers

The Bible was never written as a book to confuse, to alienate or bamboozle people.

It was written to be plain and simple

• and often the plain and simple question leads to the most valuable answer.

Ask ‘gateway’ questions …

Ask questions like:

What does this passage say about God?

• He might be there explicitly or only as a pronoun; and is he is, what is the passage telling us about him?

What does this passage say about Jesus Christ?

• If you’re studying one of the gospels he’s there almost all of the time

• He often also comes out in Paul’s letters

What does this passage say about the Holy Spirit?

• Is he present, operating or mentioned

What does this passage say about its past, its present and the future?

• Where does it fit into human history

Is there an example of good behaviour?

• Is someone doing or saying something that I want to emulate today?

Is there an example of poor behaviour?

• Something I want to avoid or recommend my friends who are listening should steer clear of.

Does it have something to say to contemporary issues

• money, sexuality, family, leadership, workplace etc

• these will be good hints of later application when we work on the other side of the bridge.

Can I encourage, at this stage, to look for the obvious answers, and avoid being inventive

• If something isn’t mentioned, it probably isn’t there!

If the Holy Spirit is not mentioned in the passage, the chances are it doesn’t have anything to day about him. – that’s fine! There are plenty of other passages which do!

If some aspect of family life is there in the passage, make a note of it and later on think about how you could apply the principles behind it.

Try to avoid going beyond what the passage actually says.

• We will come on to application later, but for now let’s restrict ourselves to what the passage actually says.

Using small-print resources

Use of cross-references

Many of them won’t be useful, but some will

Use of thematic Bibles

They identify the themes that are used in that verse or chapter.

• Those themes are gathered together at the back of the Bible so you can get an overview of what the Bible says on that particular subject.

• I’m biased because I wrote some of the themes!

Use of commentaries

Never avoid the technical details – sometimes they open up the meaning of the passage

Use of internet

But beware the source and thy to discern any motives or biases that they display.

• Some of the more valuable material is behind a pay-wall.

I hope that by the time you’ve done this you will have a fairly comprehensive understanding of what your text actually says.

• Then you’ll be in a confident position to be able to explain it to the people you’ll be speaking to.

Summary

Ask questions about the passage

• questions about its origin

• obvious questions

• gateway questions

• sructural questions

then use as many small-print resources as time allows

For me, this is usually a page or two of handwriting or a great big spider diagram.

You do whatever suits you!

Above all, enjoy spending time in the word of God

in our next segment we’ll think about the heartbeat of the passage.

God bless you