Pause to think about

What do you feel is the heartbeat of Psalm 51? (and which words or images lead you to that?)

What is the heartbeat of John 14:1-6? (and which words or images lead you to that?)

SCRIPT

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 get into a passage of the Bible by praying through it,

• look at its context and content

• We’ve thought about about how to identify its framework

In this film I want us to reflect on the heartbeat of the passage we’re handling – and how we might identify and understand it.

 

What is the heartbeat of a passage

The heartbeat of a passage is those aspects of it which evoke emotional or spiritual responses in the people who heard it first.

Maybe feelings of devotion, worship, wonder, guilt, shame, longing, yearning and so on.

When we do the heartbeat of a sermon in a future segment, I’ll give you a chart which I hope will help you create a talk that will engage people’s emotions as they hear you speak. (more later)

Now, at this juncture, we’re concerned with the heartbeat of the text itself.

In the same way that the structure of our passage may turn into the structure of our talk,

• so the heartbeat of our passage may well turn out to be a good indicator of what the spiritual thrust, the impact of our sermon might be when we get to preach it.

But beware …

Heartbeat is often slippery, open-ended or subjective

• this is why some preachers do their best to avoid it

• or at least do their best to operate on the premise that “well I’ll just expound the text and then let God do all the feeling stuff.”

• “If my talk evokes feelings in people, then that’s OK but I’m not going to put effort into making it happen.”

For me, content and heartbeat go hand-in-hand

• I can’t have one without the other

• If I sacrifice feelings to content I end up with a sterile literary analysis or a historical talk

• If I sacrifice content to feelings I end up with a sermon that’s little more than a very long fortune cookie!

What feelings was the original author experiencing?

One way of discovering the heartbeat of a passage is to ask

• What was the author feeling or sensing in his spirit as he/she wrote this?

So I extend my reflection to pondering the question of the emotional and spiritual reaction

• the tone of the author’s words

• the pictures evoked by those words

• especially reactions in the soul or emotions, the spirit

(and I jot down my reflections on this as they come to mind!)

What feelings were the original receivers sensing?

• What did the first person who heard this text feel as they heard it?

(In a previous segment we asked ‘what did this person understand when they heard it – now it’s “what did they feel”)

 

How did this passage speak to their actions and attitudes?

Write all this down

And at this point I often find myself returning to prayer and reflecting on the scripture passage

three contrasting examples

Nehemiah 7

6 These are the people of the province who came up from the captivity

in company with Zerubbabel, Joshua, Nehemiah, Azariah, Raamiah, Nahamani, Mordecai, Bilshan, Mispereth, Bigvai, Nehum and Baanah):

The list of the men of Israel:

the descendants of Parosh 2,172

of Shephatiah 372

of Arah 652

of Pahath-Moab (through the line of Jeshua and Joab) 2,818

… and on and on it goes.

Not much emotional or feeling content here – although there might have been to first hearers. Possibly amazement at what God had achieved or satisfaction that their uncle was in the list perhaps.

I find it hard to detect any emotional heartbeat there! (without going into invention mode!)

That’s not a trivial example because it demonstrates that not all of the Bible has an identifiable heartbeat.

More significantly …

Psalm 13

David is in trouble. We don’t know precisely what trouble, but he feels that God has gone off-line

How long, Lord?

Will you forget me forever?

How long will you hide your face from me?

How long must I wrestle with my thoughts

and day after day have sorrow in my heart?

How long will my enemy triumph over me?

Heartbeat?

David is feeling abandoned – and abandoned by the one person he thought he could rely on – God himself

• he’s in mental turmoil – in anguish – at the thoughts churning around in his soul

• he’s feeling defeated (his enemies have the upper hand)

and while the psalm ends on a more positive note, we can’t ignore the depth of despair David is expressing here.

• Because in almost every congregation we speak to there will be someone in despair

 

2 Timothy 4:5-8

Heartbeat?

The context informs us that Paul had trouble with people who were teaching an alternative gospel

They appeared to be very popular, very charismatic and very entertaining, but what they actually said was little more than fairy tales (or ‘myths’) – happy talk

• and they are disturbing for faithful church leaders

here’s what Paul says

But you Timothy, keep your head in all these situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.

So (in terms of framework) there’s a list here

In terms of heartbeat there are some telling insights.

• There’s hard graft in church leadership.

• There are times when you need to ‘keep your head’ when people around you are losing theirs!

Paul is sharing from his own experience about the tough, largely unseen, side of his own ministry.

Another heartbeat aspect here is to do with keeping going.

• There’s an invisible marathon that as church leaders we are called to run –

• and there will be people who seek to undermine our work

• Churches are easy to damage and difficult to build!

Then the heartbeat changes

For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time for my departure is near. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day.

What might this have evoked in Timothy?

Feelings of yearning

There will be an ache in his soul! –

“Paul you can’t be leaving me! How will I minister without your sagely wisdom and unstinting support?”

I think there would have been longing too

• Paul, you’ve fought the good fight – I’ll do that too

• Paul, you’ve finished the race, – I want to keep going to the very end, like you

• Paul you’ve kept the faith – I want to be faithful too – and one day receive the same crown of righteousness.

Did Timothy weep when he read that?

• I have no idea, but it wouldn’t surprise me – would it you?

So feel the heartbeat (and jot it down)

What feelings were the original receivers sensing?

Occasionally we’re told of the reaction.

Jesus had just told the story about the shrewd manager who had been caught fiddling the books.

• This crafty fellow tried to minimise the penalty by calling in as many of the debts owed to him as he could

• This was a vain (and futile) attempt to justify himself in the sight of his manager

• The manager, of course, could see right through his ruse.

Luke tells us what the Pharisees felt about it

The Pharisees, who loved money, heard all this and were sneering at Jesus.

Jesus said to them, “You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of others, but God knows your hearts. What people value highly (in this case ill-gotten gain) is detestable in God’s sight.

No small wonder, then that the Pharisees plotted to eliminate him.

Exegesis and exposition

At this point we need to draw a distinction between exegesis and exposition.

Exegesis is the basic interpretation of our passage – what we’ve been doing so far.

Actually our exegetical methods can be applied to any piece of text.

And we do it all the time – especially if we’ve been sent an e-mail we don’t quite understand, for example!

So we might go through it word by word, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph.

 

In my opinion exposition goes beyond the framework of the text to assess (as best we can) its significance and spiritual impact to the first hearers

• In particular: what did they feel

• what did they marvel at

• what surprised them and so on.

We draw out the deeper ramifications of what we are reading by grasping the feelings it evoked.

Which spiritual (God-directed) sentiments, emotional reactions were stirred by this passage either in the author or in the first hearers.

My friend, you might find your commentaries don’t serve you particularly well here.

I find many commentaries are excellent for analysing the meaning of the text

• but fall down when it comes to the more subjective and spiritual focus of the Bible.

 

I am also aware that philosophers will say that what we’re doing is unreliable. It’s a distinction without a difference!

They will say that the meaning of something is the same as the use to which it is put.

• Linguistically it may be true that there’s no difference between exegesis and exposition

• And yet, I still want to make this distinction

• because when you stand in front of God’s people on a Sunday (say) you’re not going to be giving just a textual analysis (or at least I hope not).

I hope you’re going to be expounding what God is saying

• “This is what God said then these are the feelings that were evoked and the spiritual reaction that would have taken place then.

• So this is what God is saying now … and I encourage you to take it on board yourself!

• Let God loose in your heart and soul so He can do today what he did then.”

There’s your heartbeat!

 

One final thing:

Before we get to the point of preaching our sermon to people, we need to preach it to ourselves.

• Let me wonder at God

• Let me be amazed at Jesus’s words or works

• Let me see what I need to repent of

• let me frame my life around Christ’s example

And then I feel confident I’m preaching from the heart of God to the hearts of his people

God bless you.