13. A I think the mechanics of preparing a sermon are not as important as some of the things that we just heard and others besides concerning our spiritual preparation. I would echo those same things. I think God desires to set up men who are going to say what Paul said, follow me as I follow the Lord. And that's a very scary proposition when you think about it.

Listen to this, whatever you have learned or received or heard from me or seen in me, put it into practice and the God of peace will be with you. I think about that. That's in Philippians. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, that's my teaching, or seen in me, that's my example, Put it into practice and God will be with you. Now how would you like to stand up in front of anybody and say that?

Whether your wife, your children, or your church, that's a challenge. But that's precisely what I think the church needs. And I think it's important for us to give ourselves to those things. What I've given you are some handouts that I gave to my church as I was teaching Sunday school teachers how to rightly divide the word of truth. I'm not going through this as not an outline of my talk.

These are just resources, what they are. I will refer to some of these sheets, but the others you can take and look over as would be helpful I think for you in your preparation. But what I want to talk about basically first of all my preparation of myself for preaching, how I mechanically go about writing sermons, etc., the process of hermeneutics, the process of looking at various contexts and how I decide what to preach, how long to preach, those kinds of things. And then I'd like to be open for questions on details about that if that's all right. So this will feel perhaps a little different than some of the talks we've had up to this point.

To begin with, I want to give a plug for the benefits of scripture memorization in good teaching and preaching. And in the booklet that I've made available to you, and I'd just assume you take them all. I don't want to bring any of them back, so if you took one, take a handful of others and give them to friends and all that. I think it's beneficial. I'm not touting myself or my method or whatever.

I tried to title it appropriately. It's just one approach to memorization of scripture. There are many. You know, we were talking earlier about losing weight. You know, you reduce your calories and increase your exercise, there it is.

Memorization, you repeat it over time, a lot. There it is. I don't know what else to say. You just do it. There's no secret really to it.

It's just hard work. But let me tell you just a little bit about my background in scripture memorization. I came to faith in Christ, as I mentioned, through Campus Crusade for Christ at MIT, and soon after that the man who was discipling me gave me some cards, scripture memory cards, from the Navigators called the Topical Memory System. And in that they were urging certain verses that would be helpful immediately in the Christian life, and they were. So I would memorize these cards, and some of the guys there at MIT, they had these huge stacks of memorization cards, and they were just cycling through them all the time, just because navigators had lots of packs you could buy for different areas of life.

And you had these stacks. And so I did a lot of those cards. After a while, I thought, I wanted to memorize more, a book of the Bible or something like that. So I ventured forth in the Gospel of John. I think it's 879 verses.

Wet behind the ears, been a Christian for less than a year and I'm going to memorize John. And so, you know, I made it through a ways, but I wasn't retaining the stuff that I was learning and it was discouraging and I gave up. But it put in my mind the idea and the thought and a desire to memorize extended passages of scripture. And it wasn't until the summer of 86 when I was on a mission trip in Kenya, and I was waiting for a bus. I'll never forget this.

I came and asked the folks, I said, now when does the bus come? And they said, in the afternoon. I'll never forget that. This is Kenya. Kenya is a very relational culture, big on friendships and how's your family, how's your wife, how are your kids and they'd name each one, how are your parents, how are your brothers, your sisters, you know this kind of thing.

And there's tremendous benefits to that kind of society in terms of love and relationships and caring about people and all that. There's also detraction too, because you'd see church buildings that they were working on for seven or eight years, and it still wasn't built. Whereas here, the competitiveness and all that, they want to build it immediately or you lose the contract, that kind of thing. So there's advantages and disadvantages. But the bus was coming in the afternoon.

Being a typical American, I was there at 11.53 in the morning just so I wouldn't miss it. And the bus ambled around 3.30 in the afternoon, something like that. So there I was. And all I had was my Bible. So how am I going to redeem the time?

And so I started memorizing Ephesians. And I worked on it all summer, got to a certain point. And then when I got back, the biggest transition was getting back into that American lifestyle where things are just so busy. You know what I'm talking about. It's very, very busy in life.

And I made a decision to keep on going and I ended up finishing Ephesians and then added other books besides and I've been working on it ever since. In that booklet I advocate the benefits of memorizing extended passages of scriptures, really whole books of the Bible, if you can, chapters and not individual verses per se. I think individual verses are beneficial. It's better to memorize individual verses than nothing at all. But I think it's better to memorize whole books than to memorize just individual verses.

And yes, of course it takes time. But the benefits are really very obvious at that point. One of the things, I did my PhD dissertation on John Calvin's eschatology, his end time teaching and I learned some things about eschatology and about Calvin's eschatology, but what I really learned was methodology and handling the scripture. And Calvin had two great projects in his life in terms of writing. One were his commentaries and the other were the institutes.

And the institutes he did four different times. There were different editions and he kept working on it and kept expanding it and kept making it longer and more thorough. The Institutes were his systematic theology where he was taking the things he was learning from Scripture and arranging them into systematic theology, a system of truth, a beautiful system of truth. His commentaries were just verse by verse expositions of scripture. And the one fed the other is a beautiful, a beautiful kind of a circle there between detail and big picture.

All the time, the detail, the big picture, what we call the forest and the trees. And I've never forgotten that and I've always desired as a preacher to be faithful to both. The big picture, the forest, what's happening overall. And overall could be everything from the whole Bible to the whole book or the whole New Testament or Old Testament, whatever you're in, the whole book. What's the big picture?

And then the details. And memorizing scripture has helped me be aware of both. Because when you go through the whole book, it might take a year or whatever, you really have a sense of the entire flow of the argument and the big picture and what is Ephesians saying. But then when you have to memorize every verse, going over it again and again and again, you become very attentive to details as well. And so what I would urge is that you consider, prayerfully, the benefits of memorizing books of the Bible.

If someone asks me, how long does it take for you to prepare a sermon? Frankly it's difficult for me to answer the question. It really is. Because I would say 90% of the time I'm preaching on passages I've memorized. Not 100%, maybe 80 to 90%.

The Old Testament I didn't memorize Genesis. So that was different. But most of the time I'm preaching on passages I've already memorized. How do I clock the hours I've put in working on each of those verses? I don't know how many they were.

A lot of hours spent doing that. And so I think that's where it begins for me. And that is memorization. Now memorization itself is just a technique. I really think what it is is a shortcut toward deep meditation.

You know, meditation on the word. And in meditation you're working over words. You're thinking about it. You're going, turning it around like a diamond, holding it up to different facets of light so it hits and it comes at you in different ways. And I think that that's a beautiful thing.

I think it's very valuable. Scripture has a way of changing on you. And I don't mean that it's saying something different than it used to. I think again it has to do with application. It has to do with the fact that we are in a different place now as we read it.

That's why people advocate reading through the whole Bible once a year. That gives you a good sense of the breadth of the scope of all of scripture. And that's a good pace to read through the Bible in a year. You know, you have to be at it. If you miss a day, you get behind the eight ball.

You know, you miss two days, you're really behind it. You know, if you miss after a while, you've lost it. You're really so far behind, you really can't make it up. And that's tough. And at that point, you kind of have to reset and have a different goal for the year or whatever.

But to keep with it, That's why I think George Mueller is so astonishing in that he read through the entire Bible 100 times in his life. You stop and think about that. That's 50 years reading through it twice a year. That's at least I think about a half an hour a day, nothing but Bible intake, just reading and taking it in. And you ought to try it.

Try it, say, I want to read through the Bible twice this upcoming year. That would be something. Well, then do it for 50 years. And so he's just saturating his mind in the big picture of the Bible. I think the two things go together beautifully then.

Read through the Bible gives you breadth. Take a book of the Bible and memorize it. It gives you depth in that book. And it's a beautiful combination if you can. So there's preparation there in terms of memorization meditation.

Another thing that I do is I make a commitment as a preacher to preach through books of the Bible. In other words, I'm going to seek to finish the book that I'm preaching through. I'm not going to jump around. I'm not doing little sections like little, you know, a unit in the Christian family or fine Christian finances and just choose some section and preach through that. I'm not saying that's bad, but I would just like to begin at the beginning of a book and go through.

But as I've already mentioned and mentioned the frustration to Scott Brown and others, I don't go entirely straight through until it's done. Some people do that, you know, seven straight years in Romans. And I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with that. Now understand about Lloyd Jones as he preached 256 times in Romans, I think it was, he didn't do that on Sunday morning. He did that on, I think, Friday evenings.

That was a select group of people that would come and listen to him. They knew what they were getting, you know what I'm saying? And he can just chug through that and if you didn't like that you didn't come on Friday evenings. And I'm not saying he wouldn't have done that on Sunday mornings but I wonder because he didn't. He did it on Friday evenings.

So I think there's some benefit to going for a while and then trying something different. And part of the reason I say that, I'm going to mention this God willing, is we talk about poetical texts tomorrow. Now think about Hebrews 1 where it says, God in the past spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways. God has spoken to us in various ways and so therefore I think it's beneficial to come at the congregation in various ways too. People don't always think alike.

Some people are more analytical, more engineering-like. Dan, I don't know if that's the way you are. I saw your background. I looked at computer programming. Maybe that's your approach.

I don't know. But others have a more poetical way of coming at things, etc. And I think there's value in coming at it. It's good for me to do poetry. I like Paul's epistles.

It's so clear, you know, and so logical. And I like the arrangement there. But to come at Song of Songs or the long discourses in Job and just force my mind to think like that is good. Same thing with Psalms and Proverbs, etc. But I think it's good to preach through books of the Bible and then for me at least I've chosen to preach only for X number of months.

X is up to me, but some amount of time, four or five months, and then go to some other genre. And frequently I try to go to a different testament than I just was in. In other words, to go from the Old Testament to the New, or then back to the Old. If you're preaching in the evenings, on Sunday evenings, then sometimes you can do that as well. Sunday morning in the New Testament, Sunday evening in the Old, or vice versa, etc.

So you want a variety there so that you get a good balance. Now, as I approach a text, first of all, for me mechanically, I have what's known as a study day, alright, as a pastor. Now, again, I'm mindful of the fact that many of you might not be called to the pulpit ministry. And you may be asking, what does this have to do with me in teaching my family? And I'm not sure what it does.

I'm being faithful to the topic that we've gotten here of expository preaching. But I think some of these techniques may be applicable also to you just in your personal Bible study. And I'll get to that toward the middle and end of my talk, etc. But for me, I have a study day and that's mechanically important, okay? What it means is that I'm not really available to be interrupted on that day.

It's important for me just to be able to concentrate and immerse myself in that. Obviously, my wife is always free to interrupt me any time she wants and other emergencies. But I set aside that day on Tuesday and just concentrate on working on scripture and working on preaching. As I go to the text, the first thing I'm going to do is I want to set the text. And what I mean by that is try to understand where this section begins and where it ends.

You don't want to leave people hanging or be in the middle of a thought. And it takes a certain amount of understanding. So you're reading the chapter and you have a sense. I think the editors of most of the English Bibles these days have broken them off into sections sometimes. They'll even give them subtitles.

Some people have Bibles that don't have that. They prefer not to be there, and I understand that too. Alright, then you just have to do the work yourself, and that's just to read through and find out where you ended and where is a good ending point as well. The start point for me is already defined by where I ended last time. So I already know where I'm starting.

I don't necessarily know 100% of the time where I'm finishing. A lot of it will depend on the exegesis I do that day. If I get more material than I really can give in a reasonable amount of preaching, then I can't set it as far. I might move it back in a bit. And by the way, that's one of the most challenging aspects for me about preaching.

I told you about my friend Mark Dever, who preached an expository sermon on the Old Testament and the New Testament, something that he is uniquely equipped to do, etc. For me, I guess thinking in a scientific way, you know like a microscope and you can kind of click it in at 10x, 100x, 1000x, 10, 000x, something like that, you click in it in, You try to figure out at what level of detail you're going to preach, what level of detail you're going to look at the text. I mean, some people, depending on the epistle or the letter, you can have six sermons on one verse. Have you ever seen that before? You know, it's just, one, this is a great verse, you know?

We have a sermon series on one verse. I get a bit skeptical about that. I find at that point, so-called exposition inverts and becomes topical at that point. It turns upside down. At that point, basically, they're using that one verse to talk about a wide range of topics in the Christian life, and they're no longer just sticking with the text as it is.

One of the things that's great about Calvin and his commentary is it's almost a little frustrating. He was describing to a friend his attitude toward writing a commentary in Romans. First of all, he was defending back in the 16th century, why do we need another, yet another commentary in Romans? Well, there have been many written since then, okay? So it would be good at least for every new publisher of a commentary in Romans to at least ask the question, why do we need another one, okay?

And what Calvin found was that the commentaries that were available were ponderous. They were really overwhelming, the kind of things that were really inaccessible to most people, way too long. And you can see how you can do it because it's such a deep book. He wanted, and I've already said the expression a couple times, lucid brevity. And I would urge you, whether you're teaching your families or you're preaching to keep those words in mind.

Lucid means clear. It's like the beautiful water, let's say, of the Caribbean. You can see down to the coral structures 30 feet below. You know what I'm talking about? That lucid water.

It's just very clear. And what is brevity? Can anyone tell me what brevity is? Short and sweet. Short and sweet.

Like someone said, once to me, blessed are the brief, for they shall be invited back. Alright? So, you know. The thing of it is, Jesus was the ultimate in lucid brevity. No one has ever been as good at it as Jesus.

Let me give you an example. The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and hid in a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough. Now, it's brief. Is it lucid? Well, it's lucid once you understand it, okay?

It has to do with the permeating effect of the Kingdom. The fact that it starts in one place and spreads until it dominates everything. The fact that that spread is hidden and you can't see it happening. The fact that that happens both in individual human hearts and in the whole history of the world. It's really quite breathtaking that Jesus could do all of that in a handful of words in a homely kitchen parable.

I never fail to keep that in mind as a preacher. I can multiply cross references. I can go on and on. I can preach long periods of time on tech, but have I served the people by doing that? So for me, I want to learn more and more heading toward lucid brevity.

Now, I don't think that it's reasonable to preach for 15 or 20 or 30 minutes. We just recently had a time in which our church was looking at various aspects of ministry and things that we could do with our physical plan, our building and all that. And it was just a brainstorming session. People were writing down ideas and we still have an interesting coalition of people and some people have been there for years and some people are new and you never know what people are going to say at settings like that. And what we invariably go to 12-15.

I broke through like the sound barrier, I broke through the noon barrier within the first week I was there. I'm not having that millstone around my neck. So we bust right through that. But I don't try to preach 102% more every week until we're at 1230, 1240, 1250. You know, I'm not trying to do that, boiling the frog until they're used to three-hour sermons.

I'm not trying to do that either. OK? It's generally about 1210 to 1215, and that's that. But someone wrote that they would like the services to be over 15 minutes earlier. 14.

So I urge one of our other pastors, go in and write right below it that they would like 15 minutes longer. Okay? So just balance it just side by side such as Baptist church life. But I thought wouldn't it be something if we had our regular service and I got up to preach at 1130 as I usually do, prayed for about five, seven minutes as I usually do as a pastor. Preached such that we were out and done by noon.

001.13.13 --> 007.26.14 That would be about a 22-minute sermon with the closing prayer, the closing hymn, benediction, and all that out by noon. 001.14.14 --> 007.27.14 I think I would get more complaints that week than I've had in eight years of preaching. People don't want that. They didn't come here to go home, you know what I'm saying? They came to hear the word of God.

They want to hear that. So there's a balance. So for me, lucid brevity, if you're talking about family with children, small children, lucid brevity friends, Okay? There's only so much that they can handle. There's only so much.

Even Jesus said that, didn't he, in John 16? I have much to say to you, more than you can now bear. We've got time. Okay? How much does he just have to say to us?

And how much time does he have to talk to us? What's the answer to that? How much time will Jesus be instructing us? What's that? For eternity.

Has he an eternity worth of things to tell us? Yes, he does. He does. I used to think like, you know, when we see him, we'll be like him, we'll know him immediately, there'll be like an instant download with no baud rate or whatever, just boom, get it all. No, that would make us like God.

We are not going to be omniscient. What we are going to be is morally pure and perfect, but we'll be learning. And so therefore it says in Isaiah 9, of the increase of his kingdom, there will be no end. Isn't that powerful? Forever we will be esteeming Christ greater and greater and greater and there will be no end to that estimation.

It will just keep growing and growing and growing. Isn't that awesome to think you'll be learning forever in heaven? To me I'm excited about that. So there's always more to teach, there's always more to say, there's more things always to do. But the scripture is infinitely deep and it can transform you and it can seem to change even in your own hand like a diamond as you turn it slightly and it gives off a different hue, a different color.

I remember I came across a passage of scripture that just shows how true this is. It had to do with Nebuchadnezzar in chapter 4 of Daniel when he was arrogant about the kingdom that he had built, the kingdom of Babylon, and he's boasting about it, you remember, and he's so arrogant. The whole chapter begins with him having a very troubling dream of a magnificent tree with birds of the air nesting in its branches and all the beasts of the field gathering around its trunk and eating from its fruit and all that and then the command comes from heaven, cut it down and down it comes and it's a very disturbing dream and in comes Daniel and he interprets it. You are the tree king. All right.

And basically you need to repent because if you don't repent you're going to be judged. Well, he doesn't repent. Is this not the great Babylon that I have built for the display of my own glory? It's really sickening little speech. And God says your mind will be changed into that of an animal.

Seven years will pass by until you acknowledge that the Most Highest Sovereign 07 years will pass by until you acknowledge that the Most Highest Sovereign over the kingdoms of men and sets them over anyone he chooses. And so for seven years he eats grass, he loses all of his glory, etc. That whole thing is very, very powerful. At the end of the seven years Nebuchadnezzar giving his testimony says, I looked up with my eyes to Heaven, and He repented, and God gave Him back the splendor of His kingdom, gave Him back His sanity, gave it all back, but He was changed. 001 John 13 verse 5, and at the end of that, He gave the lesson.

Remember what the lesson is? Those who walk in pride, he is able to humble. That's powerful, isn't it? Now when you read that whole story, how would you categorize it? Is that not a warning against pride?

Is it not a warning to you that you ought not to be an arrogant person? You ought not to be boastful. You ought not to be proud. And so it is. It is a warning.

But as I moved on in my Christian life and started to see how permeated with pride I already was, and how difficult it was for me to get rid of it, and how difficult it made my marriage, and how difficult it made my parenting, and how difficult it made encounters with total strangers out in the supermarket when they cut in front of me in line, or didn't deal with me properly, so I thought. How much pride reared its ugly head again and again, I started to lament about the nature of my own character and wondered what could deliver me from this prideful state, which Augustine said is the root of all other sins. And I started seeing how true that was. And I began to cry out to the Lord that He would transform me and make me a genuinely humble person like Jesus was, Philippians 2, to be genuinely a servant, to be willing at any moment to lay down my life, to serve, to wash feet, whatever he called, and not need anything back, not need to be noticed, not need to be praised for it, all of that. And then all of a sudden, here's this exact same verse, those who walk in pride, he is able to humble.

Now all of a sudden it comes at me more gently, more lovingly with the word of promise that he is the Lord who is able to take us and take out the heart of stone and give us the heart of flesh. It has become a transforming verse, not a warning verse. You see? And it's the same thing. Is it both?

It's still both. The language hasn't changed. It's still the same nouns, the same verbs. Everything's the same. And yet I'm different and I can hear both.

I'm warned against pride but I'm also promised that someday I'll be delivered from it. You see what I'm saying? And that's a beautiful thing. And that's just one little verse and one little aspect of that verse. The scripture is infinite.

There's always things you're going to see. So, what I urge is that we do, you come to the text and you set it and you understand how much you're going to preach and then you're going to just start reading it, and God's going to show you things. And the more things He shows you, the more material you'll have for a sermon, and you will have way more than you can use. And that same is true for a Sunday school lesson or any kind of a teaching lecture like this, anything at all. You'll have way more than you can use.

And that's a good thing. You're the one being blessed. We were talking about the warning, let not many of you presume to be teachers. Like wow, I mean the pulpits are suddenly empty. Nobody, everybody's terrified.

Everybody's afraid. Well, if we're going to be fear motivated, okay, realize also there's the parable of the one talent and the guy goes and hides it in the ground and what happens to him? He gets thrown out too. So no matter what you do, what can you do? If you're given the gift of teaching, you've got to stand up and be a man and you got to teach.

There's nothing you can do but just do it in a godly way. You can't hide your talent in the ground, right? You got to use it. All right, so let's not be fear-motivated. I know we can get laid low.

Let's read it. Take it seriously. Be holy. But let's, you know, doesn't it say in Romans 12, if your gift is teaching, what? Then teach.

The church needs it. Your family needs it. We need it done. And so therefore, let's step up just like we were exhorted and be holy and be righteous. But there it is.

Part of it is a blessing though. 13. Scott, I love what you said as we were praying. You say we get to do what we love to do. Isn't that wonderful?

We love to do this. This is love. It's a love of people of God and the Word of God. It's not a labor. It's not something we wish we were free from.

It's a delight. And one of the delights is I get to see new things in the Word of God. I get to experience and learn far more frankly than I'm going to be able to teach. And that's a gift. So there you are.

You're setting the tech and then you're starting to crank out some things. Now how's the cranking going? How does that work? Well mechanically I just begin by reading the scripture out loud. I just do.

I read the passage out loud. I actually get my Bible. I open it up and I walk around and I read it out loud. And I read it and as many different English translations as I can find. Somebody mentioned to me earlier the program Bible Works, which is an excellent piece of software.

If you're really serious about exegesis, it's well worth the investment. It's not cheap. But it's worth the investment. And what it does is it enables you to look at as many different English translations pretty much as there are. It's really amazing.

And so I have some of the main ones up on my screen. I have the ESV up. I have the NAS. I have certainly the KJV up. I have the NIV up.

I don't have any of the bad ones up. I don't use them. I have RSV, which is very similar to ESV. They're very, very similar. It's almost 95% the same.

I almost wonder about that. I wonder if there's a family relationship there between RSV and ESV. It's very interesting. By the way, RSV was John Piper's scripture text choice before the ESV came along. I find that interesting.

But anyway, there they all are. And then you have the Greek up there or the Hebrew, depending on what testament, and you're just reading it through. And so I'll read it through in each of those five or six versions. Now as I'm reading it through, I'm already starting to learn things. As I go, I've got a notebook down, and as an idea pops in my head, an exegetical idea, something hits me, some fact, something, some insight, I write it down.

I don't trust it to memory. You know that story about Jonathan Edwards, all the little pieces of paper clipped to his, pinned to his coat because he'd forget them. Here's a guy that had lots of new ideas, okay? And he just knew enough to just write them down. He's an interesting guy, a bit odd.

Get the feeling, here's a guy that just so concentrates and he's writing these pinning things to his coat. That's an interesting person. And he's the same one who didn't, he didn't want to waste paper so he'd rotate it 90 degrees and write like that and rotate it again and write. And somebody actually was able to transcribe that. That's really kind of amazing.

I'm not like him in many ways. Just an incredible genius he was. But I think I just don't trust it to memory. God shows you something, write it down. And you're just collecting some things, collecting ideas, collecting thoughts.

Also, I notice I'm reading if there are just two translations that don't seem to be saying the same thing. They're really just different. It's not just a restatement, it's just they're two different things, really. That's where I know you've got some significant translation issues at that point, where one translation committee went one way and another translation committee, they went another way. Or there could be a text issue at that point.

KGB is frequently like that. It'll say something that isn't even reflected in the others, and then you've got to deal with text criticism and all that. I want to get into those technicalities, but I tend to note, where is there a difference between one translation and the next? And by the way, if you haven't been to seminary 23, and you haven't studied Greek and Hebrew, 24, you know, you are in a better position than 25, anyone else on the face of the earth in that 26, similar condition. We have so many English translations.

27, We really do, because they're money winners. Publishers, it's the number one selling book by far every year. Nothing's even close. And so they keep coming out with new. I would say within the next five years, there'll be yet another major, big time, new English translation.

They just keep coming out. And so you really can get at the Greek and Hebrew pretty well by the gifts of others that have gone ahead who have studied these languages for you. So you're not going to be too far off, frankly. I don't think there's a big loss if you don't know the original languages. So believe me, I'm not standing up here saying that Southeastern or Southern or whatever are wasting their time teaching Greek and Hebrew.

I'm not saying that. But I'm just saying if you have never studied, you're okay in the English language in that there's so many good translations to work with. So anyway, I'm noting down the differences. I'm noting down where there might be issues. I'm writing it down.

And I'm beginning to find ideas as I write. The next thing I do is I sit down and I get to work on the actual Greek text with, you know, on the screen Bible works and I start doing word studies on significant words. As I go through, I mean, not every word is equally significant. You know that. Like never do a word search on the word the or God.

Okay. God is a very significant being but it's not going to yield much in a word search. You know what I'm saying? Or Lord. Okay.

You don't need to work on that. You just know it's going to be 7585 times in the Bible. That doesn't tell you a thing. But there are some more poignant words that are worth a word search and they can help you give you some insight as you're looking at that. Again, word searching is easy these days with the software.

If you don't have the software, you get a concordance and you study on the Greek word, by the way. You don't even need to know how to pronounce it. You use the Strong's number in an interlinear. It'll tell you what the word is, and then you can find the places where that word is used everywhere, and you start to learn some things. It's a very, very powerful approach.

All right, so I'm going through that, and then I start thinking about context. Now take your hand out, and look at the little picture, the pathetic little picture I did, the stick figure guy rightly dividing the word of truth. Did you see it there? That's really bad, but there it is. I mean, I did this one afternoon to get ready for a Wednesday class, but it basically sums up what I'm getting at.

Here's the individual person. 02. 02. 02. 03.

04. 05. 06. 07. 08.

09. 18. 18. 19. 20.

21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

31. 32. 33. 34. 35.

36. 37. 38. 39. 40.

41. 42. 43. 44. 45.

That says, Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law. That's a great prayer, isn't it? Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law. It's just exactly like Luke 24, 45. Then he opened their minds so that they could understand the scripture.

It's the same thing. So basically, Psalm 119, verse 18 is the prayer, open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law. And Luke 24, 45 is the example of Jesus actually doing that for his apostles, opening their minds so they could understand the scripture. So I keep that in mind. I'm praying for the Holy Spirit to give me illumination.

And by the way, it's interesting to me how much of an emphasis there is on the Spirit as a great at giving extempore messages. Led by the Spirit, I changed everything, that kind of thing. You know what I'm saying? That he's good at improv, changing things on the fly. Well, I'm not saying that he isn't, but I'm saying is not the Holy Spirit like the Father and the Son and Great Planner as well?

And can't the Holy Spirit work in me three, four, five weeks in advance in my study on a Tuesday, knowing exactly who's coming five weeks later, four weeks later, and what I'll need to say. Can't he prepare me then to? I think he can. Am I yielded to the Spirit while preaching to change some things if I feel led to do it, yes, but I tend to be suspicious of that momentary urge and tend to go with that which I prayed over and carefully thought over. But if I feel led at that moment to bring in something I hadn't prepared for, I'll do it if I need to.

But there I am in the study and I am praying and I'm saying, Lord, guide me, teach me, not just to understand the text but what is the church, what do they need to hear, what's going on in their lives, what are some issues going on, what's happening in our general society, those kind of things. Just keeping in mind what's going on, asking the Spirit to give illumination And that's what it is. You're asking for insight. And there you are reading the text. In it comes to your eyes and you're thinking about it.

Out comes from that looking at the words of the text, the grammar, the propositions. Isn't it an amazing thing that God has locked his truth into such homely things as nouns and verbs and adjectives and syntax? It's really very homely at this point. Go that the Lord showed me, 1 Corinthians 13, he's talking about the gift of tongues, comparing it to the gift of prophecy, and he's talking about frankly the temporary nature of these spiritual gifts. These spiritual gifts are temporary until the Body of Christ is perfected in Heaven.

Then we will not need them anymore. Isn't that powerful? We will not need them. They are temporary, and this is what it says, when I was a child I thought like a child, I talk like a child, I reason like a child, when I became a man, I put childish things behind me. Now we see through a glass darkly, then we see face to face, then we will see face to face.

This is seeing through a glass darkly. I'm not in any way denigrating the scripture. I'm just saying we will not need the book when we are in the presence of God and seeing his face. Do you see what I'm getting at? And it says in scripture, they will all be taught by God.

Isn't that powerful? So we will get direct teaching from God. We will see His face and we will serve Him and we will learn from Him. In the meantime, we see through a glass darkly. Then we shall see face to face.

There will come a time we don't need nouns and verbs and syntax anymore. What we'll have instead is the direct presence of God and that's powerful. In the meantime, God has called on us to do grammatical analysis, called on us to do word studies, called on some people to learn Greek and Hebrew and to submit themselves to that process. And that's worthwhile. So we go through that, and as we go through that, we're looking for meaning.

The whole thing with language is you're taking meaning and putting it in boxcars of words. And the words get across the nature of God. The Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love. We're not to make any physical representation of God. We have verbal representations.

We describe what He's like. The Lord is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. God is love. These kinds of things. Well these words tell us what God is like and as we read them then we get a picture in our mind.

Not a physical picture of God's face but a picture of God's nature and his character from words. And so as you're reading through the text, you have a sense of what's the point, what is the message, what is coming out. All of that, all of those concepts you then put through a context grid, alright? And I've got that box there, There are seven aspects of context that I think about. I'm not trying to make this more complicated than it is, but these are just ways that you rightly divide the word of truth so you don't make mistakes.

There's the immediate context, like what is happening in the verses beforehand and what's happening in the verses afterwards? What is the flow of thought that helps us to interpret this passage, etc.? You've heard that story about the man who was seeking God's will for his life and he opened up the Bible and pointed his finger at some random place. Do you ever do this? I hope you don't do it.

Flipping open a random page and open it up. For me, this is not the way to approach Bible study. That particular man trying to determine what to do with his life, found the passage where it said, Judas went out and hanged himself, opened it up again and said, Go and do likewise. This is not a good approach, okay? That's totally out of context.

And we know that that's not the right way to go. Immediate context tells us what the words mean. There's also literary context. What do I mean by that? Well, what type of book is it in?

Is it wisdom literature, you know, etc.? What is going on around it? Is it poetical? Now, I'm going to say tomorrow, Just because it's poetical doesn't mean you can't get precepts from it. Definitely we can.

There are precepts behind the poetical language. But the literary context helps us. Then there's the author context, and that's especially true of authors that have written many books, like Paul or John or Peter, etc. We have lots of their thoughts. Peter, a third of the book of Acts, are his thinking and his sermons and his approach.

And then you have two of his epistles. And then you have all of his statements in the gospel. So you have an idea of the whole body of his thinking and his development as an apostle of Christ. Paul the most, but then David, all of his psalms, you know, you have a sense of the way David would write and what he was thinking. And one of the big themes, I remember we're reading through psalms every day with my kids as I would drive to church every Sunday.

We'd read a psalm and talk about it. And so we get done reading the psalm and I'd say, OK, what's it about? And in one section of psalms, they would intone David and his enemies. That's basically it. Basically, David always has enemies.

And he's asking God to deliver from his enemies and needing help from his enemies. You know, that's it. And for me, I want to ask, okay, you guys are sounding bored and you ought not to, but let me ask you a question. Why are there so many psalms about David and his enemies? What does that have to do with my life?

And I don't remember which one it was, but one of them was able to make that hermeneutical bridge and that connection. Maybe we have enemies too, a lot of them. And maybe our struggle is not against flesh and blood. Our enemies are spiritual and every bit as vicious as David's enemies. And there is someone who wants your very life, someone who wants your soul, the devil, like a prowling lion seeking someone to devour.

He's coming after you today. And the prayer, the desperate prayer of David about his plotting enemies, those who are whispering in the palace and trying to take down his very life, that's what the devil and his demons are doing toward you, trying to take you down. And so that was a very sobering moment for them to realize that we have so many psalms about David and his enemies because we also have enemies that want to take us down. Anyway, literary context and author context help us. Then there's the historical and the cultural context.

What's going on in the surrounding situation? We heard Jason do that very well with what was happening in Athens. We learned a lot about Athens from your message, brother, and that was good, to try to understand who the Epicureans were and the Stoics. And it helps us to know that kind of stuff. You don't get it from the Bible.

All right? You don't get information about who the Epicureans were, but the word is mentioned in the Bible and it gives us permission to then find out who they were. And so we try to find out more about Athens, what it was like, what kind of a pagan place was it, and that helps us understand why Paul preached differently there than he did to the synagogue in Pisidian Antioch in chapter 13 of Acts. It's different preaching. As I mentioned, more pre-evangelism.

You go over Acts 13, he is openly talking about Jesus, the son of David, and how he fulfills prophecy. It's just a different approach. And so there's a historical context into which he's writing. Then there's the biblical context. And this is very important.

There's something called redemptive history. And one of the things I urge fathers, especially with their kids, is to give them a sense of the grand flow of the Bible. The big picture, what we call biblical theology or redemptive history, what is the flow from creation through Adam and Eve and the fall, right through the flood and call of Abraham, and then Isaac and Jacob, and then all of that. Trace out the whole history so that when we go to Esther, we know where it fits. It's important to know where Esther fits, not in the order of the 66 books.

Where does it fit in redemptive history? Where does it fit with how does Esther connect to Ezra? Right? What about Job? It doesn't seem to connect anywhere.

We don't know where it fits. And that's interesting. That's why some people think it was one of the oldest books of the Bible. Because it doesn't mention any of the other elements of redemptive history. That's interesting.

But to set it properly so that we can read it properly. That's important. And by the way, in your handout, I've given you a whole alpha and omega of redemptive history there. See it? These aren't page numbered because These were different handouts I gave out at different times, and then I just collected them all in one place.

But you see redemptive history? There are major divisions from the fall to Christ's incarnation, from Christ's incarnation to his resurrection, and from his resurrection to the end of the world. Those are three major divisions of human history. OK? There is a pre-one, like from creation to the fall, as well, obviously.

But then, you know, sub-points from the fall to the flood, from the flood to the call of Abraham, Abraham to Moses, Moses to David, David to the Babylonian captivity, and Babylonian captivity to Christ. Those are major divisions of redemptive history. And then Christ's incarnation is life, His death and resurrection, that's the ministry and life of Christ as spelled out in four books in the New Testament and then described many times in the epistles after that. Then you've got period three, resurrection to destruction of Jerusalem. And Now you get into, yes, here it is, church history.

Is church history part of redemptive history? Did God have a plan for redemption after Jesus ascended to heaven? After the book of Acts was finished? Yes, he did. Please nod your head.

I know it's late, late in the afternoon. But he had a plan that's carried us up to this point. To the time of Constantine, the rise of the Roman Catholic Church, the Reformation, spread of missions, defense of the faith, future events. That's it. Now isn't it nice to be able to put everything you're doing somewhere in that grid.

Turn the page and there's all kinds of details and where it fits. All right? So I tried to give you a sense of what we were dealing with there. And you can just put the reading in its proper place in terms of history. So go back to your little chart there.

So there's biblical context. Then there's theological context. Another issue of theological context is what issues are coming up in the text. Right? You look at what Jason preached on Acts 17.

What are some of the theological issues that came up in his message. From one man he made every nation of men. Okay? Isn't it good to know the effect of that and how it would influence, for example, our view of evolution? Okay?

I mean, that's good to know. Why is it important to know that from one man he made every nation of men? How does that relate to evolution? Well, I'm not going to stop here and we don't have much time left, but it does relate. Okay?

I think it makes human evolution impossible. It really does. It makes it impossible. I don't see how it fits. And so, but it's good to know that this verse connects with that.

This is a useful verse for dealing with that. All right? For me, in terms of systematic theology, when I'm doing Matthew 16, Jesus says, I tell you that you are Peter and on this rock I will build my church and the gates of Hades will not prove stronger than it. I'll give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. To me these words are rife with theological issues.

Also connecting with the last issue of context, and that's church context. How have the Roman Catholics interpreted the giving of the keys to Peter? All right, he was the first pope, right? Was he? Well, it's good to know that these are the issues as you're coming at it.

And you're thinking, man, this is a lot to know. I mean, how am I gonna get that out of every text of scripture? It just takes time. It's not something you learn overnight. That's why I keep coming back to the issue of Rome wasn't built in a day.

You don't have a city of truth erect inside your heart overnight. It's just brick by brick, line by line, preset by preset. There's just this building going on inside your soul and just stuff's getting put in place and you're reading all the time, memorizing, thinking, learning, and then something gets put in place. And out of that maturing vision, you start to have more and more of a wide-bred understanding of the context of the Bible. Takes time though, doesn't it?

I feel for the internationals that come to our church that have none of this. None of it. They don't have any of these contexts. And you have to work just with the text you're looking at and be simple and try to explain just what's right here and what these words mean and do the best you can with it. Seven aspects of context.

Out of all of that, you get a sense of the author's original intent, what he was writing about, and major and minor points. Dan already mentioned the feedback loop. You're going to bring what you're thinking back to that and this is growing, building system of truth as I've told you about. But then you're going to get out these major points and out come truths. Now, that's the work of exegesis.

The work of exposition is to the work of exegesis, someone once said, like the work of a pearl diver who dives down into the bottom of the bay to get pearls is to that of a jeweler. Okay? When you're done diving for pearls, you have a table full of pearls. More than you can use for the necklace you have in mind. More than you can use.

And some of the pearls are of different size or quality or sheen or luster. They're all pearls, they're all wonderful. But they don't all fit. They just don't. And it bothers me when people don't know that and you just get all the pearls they found or just these 30 pearls out of the 50, but there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to why those pearls were chosen.

I think a really skilled jeweler chooses the right pearls, the right arrangement, maybe a big one in the center and then ever smaller diameters out until, you know, something. It's a work of art. You see what I'm saying? To craft the sermon. And it's not perfect.

It's more art than science. Exegesis is more science than art. And as you're arranging it, there are rhetorical devices. There are passion. There's a technique of persuasion that is part of the preaching.

It's different than the work of exegesis, but exegesis is required to do a good job with it. So I like that analogy, the idea of pearl diving versus making a piece of jewelry. It's a work of art. So all of that stuff is out on the table and now you're going to make your sermon. You're going to make your beautiful piece of jewelry.

Turn the page and then you're going to start applying the word of truth. From all of that, all those truths, you're going to start getting an outline. All right? You saw Jason getting his outline from the text. Sometimes the text just gives you the outline.

Okay? Sometimes it doesn't. Okay? It's not easy to get the outline. The outline is important though because that's what your people are going to remember.

Some people, like John MacArthur, are fanatical about alliteration. Have you ever noticed the brother? I mean, he had... P is his favorite letter. I mean, it's got to be, because you can do so much with P's.

There are a lot of P's. Like one time he used the word preternatural. I'll never forget that. It's another word for supernatural, OK? But it begins with a P, OK?

And all of his other things had P, so he had to have a preternatural instead of supernatural, all right? Well, that's good. You grow your vocabulary. You learn that way and all that. I'm not much for alliteration, because sometimes it forces you to not choose the best word.

I like to choose the best titles for each of the points of the outline and get a sense at that moment of what will say it the best. If I can go alliterative, I will, but I usually don't. All right, I usually don't. So then you've got your outline. You take your major points, your minor points, and the time has come to get these timeless truths and a hermeneutical bridge across to your people, across to your audience, across to your family.

All right? Timeless truths. John Calvin said they're going to come to us in two categories. All right. The beginning of the Institutes, you remember what it was, Scott?

I'm not going to quiz you, but nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is the true and helpful wisdom, I forget the details, consists in two points, knowledge of God and of ourselves. Those are the two categories of knowledge you're getting out of the Bible. So for me it's a good question always to ask, what does this text say about God and what does this text say about human beings? Me really. What am I learning about God here?

What am I learning about people? And those are the two things. That's wisdom, says Calvin. That's going to come across the hermeneutical bridge, across culture, across time, across history, and across world view to me, to us, to change us, so that we are transformed by the renewing of our mind. That's what we're looking for, a transformation of life by our hearts being renewed.

Generally, I look at application in four simple ways. What do I need to understand, believe, be, and do? Do you see that? Understand is just something I need to know about God. That's a brick in the city of truth that's being built up.

That's a good application. All right, just now I need to know this, that God is like this or this happened, et cetera. What do I have to believe? In what way do I need to trust Christ here? What does this say to me about trust?

I recently preached on the disciples forgetting to bring bread in Matthew 16. I've preached a whole sermon on that. Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and the Sadducees and they're arguing because they forgot to bring bread. To me it's very comforting. Why is it comforting?

Because I'm forgetful. More so, ever more so. All right? And it's nice to know that if you forget something, that the Lord is there to care for you, that his sovereign providence is enough. And he rebukes them for being concerned about it, doesn't he?

He said, don't you remember the five loaves for the five thousand and how many basketballs you gathered, or the seven loaves for the four thousand and how many basketballs you gathered? I'm not talking to you about bread. It's covered. Let me ask you a question. How many of you think that the apostles ended up starving after that, dying of starvation on the other side of the lake?

Do any of you think that that happened? The account does not give it to us what happened about the food. Do you think they ate that day? What do you think? Do you think they ate?

Some say yes, some say no. I say it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if they ate that day. How do you know it doesn't matter? Because none of them died of starvation, Right?

You do have enough calories stored up in your body to make it a while. OK? So it was OK. They needed to concentrate on what Jesus was saying and let him provide in his good time for the physical needs. Remember how Paul says, you have no advantage if you eat and you're not at disadvantage if you don't.

So it's not the issue. Don't worry about your life, what do you eat or drink, etc. Well, what do I get out of that? What do I need to believe? What do I need to be?

What does that mean? Be. How is that an application? What is this passage saying to me about my character? About what kind of man I need to be?

Alright? Dan, all the stuff you were sharing, there's a lot of that. What kind of man do I need to be to be a teacher, right? There's a lot of those passages. What kind of man, person do I need to be?

What kind of son do I need to be my parents? What kind of father do I need to be my children? What kind of husband do I need to be? What kind of pastor do I need to be? What kind of man do I need to be?

Alright, husbands love your wives and don't be harsh with them. Alright, what kind of man do I need to be from that? Okay, that's an application. And then do what I need to do? Well, there's all kinds of doing that we have to do.

Do this and don't do that. Present your body as a living sacrifice. Go into your room, close the door, and pray to your Father's unseen. There's all kinds of doing, and if the passage lends itself to doing, then do. And then a pastor's job is to find out practical applications on how to apply that to your everyday life.

It's not just do, by the way. We're very pragmatic, practical people. It's understand, believe, be, and do. Those four things. That's the whole thing.

Do you see the system? Do you have any questions about that? Does that make sense? We'll get to questions in a minute. I want to turn to top 10 questions of context, and this will sum up what I'm trying to say, and I'll be done.

I'll be open for questions. All right? Do you see it on the back of one of the sheets? Top ten questions of context. They're in there.

Under grammatical context, I look at the word. What are the impact words and phrases in this passage and what is the range of meanings in these words in the Bible? That's the issue of word. Number two, sentence. How does the main idea of the sentence logically connect to what sentence precedes or follows it?

What is the train of thought here? Number three, paragraph. How does the main idea of this paragraph logically connect to what precedes and follows it? That's grammatical context. Secondly, literary context.

Question number four, genre. How does the type of writing, narrative, parable, poetry, apocalyptic, prophetic, wisdom, etc. Help us understand the words, grammar, and flow of this passage. Pause for a moment. I was getting ready, I was doing a Bible study in the book of Revelation, we're going through verse by verse in Revelation on Thursday afternoon, similar to Lloyd-Jones, 297 messages on Romans.

I go as slow as we want to go in Revelation. We're in chapter 14. All right? And so it's an hour, about 30 men come and we just go through, you know, and I have no agenda. We just try to understand the text.

And I was working on the scripture which talks about the wine press of the Lord's wrath pressing out and the blood reached the height of the bridal to a distance of 1600 stadia, something like that. Well, just being an engineer, I was looking at the volume of blood. Okay? I just was. I just thought, that's a lot of blood.

It just is. And I calculated that that distance was 184 miles. I took that as a diameter, not a radius. All right? We'll give it the benefit of the doubt.

So that's 92 mile radius that of blood. Alright? I calculated how much blood it was. Okay? And I found out from a website how much blood the average human being has.

Do you know how many people's blood worth that is? A lot doesn't say it, brother. It's one times ten to the fifteenth peoples of blood. It's a quadrillion of people. Well, there haven't been that many people in human history, okay?

Not that I know of. That's like 140, 000 Earths, all right? So what do I say? I'm saying I'm in apocalyptic literature, and that kind of calculation is obviously not appropriate. Does that make sense?

I have proven that it's not appropriate. I did it mathematically. We're not talking about the blood of one quadrillion people there. We're talking about an image of wrath that is overwhelming and terrifying. That's all you need to say because it's apocalyptic.

I love it when people say, I take a literal approach to the book of Revelation. I say, go ahead and try. It's a challenge. I love the Lord. I love the word.

But my engineering mindset showed it doesn't work too well for every little line in the book of Revelation. Sometimes there are symbolic numbers. And I think the number 1, 600 on stadia is symbolic. A lot of blood, big wrath, that's what I get out. So apocalyptic, et cetera.

All right, author context, other writings. Has the author written anything else that will help us understand this passage? Does Paul interpret Paul for us? Does that help? Historical circumstance, according to the Bible and other non-biblical sources, what was the situation of the writer, readers, and subjects of the passage?

What's going on at the time? Number seven, redemptive history, Where does this passage fit into the unfolding history of redemption and what insight do other Bible passages give on the issues in this one? Theological context, systematic theology. What topics of theology come up in this passage and what contributions and problems does the passage uncover? For example, God, humanity, Christ, salvation, God's people, the future, etc.

These are major topics of theology. And then church context, how has this passage been interpreted by other Christians in the past, number nine. And number ten, what is our present context that might affect our own interpretations. These are ten questions I ask when I write a sermon. They could be helpful to you when you prepare to teach your family or lead a Bible study, something like that.

Thank you. About the National Center for Family Integrated Churches, where you