Video Transcript: Using the Bible in Preaching

This is lecture 22 of practical ministry skills. Today. We're talking about using the Bible in preaching. This is part of chapter 14 of pastoring the nuts and bolts. Our key verse is from Romans 10:14, how then will they call on him in whom they  have not believed? And how are they to believe in Him or whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? How are they to  hear without someone preaching? Now the word preaching here means public  proclamation. an announcement. It doesn't necessarily talk about or the word is  not necessarily restricted to sermons in a church. But how can you call on  somebody you never heard of, and how can you or never believed in? And how  can you believe if you never heard of somebody, and how can you not hear?  How can you hear unless somebody announces, somebody tells you, somebody proclaims, today, we're talking about using the Bible in that proclamation. So  what is involved in helping people hear and believe and call on God in the name of Jesus, the proclamation that you make, you are standing if you are delivering  any kind of a message, as a ministry leader, as a pastor, a preacher of any kind, in the name of God, you are standing up there and claiming to give what God  wants those people to hear, and they're expecting to hear what God wants them  to hear. It's an awesome responsibility. So you need to as you sit down and  begin to prepare you want to you need to find out what God wants these  particular people at this particular time, to hear and understand and do and  make that as clear and compelling as you can with God's help. And I want to say that again, these particular people. God knows who is going to be listening to  your words, reading your words, because a proclamation doesn't have to be  verbal. It can be written out. God knows who's going to be there listening, and  he has something specific for those people to hear. These particular people. At  this particular time, you may have the same group of people in your church, in  your congregation, in your ministry for years on end, but each time they come,  each Sunday morning, or whenever it is that they're hearing you speak, that's a  particular time in their life that something is going on, and God knows that. God  knows what that is. So find out what God wants these particular time at this  particular these particular people, at this particular time to hear and understand.  See, it's not enough just that you say something that they hear if they don't  understand what you're saying, it doesn't do them any good because you're  using big language that they don't know, or because you're mumbling or  because whatever it might be, they need to not only hear it, they need to  understand it. God wants them, these particular people, at this particular time, to hear and understand and do something about it. There is something that God  wants these people to do. It may be a physical action, it may be to change a  way of thinking, but your sermon, your message, is a means that God wants to  use to get these people to do something, to make some kind of a move, some  kind of a growth move. Sometime, kind of a move toward God. Sometime, kind  of a mood of move of service do something. So you need to find out what that is.

what God wants these people at this time to hear and understand and do. And  then you need to make that as clear and compelling as you can. Clear meaning  they understand exactly what you're saying. They're not mistaking it. And I'll tell  you what, people have an incredible ability to misunderstand, an absolutely  incredible ability to take what you thought was very clear and understand it  some crazy wrong way. I have literally had two people, one right after the other,  come in line shaking hands as they're coming out of the church service. And one said, Oh, Pastor, I appreciated that you said this. And the next person said, Oh,  Pastor, I was so upset that you said that, and that was there exactly the  opposite. I said, do this. And the second person heard me say, Don't do this, and it's just people are going to hear right? And there's some way you can't  sometimes you can't do anything about that, but try to make it as clear as you  can. Try to anticipate, how could they possibly misunderstand this and and try to make it as clear as you can, and make it as compelling as you can, make it as  persuasive something that doesn't just sound dry and intellectual, but moves  them to take action, to do something, and you can only do this with God's help.  So to put it another way, every sermon should do four things. Should proclaim  the truth. It should explain its meaning. Okay, the truth may be a Bible verse that is a little difficult to understand, so you explain its meaning. You apply it to life.  You show how this applies to the lives of the people you're sitting in front of.  Some of them, it's very obvious. Some of them, it's not real obvious. You, you,  you're giving a message about something that happened, some Bible story that  happened in the Old Testament, Noah. Okay, you're giving you talk about Noah  in the ark, and people like that. You can explain, you can tell them about Noah in the ark. You could explain its meaning, but they're still going to sit there and say, but what does that have to do with me? And you need to find how to apply it to  their life, how how to encourage people to apply it to their life. And there quite a  number of applications you can find in that. And then the fourth thing that a  sermon needs to do is to encourage action. As I said, not just take it in and store it away someplace as an interesting bit of trivia, but something to do something  about. And to do that, there are two parts to encouraging action. You need to  give a reason to act, and you need to give an opportunity to act. We talked a  little bit about that earlier in talking about ministries. Now, every preacher  naturally is going to lean more toward one or two of these than the other ones.  For me, I personally, I'm real big on the proclaiming and explaining, especially  the explaining, I just love to dig into that, because that's my natural gift as a  teacher. And so I have to really remind myself to find the application and make  the application clear and encourage the action other people, other preachers  lean the other way. So remind yourself to do the ones that don't come naturally  to you, because you need to get all four from God. Now, preaching starts with  the Bible. You have to have the word of God. You can't proclaim the Word of  God if you don't have the word of God, and if you're not proclaiming the Word of 

God, you might be giving a talk or a lecture, but you're not preaching. Now the  meaning of the Bible is not always obvious. That doesn't mean, as some  skeptics would say, that the Bible contradicts itself, or that therefore we can  ignore it. I like the approach that says I don't understand everything God said,  and that's fine with me, because if God was so small that I could understand him completely with my puny human mind, he wouldn't be worth. Worshiping. A big  part of what Paul talks about, especially is mystery. And we in the modern world  very often don't like mystery. We want to be able to explain and understand  everything, and then if we understand it, then we want to be able to judge it and  say whether we buy into it or not before we believe it or follow it. That's not  That's not the way faith works. God does want us to use our mind and want us  to understand everything, but it's not always obvious. Another way of looking at  that is that there are some truths in the Bible that are set right there on the  surface for anybody to pick up. And there are other things. It's like mining for  gold. Sometimes you might find a gold nugget sitting just up on the ground and  you can pick up, but most of the time, you're going to have to dig down in and  mine and do a lot of hard work to get the gold out, or the gemstones out, or the  truth out of the Bible. And that's what you want to do, is you want to read the  meaning out of the Bible. You want to get the truth out of the Bible. You don't  want to be salting your mind. You don't want to be taking your own ideas and  reading them into the Bible and looking for verses that will support your own  ideas. That's called Proof texting. I have an idea, and there are enough verses  in this Bible and enough stories of both good and bad people that if I work hard  enough, I can find a verse in here that's going to support almost anything that I  want to say, but that's not preaching, that's not reading the Bible. That is a  misuse of the Bible. It's taking God's Word in vain. We talked a little bit, I think,  in the presuppositions that God does not contradict himself. So if you think that  you have come across something where God one verse contradicts another  verse, or one verse contradicts some scientific or historical truth, then the fact is, God is in charge of all of those things, and God does not contradict himself. And  therefore you need to ask God to show you how to reconcile those. The easy  answer could be, you just flat misunderstand one or the other of the truths or the verses or what history is saying or what science is saying. Or it could be that the current historical interpretation or the current scientific opinion is wrong, and  goodness knows, scientific opinions have changed all the time throughout  history, and they continue to interpretations of history have changed. God  doesn't change. God doesn't contradict himself. So if you find something that  seems to contradict itself, let the Bible interpret the Bible. Chain references are  the little numbers in on the margins in the side, where a lot of Bibles, especially  a lot of study Bibles, will have this one doesn't have it, but we'll have over in the  side, in the verse, it'll have a little number or a little letter, and over on the side is that same number or letter, and it'll have other Bible verses that talk about the 

same thing that help explain this Bible verse. And it can be very, very helpful to  what they call, run the references, look up the other passages. Now, some some of us can enjoy that so much that we get a little bit carried away. It says, By the  time he realized the danger, Carl had developed a compulsive chain reference  habit. He couldn't read a single verse without having to look up all the other  verses that are that are referenced, and then each of those had other verses  referenced. And you go in and you it can be really good if you're just doing  study, but it can be really distracting if you're trying to prepare something. You've got a deadline, and you got to get this sermon ready. But let the truth is, let the  Bible interpret the Bible. And so when you do that, you need to understand  things there, how to read the Bible, and it's basically how to read any other  book. God gave us the Bible as a book because it is an enduring. Uh, objective  way of passing truth along from generation to generation. So you read a book in  terms of three contexts. There's the literary context, what the author says this in  this, in these few words, what is the author saying in all these other words  around it, and then, how does it fit into the whole context of the whole Bible, but  particularly, what's going on in this whole situation here that that the author is  writing about, that I'm taking these few words out of make sure that it it fits in  there. You understand that context, the historical context, what was going on in  history, in the world at the time, that may help you understand this situation. We  talked earlier about the the when Jesus said, render unto Caesar, what is  Caesar's And unto God. What is God's you need to understand that if you don't  understand what he's talking about there, you need to know that this happened  at a time in history when the Roman Empire was ruled by Caesar and they had  conquered Israel, where Jesus lived, and all of the people who were there were  unwilling Vassals of the Roman Empire. And so if you don't have that historical  understanding, then you'll be very confused about what Jesus is saying  understand the cultural context, and that is, how were different people treated  and understood? What was is this a time in or a culture in which women were  not allowed to be educated, or, you know, various other different kinds of things.  What was the the culture? The culture, for instance, of betrothal, which we often  think of in terms of our modern American engagement, was very different. It was a much more serious kind of a situation, and you can understand the birth  stories of Jesus and the relationship between Joseph and Mary as a betrothed  couple in that culture meant something quite different than in our American  modern American culture, just saying that was she's my fiance. That's a very  different meaning. So understand the cultural meanings. And I think I mentioned  before the Africa Study Bible, that's great for explaining that if you're in an  African context, if you can get hold of that, I think it's pretty expensive, as most  study Bibles are, but that's a really good help for that one meaning principal  application. Lots of times we want to just look at a verse and say, Okay, this is  what it says, Therefore this is what I'm supposed to do. Sometimes that's the 

case, but sometimes it's not, because often of these cultural situations where  Paul says that women should not have short hair, okay, that doesn't necessarily  apply to us. We can't say anybody who, any woman who cuts their hair short, is  is not a good Christian. And then you start getting into how short is short? And,  you know, all that kind of stuff, you have to understand that in that particular  culture in which Paul was writing, the only women who had their short hair, their  hair short were prostitutes. And that's what I have read. And so that what the  principle there is, Christian women should not go around looking like prostitutes. So meaning principle application, don't be dogmatic where the Bible is not  dogmatic. Okay, in other words, don't, don't pound your fist and say, I'm staking  taking my stand on this, and no matter what this is, what I'm going to believe,  because the Bible says this. Well, there are some things about that where that's  absolutely true. Jesus is the Son of God, and He died for our sins, and salvation  is by faith, absolutely yes indeed. But there may be something that's just one  verse, and maybe somebody's interpretation of one verse. And look, for  instance, we mentioned the word pastor only appears one time in the Bible. And so I'm not going to dogmatically stand here and say, Well, what it means is this  and this and. This exactly, and if you don't believe this, then you're not a good  Christian, because the Bible is not dogmatic about it. If the Bible itself says, Let  everything be proved by two or three witnesses, if you can't find three solid  verses that support something, then don't try to force it on other people. You can still have an opinion about it. But don't be dogmatic where the Bible isn't. How is  the Bible meant to be understood? How is the particular passage you're looking  at? Is it literal? Most historical stories and so on are under are meant to be  understood literally. When it says that David became king, or David killed  Goliath, then you understand that, yeah, but sometimes it's figurative. Jesus  said, I'm the door. He also said I'm the vine, for goodness sakes was sometimes he was the door and sometimes he was a vine, and sometimes he was . We  supposed to understand that Well, it's obvious. It's figured he was using a figure  of speech. Sometimes it's to be understood allegorically. Historically. Throughout much of history, the Song of Solomon has been understood as an allegory or a  picture, a symbolic picture of the love between Jesus and the church. So let the  Lord guide you. In there your common sense guiding you. When you're reading  modern writing, you don't even have to think about is this a literal or a figure?  But in in something like the Bible that was written so long ago and in different  cultures, sometimes we have to look into it more, but recognize that  understanding a figurative or even sometimes an allegorical meaning doesn't  mean that you're not understanding it true or believing that it's true, because  sometimes the true meaning is expressed that way. Another figure is the  apocalyptical writings of revelations and so on, the beasts and all of that, where  the meaning still isn't clear. Consult what other Christians have believed down  through the years. Consult your spirit and consult your mind. Use study tools, 

concordances, commentaries, Bible encyclopedias, all of those are wonderful. I  use them all the time, if you can get them on your your phone, on your  computer, and by the way, there are a lot of good free Bible study stuff online  that you can get onto your phone and use offline. And certainly look into those if  you can. And and a lot of those have commentaries and so on. Usually the free  ones include free commentaries, and they're free because they're old, but old  meaning 150 years old or something like that, but still very, very excellent, and  you can learn a lot about out of it. And of course, if you have a study Bible, it'll  have footnotes and explain things. Use the study tools, but remember, they're  not inspired. The text of the Bible is inspired. The study tools are not I mentioned online just a quick word on how to tell a good website from a bad website,  because there are a lot out there. There are websites that are put up. Anybody  can put up a website. It's pretty quick and easy and cheap, relatively nowadays,  it's amazing how things get up there. And so there will be some stuff that's put  up by people who have some really strange beliefs and are just putting them up  there trying to get you to believe them. How do you know a good, trustworthy  biblical website? Well, first, how do you know one that's not if, if they are trying  to get money out of you? There are plenty of good, solid ones that are free. So if they say, send us this money now, there are some good ones that charge  money because courses are worth money. But you can tell when a preacher is  trying to get money out of you, and you can tell when a website is trying to get  money out of you. And if that's their big thing, you know, send us money and  we'll guarantee that you go to heaven kind of thing, you know, avoid that. That's  one of the big things. Or we went through the apostle's creed early check  against that good websites usually offer a lot of free stuff that's not the first thing. That's the easiest, it's not the most important. The most important is that they  will have a statement of faith posted that you can read and you can compare to  the statement of faith of your Church, or to what you know to be true, or to the  statement of faith of other good websites. They say, We believe this and this  and this and this. And you look at that and say, yeah, that that's true. Often they  will reference or make available different commentaries and Bible programs and  you can compare them. And if you've got a number of different good, reputable,  seeming websites that all seem to reference the same kind of material and  make it available to you. That's another sign that they're good. And since you're  taking these courses, compare the statement of faith and what you're learning in these courses against the statement of faith and so on, on the websites and the  ones that agree you can you can trust, and the ones that are trying to lead you  off into other kinds of things be careful of we are toward the end of our time. So I will leave you with that and see you again next time