Video Transcript: How to Construct a Sermon

Welcome to number 24 in the practical ministry skills course. This lecture is on  how to construct a sermon, and it is not in the book, so perhaps you didn't have  to read anything for this one. I was quite shocked and surprised when I  discovered, after a couple years, after the book had been written and out there,  that I had not put in anything about how to actually construct a sermon. So I  hope this will be helpful to you. Our key verse is Isaiah 28:13, therefore the word of the Lord will be to them, precept upon precept, precept upon precept. Line  upon line, line upon line. Here, a little, there, a little. The context of this verse is  that the Israelites are insulted that God is sending preachers to use such simple, clear language, as if they're babies, and God says that's exactly what they need, because they're acting like babies. The reason I brought it here is because  simple, clear language, building, building, building, either through stories or  through points, or any of the other approaches that we talked about, but you  want to get it across to the people. Your point is not to show you show them how smart you are, but to help them understand it. I was told never overestimate the  vocabulary of your listeners and never underestimate their intelligence. In other  words, they might not know the big words that you learned in school, but they  are smart enough to hear what God wants them to hear. So how do you  construct a sermon? You can preach 1000 recipes for tasty sermons. It's this is  based on a cooking show, cooking show that talks about recipes and so on. And the guy is the pastor is saying, add one part college experience story with two  humorous asides. Mix well with original Greek meaning, saute one spicy  example. Let soak in then add final three points to remember stir fry until 12  noon, save leftovers for Wednesday evening. The fact is, there is not just one  recipe. I mean, there are pastors, some very effective pastors who have been  taught structures like that the classic stereotypic American Seminary of 50 years ago, preaching course was three points and a poem, but there is no one recipe.  I want to try and give you some options. Tell you some things that have worked  for me, that have worked for other people. And I want to start with you don't  have to come up with your own original sermons right from the beginning every  Sunday, paraphrased sermons have a long, honorable history. That's where you  take somebody else's sermon, put it in your own language and preach it. This is  was especially used when John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, was using  laypeople who had not been his movement grew. It was a reform movement of  the Church of England in the middle 1700s and his movement grew to the point  where there were not enough trained priests who were willing to come in and  start working with his people instead of leaving their established churches in the  Church of England, and Wesley started using laypeople, untrained people, to be his preachers. To go into various places where he could not go and preach  sermons. And when they moved to America, when Methodism moved to  America, they the circuit riders, they were called, would go out on horses into  the frontier where the new settlements were, and would preach one Sunday 

here and one Sunday there, and one Sunday another place. And the circuit  riders were required, and then later the class leaders, those who preached,  excuse me. Excuse me. Those who preached on the some of these when the  circuit riders couldn't be there, they took the outlines of the sermons that John  Wesley had written and preached, and they put them in their own words. They  paraphrased them, and they preached those. And here it comes again. Excuse  me, what's going on in here? If I knew more about this technology, I would figure out some way to do something about it. But anyway, there we go. Please forgive me. Even today, pastors who start a satellite church sometimes will have the  local pastor of the daughter church or satellite location paraphrase the sermon  that the senior pastor preached just so that everybody is getting the same  teaching at the same time. So if you hear a good sermon, you read a good  sermon, you come across a good sermon that you think your people would  benefit from. Feel free to use it, paraphrase it, there's an honorable history to  that. Now give credit. Don't let people think you came up with something if you  didn't. So first you give credit, then you note the main points the outline. You can write it as an outline. You can write it as a mind map. You can write it as a list of  stories, just whatever helps you remember the sermon, the points that you want  to get across, and then put it in your own language. You can add different or  additional scriptures. You can use different or additional illustrations. You're just  paraphrasing. You're getting the same points across. So what should a sermon  do? We covered this a little bit before, but every sermon should proclaim,  explain. Apply and encourage, explain. Excuse me, proclaim, explain, apply and  encourage. I've heard sermons that gave fiery calls to get out of the pews and  do something without a clear idea of what to do or why to do it. I've heard  sermons called how to do X without a clear explanation of why X is something I  should want to do, and no encouragement to get started. I've heard sermons  and preached some myself that clearly explain the meaning of a Bible passage,  and stop there, leaving it for the hearers to figure out what to do and motivate  themselves to do it. All of those are essentially partial sermons. Every sermon  should have all four of these points, proclaim, explain, apply and encourage  what do those mean? Proclaim is to state a truth. It can be as simple as reading  a Bible passage. Explain is to help the listeners understand its meaning. And  sometimes there's more than one meaning. I personally always like to say in a  case like that, some good Christians think this. Some good Christians think that.  Here's why I believe this is better apply. Show how this truth applies to your  listeners' lives, what they should do about it, what difference it should make in  their lives, and then encourage, motivate your people to do the application, and  if you can provide an organized opportunity for you to do it. So we've gone over  that before. Just wanted to give a. A quick recap. How do you prepare a  message number one, which is number one in pretty much everything you do as a minister and as a Christian is pray, pray and listen, listen for what God is 

saying, not what you want to say and pray and listen for how best to present it.  Here's the message God wants me to get across. The point God wants me to  make. Is it best made by finding a passage in the Bible, one passage in the  Bible, that explains it, and going clearly through verse by verse, Through that  passage in an expository sermon. Or is it maybe better going through the Bible  and finding the different places in the Bible that address this point or this subject  and that's a topical sermon? Or would this one lend itself to telling a story that  gets the point across with not only understandably, but with emotional impact,  pray about how God wants you to present that and he may have different  preachers present the same point in different ways based on their own  preaching style and the people who will be listening. So first you pray and listen, what is God saying? How to present it. Then you do your research to get more  into making sure you know what is going on, making sure you've got all the right  and appropriate verses. Run the references, use your study helps put it all  together in your mind, to make sure that you have enough resources to grab  from, to choose from, to actually assemble the sermon, the research is pulling  together a bunch of raw material. And you may not, at the end of it, wind up  using all of it, but that's okay. Third point think. And actually we should be  thinking all the way through but there are some times that we need to just really  remind ourselves to stop and think. Study this book of instruction, continually  meditate on it day and night, so you will be sure to obey everything written in it,  only then will you prosper and succeed in all you do? Joshua 1:8, meditate is  just another word for Think. Think deeply. It's interesting. In the English, another  word for meditate is ruminate, and ruminate, also in English, has the meaning of describing what a cow does when it chews its cud. Cows have four stomachs  and they eat, they chew up the grass and they swallow it pretty quickly. During  the daytime, when they're in a good place with a lot of grass, they just get as  much as they can into that first stomach. Then they lie down. It's nighttime or  something else they're done. Maybe they're just full, but then they lie down  typically, and they bring bits of this back up from the first stomach into their  mouth, and they chew on it again, and they get all the juices out, and they they  really begin to work it over. And then they swallow it down into the second  stomach. And then it goes on from there and gives them the nourishment. Well,  meditation is a mental form of doing the same thing. You get the truth into your  mind. You put it in your memory. Maybe you write it in a notebook. You have  your Bible verses, your other study helps that you've gathered. Then you  prayerfully ask God to bring these things back into your mind, and you think  about them and you you run them over in your mind, and you ruminate over  them. You meditate over them, you think deeply about them. How does this  apply? What does this mean? Could it mean something else, and God will bring  the essence of it, and that's how you get the spiritual nourishment. That's a great practice to memorize and meditate on scripture in general, but especially if 

you're preaching on the passages that you are speaking about or the message  that God wants you to bring. So think about, Do I understand this myself? Make  sure you really have a clear understanding yourself of the point that you're trying to get across. Think how much of this do my people already know? How much of this do they already understand, and how much of it am I going to have to  explain? What parts of this am I going to have to explain and make clear? Think  about how can I best illustrate this with a story, with the words to a song they're  used to singing with a poem, whatever, some something from nature. How can I  best illustrate this? Think about what does God want your people to do about  this message? What does God want your people to do in response to what you  are telling them? Think about what questions will people have as they listen, and how will my message answer them ideally, as people are listening, and they  hear what you say and it raises a question in their mind, and that means they're  actively involved. They're engaging with what you're saying, and then ideally,  your next point answers that question. They know that you are on track with  what they're thinking, they're listening, because it's exactly the question they  came up in their own mind, and they are much more likely to take it in and retain it, remember it, do something about it. If they've raised the questions and in their own minds and you've answered them, once you've thought all about this and  you know, okay, here's all my research material. Here are the things that I've  thought about and I'm thinking, these are the answers that I need to put  together. The next step is to arrange the message in the order in which you're  going to present it, the various points. If you're presenting facts and drawing a  conclusion, this, this, this, therefore, that then you want people to be able to  follow your reasoning. If you're telling a story, be sure not to give away the  ending, unless your overall message works better that way. Sometimes it does.  Sometimes it's easiest and clearest just to walk your people through your own  process of discovery and reasoning. Tell them how you got to thinking about this and the questions that you had and how you found the answers and what you  believe God is telling you about it all. And then they can identify with you. They'll  know that you, like them have questions. Sometimes they'll learn from your  process, and maybe learn to engage that process themselves. And in a sense,  it's a story just in itself. Of I had this question, I did this, and I did this, and I  discovered that, and people can follow that once you've got all that together, add stories or illustrations where they are needed, where they will be helpful. To  make things clear. Don't add stories and illustrations when they don't help make  things clear. It's tempting to use a story or a joke just because it's moving or it's  funny, but if it doesn't add to your message, file it away to use another time. You  don't want to get people thinking about other things and losing sight of your main point, don't use a story or joke just because it's moving or funny. I put this I'm  saying it again and putting it up here because it's so tempting to tell that funny  story. Now, sometimes you can tell a funny story right at the beginning that 

doesn't have anything to do with your message, and that is okay, because that's  just beginning to get people engaged. But once you're into what you're doing, if  it doesn't add to your message, save it for another time. Make sure that you  include concrete examples. Of how what you're saying applies to everyday life,  concrete examples. And if possible, many pastors find it very helpful to say how  they personally applied it in their life. And people like to hear that and end with a  call to action, an encouragement to do something, an explanation of what to do,  if possible. Here's an opportunity to do it. Your mission is not just to impart  knowledge. It's to help people grow more like Jesus. You're not just giving a  lecture when you're preaching. What I'm doing here is giving a lecture, but your  mission when you're preaching, when you're ministering the Word of God is not  just to impart knowledge, it's to help people grow more like Jesus. And of  course, once you've got all of that done, pray some more. Hopefully you've been praying through the whole thing. How do you give a message? How do you  deliver a message? Well, it can be a lecture. And I'm going to come to that in a  moment. I mean, well, I'm right here, it can be a lecture. That's probably what  most of us expect. When we think of a sermon. When we think of preaching, we  think of people, one person talking, and everybody else sitting and listening.  Maybe they'll say, amen, hallelujah. Preach it, brother. But other than that, you're talking in there listening, and that's fine, and that's probably the way most  sermons have been preached in most churches, you know, for a long time, but  let me mention a couple of other ways that can be more effective if your church  is small enough to do it. And now listen, this is an example where the smaller  congregation has an example has an advantage, because you can't do these  with more than maybe 30 or 50 people. Okay, once you get beyond that, it's  pretty much lecture or not, that's about the only way. But if you have a smaller  group, there are two other things I think that you should consider. You probably  maybe already do this in Sunday school class or in Bible studies, but consider a  guided study or a discussion, even in a sermon, if your congregation small  enough, if you're in a house church or something like that, or you're just starting, then people can get really engaged and can really grow that way. So a guided  study is where you have all your points that you want to make laid out and  everything, but you lead the people through it and ask them questions that are  designed to get them to say the point that otherwise, in a lecture, you would just  say so. In other words, this scripture we say here, Jesus said, When two or  three are gathered in my name, I will be there in their midst. If you're doing the  lecture kind of thing, you might explain what that means. But if you are doing a  guided study, you might say, so what does he say? If we want Jesus in our  midst, what's the requirement? And wait for them to answer. They people get it  more into their minds, into their hearts, if they think of it themselves, a  discussion is even looser than that, a discussion you may read the passage or  bring up the topic and say, What do you all think about this? What does the Bible

say about this? And if you have good, biblically literate people who know the  Bible that can you can bring some real good stuff out of it. The discussion is a  little harder for a Sunday morning kind of a thing, because you need to keep it  on track. You do want your points to come out. You need to be ready to bring  your points in and even say, Well, yeah, that's true, but that's not the direction I  wanted to go this morning. Let's go over here. One point about discussions, and  especially in America, we tend to do this in Bible studies and so on. We'll read a  passage, and then the leader will say, what does this mean to you? What do you think this means? That sounds like a good way to get people involved, but the  problem is that you have to be careful of that implies that everybody's opinion  about it is of equal value. And this may not sound democratic, but it's not you're  the one who was trained, you're the one who's taken the courses, you're the one who has done the research and prepared the study, and you're trying to get  them to the right answer, not and now, if your study shows that Christians  disagree and there are two answers the different groups of Christians think are  right then. You can bring that out. You can talk about the differences. But if  somebody says, Oh, well, I think the stories of Jesus rising from the dead are  just not true. They're just fairy tales, that opinion does not have as much value  as certain in your place. In other places it might, but not in your teaching the  church, you don't let that get away. You don't let that go by as if it had as much  weight and as much value as the truth, because your point is getting God's truth  to people, okay, if you go to do a lecture or even one of the others, do you write  it all out, every word in a manuscript, or do you just write out an outline, or write  out notes and little reminders to yourself and then speak it out spontaneously  based on what those notes remind you to say, or do you memorize it in some  form? Well, it's up to you. The only thing I would say is don't let it sound stilted. It can sound stilted by memorizing it, and it can sound stilted if you're reading, and it's obvious that you're reading, you want it to sound like you're talking Heart to  Heart to the people this last bit, if possible, and in this day and age, it certainly  should be possible for you to watch and listen to video of yourself preaching. I  was amazed when I saw some of the kinds of crazy gestures and looks that I did not realize I was doing. So be aware of your diction. Are you enunciating? Can  people understand that the thing the words that you're saying? Are you talking  too fast? My one of my sons was a communication major, and he does some  presentations, sometimes for his work. And he commented to me that he has  discovered that if he slows himself down from he used to speak 150 words a  minute, and if he slows down to 130 it's much more effective. I'm not saying you  need to get into that, but nothing wrong with doing it. It can make you much  more effective if you get into that. But pay attention to that kind of thing. Many  people have a habit of, especially in English language of dropping the sounds at the end of a sentence. They as they speak the end of a sentence, then they  come to the end and they turn it off, and you can't hear what they said, and you 

don't know what they said. So make sure that you don't drop off. What I said  was you can't hear what they said. So don't let that happen to your speech.  Make sure that people can hear everything you do, and make sure your  gestures are appropriate, not distracted. Your gestures add to the  understanding, and don't distract people from it. Watch your time. I'm watching  my time, and it's time to see you next time