Video Transcript: Session 21 Organization

All right, we have looked at introductions to the message. And now we're  turning, you'll notice on the slide to the organization of the message, how do you organize your message you, you've chosen the Bible passage that you're going  to focus on how you've chosen the theme. Probably you've seen what the big  idea is, and you've done some of the research in the back unless you're doing a  topical message. I'll talk about that in a moment. Now, how do you organize your message, you may have an idea at this point of the introduction. But as I said, at the end of last lesson, sometimes your introduction will come when you're in the  process of writing or putting your sermon together. Sometimes it'll come before  that, that, you know, hey, I know this theme. And this is how I want to introduce it and how I want to translate it. Wherever you do the introduction, you've come up with the introduction, but the organization of the message is essential to how  people receive it. And so how they listen how they engage. And so organization  is very important. In fact, I want to introduce you to a man who's a, he's a coach  of preachers, basically, his name is Frank, and you're going to see a brief video  by him. As he talks about five mistakes preachers make. He's got a blog, and he does five of them. In the first one, you'll note, the thing he says that most  important for preachers is structure. So just spend a few moments is just a few  minute video about Frank talking about the how to be a person who organizes  your messages. Well, this is the most common mistake that preachers make.  Number one, the most common mistake that preachers make number one is  what I call a lack of structure or weak structure. To illustrate his point about  structure, I will tell you a story about my barber who acknowledged his call to  ministry and he is from the Baptist tradition. And in the Baptist tradition, when  you acknowledge your call to ministry, you have to preach what's called a trial  sermon. And you develop a sermon, and then you get up in front of people who  preach and then assuming that they discern the Spirit of God in your life, and  they'll give you a license on your way to ordination. So he said to me, While I'm  cutting your hair. What could you tell me to help me most organize my sermon  last said, This is what I will tell you structure, structure structure, most preachers are weak at structure. I said, organize your sermon like this. There's a situation,  there's some complication of the situation, there then must be a resolution to the complication. And then you celebrate the resolution, that is situation,  complication, resolution celebration, that's great structure. It provides the listener a total experience. Most of us live by the experience of some situation in our  lives, we have a complication of that situation. We want the gospel, to give us  insight to resolve the complication. And then we celebrate the good news of  God's healing grace in our lives that resolves all difficulties and problems. And if  you will practice this situation complication resolution, you have great structure,  you will be easy to listen to. And I say that people that have great structure,  have many friends traveling with them while they are preaching. Many friends  will go with you. Remember, situation, complication, resolution, and celebration, 

have good structure. And you'll have many friends while you're preaching. Yeah, I introduced it to him just because I wanted you to see that he is somebody who  says structure is important. The biggest mistake he says pastors make because  they don't have appropriate structure. Now he Oh, we're not getting anything on  the screen here. There we are. He says, I'm sorry. Let me start this one over.  

Our we can take it we can take it from the from the video if that's okay. Okay, get after the video. All right. 432. Now, what I wanted you to see there is just  somebody who's a coach of preachers, saying, The biggest mistake you can  make is not have enough structure. In fact, if you just wander around, you know, people are going to tune you out because they they won't figure it out. In fact, I  worked for a man for a while, who was a pro at this. And I remember being out  with somebody who said, you know, I finally learned to appreciate him. And he  was a preacher wasn't very popular in his church. And in fact, there was a  movement afoot to to maybe ask him to leave. But the person said, you know,  he said, I used to be a detective, police force and he said, you know, you'd get  this clue and then you get this clue in there. You get this clue, and then you get  this clue and you get this clue. And when you put them all together, you say, oh,  yeah, I've got a case. So that's how he preaches. That maybe worked for a  former detective, but it doesn't work real well, for most of us. And so there's got  to be a system of organization that people will say, Oh, I understand. Now you'll  notice the one he says to use. Now there's a situation, there's a complication of  the situation, there's a resolution of the complication, and there's celebration of  the resolution. Now, that is an organization that's very close to what we've talked about when we talked about how do you do a novel, you know, how do you do a story kind of sermon? How do you tell a story that is that kind of information, and that kind of organization, and it will work well with narrative kind of story kind of  messages, but it's not the most common one. In fact, today, we're going to cover the most common means of organizing your message. And I'm gonna give you  some examples. And then the next time we're gonna move on to some of the  less common ways of organizing messages, but ways that can still be powerfully effective. So the way to organize a topical sermon, let's look at that for a  moment hope I went the wrong direction. A topical sermon, as we've seen is one that chooses a topic and then develops it's not developing this particular verse,  so much, or this particular passage so much is introducing a topic. Now, here's a topic that we can give you from Psalm 82. God is speaking to his people in  Psalm 82. And he says, How long will you defend the unjust and show partiality  to the wicked, defend the weak and the fatherless, uphold the cause of the poor  and the oppressed, rescue the weak and the needy, deliver them from the hands of the wicked. Now, that would be a tremendous introduction to a topical sermon on how to help the needy. And you could do a variety of kinds of organizations of a message on that. I here's one, I'm indebted to Bryan Chapell, in his book,  Christ centered preaching for this. When he says, here's a good organization for

that the history of the church caring for the poor, you could talk about the history  of the church, in fact, where the church went in history that the poor were cared  for, in fact, most hospitals that began most orphanages that began, most social  

programs began because of the church. In fact, where I live, I live near  Muskegon, Michigan, the major health system in Muskegon is Mercy Hospital,  and it was begun by order of the Roman Catholic Church, because they were  caring for the poor, they were caring for the needy. And then you might go on to  the history in our nation, that our nation, if it's the United States, has a history of  caring for the poor, of providing for people who are on that edge in over the  edge. And you could maybe give statistic positively negatively may be saying  how that seems to be waning these days, as we seem less concerned about the poor. And then the third would say, the necessity of caring for the poor today.  And here, you could pull in all kinds of Scripture that would say that this is God's will for us that this this is part of our heart of God, that we that God's people  become engaged with the poor. And you can make all kinds of applications  about that. Now, that's a topical arrangement, you could find other arrangements for that. But that's just an example of taking a topic and making a structure for it  that people can follow that they can be part of now you're here are some notes  about the topical sermon outline. It's derived, the topic is derived from the text.  In other words, in many churches, you read the passage before you explain it,  you would read that Psalm 82 passage, and that's where we got the topic. But  you'll notice that the main points are not derived from the text, they don't come  directly out of there. They're derived from our minds, our hearts as we want to  develop that. And the sub points are developed from the text. Or here's another  example of it that he found online. Three insights into winning the spiritual  battles of life. We have three enemies, the devil, the world, the flesh, and you'll  notice there's a passage listed for each behind them. We have to battle fronts,  personal holiness, personal witness, and we have two weapons, the armor of  God and the Word of God. Now, you'll notice that's compiled by  onlinesermonforbusypastors.com. And if you go to that website, you'll find all  kinds of topical sermon outlines, because that's one of the major ways that they  use. This is a good way if you're preaching a topical sermon. However, I said a  little while ago that when we're developing, working on now developing the  sermon, that for the most part, you should expect to be preaching things like  expository sermons and organizing those and so the topical sermon is a good  sermon, as they said, and we've given examples of that earlier on when we  were talking about the types of sermons. But here's a way to organize it, just be  aware of that. Now, there's another kind of organization that you can give. And  that is what what's called textual organization. In textual organization, the topic  comes from the text as it doesn't in the topical message. But the main points  come from the text as well. So when you're looking for the main points in your  organization, they're drawn out of the passage that you're working with. And 

then the sub points often most often come from outside the text. In a textual  organization sermon, we're gonna get to expository in a moment. But this is how you organize a textual sermon that's focused on the text, but is not totally  expository. It's very closely related to it. But it's not totally expository. So here's a passage we'll let's look at an outline, a structure for this passage. John writes,  do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love of  the Father is not in them. For everything in the world, the lust of the flesh, the  lust of the eyes, and the pride of life comes not from the Father, but from the  world. Now, here's how you would organize that text, most likely something  similar to this. One, we should resist the lust of the flesh, those three things that  John refers to. And then a textual organization would say, Well, what is that  anyway, and there's supporting material in the sub points that are not taken out  of the text. For instance, you could talk about materialism, and the fact that you  know, our flesh wants certain things. Or you could talk about David's erosion of  faith, when he was somebody who became more concerned about sensuality,  and he began to multiply the number of wives that he had. And we should resist  the lust of the eyes. And this is talking about sensuality, in particular. And you  can make all kinds of examples of that in our world today, wherever you are, if  you haven't watched television at all. And you could use a boy this, this lust of  the eyes, damaged, David's purity, and the lust of the eyes when he was up on  the rooftop of the palace. And he looked over and he saw Bathsheba, bathing,  and he lusted after her. And as a result called her they committed adultery and  murder of Uriah, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. But that's a sub point, but it's not  directly derived from the text. And then we should resist the pride of life. And we  you can talk about arrogance there. And you can talk about how arrogance  destroyed David's humility so that he kept the sin hidden for a full year until  Nathan the prophet came in. And so this is an example again, of a textual  organization. The main points are derived from the text or here's the definition.  Textual sermon is one in which the main divisions are derived from a text  consisting of a brief portion of Scripture. Each of these divisions are then used  as a line of suggestion, and the text provides the theme for the sermon. In  contrast with a topical sermon, we begin with a text, not a topic. Or here's  another definition that I found online. The textual sermon is similar to the  expository sermon, but it is based on one abbreviated passage and the textual  sermon, the outline comes from the text itself, the textual sermon usually  involves a shorter passage and a more detailed analysis. So those are the  textual sermon and and then the topical sermon outline now, how do you  organize in an expository fashion? A third kind of organization that we're going to talk about today is what's called the expository outline or the expository  organization. Now, we've looked at expository preaching the fact that it is to  expose what's in the Bible. Now, here are some of the notes about expository  preaching. First of all, the main topic is taken from the text. That's the same is 

true for textual preaching. But here the points are taken from the text. That's true in textual preaching, but the sub points are also taken from the text. And so  everything has to do with this particular passage of scripture. And so as I'm  bringing organization to my message, I want it to follow what the Bible says in  this particular passage. Now, I'm going to just read a little bit here's a website I  came across this week, called Gotquestions.org. And I simply asked what is  expository preaching? And I was surprised to get an answer from them. And  here's their answer. expository preaching involves the exposition or  comprehensive explanation of the scripture that is expository preaching  presents the meaning and intent of a biblical text providing commentary and  examples to make the passage clear and understandable. The word exposition  is related to the word expose. The expository preachers goal is simply to expose the meaning of the Bible verse by verse. As a method, expository preaching  differs from topical preaching and textual preaching. To prepare a topical  sermon, the preacher starts with a topic and then finds a passage in the Bible  that addresses that topic. For example, for the chosen topic of laziness, the  preacher might refer to Proverbs 15:19 Proverbs 18:9. touch on Romans 12:11,  and II Thessalonians 3:10. None of the passages is studied in depth Instead,  each is used to support a theme of laziness. In a textual sermon, the preacher  uses that text as a springboard for discussing a particular point. For example,  someone could use Isaiah 66:7-13 to preach on motherhood. Although  motherhood is only peripheral, in that text, being merely an illustration of the true theme, that the restoration of Israel when Jesus comes when the Messiah  comes. So again, that's expository preaching, saying I want to expose what is in  this passage. Now, again, I want to give you an example of what this looks like.  And again, I'm indebted to a man named Bryan Chapell in his book Christ  centered preaching, for this example. This section of Romans 8 is probably one  of the most powerful that you could find in Scripture. And it's a wonderful basis  for a sermon. So how would you do a sermon on this passage? Now, it's too  long for me to put it on the screen for you. And so let me just quote from it. Point number one is, God's love is greater than sin and point one is my past sin.  Here's 30, verse 31. What then, shall we say in response to this, if God is for us, who can be against us? All right, he who did not spare His own Son, but gave  him up for us all. How will he not also along with him graciously give us all  things, who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen, it is God who justifies. And then it's greater than present sin. Who is he that condemns  Christ Jesus, who died more than that was raised to life as at the right hand of  God, and also interceding for us. And so, first point is, God's love is great. That's the theme of this passage. And as shown in the sub, point, past sin, God, love is greater than past sin, and it's greater than present sin. And a second major  theme in here is God's love is greater than circumstances. And all you got to do  is look at verse 35, Who shall separate us from the love of Christ Shall trouble or

hardship or persecution, or famine, or nature, nakedness or danger or sword?  God is greater than all of these things. God's love is greater than our  circumstances. Now, circumstances will challenge our sense of God's love.  Sometimes when you experience illness, financial downturn, whatever you may  say, Where's God? As Philip Yancey showed, where's God when it hurts, but  God's love, Paul is saying here is greater than our circumstances. And it cannot  undo God's love, verse 37, knowing all of these things, we are more than  conquerors through him who loved us. And then the third point that comes out of this passage would be God's love is greater than Satan. Look at verse 38. For  I'm convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels or demons, neither the  present or the future, nor any powers, neither height or depth, or anything else  in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God. That is in Christ  Jesus, our Lord. So first of all, it's greater than spiritual powers, but even greater than anything else in all creation. So that's an expository sermon, an example.  Now, bottom line, this is Bryan Chapell again. For structure, it's got to be formed, faithful to the text, obvious from the text related to the fallen condition of  mankind in the situation that exists in the world today, and always moving  toward a climax, usually, which involves the love of God and the goodness he  has in Jesus Christ. So those are our three ways four ways. If we count the intro video of organizing a text, we're going to continue this theme next time