sermon preparation

Pastor, Are You Bored with God?

/ Richard Bargas / 2 Comments

“Great is Yahweh, and highly to be praised, And His greatness is unsearchable.” (Psalm 145:3, LSB)

I remember it vividly because of the shock I had when he spoke the words. I was an associate pastor of a small church and was soaking up every practical ministry lesson I could. “I hate preaching holidays like Christmas and Easter,” he said.

“Why?” I couldn’t fathom a Christian pastor ever uttering those words. Unfortunately, I have heard versions of that same sentiment ever since I first heard it.

“I have a hard time finding something new to say,” the pastor replied. As a young man just starting out in ministry, I could see his point. If you preached for 40 years (and never repeated a sermon at a different church), you would need to write 40 sermons on some aspect of Christ’s birth and the resurrection. If you preach a special message about communion, the task grows exponentially.  

I’m on the other end of the spectrum–maybe even a little farther down the road than the pastor who spoke those shocking words to me. So, have I come to adopt the same sense of dread? No, and the words of Psalm 145:3 are part of the reason why.

I have found that when I preach to an “audience,” I am especially mindful of their reactions and responses. I am not much different from an orator, stand-up comedian, politician, commencement speaker, or anyone else who is seeking to win the approval of their listening audience. Such a person would be reasonable in wanting a positive response and in seeking some form of entertainment or fulfillment. I have seen many pastors do this very thing. And that can stir up the feeling that we need to say something novel, or something that will impress listeners so they keep coming back. But this can become a trap, like a hamster wheel of pleasing our audience or they will become bored with God, with the church, and worst of all in this mindset: bored with us!

Some homileticians have argued that expositional preaching is dying because listeners don’t want it. Some have said it isn’t a biblical model to just stand in front of people and tell them what the Bible says (even though Jesus and the Apostles did just that). But when all the arguments are laid out, they all amount to the desire to scratch the hearer where they itch.

Can we take a step back for a second and meditate on the verse above? Our God is great! We, as preachers of the Scriptures, get to open our Bibles and tell people about this great God every time we step into the pulpit, sit down in a discipleship setting, or meet in counseling. Then out of the overflow of that magnificent truth comes forth praise for this God! Here we can see our goal is not to entertain, but to have those who hear us, both believers and unbelievers, walk out of our churches in awe of the God within the pages of Scripture. If we aim to have them see our preaching as something great, we have greatly missed the point of our calling!

And finally, there is no end to this greatness, and thus no end to our speaking about our great God. His greatness is unsearchable, David wrote. And to illustrate this truth, he wrote this 21-verse song in an acrostic form to put on full display the beauty and majesty of his Subject.

It’s Saturday morning, and I have to wonder how many pastors will muddle through another sermon they have to write because they have to preach tomorrow. If that’s you, you may have lost the reason why God has called you to be one of His heralds. It’s not about you or your listeners. It’s all about Him. Even if it’s only you and the church mouse, proclaim the majestic glories of our Risen Savior tomorrow–and then do it again and again until Jesus calls you home.

Pride and Cowardice in God’s Messengers

/ Richard Bargas / Leave a comment

“For the eyes of Yahweh move to and fro throughout the earth that He may strongly support those whose heart is wholly devoted to Him. You have acted foolishly in this. Indeed, from now on you will surely have wars. Then Asa was vexed with the seer and put him in prison, for he was enraged at him for this. And Asa oppressed some of the people at the same time.”  (2 Chronicles 16:9–10, LSB)

Overall, King Asa wasn’t an evil king, at least not in the beginning. When he faced a million-man army from Ethiopia, he cried out to the Lord for help: “Yahweh, there is no one besides You to help in the battle between those of abundant power and those who have no power; so help us, O Yahweh our God, for we lean on You, and in Your name have come against this multitude. O Yahweh, You are our God; let not mortal man prevail against You” (2Chron 14:11, LSB). He grasped how powerless he was without God.

Asa removed idolatry from the land during his reign and experienced success and peace in his time. However, another threat soon arose that would test his faith in God. Baasha, the king of Israel, brought war once again to Asa’s doorstep. When Asa faced the larger Ethiopian army, he cried out to the Lord, and the Lord defeated that massive army for him. But something had changed in Asa.

Perhaps he had become overly confident. Maybe he had learned the politics of ruling by watching other kings. Whatever the reason, Asa didn’t go to God with his problem. Instead, he gathered up all the wealth he could and struck a deal with the King of Aram. Asa would give this wealth to entice the Aramean king to break his covenant with Baasha and go to war. It all seemed to work as he planned. And although Asa didn’t say it, his whole plan acted as if Yahweh didn’t even exist.

Asa didn’t consult a prophet. He didn’t pray as he did when facing the Ethiopian army. He didn’t offer up sacrifices to the Lord. Because King Asa had failed to entrust himself to the Lord, the Lord sent his prophet to speak to him words of condemnation and judgment.

We get a glimpse into Asa’s heart. Once the prophet is finished speaking the word of the Lord to the king, he responds with wrath and puts the prophet into prison. This is a classic case of striking out against the messenger because you don’t like the message. King Asa could have put the prophet to death, but the act wasn’t merciful; it was cowardly. Asa had grown so prideful that he not only didn’t need God to fight his battles for him, he also didn’t need any of his advice or counsel. And since Asa didn’t dare strike out against God (and how could he?), he struck out against God’s man.

My thoughts for this morning could be about Asa’s pride and how he responded, but I’d like to turn my final thoughts to the unnamed man of God who brought the unwanted message. As a preacher, I am often allowed to stand before people and proclaim to them God’s message. Sometimes, especially in mixed groups of believers and unbelievers, it is unwelcome.

How should we, as God’s messengers, behave when we sense people might not like our message? Should we be cowardly and soften the message? Should we add some sugar to the medicine to help it go down, like Mary Poppins would prescribe? Or perhaps, we should avoid giving the message altogether, like Joel Osteen? “Nuance” is another method that many use. Apologizing for the message is yet another method. All of these are ways of soft-selling the biblical message.

It’s easy to identify pride, cowardice, anger, and selfish motives in others, like Asa. But God’s messengers need to be wary of these sins in their own lives as well, because they will impact the way they deliver the message God has given to them.

Am I independent of God’s strength, or at least act like I am? Then my messages will be prayerless. I can study, write a sermon, and preach, all without God’s help. And I will be without God’s power and blessing as well.

Am I prideful, thinking that I’m the next superstar messenger? Have I forgotten that all I have has come from God? Who made your mouth and lips? Who makes your vocal cords work, and gives your eyes sight? Who causes your heart to beat? Who called you, and saved you? Who gave you His Spirit and His Word?

And like Moses, we can become angry when the people will not listen. We can strike the rock instead of speaking as a messenger. They aren’t your sheep, and they’re not mine. Those sheep are Jesus’ and we shouldn’t beat the Lord’s sheep—either figuratively or literally. Anger is often a manifestation of pride.

And cowardice can come, just like it did with Asa. Not like Asa, as the one receiving God’s message, but as a messenger who is afraid of how people will react to what we say. We skip topics or issues because they are “controversial” or people will take offense. We soften words to be more palatable to the “sensitive.” There’s a difference between being intentionally harsh and offensive and letting the message speak for itself, including those things that strike at the heart. If God’s Word offends, so be it. What right do I have to refashion God’s message to my liking?

Second Chronicles 16:9 says, “For the eyes of Yahweh move to and fro throughout the earth that He may strongly support those whose heart is wholly devoted to Him.” May this not just be the desire of those who hear the Word of God, but also of those who deliver the message of God as well.

Improving Writing Skills as a Pastor

/ Richard Bargas / Leave a comment

As a pastor, I wouldn’t write anything that I would consider “formal,” such as articles, papers, or books. After seminary, papers became a thing of the past, but they taught me both good and bad habits. Seminary papers are often meant to be technical and, to be honest, are not the most enjoyable to read. They can be tedious because they are so precise and focus on the minute details of a biblical text that interest scholars, but not most other people. It can take a while for a newly minted seminary graduate to break away from that style of writing when preparing his sermons. If you’ve ever heard a message given by one of these young men, then you know exactly what I’m talking about.

I began leading a church as their pastor after my first year of seminary. I knew I wasn’t ready yet, but the church was small and needed someone to guide them, and my pastor was confident that with his help and guidance, I would be okay. I found that the combination of experience with the congregation, time spent in seminary classrooms, and hours spent reading had a positive effect on me. The reading assignments and papers I wrote had focus and purpose. They reflected the idea of the pastor-scholar, the shepherd who invests deeply in his studies so that he can frequently emerge to tend to the sheep with loving care and deep devotion. Being a scholar is a lot of work, and so is being a shepherd of God’s sheep. But merging the two is a joyful labor that offers the best of both worlds.

I write all of this because it was in this laboratory of the local church that I truly began writing in a different way. In serving my local church, I was writing—but not on exegetical minutiae; nor was I producing the emotional devotional material typically found in church newsletters. Mainly focusing on expositions, my writing aimed to merge the deeper thoughts of the biblical text with practical applications and illustrations. Making hard concepts understandable for the person in the pew was a labor of love.

I have once again begun writing for this blog because I need to continue honing my writing. I write for the Voice magazine and constantly edit the content we create. But writing takes a certain amount of practice and discipline if you want to become a decent writer. I want to grow in this area, and so I need to write every day, if possible.

Our world is shifting from humans to machines. Artificial intelligence, like social media, is changing our environment. People have shorter attention spans, read less, and possess less patience for anything longer than a few brief sentences. This has also impacted how people write. Younger generations struggle with spelling, at least without the aid of auto-correct. Many can’t write in longhand (cursive). Additionally, crafting sentences that flow smoothly and are readable is becoming increasingly rare. I often read news articles from major outlets that are filled with typographical errors. Just yesterday, I read a scholarly journal article packed with misspelled words. This reflects both poor writing and inadequate editing. I mention this not to throw stones but to encourage you to personally combat this tide of dehumanization. Read books. Write. Sharpen your craft if you are a pastor.

If you’d like to sample some of my more formal writing for the IFCA International magazine, The Voice, you can read it here. I have written the first article in each issue for about six years. I am greatly indebted to the many fine writers we feature, which makes our magazine an excellent blend for the church of the pastor-scholar ideal.

Help for New Expositors: How to Find the Main Idea for Preaching (part 3)

/ Richard Bargas / Leave a comment

In my last two blogposts (which can be found here and here), I walked the reader through the process of becoming familiar with the preaching text to the point where you should have a solid grasp upon what the preaching text says, although you still might not be sure how to preach it or organize the sermon.

The next step is to form the preaching proposition, sometimes called the “big idea.” That’s easier said than done, and a lot of well-meaning teachers assume that finding the proposition comes naturally. If it doesn’t come naturally to you, then you aren’t alone and I’ll try to help you here. Now, I need to say that if you haven’t first done all of the exegesis that I mentioned in my last two posts, then you won’t be able to do this, or you may come up with a preaching proposition, but it may not be the main idea of the text or accurately reflect the author’s meaning. Be the approved workman and don’t be ashamed that you preached a sermon that doesn’t reflect the meaning of your text.

Before we go down this road, some of you might be wondering, what is a proposition? In simplest terms, a proposition is a statement or assertion. So, a preaching proposition is a statement that you are making about your text that you are going to explain or prove. Some examples might be: “Jesus Christ is the Son of God” or “We are no longer under the Mosaic Law, but under the Law of Christ.” A “plural noun” preaching proposition would include a plural noun, and is probably familiar for anyone that has heard a sermon. Some examples of these might be: “Three Reasons Why Jesus Christ is the Son of God” and “Four Proofs that We are Not Under the Mosaic Law.” As you might be able to see, these examples of plural noun propositions are different forms of the same statement made earlier, and the content of the explanation would be the same, although each sermon might be organized differently.

Forming the Preaching Proposition

I’m going to walk through several steps to reach a preaching proposition. These steps are heavily influenced by a chapter in Wayne McDill’s book 12 Essential Skills for Great Preaching. If you need more help, I’d recommend you pick up this book.

  1. Write out the main subject of the text you have studied in one word. For example, if you were preaching 1 Cor. 13, you might write down, “Love.” This I can be hard to do because it requires that you crystalize your thoughts from study down to this one idea. Don’t give yourself more words. Limit it to one word only. This will assure that you are certain about the main idea of the text.
  2. Next, find a word that clarifies and narrows your one word main idea. For our example, “love,” you need to narrow down this large subject. Does 1 Cor. 13 speak about romantic love, brotherly love, Jesus’ love, marital love? How about “Christian love?” That fits. Let’s move on.
  3. Write out a sentence that includes the two words you chose from steps one and two. We can consider this a sermon title, or maybe something you’d put on a church sign. Make this a single sentence or phrase only. How about, “What Christian love looks like?” Sounds good.
  4. In this step you will need to expand your sentence again, using the same two key words (for our example, “love” and “Christian”). This time, you will write a sentence that includes what I’ll call “Bible dress.” This refers to the human author, his audience, and the scenario that is taking place in the context. Make sure it is only one sentence again. For our example, we might write about 1 Cor. 13: “Paul is concerned that the Corinthians are failing to show Christian love to each other and so he teaches them what this looks like.” Notice how we have the writer, audience, and even a little about the context (failing to show…”). This could of course be expanded to refer to the greater argument of chapters 12-14, and we could mention the place of spiritual gifts involved. But hold back the need to include so many details because we are only trying to get a crystalized summary for now–the details will come out as we unpack our proposition in the sermon.
  5. Now we are going to do a little trimming. We need to figure out what we want to leave in the last sentence because it is universally true, and what we want to remove because it is contextually true, but doesn’t fit our context. This new sentence will be stripped of the Bible dress (context, specifics, etc.) so that it becomes a universally true statement for today. For our example, it might look something like this: “God is concerned when the Church fails to show Christian love and He shows us what it should look like.” Notice that I replaced “Paul” with “God” because God is also the Author, and I replaced “Corinthians” with “Church” because the Scriptures written to the Corinthian church were also written to be applied to the whole church. Is this new sentence universally true and unbound by time and context? I’d say, yes! Let’s move ahead.
  6. Now, we are going to change our sentence into a questions: “God is concerned when the Church fails to show Christian love and He shows us what it should look like” becomes “What happens when the Church fails to show Christian love, and what should it look like?” We turn this into a question to test our propositional statement. Can we find the answer in our text? If not, we have made a mistake somewhere and need to go back and see where we went off track. If we can find the answers to our question in our text, we got it right. Make sure you choose the right words to form the question: Who, what, where, when, why, or how?
  7. Next, we will look for those answers in the text by choosing an appropriate plural noun–if we asked “Why?” we might find “reasons” in our passage. Maybe we will find steps, examples, reasons, examples, ways, proofs, thoughts, questions, prayers, solutions, etc. For our 1 Corinthians 13 passage, we might choose “Ways:” “Ways the Church fails to show Christian love, and what it should look like.” Another possibility might be, “Ways the Church fails to show Christian love, and Ways we can love like Christ would.” When we find these “ways” in our text, this makes up our outline and gives us the number of “ways.” We might find Four ways the Church fails to show Christian love, and Five ways we can love like Christ.” Each “Way” would be a sermon point, and with each point we would prove our propositional statement and explain the text before us. At this point, we might even see that we have two sermons here and would break it into two sections to be presented at two different times.

Why are we doing all this? I want you to understand a couple of things that are important. First, take your time to craft these sentences–refining your word choices so that you have clarity and an economy of words. But it is also important to know that this is a process, and so you don’t need to worry too much about each sentence being perfect. If you need to, go back and adjust if something doesn’t quite fit. Secondly, the reason for this process is to make sure that the preaching proposition is firmly based upon the text and its meaning. We are sticking with the heart of the text (the subject and its modifier) and building upon it, instead of what many preachers do–start with a sermon idea and find a text to make it say what they want.

Although this process does take a lot of time and effort, the results are satisfying and assure you that you are basing your conclusions on the text of the Word. take your time and learn to develop the skills needed to do it right, and over time it will become easier and you will move much faster through the steps. Of course, when we have the propositional statement we aren’t done. We still need to come up with an introduction, conclusion, illustrations, applications and transitional statements. But the meat of the sermon is now outlined and we are well on our way to preaching a biblically centered expositional sermon. Congratulations!

Help for New Expositors: How to Find the Main Idea for Preaching (part 2)

/ Richard Bargas / 1 Comment

enIn my last post (you can read it here:https://always-reforming.com/2021/10/25/help-for-new-expositors-how-to-find-the-main-idea-for-preaching-part-1/ ), I walked through my method for becoming more familiar with the biblical text through the process of reading, translating, and diagramming. Although at this point much progress has been made, there is still more work to do before we can confidently say we know the main idea of the text. Up to this point the study has been with the Bible alone–no commentaries should have been used thus far. This is important because we want to hear from God what His word says to us without the contamination of outside voices. Although we will need to fight against our own personal ideas and presuppositions being imposed upon the meaning of the text, this would be much more difficult if we had the input of others at this early stage. Now that we have listened to the Word with dependence upon the Holy Spirit, we are now ready to begin answering some of the observation questions we have developed in our reading and translation.

The next step we need to take is to tentatively identify the main theme of the passage. This may be changed as we continue studying, but we should have a good idea of a major theme that has risen to the top of our understanding from our studying at this point. Write this down and set it aside.

Next, choose several commentaries that will speak to the text you have chosen to study. If you need help knowing how to choose a commentary and the differences between some commentaries and others, read my post on how to select a commentary, and just as important, when to use them. You can find that post here: https://always-reforming.com/2021/02/08/how-to-use-bible-commentaries-more-effectively/ Now, take out that list of observations and questions that you gathered from reading through your Bible 25 times, and with your commentaries handy, go looking for the answers to the questions and curiosities that you found. Background commentaries will help with the cultural issues you observed, exegetical and critical commentaries will help with linguistic issues that popped up when you translated or read various translations. Try to avoid reading expositional commentaries at this point because they might tempt you to short-cut the process of self-study by giving you the answers too easily. In these types of commentaries, usually built off of sermons, you would find an outline, illustrations, and even application. Plagiarism is still a sin, and is especially grievous in a minister of the Word.

Hopefully as you read the commentaries you had several conclusions confirmed from your own study. It is a special satisfaction that comes when you read the same things you found in your study in the pages of commentaries. It helps you realize that you too can study the Scriptures for yourself! If you find that you had unique ideas or were in disagreement with all or most of the commentaries regarding the main ideas or interpretation of the text, you might want to go back and re-study the passage again. It is possible that you got it right and everyone else got it wrong–possible, but highly improbable. Commentaries act as a check on our study to make sure that we aren’t far off in our conclusions. If you are certain you got it right, make sure that you have strong reasons that are defendable by the text of the Scriptures. God has given to the church many excellent Bible teachers (Eph. 4:11), and we shouldn’t ignore the wisdom given by the Spirit without very good reasons.

After your review of commentaries, you should be ready to put together a textual or exegetical outline. What is a textual or exegetical outline? It is an outline that follows the contours, storyline, or argument of the author. Sometimes this is done through textual markers seen in the original languages or grammar. Sometimes it is suggested by the flow of a narrative and the changing of scenes. It doesn’t have to be pretty, it just needs to accurately hit the high points of the text. Don’t try to alliterate or be fancy–just get the main ideas down. This outline should reflect the totality of the text you have studied. At this point, you may begin to see how you will break up a longer passage to be preached in larger chunks as multiple sermons.

Next, looking at the main theme you wrote down earlier, and your textual outline. What would you say is the doctrinal theme? In other words, what main theological idea rises to the top of this passage? Try to be brief and accurate–“love” is too generic, but “the love of God for the Church” would be more accurate. Think of this as a label for a box that your whole sermon text will fit into. If some of the text doesn’t fit this theological theme, then you need to adjust it and make sure it covers the whole text.

When you have come to the doctrinal or theological theme, ask yourself how well you know this doctrine. Perhaps it is one that you have studied well and in depth and you know what the whole of Scripture teaches about it. Wonderful! You can move on. But if you are lacking in your understanding, it would be best to take a look at a good systematic theology (or two) and read up on the subject. It might be that the doctrine is found in a few places that you will need to review, like our above subject “the love of God for the Church.” There you should look up the “love of God” under the attributes of God, and under “the love of Christ.” You probably would also want to look up this love under the subject of “the Church.” Additionally, you might want to check and see how God’s love for the Church is different from his love for other entities like Israel, unbelievers, and “the world.” Once you have armed yourself with what the whole Bible teaches on your doctrinal subject, you can be assured that you will not say something about your passage that is untrue in another passage you might have been ignorant about. That’s always embarrassing.

Now we are ready to consider forming the preaching proposition or main idea of the sermon. That will need to wait for the next post.