“Is there a word from God?” (Jeremiah 37:17)
Anyone can “get up a sermon.”
When you are first beginning in the ministry, the “art”—if you want to call it that—of finding, creating and building sermons seems mysterious and difficult. In time, however, you work out the formula for sermons and your life becomes less stressful, sermon-building easier.
“What is the formula for sermons?” someone asks.
There’s no one formula, but each preacher works out his own according to his own style.
It goes something like this …
Take a random verse of scripture: “Some of the scribes answered and said, ‘Teacher, you have spoken well.” (Luke 20:29) Can we build a sermon on that? You bet. Nothing to it, if all we want is a sermon.
Start with the scribes. They are scriptural authorities, experts on the law as a result of their history of copying manuscripts for use by individuals and congregations. Because they had handwritten everything the Scriptures had to say, people came asking what the Word says about this or that. If anyone knew, they would. So, when the scribes heard Jesus teaching, they recognized He was right on target with His teaching, and they said so. So, we have (our first point): The testimony of the scribes.
Then, there is the matter of what our Lord was saying to them that evoked this compliment. Jesus is addressing the matter of the resurrection to the Sadducees, a religious group that took only the first five books of the Old Testament as their Bible and were smugly convinced that no teachings, nada, zero, about Heaven and hell were to be found there. Jesus gave them two things: a teaching right out of Heaven itself for which there were no scriptures and He alone was the only Source, and an insight from their own Scriptures that was so perfect even the scribes applauded Him. So, second point, we have: Truth from the Lord.
And finally, because every sermon needs at least three points, we can ask, “What more needs to be done?” because the very next verse says, “They did not have courage to ask Him anything else.” So, perhaps the third point could be: The courage to go forward, that is, to act on what He has said.
That was strictly a randomly selected verse. And, with a few more hours of study, prayer and reflection, we could end up with a fairly decent sermon.
If that’s all we’re looking for.
Or, here’s another very quick take on the verse right before that one, Luke 20:38. “Now, He is not the God of the dead, but of the living; for all live to Him.” Three possibilities are: 1) A common misconception—the dead are dead and that’s that; 2) A scriptural revelation—God is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; and 3) An incredible interpretation—He is not the God of the dead, but of the living.
It’s simple once you get the hang of it.
However …
Is that the Word from God your congregation needs to hear and which you need to deliver?
Just because it’s from Scripture does not mean it’s God’s Word for the moment.
That, incidentally, is the problem I personally have with preachers deciding to “preach through the Bible.” It assumes that any sermon you bring from any text is God’s word for your flock for that Sunday. And that, I venture to say, my friend, is sheer foolishness.
Spending years preaching verse-by-verse through the entire Bible will keep you in the Old Testament far longer than you will want to stay. You will struggle to find pegs on which to hang the gospel. You will be tempted to strain at metaphors and types and images and to spiritualize stories in order to bring in Jesus. And—strictly my opinion here now—you will forever burn your people out on a large portion of Holy Scriptures. Some of those stories and prophecies and teachings they will never want to see again because you simply could not handle them.
