Association of Clergy International - AOCI
"Uniting Christian & Jewish Clergy from Around the World"
SHORT GUIDE FOR SERMON EXEGESIS
SESSION 3 – SHORT GUIDE FOR SERMON EXEGESIS
1. The total time allotted is somewhat arbitrarily set at about five hours, the minimum that a pastor ought normally to be able to give to the research aspect of sermon preparation. If you are new to exegetical preaching, you will need to increase the time allotments substantially. The sermon is usually composed in ten hours or less.
2. The average Sunday sermon is so often either devoid of exegetical insight or sprinkled with exegetical absurdities that countless congregations across the land long in vain for “simple” preaching from the Bible.” Pastors stand in the ideal position to make the connection between the insights of scholarly research and the concerns of practical living.
3. This chapter is a short guide for sermon exegesis and is both an abridged and a blended version of the full guide used for exegesis papers. Sermon exegesis need not be as exhaustive as that required for a term paper. Even though sermon exegesis cannot be exhaustive, it does not mean that it cannot be adequate. The sermon ought not to wrap scholarship in a cloak of fervency. As an act of obedience and worship, let your sermon be exiting, but let it be in every way faithful to God’s revelation.
4. Allow approximately one hour during the text and translation portion of your sermon exegesis. Read the passage repeatedly, both silent and aloud, even in Hebrew if possible. Be on the lookout for the possibility that you may need to adjust the (limits) of your passage, since the chapter and verse divisions are secondary to the composition of the original. Check for significant textual issues as you refer to the BHS (Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia) – or the older BH3 (Kittel Biblia Hebraica). Look for major variants to see whether any should be adopted, thus altering the received or Masoretic text as printed in the Hebrew Bible.
5. Try to make your own translation, even if your Hebrew is inadequate, dormant, or nonexistent. However, check yourself by referring whenever necessary to two or more of the respected modern versions. Avoid referring to the non-literal paraphrases, even though they are called “versions” or “translations”, since they will confuse you. These “translations” do not usually represent a direct rendering of the Hebrew original and are thus hard to follow. They are only intended for skimming large blocks of material in order for you to get the main idea, rather than for close, careful study.
6. The benefits of making your own translation will help you notice things about the passage that you would not notice about the passage in just reading it. The difference is like walking down the street as opposed to what you see while driving down it. You will be more alert to the structure of the passage, its vocabulary, its grammatical features, and some aspects of its theology.
7. If the passage does contain textual or translational difficulties, your congregation deserves to be informed about them. They can benefit from knowing not just which option you have chosen in a given place in the passage, but what the various options are and why you have chosen one over the other(s). They can then follow some of your reasoning rather than accepting your conclusions merely “on faith”. The best way to prepare this for the sermon is by way of a list of alternatives for both the textual and the translational possibilities.
8. In the same manner as you compiled the list of alternatives for both the textual and the translational possibilities, you would, start a sermon use list by recording what you feel might be worth mentioning in your sermon based on the passage. The list should include what you feel your congregation ought perhaps to hear and may indeed benefit from knowing.
9. There is usually considerable overlap between the literary context and the historical context of an Old Testament passage. Identify whether some feature is primarily literary or primarily historical. Is it a narrative? Is it a prophetic oracle? Is it one in a group of stories? Try to isolate both the immediate and general background. This is not exhaustive so you must concentrate on the highlights. In other words, search for the (essentials). Finally, you must summarize your findings.
10. Describe the literary-historical setting by placement and function, authorship, social setting including economic and political setting, geographical setting, archaeological setting, and date. You must examine the foreground of the passage. In other words, what comes next in the chapter(s) following? Is it something that relates closely to the passage or not? Remember, God’s revelation to us is a historical one and we should not neglect chronology.
11. Don’t hesitate to bring matters right up to or beyond current times, if legitimate. For example, an OT prophecy about the kingdom of God that might well include ancient Israel, the current church, and the heavenly future kingdom. In General, you want to avoid talking to your congregation about the passage in isolation, as if there were no scripture or history surrounding it. This is unfair to scripture and suggests to your congregation that the Bible is a collection of atomistic fragments not well connected one to another and without much relationship to the passage of time.
12. Allow about one half hour to engage in the form and structure of the passage. Your congregation deserves to know whether the passage is in prose or poetry or some of both. In addition to that, whether it is a narrative, a speech, a lament, a hymn, an oracle of woe, an apocalyptic vision, a wisdom saying, etc. You must identify these genres of literature and analyze them lest the meaning be lost or obscured. For example your congregation will be puzzled as to why Jonah the Nineveh hater, should have wanted to avoid preaching such an obviously negative message of doom. (Jonah 3:4). Unless you explain that the possibility of repentance and therefore forgiveness is implicit in the warning of delayed punishment (yet forty days), your congregation will not be clear on this passage.
13. Note any grammar that is unusual, (ambiguous), or otherwise important. Make a list of the key terms when analyzing the (grammatical) and (lexical) data. Pare down the list to manageable size and conduct a mini word study. For example, “You shall have no other gods before me.” Does before me mean: “in my presence”, “earlier than me” or the devotionally “above me in importance”. Allow about 50 minutes to conduct this part of your sermon exegesis.
14. Allow approximately 50 minutes to discover the biblical and theological context. You will analyze the use and relation to the rest of the scripture and its use in and relation to theology. Are its theological concerns more or less explicit or implicit? Does the passage raise any questions or difficulties about some theological issue or stance that needs an explanation? How and why is this passage quoted in other parts of the Bible?
15. Finally, allow one hour for the application portion of your exegesis. List the life issues in the passage. Clarify the possible nature and area and identify the audience and the categories. Does the passage have a dual application as, for example, a certain messianic passages do? If so, explain these to your congregation and suggest where their responsibilities lie. Be (cautious) and avoid especially the fallacy of (exemplarism) - the idea that because someone in the Bible does it, we can or ought to do it, too. This monkey see-monkey-do sort of approach to applying the scriptures is largely followed and therefore does a disservice to good pulpit teaching. Finally, you are not required to suggest to your congregation all the possible ways in which a passage might theoretically be applied.
There are many ways to prepare sermons and to deliver them, as well as many different types of sermons and books about them. Still, some general advice can be given about creating an exegetically sound sermon.
First, work from your sermon list. Organize the various notes on your list into categories. See how many fit together. Do some groups seem especially weighty? For example, does much of the list seem to center on theological terms and themes? If so, perhaps your sermon ought to be especially theological. Does your list contain elements that are part of a story? If so, maybe the sermon can take the form of a story. Generally, the material on the sermon use list should at least suggest what some of the major blocks for building the sermon would be, whether or not it suggests a particular format for the sermon. Remember that you will not be able to include everything on the list. A single sermon cannot do everything.
Do not use the twelve –or six-step exegesis outline as the sermon outline. You will surely not last long in the pastorate if your congregation hears every sermon begin with:” Let us examine the textual problems of the passage…” You must organize and incorporate the results of your exegesis into the sermon according to an order that has as its primary concern to educate and challenge the congregation. It is the preacher’s responsibility to decide what sort of sermon, which elements to include in the sermon, and in what order the sermon would best be conveyed to the listeners.
Always be sure to differentiate between the speculative and the certain. Let your congregation know what exegetical “discoveries” are possible, which are probable, and which are definite. You may be excited by the possibility that a particular poetic couplet in Hosea seems to be adapted from Amos, but you would be irresponsible to present this as a given, since equally plausible cases can be built that Amos did the borrowing, or that both prophets drew upon a common repertoire of prophetic poetry, or whether they were independently inspired with a similar message, etc. There may be no harm in alerting your congregation to any or all of these options as long as you identify them as speculative.
You must also differentiate between the central and the peripheral. The sermon should not give equally high priority to all exegetical issues. The fact that you may have spent a half hour trying to get straight a particular tricky historical problem of Israelite-Assyrian chronology does not mean that ten percent of the sermon should therefore be given over to an explanation of it. You may well choose not to mention it at all. Decide what the congregation needs to know from the passage as opposed to what is needed to prepare your sermon. The way to make this decision is by the passage itself and your own reactions to it. What the passage treats as significant is probably what the sermon should treat as significant. What you feel is most helpful and important to you personally is probably what your congregation will find most helpful and important to them. If your preaching was faithful to the passage, your congregation should be able to go away form church with the “big idea”. The “big idea” should always help them understand God and their relationship to Him, or you did not think through the exegesis and its culmination in application as carefully as you should have.
Most pastors rely far too heavily on the so-called homiletical commentaries (those that emphasize suggestions for preaching) and not enough on their own scholarly exegesis. This can be counterproductive, since the homiletical commentaries are for the most part exegetically shallow. In addition, since the commentator has no personal knowledge of you and your congregation, he or she cannot possibly provide other than all-purpose observations and insights. The commentator can hardly speak to the controversies, the special strengths and weaknesses, the hot topics, the ethnic, familial, social, economic, political, educational, interpersonal, and other concerns that constitute the particular spiritual challenges for you and your congregation. The commentator has no idea how much or how little your congregation knows about a given topic or passage, how much ground you intend to cover in your sermon, or even the size of the units of the passage you have chosen to preach on. It is advisable that you refer to the homiletical commentaries for the supplemental insights they may offer you after, not before, you have done the basic work yourself.
Finally, always remember that application is the ultimate concern of a sermon. A sermon is a presentation designed to apply the word of God to the lives of people. Without application, a talk is not a sermon; it may be a lecture, a lesson, or the like, but it is not a sermon. Be sure that you construct a sermon that is absolutely clear, practicable, and exegetically based application. This does not mean that most of the time given to the sermon must be spent on the application. The major portion of time, in fact, may be spent on matters that are not strictly applicational, as long as they help you lay the ground for the application. Indeed, you can hardly expect your congregation to accept your suggested application of a passage solely on your own authority. They need to be shown how the application is based on a proper comprehension of the passage’s meaning, and they will probably not take the application to heart unless this is clear to them. Likewise, you must not merely explain to them what it says while avoiding what it demands. The Bible is not an end in itself – it is a means to the end of loving God with one’s whole heart and loving one’s neighbor as oneself. That is what the law and the prophets are all about.
As a review, when using this short guide for sermon exegesis, you must allow about one hour to research the text and translation. In doing so you must, check for significant textual issues, make your own translation, compile a list of alternatives, and start a sermon list. Allow approximately one hour to research the literary-historical context, both the immediate and general background. Remember to only search for the essentials. You must describe the literary-historical setting, and examine the foreground of the passage. Spend about one half hour researching the passage’s form and structure, identifying the genre and form, investigating the life setting of forms where appropriate, look for structural patterns, and isolate unique features and evaluate their significance. Spend another 50 minutes or so on researching the passage’s grammatical and lexical data by noting any grammar that is unusual, ambiguous, or otherwise important. Make a list of the key terms; pare down the list to a manageable size and do a mini word study. Next, allow another 50 minutes of so on researching the biblical and theological context by analyzing the passages elsewhere in scripture its relation to the rest of the scriptures and its use and relation to theology. Finally, allow approximately one hour to develop your application. You can do this by listing the life issues in the passage, clarifying the possible nature and area of application, identifying the audience and categories of application, and establishing the time focus and limits of the application.
In doing a proper sermon exegesis, you can avoid some common hermeneutical errors such as spiritualizing, exemplarizing, allegorizing, genre confusion, and equivocation.
1. The total time allotted is somewhat arbitrarily set at about five hours, the minimum that a pastor ought normally to be able to give to the research aspect of sermon preparation. If you are new to exegetical preaching, you will need to increase the time allotments substantially. The sermon is usually composed in ten hours or less.
2. The average Sunday sermon is so often either devoid of exegetical insight or sprinkled with exegetical absurdities that countless congregations across the land long in vain for “simple” preaching from the Bible.” Pastors stand in the ideal position to make the connection between the insights of scholarly research and the concerns of practical living.
3. This chapter is a short guide for sermon exegesis and is both an abridged and a blended version of the full guide used for exegesis papers. Sermon exegesis need not be as exhaustive as that required for a term paper. Even though sermon exegesis cannot be exhaustive, it does not mean that it cannot be adequate. The sermon ought not to wrap scholarship in a cloak of fervency. As an act of obedience and worship, let your sermon be exiting, but let it be in every way faithful to God’s revelation.
4. Allow approximately one hour during the text and translation portion of your sermon exegesis. Read the passage repeatedly, both silent and aloud, even in Hebrew if possible. Be on the lookout for the possibility that you may need to adjust the (limits) of your passage, since the chapter and verse divisions are secondary to the composition of the original. Check for significant textual issues as you refer to the BHS (Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia) – or the older BH3 (Kittel Biblia Hebraica). Look for major variants to see whether any should be adopted, thus altering the received or Masoretic text as printed in the Hebrew Bible.
5. Try to make your own translation, even if your Hebrew is inadequate, dormant, or nonexistent. However, check yourself by referring whenever necessary to two or more of the respected modern versions. Avoid referring to the non-literal paraphrases, even though they are called “versions” or “translations”, since they will confuse you. These “translations” do not usually represent a direct rendering of the Hebrew original and are thus hard to follow. They are only intended for skimming large blocks of material in order for you to get the main idea, rather than for close, careful study.
6. The benefits of making your own translation will help you notice things about the passage that you would not notice about the passage in just reading it. The difference is like walking down the street as opposed to what you see while driving down it. You will be more alert to the structure of the passage, its vocabulary, its grammatical features, and some aspects of its theology.
7. If the passage does contain textual or translational difficulties, your congregation deserves to be informed about them. They can benefit from knowing not just which option you have chosen in a given place in the passage, but what the various options are and why you have chosen one over the other(s). They can then follow some of your reasoning rather than accepting your conclusions merely “on faith”. The best way to prepare this for the sermon is by way of a list of alternatives for both the textual and the translational possibilities.
8. In the same manner as you compiled the list of alternatives for both the textual and the translational possibilities, you would, start a sermon use list by recording what you feel might be worth mentioning in your sermon based on the passage. The list should include what you feel your congregation ought perhaps to hear and may indeed benefit from knowing.
9. There is usually considerable overlap between the literary context and the historical context of an Old Testament passage. Identify whether some feature is primarily literary or primarily historical. Is it a narrative? Is it a prophetic oracle? Is it one in a group of stories? Try to isolate both the immediate and general background. This is not exhaustive so you must concentrate on the highlights. In other words, search for the (essentials). Finally, you must summarize your findings.
10. Describe the literary-historical setting by placement and function, authorship, social setting including economic and political setting, geographical setting, archaeological setting, and date. You must examine the foreground of the passage. In other words, what comes next in the chapter(s) following? Is it something that relates closely to the passage or not? Remember, God’s revelation to us is a historical one and we should not neglect chronology.
11. Don’t hesitate to bring matters right up to or beyond current times, if legitimate. For example, an OT prophecy about the kingdom of God that might well include ancient Israel, the current church, and the heavenly future kingdom. In General, you want to avoid talking to your congregation about the passage in isolation, as if there were no scripture or history surrounding it. This is unfair to scripture and suggests to your congregation that the Bible is a collection of atomistic fragments not well connected one to another and without much relationship to the passage of time.
12. Allow about one half hour to engage in the form and structure of the passage. Your congregation deserves to know whether the passage is in prose or poetry or some of both. In addition to that, whether it is a narrative, a speech, a lament, a hymn, an oracle of woe, an apocalyptic vision, a wisdom saying, etc. You must identify these genres of literature and analyze them lest the meaning be lost or obscured. For example your congregation will be puzzled as to why Jonah the Nineveh hater, should have wanted to avoid preaching such an obviously negative message of doom. (Jonah 3:4). Unless you explain that the possibility of repentance and therefore forgiveness is implicit in the warning of delayed punishment (yet forty days), your congregation will not be clear on this passage.
13. Note any grammar that is unusual, (ambiguous), or otherwise important. Make a list of the key terms when analyzing the (grammatical) and (lexical) data. Pare down the list to manageable size and conduct a mini word study. For example, “You shall have no other gods before me.” Does before me mean: “in my presence”, “earlier than me” or the devotionally “above me in importance”. Allow about 50 minutes to conduct this part of your sermon exegesis.
14. Allow approximately 50 minutes to discover the biblical and theological context. You will analyze the use and relation to the rest of the scripture and its use in and relation to theology. Are its theological concerns more or less explicit or implicit? Does the passage raise any questions or difficulties about some theological issue or stance that needs an explanation? How and why is this passage quoted in other parts of the Bible?
15. Finally, allow one hour for the application portion of your exegesis. List the life issues in the passage. Clarify the possible nature and area and identify the audience and the categories. Does the passage have a dual application as, for example, a certain messianic passages do? If so, explain these to your congregation and suggest where their responsibilities lie. Be (cautious) and avoid especially the fallacy of (exemplarism) - the idea that because someone in the Bible does it, we can or ought to do it, too. This monkey see-monkey-do sort of approach to applying the scriptures is largely followed and therefore does a disservice to good pulpit teaching. Finally, you are not required to suggest to your congregation all the possible ways in which a passage might theoretically be applied.
There are many ways to prepare sermons and to deliver them, as well as many different types of sermons and books about them. Still, some general advice can be given about creating an exegetically sound sermon.
First, work from your sermon list. Organize the various notes on your list into categories. See how many fit together. Do some groups seem especially weighty? For example, does much of the list seem to center on theological terms and themes? If so, perhaps your sermon ought to be especially theological. Does your list contain elements that are part of a story? If so, maybe the sermon can take the form of a story. Generally, the material on the sermon use list should at least suggest what some of the major blocks for building the sermon would be, whether or not it suggests a particular format for the sermon. Remember that you will not be able to include everything on the list. A single sermon cannot do everything.
Do not use the twelve –or six-step exegesis outline as the sermon outline. You will surely not last long in the pastorate if your congregation hears every sermon begin with:” Let us examine the textual problems of the passage…” You must organize and incorporate the results of your exegesis into the sermon according to an order that has as its primary concern to educate and challenge the congregation. It is the preacher’s responsibility to decide what sort of sermon, which elements to include in the sermon, and in what order the sermon would best be conveyed to the listeners.
Always be sure to differentiate between the speculative and the certain. Let your congregation know what exegetical “discoveries” are possible, which are probable, and which are definite. You may be excited by the possibility that a particular poetic couplet in Hosea seems to be adapted from Amos, but you would be irresponsible to present this as a given, since equally plausible cases can be built that Amos did the borrowing, or that both prophets drew upon a common repertoire of prophetic poetry, or whether they were independently inspired with a similar message, etc. There may be no harm in alerting your congregation to any or all of these options as long as you identify them as speculative.
You must also differentiate between the central and the peripheral. The sermon should not give equally high priority to all exegetical issues. The fact that you may have spent a half hour trying to get straight a particular tricky historical problem of Israelite-Assyrian chronology does not mean that ten percent of the sermon should therefore be given over to an explanation of it. You may well choose not to mention it at all. Decide what the congregation needs to know from the passage as opposed to what is needed to prepare your sermon. The way to make this decision is by the passage itself and your own reactions to it. What the passage treats as significant is probably what the sermon should treat as significant. What you feel is most helpful and important to you personally is probably what your congregation will find most helpful and important to them. If your preaching was faithful to the passage, your congregation should be able to go away form church with the “big idea”. The “big idea” should always help them understand God and their relationship to Him, or you did not think through the exegesis and its culmination in application as carefully as you should have.
Most pastors rely far too heavily on the so-called homiletical commentaries (those that emphasize suggestions for preaching) and not enough on their own scholarly exegesis. This can be counterproductive, since the homiletical commentaries are for the most part exegetically shallow. In addition, since the commentator has no personal knowledge of you and your congregation, he or she cannot possibly provide other than all-purpose observations and insights. The commentator can hardly speak to the controversies, the special strengths and weaknesses, the hot topics, the ethnic, familial, social, economic, political, educational, interpersonal, and other concerns that constitute the particular spiritual challenges for you and your congregation. The commentator has no idea how much or how little your congregation knows about a given topic or passage, how much ground you intend to cover in your sermon, or even the size of the units of the passage you have chosen to preach on. It is advisable that you refer to the homiletical commentaries for the supplemental insights they may offer you after, not before, you have done the basic work yourself.
Finally, always remember that application is the ultimate concern of a sermon. A sermon is a presentation designed to apply the word of God to the lives of people. Without application, a talk is not a sermon; it may be a lecture, a lesson, or the like, but it is not a sermon. Be sure that you construct a sermon that is absolutely clear, practicable, and exegetically based application. This does not mean that most of the time given to the sermon must be spent on the application. The major portion of time, in fact, may be spent on matters that are not strictly applicational, as long as they help you lay the ground for the application. Indeed, you can hardly expect your congregation to accept your suggested application of a passage solely on your own authority. They need to be shown how the application is based on a proper comprehension of the passage’s meaning, and they will probably not take the application to heart unless this is clear to them. Likewise, you must not merely explain to them what it says while avoiding what it demands. The Bible is not an end in itself – it is a means to the end of loving God with one’s whole heart and loving one’s neighbor as oneself. That is what the law and the prophets are all about.
As a review, when using this short guide for sermon exegesis, you must allow about one hour to research the text and translation. In doing so you must, check for significant textual issues, make your own translation, compile a list of alternatives, and start a sermon list. Allow approximately one hour to research the literary-historical context, both the immediate and general background. Remember to only search for the essentials. You must describe the literary-historical setting, and examine the foreground of the passage. Spend about one half hour researching the passage’s form and structure, identifying the genre and form, investigating the life setting of forms where appropriate, look for structural patterns, and isolate unique features and evaluate their significance. Spend another 50 minutes or so on researching the passage’s grammatical and lexical data by noting any grammar that is unusual, ambiguous, or otherwise important. Make a list of the key terms; pare down the list to a manageable size and do a mini word study. Next, allow another 50 minutes of so on researching the biblical and theological context by analyzing the passages elsewhere in scripture its relation to the rest of the scriptures and its use and relation to theology. Finally, allow approximately one hour to develop your application. You can do this by listing the life issues in the passage, clarifying the possible nature and area of application, identifying the audience and categories of application, and establishing the time focus and limits of the application.
In doing a proper sermon exegesis, you can avoid some common hermeneutical errors such as spiritualizing, exemplarizing, allegorizing, genre confusion, and equivocation.
Comment
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Comment by Dr. Henry, President of the AOCI on May 31, 2012 at 7:38pm
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Amen Pastor Barr. God bless.
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Comment by Pastor Sam Barr on May 31, 2012 at 6:07am
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great advice, God/El bless
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Tks brother. send me your address and I can mail you some previous sermons if you like or if you are going to the conference I will have more updated teachings at my table. If you want me to send you out a few sermons, it will take me a few weeks to do this for you because of the amount of work I am doing now...God bless you brother. Keep up the great work.
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Comment by Christopher R. Dockrey on February 1, 2010 at 1:24pm
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Lots of great stuff in here as usual. You know, I'd like to hear one of your sermons just to see exactly how you put all this into practice.
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