Lesson Goal
I hope to teach how to prepare and deliver a sermon expounding a small unit of Scripture such as a single verse or part of a verse.
Lesson Intro
A sermon can be painted using a very fine brush for a single word, a small brush for a single verse, a medium brush for a part of a chapter and a broad brush for much larger segments of scripture. For this lesson, we will choose out of our artists set a small brush.
Lesson Plan
We will examine how to choose a verse for a sermon, then parse and translate it, check with a number of translations, check with a couple of good commentaries, and after analyzing it, create some points for a sermon outline and apply to every day life.
Lesson Body
1. How to Choose
Choose a verse that can be expounded, that has a natural beginning and ending, and that will have some direct application to the lives of people today. Avoid verses that are unclear, or are offensive, or may cause a giant split in the congregation. Focus on the main things and the plain things. Remember that reformers usually end up as martyrs, and if you are dead or fired or excommunicated, you have little or no chance of future effectiveness. I speak from experience. Most churches are not really ready for meat that is hard to chew. They can only digest baby food. Seriously!
2. Parse and Translate the Verse
If you have the ability, make your own translation from the original Greek or Hebrew. This will involve parsing (or analyzing the grammar and sentence structure) and then translating it into some English-language equivalent, whether word-for-word, sense-for-sense or idiom-for-idiom. This will take some time, but is well worth the effort, as it gets you into the way the verse was originally read and gives a glimpse of the mind of the author. This does not mean that you now start spouting Greek and Hebrew verses to the congregation. Frankly, you would lose all but the supremely intellectual churches, and a blue-collar church may never forgive you for even mentioning that you have studied biblical languages. Just kidding! The purpose in translating the verse is to get a better grip on it.
3. A Note about Bible Translations
The New American Standard Bible (NASB) and the King James Version (KJV) have been called the most accurate translations. However, this is only true in the word-for-word sense. Sometimes translating a foreign language does not make the best sense when we translate word-for-word. For instance, if I translated the German phrase "you are on the wooden way" word-for-word, you would not understand what it means, so I would have to translate the whole phrase, rather than each individual word. In a certain context it could mean "you've got the wrong idea." Or because this is an idiom, I could translate it with a similar idiom in English, such as "you've been led up the garden path" or "you're on the wrong track."
So, even though some people say that translations like the Message or the New Living Translation (NLT) are not as accurate, we could dispute that. They may be just as accurate in translating idiom-for-idiom, rather than word-for-word. The only problem with idioms though is that they are culturally bound. A teenager in California, a businessman in New Zealand and a little old lady in Scotland do not necessarily all understand the same idioms. One may say "let's rock on dudes," the other may say "let's go guys" and the other may say "gentlemen, it's time to move." That is why some people prefer a dynamic equivalent translation, such as the New International Version (NIV). These are middle of the road translations that are not as wooden or stiff as a word-for-word translation, but not as loosy-goosy as an idiom-for-idiom translation.
4. Read Other Translations
Up to a point, the more translations of the Bible that you have the better you can research. I have over 30, but mostly use about a half dozen. There are also several good websites around that contain a number of modern Bible translations as well as the usual older versions. It is good to see which words different translators use. They are all translating the sense of the original verse, but sometimes a different word or phrase hits home in a different and more meaningful way depending on your cultural background.
5. Read Commentaries
Look up a few commentaries. If all you have are the usual old commentaries such as the JFB, Matthew Henry's, and Adam Clarke's that is at least a start. Some modern one-volume commentaries are also good, such as the New Bible Commentary from IVP. However, these commentaries do not contain much depth and are not as helpful as those that go into great detail. The older commentaries may use out of date examples, but can also be more orthdox and less apt watering down the truth.
I highly recommend an in depth commentary such as the Word Biblical Commentary which provides a bibliography, translation, notes, form, structure, setting, commentary and explanation. The New International Commentary is of similar depth in that it analyzes the text, canonicity, literary criticism, authorship, date, purpose, setting, genre, legal background, themes, theology, analysis of contents, contains a selected bibliography and a verse by verse commentary. If you don't have the money for the hardbound volumes or a lesser expensive digital version, you can often buy one volume at a time of these superior commentaries. Also, don't be a bigoted Protestant who ignores the wonderfully deep explanations found among various Catholic and Orthodox sources.
6. In-Depth Analysis
It is always good to make sure that you are reading your verse in the context of the passage, genre, setting, and culture. So it is good to make notes regarding all these things. Ask questions about different translations, the form, structure, setting, explanations, the author, the date it was written, its purpose, its setting, its genre, its theme, its relationship to the central themes of Christianity such as the cross, any theological importance, its contents, and what the commentaries say.
7. Create Points
Break the verse down into points. Sometimes there are no obvious points within the verse structure itself, but a commentary on the verse will contain natural points. You may even want to introduce some basic concepts such as genre, setting and theme as your points which will help arm your congregation with some elementary understanding of exegesis and hermeneutics without even calling it that. I usually refer to exegesis and hermeneutics as principles of Bible study when speaking to lay people.
Example Sermon
Title: "What the Poor Can Teach Us All"
Goal
To understand what it means: blessed are the poor in spirit (Matthew 5:3).
Intro
Jesus often challenges our thinking by saying the exact opposite of what the world around us says, and if we are not careful we can allow the world and its standards to determine our values, rather than God. For instance, the world says think poor and you will be poor, but Jesus says the exact opposite. He says think poor and you will be supremely happy. Now that is a puzzle. How do we understand it?
Plan
We will examine what it means to be blessed. We will see that the poor can teach us a special lesson regarding what is really important in life, and that materialism is a dangerous trap. We will also see that the poor often have a real experience of the kingdom of heaven in their lives right now, an experience that materialism can rob us of.
Body
1. What Blessed Means
Blessed is a rather nebulous word in modern English. It seems to mean a fuzzy religious feeling rather than something that the man on the street would understand. However, we would say today in everyday language supremely happy rather than blessed. This is not speaking of the fleeting happiness that seems to come when we are at a party or watch a funny movie, but the kind of happiness that is still there through those dark times, such as if you lose everything in a house fire or lose a job.
Application
How happy are you when things go wrong? Is there still a deep, abiding happiness during those dark times of your life?
2. What Poor in Spirit Means
Poor in spirit sounds like something that only a clinically depressed person would experience, and challenges the idea that if you think poor you will be poor, as a get-rich-quick scheme might suggest. Like most of the beatitudes, this one too challenges us to think the exact opposite of what is popular.
Actually, being poor in spirit is a conundrum. It is the mind set of those physically poor. It reminds us all that we can learn from the poor, spiritually. We ought to be spiritually like poor people, no matter what our material status. The poor are often rich in spiritual things rather than material things. It's like getting closer to a mountain. The closer you get, the smaller you realize that you are. In the same way, the more that we allow the spiritual things to fill our lives, that is, the more spirit-filled our lives become, the more we realize how poor we really are in spirit. Material-filled lives can often tend not to be Spirit-filled lives.
The phrase here "blessed are the poor in spirit" and the equivalent phrase in Luke "blessed are the poor" are equivalent in the language of the time. It refers to one and the same thing. Because the poor have a mind-set from which the believer can learn. They are not proud, or arrogant self-made men, but humble and have no other option than to rely completely on God. This flies completely in the face of the modern health-wealth fad and exposes it as the counterfeit that it is.
Application
Are you spiritually like a poor person, destitute, recognizing your need for God?
3. What the Promise Means
The promise in this verse is that the kingdom is theirs. Note that it says IS theirs not "will be" theirs. This means that Jesus' kingdom is present with them right now, despite contradictory outward appearances. The rest of the beatitudes show the future presence of the kingdom of heaven, but those who are poor in spirit, have a foretaste of it with them right now.
Application
How much do you sense the kingdom of heaven in your life? Or, is it crowded out with the things of this world?
Outro
We have examined what it means to be blessed, to be abundantly and deeply happy. We have seen that the poor can teach us a special lesson regarding what is really important in life, and that materialism is a dangerous trap that can take us far away from God. We have also seen that the poor often have a real experience of the kingdom of heaven in their lives right now, an experience that materialism can rob us of.
Truly those who are spiritually like poor people are supremely happy, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven right now.
Suggested Assignment
Choose a verse or part of a verse that can be expounded, that has a natural beginning and ending, and that will have some direct application of blessing to the lives of people in your church.
Lesson Outro
We have examined how to choose a verse for a sermon, then parse and translate it, check with a number of translations, check with a couple of good commentaries, and after analyzing it, create some points for a sermon outline and apply it to every day life.
