Expository Preaching HR504 LESSON 15 of 20 Haddon W. Robinson, Ph.D. Distinguished Professor of Preaching and the Senior Director of the Doctor of Ministry Program at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts It s tough to think. It s even harder to think about thinking, and believe me it s harder to talk about thinking about thinking, but that s what we re doing. We re asking How do people think? Homiletics or preaching is not just, you know, three points and a poem. We re really asking How does someone think when they prepare a sermon? How do you think about the text as you study it? How do you think about taking this text and applying it to your people in the 21st century? We ve been talking about three questions that, whenever you state an idea, you either have to explain it, prove it, or apply it. The questions are what does that mean? Is that true? So what? What difference does it make? And you use those questions in two different ways. First, you use those questions as you re studying a text. That is, what was the biblical writer doing when he was writing to the biblical readers? Was the writer explaining or proving or applying? And after you have worked with that in the text, you take the same questions and apply them to your audience. That is, as I preach this passage, the people in the pew have to ask those questions. If they re following me at all, are they asking what does that mean or is that true or so what? What difference does it make? For example, supposing you re going through the Corinthian letter and you come to the passage in chapter 8 [where] Paul says that he s talking about food sacrificed to idols. I have been at this business of preaching for half a century. I have never had anyone come to my study here in the United States and say, You know I d like to talk to you about food offered to idols. Just doesn t happen. Now it did happen to me once. I was over in Singapore and was talking to some Christians there who came out of homes of people who were not believers, who were idol worshipers, and the question they asked me was, We go to our parent s home for dinner every week and we know that the food that they serve us has been offered to an idol. Is it all right for us to eat it? Only time in my life I could turn to 1 Corinthians 8 to answer the question 1 of 5
directly, but the people that you talk to, if you re in the Western world, may never have asked that because it s not a pressing concern. It was a big concern to the people in the ancient world who lived in Corinth. Everywhere they looked there were temples to idols. They re surrounded by it, and everywhere they went there was this problem of whether or not they could eat food offered to idols. So I know that one question is, in talking to my congregation, they re asking what does this mean? That is, Help me see why this was such a big problem to the people in the ancient world. And so I know I m going to have to take some part of my sermon to explain that. I m going to have to explain that at the center of the city of Corinth there was a temple to the goddess Aphrodite and people would offer sacrifices to the goddess food, meat sacrifices. Whenever a worshiper brought an offering, only a small part was actually burned on the altar. Another part was given to the priest as an honorarium and the other part was given to the worshiper. They d have a meal. No refrigeration, and so they had to do something with this meat. Next to the idol s temple there was a meat market. Probably the only meat market in town, so if you wanted to have a pot roast or a steak you went to the meat market connected to the idol s temple. So the question, can you eat meat offered to idols? became crucial. It was a crucial question physically. That is, can you eat that kind of meat? It was a problem socially. If you were invited to the home of a pagan neighbor, somebody who was still in idolatry, you knew that that meat that was served was undoubtedly offered to an idol earlier in the day, and you re a Christian. Can you go to that meal? Can you eat of that food? Paul takes that up in 1 Corinthians 10. So it was a physical problem; it was a social problem; it was a spiritual problem. If a person has just come out of idolatry, where you offered all your food to an idol, he eats this food as a Christian. There s a danger isn t there that he would be drawn back to the old life, and I ve got to explain that to my people, because until they understand what was going on and why this was such a problem, the passage looks like it has absolutely no relevance or bearing on them. So I have to jot that down. Whatever I do, a part of my sermon has to be devoted to why food would be sacrificed to idols and why food sacrificed to idols would be a problem to Christians in the first century. Sometimes I have to come at my audience and realize that they 2 of 5
really are beginning with the question Is that really true? For example, in the famous passage in Romans 8:28 Paul says, For we know that God works all things together for good to them who love God, to them who are called according to His purpose. The minute I announce that text, a person in the third row hears it and says, Is that really true that God works all things together for good to them who love God, them who are called according to His purpose? And then immediately what will happen is there ll be things that will pop into his mind. What about the widow in our church? Her husband was just killed in an accident. She s left alone with three small children. Is that good? How in the world can anybody say that s good? Or, What about a young woman who is brutally raped? Everybody in the community knows about it. She knows about it. It will affect her for the rest of her life. How can you say that s good? What they ll do is they ll immediately think of specific situations that you can t call good. But they are starting with the second functional question is that really true because they think they know the answer to the first question what does that mean? So as you are preaching that text, you re going to have to go back and explain Romans 8 to these folks. What does it mean that it says that God works things together for good? What in the world does he mean by good? Why does he talk about those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose? And you discover that after you ve answered those questions, which are really an answer to the first question namely, what does that mean? when you ve answered that, then the second question is more easily answered. They build on one another. So sometimes when you come to a text, the person in the pew immediately asks is that true? Sometimes they ask that question because the idea you re advancing really isn t a solid reflection of biblical thought. A preacher says God always answers prayer. Sometimes God says yes, sometimes God says no, sometimes God says wait awhile, but He always answers prayer. Well that sounds good, except if you think about it, when you talk about answered prayer, you mean answered in terms of the asking. If my grandson may, at the time was 5 or 6, would come to me and say Grandpa, can you give me two dollars? I want to get an ice cream cone. And I say, No, sorry Carl, I can t give you two dollars for an ice cream cone, he doesn t go to his friends and say that My grandpa always answers my request. I asked for two dollars; he said no. No. Whatever you do, you re playing word games, and sometimes when we make statements like that, people don t say it, but inside they say, That s not true. That s not accurate. You re not being honest 3 of 5
with the realities of the text or the realities of life. So what I m saying is I have to take these three questions and direct them to my audience. What does the audience not know? What do they need to know in order to understand this passage? The biblical writer may not have explained things to his readers because they knew. He s writing to people in the ancient world in a particular situation. But we don t know as a listener, so I have to answer it. I have to explain what I think they don t know in order to understand the passage. Sometimes the question I have to answer, as I ve just said, Is that really true? Is it really true that we can count it joy when we fall into all kinds of trials? I don t feel like joy. You re trying to be Pollyannaish. I have to realize that if I say that, I have to go and prove to the audience that what James is saying is indeed true to life if you read all that he is saying. So I m asking What about my audience? And then as I have worked with my text, I have to ask that third question, So what? What difference does it make? I know my audience isn t going to ask that question unless they think they understand and unless they accept what is said. Then they will say, Well so what? I also realize that when people ask, Is that really true? which I happen to think is the major question audiences ask of us today, I have to think, Why wouldn t they accept that? For example, if I am making a case to a congregation that Christians ought to marry Christians; that you ought not marry a non-believer if you re a believer, and imagine a young woman listening to the sermon wondering if she believes that. If you said to her, Do you think Christian ought to marry a non-christian? Oh no, no, no. It d be too difficult. You ought not do that unless of course she is dating a non-christian and it s serious. Now she knows what the passage is saying and ordinarily she would agree that that s what Christians ought to do, but in her case, Frank is such a lovely guy and he s well mannered and we get along so well together and I m sure that after we get married, you know, I can tell him about Jesus again and he ll become a Christian, or, I ll get him to go to church and he ll become a believer. He s not that way now, but I m sure we love each other and that ll happen. So, you know, she s going to make Frank into a mission field. She s confident that s going to occur even though the text would say to her don t do that. She doesn t hear it because she has something she wants more than obedience to 4 of 5
God and that is she wants Frank. I have to understand that. If I m going to speak to young people about this, I have got to be able to be aware of that kind of objection, because people will say no because they don t understand or they say no because [they think] there s a better reason for them a better reason to disobey God than to obey Him. So what I m saying is you take the text, then having gotten the text, you think about your audience, and the three developmental questions work for the audience today as they did in the ancient world. Where are they in this text? What do I have to explain (and I find it helpful to write that down)? And then, Will they accept this? Will they understand it? Will they accept it? Well some will, but some won t. Then the third thing is So what? What difference does it make? One thing you can see though, if you re following what we re doing, is that all three of those questions can be answered with the use of an illustration. You can use an illustration an analogy to explain as Paul does when he talks about the church being the body of Christ. You can use illustrations to prove, to win consent, and you can use illustrations to show people how this would work in their lives. So those questions work both ways, and an effective communicator not only uses them for the text but for the audience. Christ-Centered Learning Anytime, Anywhere 5 of 5