by Barney Wells, DMin
Director, The Fred Craddock Center for Preaching Excellence
In this installment of the Sermon Crafting Blog, we continue our step-by-step look at the basics of crafting a sermon. Thus far, we have read the text, lived with it and ruminated on it, then dived into the exegesis of the text. By this point, you should have arrived at a fair degree of certainty as to the meaning of the text to its original readers. But as we ended last week, we are not yet ready to preach the text. A text from Isaiah might assure the original readers that God will protect them from an impending Assyrian invasion, but we don’t face an Assyrian invasion. A text in Romans or I Corinthians might give guidance about eating meat that had been sacrificed to idols, but at least in the U.S., I doubt there is much of that for sale. So are those texts sort of obsolete, completely time and culture bound, or is there still a meaning for us?
The next step in crafting your sermon is to look for the timeless theological truth in the passage. While we may not concern ourselves with whether our hamburger had been offered as a sacrifice in worship of an idol before it wound up at Kroger’s, we do face issues of conscience and scrutiny from “weaker brothers.” The last remnants of the Assyrian empire were wiped out in the Battle of Carchemish over 2500 years ago, but we still live in a world where threats of invasion, political dominance, and persecution are daily news, and God still “…reigns over the nations; God is seated on his holy throne” (Ps 47:8). So, what is the central timeless truth about God, Christ, sin and redemption and grace, that you find in your passage? Be sure to return to a time of prayer and ask God to lead you in discerning this timeless truth, as it becomes the core, the main point or big idea, of your sermon.
To help find the timeless truths, try replacing proper nouns or culture-bound phrases in the passage with generic terms, e.g. “Assyrians” could become “adversaries” or “attackers,” perhaps. Be very careful, though. In the “meat sacrificed to idols” issue, the problem is not that the meat was unhealthy, but that for some Christians in Corinth, eating such meat implied participation in the worship of the idol. The spiritual problem of worshipping anyone but God is the issue. Don’t confuse that with a physical health issue of cholesterol or nitrites.
When you have found the timeless truth that is the main point of your passage, the crafting of the first and most important words of the sermon can begin. And there we will begin—next week.