Illuminating Devices in Preaching

Introduction to the Fifth Axiom: Legitimate Illuminating Devices

0:03 In our consideration of those axioms which apply to all kinds of sermons as to their content and form, we thus far opened up four major lines of thought, and I leave you to your notes and to your memory for the substance of what we've already covered, and this morning I want to plunge right in to the fifth axiom pertaining to all kinds of sermons with reference to content and form, and the axiom is this, the proclamation, explanation, and application of scriptural truths, as the familiar friend at the beginning of all the axioms, the proclamation, explanation, and application of scriptural truths aided by legitimate illuminating devices, aided by legitimate illuminating devices must constitute our constant labor, must constitute our constant labor. First of all, let me take a few minutes to explain the meaning of the key words in the axiom,

1:25 and it's obvious that the key phrase is made up of the words legitimate illuminating devices. Now, according to Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, to illuminate means to give light to, to make clear, to explain, or to elucidate. Therefore, the axiom is concerned with those aspects of composition and communication in which we use the linguistic materials which illuminate the substance of the sermon, whether the proclamation, the explanation, or the application. So, when I speak of illuminating devices, I am speaking of those linguistic devices used either in proclamation, explanation, or application which help to give light to, to make clear, to explain or elucidate the subject in hand. Into this category falls such things as similes, metaphors, Analogies, parables, illustrations, anecdotes, and not least, imaginative description. Now that's not an exhaustive list, it's merely suggestive.

2:50 Now if the sermon is constructed of the reinforced concrete of biblical truth, then these devices, illuminating devices, are the holes which let light in to the structure. Now in the axiom, I've used a qualifying word, legitimate. Now what do I mean by that? Well, not everything which would illuminate and clarify would be legitimate in any given sermon.

3:20 An illustration might take too much time. It might well illustrate a point of explanation, proclamation, or application, but it might so predominate as to time as to render it illegitimate.

3:34 Another illustration might very clearly, and very clearly, very, very powerfully illustrate a given truth, but it might be indelicate to use it.

3:45 And it's never right to use something that is indelicate to make a truth plain. Just as the apostle can say there are certain things that are a shame to speak of, there are certain illustrations it's a shame to use. They are simply indelicate. They would not be unto edification in that sense.

4:06 Furthermore, there might be a series of similes, which could clarify truth that they might be excessive and give the appearance of one attempting to speak with enticing words of man's wisdom. So you see why I've used the word legitimate illuminating devices, and in the axiom I have called them aids to effective proclamation, explanation, and application. They are helpers. To that great end of opening up and applying the word of God.

Demonstrating the Desirability of Illuminating Devices

4:44 So just that little bit of an exegesis of the key words in the axiom, we are in effective preaching to use these legitimate illuminating devices. Now as we work our way through the subject this morning, I have four categories of thought. Number one, a demonstration of the desirability of these devices, in previous treatments of this subject I used the word necessity. But in reworking the subject I came to the conviction I could not use the word necessity, because there are some noteworthy sermons, at least the outline of sermons recorded in the book of Acts, which to my knowledge do not contain a single powerful device of this nature, and yet they were obviously owned of God. So I had to strike out the word necessity, and put in its place a demonstration of the desirability of these devices. Then secondly, and you don't need to take down these other headings, I'll give them to you as I go along, I hope to set forth an explanation of the manifold functions of these devices, and then thirdly, give some warnings regarding the abuse of these devices, and then finally some suggestions as to the means of cultivating, and I just want to say, I just have to use the word,

6:11 it's one that isn't used too often, I'm afraid it'll die if somebody doesn't use it, the word felicity. Some suggestions as to means of cultivating felicity in the use of these devices. You see, this is a wonderful place for me to give vent to all of my verbal frustrations, and use words that I can't use in the pulpit, but I'm afraid they're going to die for want of use, so I'm going to give them a little bit of breath in this class. No, that's right, that's right.

6:42 Okay. All right, we start out then with a demonstration of the desirability of these devices for effective pastoral preaching.

6:53 And this desirability grows out of three basic lines of consideration. Number one, I'm calling this a God-given law of learning. A God-given law of learning. One of the most fundamental principles, in the process of learning, is that we proceed from the known to the unknown.

7:19 And although it is certainly true that spiritual truths can only be savingly known by a divine act of spiritual illumination, the spirit works by and with the natural laws of learning, not against or without them. You see the point I'm making. Only the spirit. Only the spirit of God can give saving illumination to biblical truth.

7:50 But the spirit who sovereignly and powerfully as well as efficaciously grants that saving illumination works by and with the natural laws of learning, not against or without them. Hence the bridge from the known to the unknown is that of explanation. And many of its building materials, are these illuminating devices. Now, why is that so?

8:22 Because God has made us in such a way as to make it so. Blakey, in his excellent work entitled, For the Work of the Ministry, addresses himself to this subject on page 59.

8:39 Dealing with the whole subject of illustration, he says, the capacity of the human mind to appreciate resemblances and contrasts is one of its most invariable characteristics. And it may readily be turned by the preacher to valuable account. It enables him to lay stepping stones along paths where otherwise he could not hope to conduct the larger portion of his hearers. It lends bright hues to subjects which would otherwise be too somber, and catches the attention of the audience.

9:16 In cases innumerable, would be sure to be lost. It is in this light that we speak of it now. When ordained to the charge of his first congregation, the late Dr. Guthrie determined, that whatever he might fail in, he would compel his hearers to listen to him.

9:35 Watching in the course of his first efforts to discover what part of his discourse is seen to be most attended to, he saw that it was the illustration. He accordingly resolved to cultivate that department with peculiar care. Cultivate it he did, and to great his purpose, for a greater master of illustration has never appeared in the pulpit, nor one who by means of it could more closely rivet the attention of his audience. As you've often been reminded, we must seek to honor the God of general revelation in our handling of the sacred and profound mysteries of special revelation. And it is a fact of general revelation that God has so constituted the human mind that in the learning process it proceeds from the known to the unknown, and that bridge from the one to the other that is rich, in the materials that we're dealing with this morning, illustrative devices, metaphors, simile, anecdote, analogy, descriptive devices,

10:50 all of these things, when the materials of the bridge are made up of that, you'll find more people landing from the shore of the unknown to the known than if the materials are made up of pure, unadorned, blunt statements. Again, here, as in so many other aspects, of the work of the ministry, in general, and in preaching in particular, there is that delicate interplay, and, coming together, the confluences, confluescence, of the natural and of the spiritual. It is a simple fact of human experience, one so patent that it was pagan Arabians who coined the proverb, he is the most powerful speaker who can turn men's ears into eyes. He is the most powerful speaker who can turn men's ears into eyes. So, in demonstrating the desirability of the use of these devices for effective pastoral preaching, the first line of demonstration is this God-given law of learning. The second is the scriptural mode of preaching.

12:06 The scriptural mode of preaching. If we are to preach after the fashion of the biblical preachers, then we ought to use these illuminating devices in our sermons as a general rule. For instance, what would the prophecy of Jeremiah be if stripped of its object lessons of the marred girdle, the basket of figs, and the potter's vessel? What would Hosea's message to backsliding and unfaithful Israel be if stripped of the extended analogy of the unfaithful wife of the prophet?

12:49 What would Isaiah's message be if denuded of its vivid poetic imagery, its flights of breathtaking analogy and eloquence? And when we turn to the recorded sermons of our Lord, can we even begin to imagine the flatness the insipidity, the insipid nature, the saltlessness of the recorded messages of Christ if we strip them of such things as lost sheep, lost coins, wayward sons, pleading widows, carefree birds, beans and specks, houses built on sand or on rock, millstones around the neck, vine branches, sheep and shepherd, mats and camels, seed and sower, bride and bridegroom, prevailing mothers, and a host of other parables, metaphors, and verbal imagery? Strip our Lord's preaching of those devices and what you have left is very little. And most of the men I've read who speak to the desirability of this element of preaching find their most powerful arguments derived from the example of our Lord. Listen to Blakey from the same book on page 60.

14:12 He comes to summarize his polemic for the use of illustrations and analogies and parable and metaphor, and he says, Our Lord's discourses abound in these things. His parables are illustrations all through. The Sermon on the Mount was hardly started before we find the salt of the earth, the light of the world, the city set on a hill, the candle under a bushel, and the candle on the candlestick. In their most solemn and impressive periods also, Christ's discourses are pointed with illustrations.

14:50 The Sermon on the Mount fills us with an overwhelming sense of the retributions of the day of doom by the illustration of the house on the rock and the house on the sand. The parable of the Last Judgment makes a similar impression by the illustration of the shepherd dividing his sheep from the goats. Nothing could repress the outflow of illustration from the mind of Jesus. In the deepest agony of the garden, his sufferings were spoken of as a cup.

15:21 The farewell discourse begins with the house of many mansions, has for its central subject the vine and the branches, and near its end introduces the woman in travail having sorrow when her hour is come, but after the child is born, forgetting her anguish for joy that a man is born into the world. Probably it is not less instructive in another connection that there are no figures and hardly any illustrations in the intercessory prayer. When the address was to God, they were not needed. He's speaking of John 17.

15:59 Hardly any of these devices in his prayer, when he speaks to God, they are not needed. But on the way to Calvary, the ever busy faculty, that is of illustration, again asserts itself in the address to the daughters of Jerusalem. If they do these things in the green tree, what shall be done in the dry? There is this further to be said in favor of illustration.

16:25 I'm sorry, then that goes on to give another polemic for this. Well, you find the same emphasis in Ryle in his treatment on simplicity in preaching in the collection of essays, The Upper Room, page 48, where he summarizes from the life of our Lord the profuse use of these illuminating devices in preaching. And when we move on to the epistles, even where you find closely reasoned argument, the argument is again and again suffused with these devices. What would Paul's epistles be without the slave master imagery, without the son under tutelage and the son who has come to full age and full acceptance? What would his pastoral, the effusions of pastoral concern be, such as we find in 1 Timothy 2, without the image of a nursing mother and of a good father? And when we turn to the last book of the Bible, where the great and ultimate conquest of Christ is set forth in apocalyptic vision, what would all of that be without horses and dragons and fire and smoke and thrones and thunder and lightnings? Well, you see, all of that is in a sense one extended imaginative description of the great spiritual realities

17:52 which that book is intended to set before us. So I assert that the desirability of the use of these devices for effective preaching is seen not only as we consider that God-given law of learning, but the scriptural mode of preaching itself. Now the qualifying word I've already intimated is that there are some sermons in the book of Acts where you will find almost none or very little of these devices. So I cannot make a law and say your scripture, your preaching, is not biblical preaching.

18:32 Unless your sermons are suffused with these devices. However, I will go so far as to say that they are very, very desirable and the overwhelming evidence of the Bible is that they ought to be part and parcel of our ordinary sermonic exercises. And then there is a third, what to me is a powerful argument with respect to the desirability of these devices, and it's what I'm calling the history of God-owned preaching itself. That is, the history after the closing of the canon.

19:13 The men who have preached effectively to their own generation, or at least the record, we must constantly remind ourselves of that, brethren. We talk about the great preachers of history. We should say the ones whose greatness is recorded. Many others whose greatness is unknown to us.

19:33 But the men of whom we have some record, who preached effectively to their own generation, whose sermons live, if they are in print, and minister to us today, are the men who did not think it beneath their dignity to use these devices in preaching and to use them often profusely. One of the great blessings again of the Puritan literature is that in spite of their prolixity, they ooze with anecdote, analogy, and the other tools of imaginative preaching. Stuart, in his little book on preaching, speaking of this principle, says, We may not possess one-tenth of George Whitefield's dramatic imagination. Nevertheless, the art of illustration is a thing no preacher can afford to neglect. Abstract truth must be translated into concrete truth. If it is to impinge on the average mind, the preacher who will not condescend thus to translate his meaning, who disdains the use of illustration, considering it undignified and puerile, is being very foolish.

20:53 Surely our Lord's example is decisive here. Jesus did not speak of the efficacy of importunate prayer. He showed us a man, shamelessly hammering at his neighbor's door at midnight. He did not say that wrong personal relationships were inimical to religious reality.

21:12 He said it would be wise to leave our gift before the altar, go and make peace with our brother, then come back and offer our gift. When a certain jurist, an expert in definitions, demanded, Who is my neighbor? The answer was, A certain man went down to Jericho. And the story of the good Samaritan, truth made concrete, will find a way past many a door, where abstractions knock in vain.

21:40 And you see the very imagery. He's illustrating it. Rather than saying, Truth will find entrance where mere abstract statement won't, he uses a figure. Truth made concrete will find a way past many a door, where abstractions knock in vain.

21:59 And that certainly is illustrated in the history of preaching. Broadus, summarizing some of his own views on the subject, says, on page 228, The importance of illustration in preaching is beyond expression. In numerous cases, it is our best means of explaining religious truth, and often, to the popular mind, our only means of proving it. And then he goes on to give other benefits that come, and he says, Among the Christian preachers, there are preachers of different ages, who have been most remarkable for affluence and felicity of illustration.

22:43 There may be mentioned Chrysostom, Jeremy Taylor, Christmas Evans, Chalmers, Guthrie, Spurgeon, Richard Fuller, Beecher, and I added a list of some others myself. And the history of preaching that gripped the popular mind is the history of preaching in which preachers, either by natural bent or by self-conscious effort, labored at being masters of these illustrative or illuminating aids, namely, simile, metaphor, anecdote, parable, and imaginative description. So, brethren, if you would have sermons that are useful and clear to your people throughout the length of your ministry, then axiom number five must always be that these stand before you as part of your responsibility. You must labor at suffusing your sermons with these illuminating devices. Now, having set forth the desirability of these devices, now, secondly, the manifold functions of these devices. What are the functions of these devices?

The Manifold Functions of Illuminating Devices: Clarifying Truth

24:02 Well, the primary function, when judiciously employed, is that of clarifying truth. That's already been expressed. It's been assumed and everything said thus far. Now I want to state it.

24:15 The primary function is that of clarifying truth. Our great concern in preaching must always be the explanation and application of divine truth with clarity. Therefore, this end is the only legitimate goal in the use of any one of these devices. If the mandate of Corinthians should always be before us, let all things be done unto edifying, then its corollary must also be before us.

24:54 Only that which is clear can be edified. You can't be edified by verbal hash. You cannot be edified except at a very surface and temporary level of some kind of soulish edifying, some kind of something you might experience when listening to music. But you cannot be edified in the biblical sense of the intelligent absorption of truth unless the thing is made clear.

25:25 One author has said that reasons are the pillars of the fabric of a sermon, but similitudes are the windows which give the best lights. Now if this fact is before us, we'll have the key to the answer to such questions as, how much shall I illustrate in any given sermon? What illustrations are appropriate in this situation? What kind of imagery will be proper here?

25:55 What kind will be improper? Well, you see, when you're driven by this one great passion, what best serves making truth plain? Then you have the key that will unlock the answer to most of those questions. You're not there to prove how clever you are in storytelling, and you're certainly not there to prove how clever you are in setting up termed statements so that people ooh and ah your ability for termed phrases.

26:27 And I trust you're not in the pulpit with a view to giving people by piecemeal a biography of your unglamorous and unworthy life by telling stories about yourself ad nauseum, but you're there to make truth plain. You're there to rivet truth on the minds of your people. And with that passion burning in your breast, then all of these devices are your servants to be summoned in at any point where they will serve that great end. You see?

27:03 And having that single eye in preaching is in many ways a tremendous help in resolving some of these moot questions, these oft-debated questions of how many illustrations, what kind, how many similes, metaphors, images, et cetera. And of course, this will also, as I've already alluded, keep you from the abuse of these devices. Storytelling, which has no base in exegesis and clarifies no fruit of exegesis, does not prepare the mind to receive the implication and application of the truth established in exegesis or exegesis or exposition has no place in a sermon. Many a time when I sat in chapels, when preachers would come and stand up and tell a joke that had absolutely no relevance whatsoever to what they were going to say, it took all the grace I could muster to stay in my seat. I wanted to stand up and just point my finger at them and say, clown, get out of the pulpit. It seemed like they had to prove they were nice guys by telling some inane story that we'd already heard many times you know, twenty times over.

28:21 So, it was almost an act of dishonesty to giggle and to feed the guy's ego that he was a regular joe. I mean, I just can't say enough in a negative way about that business, you see. Flights of imagery which simply attract attention to ourselves, similes so coarse as to disgust and cause revulsion are things that simply do not belong in the work of preaching. Now, if I may just use the illustration from a couple of weeks ago.

28:58 As I wrestled with the matter, how can I make plain to people who are not trained in thinking logically to whom the words, framework of exhortation, substance of exhortation don't mean anything? They're not taught and they're not trained and disciplined to think in that language. How can I make plain the structure of Philippians 2, 1 to 4? And I said, well, there's some who've got an athletic background and all the rest so I'll come at them with that illustration of the coach.

29:30 But there's some to whom that wouldn't relate so then I thought of the military analogy. And so, right up front, at the beginning of the sermon, I spent about seven to eight minutes, that's a lot of time, and I wrestled with whether or not I could justify that much time using two analogies of the football coach who said, if you have, you remember those who were there, if you have, then. Well, the whole end, you see, of that was not to demonstrate that I can come up with clever little stories but to help our people sit with their Bibles in their laps and see the structure of that passage. Now, I put the illustration in before the exposition.

30:09 Why? To set the framework that would make the exposition more readily grasped. And though that may break some formal rule of rhetoric, I could care less because the great end is to make truth plain to your people. And here was a servant, an analogy, a parable that would help make it plain so you bring it in, call it along to your side and use it.

Secondary Functions of Illuminating Devices: Pleasure, Attention, Conscience, Memory

30:33 A soul suffused with what the old writers called disinterested love, not uninterested, disinterested, that is, that does not terminate upon itself but upon its object, a soul suffused with disinterested love will be the great index as to what is and is not proper in the use of these devices. The great and primary function is to clarify truth. However, there are secondary functions of these devices, particularly the matter of anecdote, parable, analogy, or what we would generally call illustration. And here I commend for your careful reading the chapters in Spurgeon, Dr. Lloyd-Jones, any of these, the standard writers on homiletics and sermon preparation for insights on what I would call the secondary function of these devices. And I'm certainly indebted to these writers as I set before you at least four, and I doubt there are more, but to my present observation, these are four of the primary, secondary functions of these devices. All right?

31:53 Number one, the pleasure and interest producing contribution. The pleasure and interest dash producing contribution. Now it may surprise some people to realize that we ought to aim at having our preaching be a pleasurable and interesting experience for our listeners. There is nothing wrong with seeking to have sermons that are a pleasure to hear.

32:27 That is not carnal. God has made us so that we gravitate to the pleasurable and we have an aversion to the unpleasant. Spurgeon, speaking to his students, understood this well, or I should say understood it well and in speaking to his students articulated this principle well. He says on page 350, Let us not deny our people the salt of parable with the meat of doctrine.

33:00 Our congregations hear us with pleasure when we give them a fair measure of imagery. When an anecdote is being told, they rest, take breath and give play to their imaginations and thus prepare themselves for the sterner work which lies before them in listening to our profounder expositions. Riding in a third-class carriage some years ago in the eastern counties, we have been for a long time without a lamp and when a traveler lighted a candle it was pleasant to see how all eyes turned that way and rejoiced in the light. Such is frequently the effect of an apt simile in the midst of a sermon.

33:42 It lights up the whole matter and gladdens every heart. Even the little children open their eyes and ears and a smile brightens up their faces as we tell a story for they too rejoice in the light which streams in through our windows. We dare say they often wish that the sermon were all illustrations even as the boy desired to have a cake made of all plums. But that must not be.

34:07 There is a happy medium and we must keep to it by making our discourse pleasant hearing but not a mere pastime. No reason exists and here's the statement that I cannot escape. No reason exists why the preaching of the gospel should be a miserable operation either to the speaker or to the hearer. Pleasantly profitable let all our sermons be.

34:36 A house must not have thick walls without openings neither must a discourse be all made up of solid slabs of doctrine without a window of comparison or a lattice of poetry. If so our hearers will gradually forsake us and prefer to stay at home and read their favorite authors whose lively use of these devices affords more pleasure to their minds. So the secondary benefit of the use of these illuminating devices is that of the pleasure and interest producing contribution they make to our sermons. And again you remember I'm speaking of those who are going to labor on we trust month after month year after year with one congregation of God's people and to maintain the pleasure and interest that our people should have in our sermons in no little measure the degree to which you give yourself to this aspect of sermon construction will influence that pleasure. Alright, secondly what I'm going to call the attention getting contribution. Again a hyphenated word the attention getting contribution. Often where a blunt statement unadorned with simile

36:02 metaphor or analogy will leave our people dull the use of these devices will cause them to perk up their ears and to rivet their attention upon that which we are about to say. Let me give you a quote from Ryle if you've not read his treatise Simplicity in Preaching or if you've not read it for a while I commend it to you it's one of those I try to go back over and read periodically Ryle says on page 48 of the Upper Room if you pause in your sermon and say now I'll tell you a story I engage that all who are not too fast to sleep will prick up their ears and listen. People like similes illustrations and well told stories and will listen to them than when they will attend to nothing else. And then he quotes the old Arabian proverb he is the best speaker says an Arabian proverb who can turn the ear into an eye. Now to show how sensitive Spurgeon was to this and to the different needs for using this device in terms of the level of attention or the level at which the attention might be lost I came across a sermon of Spurgeon's in which he said this right in the midst of his sermon this is in volume 27

37:31 page 404 Now I thought as it was a very hot and heavy morning that I had better give you a number of illustrations lest anyone should be inclined to go to sleep anyone should be drowsy will his next neighbor just nudge him a little bit by accident for it may be as well while we are here to be awake I'm sorry for it may be as well while we are here to be awake especially with such a subject on hand as this. The illustrations will be such as have been commonly used and perhaps I may be able to give one or two of my own. Now here either he knew on Saturday when he was preparing his sermon for that's when he did his formal preparation six o'clock Saturday night he started when Mrs. Spurgeon ushered everyone out of the room amazing man

38:26 but anyway he either knew that they were in the midst of a heat wave and in planning his sermon he said now it's going to be hot people's attention span is going to be limited so I've got to work in a lot more illustrations than I normally do or he had presence of mind enough when he got there and sensed that because of the heat people were oppressive and the air was oppressive and people were dull he just reached back in the file draw of memory and no doubt with his fertile mind he did a little work of creation on his feet but rather than have people sit there and not have their attention and rather than simply scold them and say hey you rebels pay attention to me I'm the great Charles Spurgeon don't you know it's a privilege to listen to me no he didn't do that what he did is he accommodated himself and he used illustrations as an attention getting device and he himself speaks of that function when writing or speaking to his students and he says illustrations tend to enliven an audience and quicken attention page 351 then he uses the analogy of windows and of a good breath of fresh air and I commend to you that those two chapters by Spurgeon on illustrations in preaching but then there is a third secondary function of these devices and it's what I'm calling the conscience stabbing contribution in other words the illustration

39:56 can often be used with great effect in application not only in exercise but also in explanation but in application and of course the classic example in the Old Testament is what Nathan and David you can't think of illustrations being used to stab the conscience without thinking of Nathan's parable of the you and her little lamb you cannot think of that whole situation or this whole concept without thinking of that powerful vision of how David's slumbering conscience that had apparently resisted all of the ordinary means of grace and all of his general knowledge of God and of his ways but when Nathan could stir him up to anger about that wicked man that dared to come to that poor man with his one sheep he had him he had him and when he said thou art the man down he went in his dealings with the Pharisees you remember how on several critical occasions he used parables and they were incensed what should he do with these people why he should kill them and give the vineyard to another and Jesus turned and said precisely the kingdom of God should be taken from you and given

41:25 to a generation bringing forth the fruits thereof they signed their own death knell they signed their own death warrant sounded their own death knell and there is that tremendously powerful and albeit secondary function of these devices and that is what I've called the conscience stabbing contribution and then fourthly but not least in importance is the memory aiding contribution another hyphenated word the memory aiding contribution you've sought to open up a truth by simple plain statement by the explanation of words by the demonstration of parallel scriptural principles and precepts and then you seek to rivet it all with one telling illustration and months and years after you've preached that sermon that illustration has fastened itself in the minds of people and whenever they think of it then they make their way backwards to the truths that it was used to enforce if you had simply left them with those truths their memories would not be able to recall it but by that law of association if I may use the analogy the unusual dress with which you adorned that truth was such that every time they saw the dress

42:53 they made the association with what was in it and that is no little factor in the desirability of using these devices the memory aiding now Broadus was very conscious of this in dealing with the desirability of these devices Broadus said they greatly assist the memory of the hearer in retaining the lesson of the sermon page 228 good anecdotes and illustrations are far more easily remembered than bright sayings and trains of argument it is not an uncommon experience with preachers to find that their sentences and profoundest observations easily slip the memory while some apparently trivial anecdote or illustration remains if these can be made so apt as necessarily to recall the argument or train of thought so much the better now there may be times as we'll see when we come to the actual matter of sermon construction when you can use an extended illustration to set the framework of your whole discourse that's an ideal thing when you can do that because then the entire discourse is hung together by that analogy

44:21 and people are able to hold the thing together I was so tickled when one of the parents told me that a youngster who's only about four years of age was able to understand the context by that sandwich illustration and that really stuck because this particular person really loves peanut butter and jelly sandwiches so when I talked about the slice of bread coming down from above and the one from beneath and the peanut butter and jelly in the middle that really stuck with this little one and the father told me that it was evident that they just were not tickled with the idea in the technical sense the universe of discourse because of that silly illustration of the peanut butter sandwich well that's the kind of thing I'm talking about making the thing stick in the memory by that law of association often when I've been away in meetings somewhere someone will come to me and say Pastor Martin I want to thank you such and such a sermon I heard on tape where you preached this place so many years ago and when I asked them what it was almost invariably almost invariably it was in conjunction with some kind of an illustration or an analogy that made that truth stick rarely have they come and said well you stated this in these words and it was so powerful that it stuck with me now they would say

45:51 in enforcing such and such a truth you use such and such an illustration and it was that illustration that caused the truth to stick so I'm only adding my might to what these giants of the past have said with regard to the memory aiding contribution that these devices lend to our preaching well then very quickly I want to cover this third category and then we'll break and for the next hour for about twenty five minutes or so probably I'll give these suggestions with regard to cultivating felicity in this matter but now I want to give some words of warning and caution with respect to the use of these devices having shown the desirability of their use having laid out some of the functions of their use now some words of warning and caution with respect to the use of these devices now I commend to you chapter twelve of Lloyd Jones preaching and preachers from some very telling and helpful warnings and some very humorous illustrations of why those devices are so important to our lives they are anemic they're not even gaseous they're not

Warnings and Cautions Regarding the Use of Illuminating Devices

47:21 packable I've written a very detailed paper where we can put these things in the question table regard to the use of these devices. Number one, don't overload the sermon with any of these devices. Don't overload the sermon with any of these devices. Too many illustrations take precious time from exposition and explanation. Too much imagery makes the sermon top-heavy with the elements of a florid rhetoric. Too many metaphors and similes are like too much honey or too much sugar in your coffee. And too much imaginative description will generally lead people away from the word and produce a form of idolatry directed to the preacher. And if you have any ability in

48:38 the area of imaginative description, it's a dangerous ability. Keep a tight rein upon it.

48:46 Lloyd-Jones said, Lloyd-Jones gives a classic example that I do want to read. I know many of you have not read this, and I'm hoping this will whet your appetite to read this. Let me relate to page 237. Another authentic story is giving this caution. There was a preacher in Wales at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century called Robert Roberts. He also had this great gift of imagination. If anything, even more so than did Whitefield. He was preaching one day in a very crowded chapel and again was dealing with this same point about the sinner not heeding warnings, enjoying himself and ignoring the intimations of the coming judgment. To enforce this warning, he used a vivid illustration. Some people staying at the seaside

49:36 had gone walking along the beach. There were rocks leading out into the sea, a sort of promontory of rocks. That is, you have a piece of rock that is going to the beach, and you have a piece of rock that is going to the beach. You have a piece of rock that is going to the beach.

49:46 You have a piece of land stretching out into the water. The tide was out, so they had walked to the very end of this stretch of land, and having done so, lay down on their backs, basking in the sun. There they were, enjoying themselves tremendously, sleeping and reading and so on. But they had not noticed that the tide had turned and was beginning to come in again very slowly. They paid no attention to this, but the tide continued to lap the rocks on both sides and slowly to encircle them.

50:16 They paid no attention to this, but the tide continued to lap the rocks on both sides and slowly to encircle them. They paid no attention to this, but the tide continued to lap the rocks on both sides and slowly to encircle them.

51:16 They paid no attention to this, but the tide continued to lap the rocks on both sides and slowly to encircle them. They paid no attention to this, but the tide continued to lap the rocks on both sides and slowly to encircle them.

52:18 They paid no attention to this, but the tide continued to lap the rocks on both sides and slowly to encircle them. They paid no attention to this, but the tide continued to lap the rocks on both sides and slowly to encircle them. They paid no attention to this, but the tide continued to lap the rocks on both sides and slowly to encircle them. They paid no attention to this, but the tide continued to lap the rocks on both sides and slowly to encircle them.

52:57 They paid no attention to this, but the tide continued to lap the rocks on both sides and slowly to encircle them. They paid no attention to this, but the tide continued to lap the rocks on both sides and slowly to encircle them. They paid no attention to this, but the tide continued to lap the rocks on both sides and slowly to encircle them. They paid no attention to this, but the tide continued to lap the rocks on both sides and slowly to encircle them.

53:05 average hearer and this is very important and this is where you see you can't make hard fast rules and i want to illustrate it from your own ranks you've got to be sensitive to the situation the context in which you are preaching don't use any of these devices unless they clarify truth to the average hearer now let me give you a negative illustration here's someone who's writing a commentary in the book of ephesians and he is seeking to illustrate to elucidate to clarify the text to the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in the heavenly places might be made known through the church the manifold wisdom of god now he's going to attempt to explain the significance of that text by the use of analogy metaphor simile imagination and a very large and expansive vocabulary now notice how clear he makes the verse at any rate that purpose sets the sovereign choice of the land's bride in a wondrous

54:22 aspect and iridates her with an extra mundane luster and distinction all her own she is not only emblazoned as a signal trophy of divine counsel but is discerned to be such by a gaggle of the mind and the mind of the soul and the mind of the soul and the mind of the soul and the mind of the soul and the mind of the soul and the mind of the soul and the mind of the mind of the soul and the head of the soul and the mind of the soul and the mind of the soul and the heart of the soul and the mind of the soul and the mind of the soul and the mind of the soul higher intelligences who mark the unfolding of her destiny the church is a spectacle to angels as well as men from her checkered story and long drawn conflict the celestial host learns secrets of the creator's wisdom not elsewhere divulged the strange vicissitudes of her status the yet stranger throes of tribulation through which she is called to pass and strangest sight of all to the heavenly unloving being and the most mysterious sight of all to the heavenly unloving lookers, the submission of her illustrious head to the reproaches and agonies of the cross, are fraught with priceless instruction to these sons of the morning, themselves not wholly unscathed by the internecine feud between light and darkness. We are their graduating school. It is a captivating glimpse we here gain of the repercussions of the battlefields of earth, audible in the heavenlies by spirits, attempt to listen and perceptive by intuition of arcana, which we must spell out letter by letter. Here we descry unsuspected witnesses

55:47 of our prowess or pusillanimity, whose keen vision pierces through the dim inane and scans from afar the bearing of the victors and the vanquished, the unquailing heroes of faith or the inglorious herd who fall. A prey to the shafts of unbelief. Oft times they must have puzzled over the story of man's fall and the permission of moral evil, for they themselves form units in the order of the universe. Their hermit spirits dwell apart without point of intersection. Sweet communings may be theirs, but no ties of consanguinity. How diverse from the mortal constitution of things, in which, as Whittier's haunting lines remind us, . . . like warp and woof, all destinies are woven fast, locked in sympathy like the keys

56:39 of an organ, vast. Pluck one thread and the web ye mar, break but one of a thousand strings and the painful jar through all will run. To these watchers of the skies of the first human pair could not but present an amazing phenomenon. The mysterious hyphen between matter and spirit in Scallinger's apt phrase . . .

57:01 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ULTIMATE, ULTIMATE, ULTIMATE, Trubisky-Mundy nexus in London. Amen.

57:09 Can you run that test for me one more time? Now, the next paragraph says, one thing at any rate is clear.

57:22 Now, brethren, submit your naughty desire to know who the author is and the rest to an instant mortification. Suffice it to say,

57:35 has that made Ephesians 3.10 clear to you?

57:40 Now, I use that as an illustration of a negative kind of what I mean by, don't use these devices unless they clarify truth to the average hearer. Now, if he were speaking to an elite group of people with a very rich literary background,

58:02 to those who had a highly cultivated sense of poetic imagery, who were knowledgeable in Latin prose, this might really clarify Ephesians 3.10.

58:17 But to us folks, it don't do it. It doesn't do it, you see. Now, there's a tremendous scale of comprehension, of background, of sensitivity, of what locks a man's similes into a real experience, to which the people can relate. And this demands that constant adjustment to the situation in which you're preaching.

58:42 And don't use any of these devices unless you have reason to believe they will clarify the truth to the average hearer. Sometimes you'll be reading in the old writers and they will use analogies and similes that don't register because they really did register in the context of their own generation. And there's a sense in which any man's writings that would relate to any culture and any generation at any given time really were not meeting the need of the context in which they were originally given. This is why some of the things in Bunyan demand footnotes. Because Bunyan the Tinker was taking his whole extended analogy of the Christian life under the figure of that pilgrim and constantly relating it to things that were embedded in the culture of England at his time. And for the most part embedded in the culture of the average middle to low class person in England. That's why a lot of people didn't like it. They felt it demeaned holy truths by bringing it down too low to the common person.

59:50 Well then there's a final word of caution. And the word of caution here is don't ever use these devices as filler. That's not P-H-I-L, that's F-I-L-L-E-R. Don't ever use these devices as mere filler.

60:11 It's solid proclamation, explanation, application with a modicum of these devices means you come up with a 20 minute sermon. Preach a solid, well trimmed 20 minute sermon than a 30 minute sermon in which you've just added filler.

60:30 All of you have had a hamburger that was stretched a little bit too much with breadcrumbs. You'd much rather it had a smaller hamburger that was real meat than that mush that was added to make it bigger. They weren't fooling anyone. Your taste buds could immediately sense that that was added simply for size and certainly not for taste and not necessarily for nutriment. Well, Phelps, who has the largest treatment, one of the longest treatments of this whole subject, speaking to this issue says on page 440,

61:08 digression, he's warning against digression in preaching, may take the form of excessive illustration. The difficulties of composition must have already disclosed to you the temptation which a preacher experiences to illustrate for other purposes than to meet the necessities of the thing in hand. We're tempted to illustrate for the sake of the illustration, its beauty, its novelty, or its eccentricity. We're tempted to illustrate for the sake of rhetorical display, display of ingenuity, of learning, or originality.

61:39 We're tempted to illustrate for the entertainment of an audience, and of course that's the curse of much modern preaching. We're tempted to fill in with anecdote for the sake of the story, not because the thing in hand demands the anecdote. You all know a certain popular lecturer whose passion for anecdote is so great as to have degenerated into what De Quincey calls anecdotage. Illustrative stories have so multiplied in number that now the larger portion of the time spent in listening to him is devoted to laughter at his jocular, and then he uses a big word here, that means his jocular diversions, I guess. His hearers find that their digestion improves more than their culture. All these forms of illustrative digression are claptrap. That they can be linked logically to the subject does not save them from the charge. Everything conceivable can be linked logically to every other thing by some sort of underground connections.

62:39 Such illustrations do not advance the subject. They do not carry it. It carries them. And I think Phelps has very wisely and perceptively said you can give a semblance of rationale for that device when in reality there is none. So I will lay those cautions before you, brethren, and there'll be cautions, the relevance of which you may not immediately sense, but over the long haul, I think you will see the necessity and the wisdom in those cautions. Well, let's take a break for a few minutes, and then I'll give you some suggestions as to how to cultivate some skill in the use of these devices. Now, when this lecture was originally given, point number four, which was taken up after the break, was lost in the original recording, and we are now dubbing in this point, and so there will be some obvious difference in the classroom climate as opposed to the present situation in which this material is

Cultivating Skill in the Use of Illuminating Devices

63:42 being put on tape. Now, the fourth area of concern with respect to these matters of illuminating devices is what I am calling some suggestions as to the means of cultivating a good degree of skill in the use of these devices. Now, as with almost all aspects of preaching, there will be a great diversity of native gift, of the factors of early cultivation, of cultural impression, for instance, right, here in the academy amongst our men who come from different parts of the country. Someone may say on a given Lord's Day at the conclusion of a service, greeting me at the door, Pastor, I was deeply challenged by the message.

64:24 Someone else from another part of the country might say, Pastor, God tanned my hide and blessed my soul with that preaching this morning. Well, obviously that whole matter of the imagery of having one's hide tanned and soul blessed, grows out of a cultural perspective, and these are the things that of course will influence the way in which we use the various illuminating devices in our actual preaching. However, giving due allowance for this great diversity rising from native gift, early cultivation of mind and cultural impression, there are ways in which each of us can labor at cultivating a maximum measure of skill in the use of these devices. And I would like to suggest four indirect ways by which we may cultivate these devices, and then in closing two more direct ways. The first indirect way is to seek to employ these devices in ordinary conversation. If we're aiming at a style in preaching that is basically conversational, that is, we are not speaking in an artificial or elevated tone, then the more we are able to include these illuminating devices in ordinary conversation in ordinary situations, the more likely we are to find them breaking out in our preaching and being

65:51 used to help make our preaching clearer and to make our preaching more interesting. Then there is a second indirect way in which we can cultivate these devices, and it's what I am calling to labor at using these devices in the instruction of our children. For instance, when we were going through a portion of the Word of God dealing with the birth narrative in Luke's Gospel, and we came to that incident where it is said that the babe leaped in the womb of Mary, I'm sorry, in the womb of Elizabeth at the presence of Mary, I used the terminology with my children that John the Baptist did a backflip in Elizabeth's womb. Well, again, it's the kind of use of these word pictures with our children that can help us in cultivating these devices that again will carry over into our pulpit ministry. And then in the third place, an indirect way in which we can labor at cultivating this skill is to sustain much general reading as a means of impressing our minds with these devices as used by others, and then imperceptibly gaining an acquisition of some of these word pictures, some of these devices of illustration, and this is where general reading again will do much to tone our minds and will have a very powerful

67:20 albeit indirect influence upon our ability to use these devices in our actual preaching. And then the fourth indirect way in which we can cultivate our skill is constantly to expose ourselves to and to analyze living models. And here, reading current literature of preachers who have been used of God to make an impact upon our own generation, listening to tapes, not so much for personal edification at times, but to analyze the style in which men who are being used of God to gain a hearing are actually using these devices. And then finally, there are two direct ways in which we can actually labor at cultivating these devices, and the first is this. When you're reading a sermon, it's fairly well formed, go back over it and note the places where these devices are most needed and where they would perhaps lend the most power and effect to your sermon, using the terms power and effect in their highest sense, namely, helping to make the truth of God clear, or to aid in impressing that truth upon the understanding or upon the conscience. And then the second direct way is to seek to analyze the statements which could be made more interesting or clear or forceful with the use of one or more of these devices.

68:48 In other words, as you go back over your sermon notes, you will notice places where you have stated things in straightforward sentence construction which could be stated with some measure of the use of these devices in a way that will make the statements stick, will make it more vivid, and thereby create a more lengthy and more lengthy and more lengthy framework for lasting impression upon the minds of your hearers. Now, as with this skill and all other skills, it's evident that these things will not come to us naturally, but they are matters in which we must seek continually to labor and, in obedience to the biblical injunction, continually to stir up the gift of God that is in us, and I underscore again, not with a view to gaining the reputation for being impressive or eloquent, and preachers, but with the end in view that our sermons will have a stickability about them that will cause the truth of God under the blessing of the Spirit of God to linger long in the minds and hearts of our hearers.