Development of Sermonic Materials

Review of Essential Elements of Effective Pastoral Teaching and Preaching

0:01 I will take but five minutes to review, since it's been two months since we met, the problems connected with the holiday season we did not meet in December. We are considering, I trust you remember, the broad theme of the essential elements of effective pastoral teaching and preaching, and having concerned ourselves for an entire year with the subject of the man and the tremendous and inseparable relationship between the quality of a man's walk before God and his people and the effectiveness of his preaching, we have now begun to concern ourselves with the subject of the message itself,

0:42 having moved from the man as the focus of our concern to the message, particularly in its form and in its substance. And what we have done is tried, first of all, to establish the centrality of the truth of God in accomplishing it. In accomplishing or effecting the saving purposes of God. And we looked at a number of scriptures showing that both in the beginning and the nurturing and sustaining and developing of spiritual life, that the word of God is central in the accomplishment of those ends.

1:14 And then we deduced five things from that biblical study, and we made the assertions that if our sermonic exercises are to be blessed of God, they must be painstaking. They must be painstakingly exegetical in their raw materials, predominantly biblical in their essential substance, harmoniously theological in their statements, intensely practical in their overall thrust, and pervasively evangelical in their overall climate. And then in our last session, we moved from these general principles relative to the theory of preaching to the more nitty-gritty and practical matter of how to preach.

Principles for Selecting Sermonic Materials

1:56 How to select a text, how to select our sermonic themes, what portion of scripture shall I expound, what book of the Bible shall I attempt to preach through, what great themes of scripture shall I attempt to open up and to apply to my people. And I suggested to you that the undergirding principle of selecting sermonic materials is the recognition that there is this constant interplay, of the natural and the supernatural, of that which is true of me as a man and that which is true of me as a new man in Christ Jesus. Therefore, we must beware of ironclad rules,

2:40 we must beware of legalistic inflexibility, we must beware of copying others, and we must beware of the two great dangers ever before us, that of enthusiasm, expecting direct revelation, and that of a cold rationalism, that expects no specific guidance from God. And then I laid before you some general maxims for guidance in the selection of sermonic materials. I'll not expound them, I'll only mention them. Seek to be consistently prayerful for divine guidance in this matter, seek to be aware of the needs of the flock, and then seek to be sensitive to God's dealings with your own heart and mind as a preacher,

3:23 seek to be sensitive to your present development, as a preacher, and seek to be sensitive to the reaction of the flock of God over which God has placed you. Now having covered in about three minutes several hours of lecture material, we come today to consider together this whole matter of how do we actually go about now developing that theme that we have selected, opening up that passage that we have chosen, preaching through that specific book that we have settled on, as being the mind of God for our people at this particular time. You've settled in to the basic locus of concern,

The Absolute Necessity of Prayer for Holy Spirit's Assistance

4:07 now how do you move from the raw material of the text before you to the final product of the sermon that you desire to preach, the Bible lesson that you desire to teach. And today I think we'll have time to cover just two basic heads. If we get further than that, fine and well, but I doubt we shall. First of all, there must be, there must be earnest prayer for the assistance of the Holy Spirit in this work of opening up the text of Scripture.

4:39 Perhaps no text is more relevant at this point than Luke 11, 13 and James 4, 4. No two texts, plural. If ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those that ask him, and James says ye have not because ye ask not. And I cannot emphasize too strongly the absolute necessity for earnest prayer for the assistance of the Holy Spirit in this work of exegesis, of seeking to understand the mind of God as contained in a given portion of the Word of God.

Prayer for Illumination and Guidance in Exegesis

5:21 And let me suggest that prayer for the Spirit's ministry should follow, at least two directions, or flow out in two directions. There should be first of all prayer for his illuminating ministry as to the meaning of the text, and then secondly prayer for his guidance as to the precise message of the text to your people at that time. First of all then, prayer for his illuminating ministry as to the meaning of the text of Scripture. The sooner we learn and settle deeply in our conviction that a right understanding of the Scriptures

6:01 is not alone the fruit of the tools of exegesis, but is the fruit of a present operation of the Holy Spirit, the better off we'll be. Now God may have to teach some of you this in a very bitter way. The nerves and fibers of self-confidence are very, very real in all of us, those fibrous roots of self-confidence, and they shrivel only when there is great application of spiritual pressure upon them. And it's relatively easy to assume that when you have a workable knowledge of the languages and you have a fairly well-stocked library

6:43 with lexical aids and exegetical aids that you can have a sweet little help me Lord and go right to your work and everything will go well. Well, you may think, that everything is going well, but your own barren, lifeless, fruitless, unctionless preaching will be a constant monument to the fact that you do not penetrate the mind of the Spirit in the Word of God simply by the intellectual tools of exegesis. The Apostle Paul earnestly pleaded for the Ephesians that God would grant unto them the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of himself that they might know and then he mentions those three great spiritual things

7:27 that he wants them to know, but he recognizes that if they are to know them there must be a present operation of the Holy Spirit as the spirit of illumination. And the man whose exegesis breathes of the closet is the man whose preaching is marked by a freshness, a warmth, a glow, and a penetration not possible in any other way. I've heard many men give a very technically accurate running commentary on the text that was as dry as the Sahara. I've heard other men who obviously lacked certain tools of exegesis who carried me into the presence of my God and displayed the glory of Christ until I felt I couldn't take any more.

Spurgeon's Counsel on Prayer in Sermon Preparation

8:12 And the basic difference was not eloquence. The basic difference was one who came to the text with a deep sense and his own inability to penetrate the mind of God and pleaded with God O Lord, break open that word. And the other man came quite confident that he could understand it, unaided by a present assistance of the Holy Spirit. And at this point Spurgeon says some very, very pointed things and I want to quote him in the section of these lectures to his students under the heading The Preacher's Private Prayer.

8:44 He says as one of his points Your prayers will be your ablest assistance while your discourses are yet upon the anvil. While other men like Esau are hunting for their portion you by the aid of prayer will find the savory meat near at home and may say in truth what Jacob said so falsely the Lord brought it to me. If you can dip your pens into your hearts appealing in earnestness to the Lord you will write well. And if you can gather your matter on your knees at the gate of heaven you will not fail to speak well.

9:19 Prayer as a mental exercise will bring many subjects together before the mind and so help in the selection of a topic while as a high spiritual engagement it will cleanse your inner eye that you may see the truth in the light of God. Text will often refuse to reveal their treasures till you open them with the key of prayer. How wonderfully were the books opened to Daniel when he was in supplication. How much Peter learned upon the housetop.

9:48 The closet is the best study. The commentators are good instructors. But the author himself is far better. And prayer makes a direct appeal to him and enlists him in your cause.

10:00 It's a great thing to pray oneself into the spirit and marrow of a text working into it by a sacred feeding thereon even as the worm bores its way into the kernel of the nut. Prayer supplies a leverage for the uplifting of ponderous truths. One marvels how the stones of Stonehenge could have been set in their place. Apparently a very unusual phenomena there in England.

10:24 It is even more to be inquired after whence some men obtained such admirable knowledge of mysterious doctrines. Was not prayer the potent machinery that wrought the wonder? Waiting upon God often turns darkness into light. Persevering inquiry into the sacred oracle uplifts the veil and gives grace to look into the deep things of God.

10:39 A certain Puritan divine in a debate of the sacred oracle says that God is the only God and that God is the only God and that God is the only God and that God is the only God and that God is the only God and that God is the only God and that God is the only God and that God is the only God and that God is the only God and that God is the only God and that God is the only God and that God is the only God and that God is the only God and that God is the only God and that God is the only God and that God is the only God and that God is the only God and that God is the only God and that God is the only God

11:20 of precious ore will be revealed to your astonished gaze as you quarry God's word and use diligently the hammer of prayer. You will sometimes feel as if you were entirely shut up, and then suddenly a new road will open before you. He who hath the key of David openeth, and no man shuddereth. If you have ever sailed down the Rhine, the water scenery of that majestic river will have struck you as being very like in effect to a series of lakes. Before and behind, the vessel appears to be enclosed in massive walls of rock or

11:53 circles of vine-clad terraces, till all of a sudden you turn a corner, and before you the rejoicing and abounding river flows onward in its strength. So the laborious student often finds it with the text. It appears to be fast closed against you, but prayer propels your vessel and turns its prow into fresh waters, and you behold the broad and deep stream of sacred truth. And there's the key phrase. When it's opened in the context of prayer, you're not handling

12:27 it, it begins to handle you. And until the text is handled you, you're not fit to preach it. Until the text is taken hold of you, you're not fit to preach it. And it's by prayer that we cease to feel we have the text, and the text begins to have us. Use prayer as a boring

12:46 rod, and wells of living water will leap up and down. And when the verse says, And I cannot emphasize this enough, my brethren, and I am personally convinced that it's one of those subjective but very real ingredients that means the difference from anointed preaching and a mere well-organized commentary upon a given text of Holy Scripture. There must be earnest prayer for the assistance of the Holy Spirit, and there must be earnest prayer and earnest prayer for the assistance of the Holy Spirit, and there must be earnest prayer

Holy Spirit's Prerogative in Discerning the Message

13:20 Prayer, first of all, for his illuminating ministry as to the meaning of the text, and then secondly, prayer for his guidance as to the precise message of that text to your people at that time. Third, since all scripture is profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, instruction, and righteousness, since you cannot derive all of the doctrine and issue all of the reproof and all of the correction contained in any given text at any one time, and since God knows what is needed for edification in terms of doctrine, reproof, correction at that precise time,

14:02 it is the prerogative of the Holy Spirit. God. Even in our exegesis, so that as we begin to see the doctrine being fleshed out, those aspects of the doctrine that are most needed by our people at that time are the ones that will appear clearest to our vision at that particular point of study. This is not saying that a text of scripture means twenty things, but neither is its meaning exhausted by one dominant line of emphasis contained within the text.

14:32 The word of God is like a diamond. It has many facets. It is one diamond, one given text of scripture. And so it is the ministry of the Holy Spirit to make us sensitive, to give us, as it were, the ability to see in that text that aspect of its inherent truth, which is most needed for the people of God at that particular time.

Warning Against Creature Confidence and Its Curse

14:56 The man who approaches this task with his lexical aids, his commentaries, his mental abilities, but with no conscious dependence on the Holy Spirit, driving him to prayer, is the man who begins his sermon preparation under the indictment of Jeremiah 17 and verse 5.

15:17 More than once God has brought this passage to mind when I've been laboring over a text and it just seems as though it hasn't yielded its truth. And the Lord has dealt with me about the fact that I have not really sought his face in earnest.

15:35 And I've been experiencing the truth of this text. Thus said, The Lord cursed is the man that trusteth in man and maketh flesh his eye, and whose heart departed from the Lord. He shall be like the heath in the desert, and shall not see when good cometh, but shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness of salt land, and not inhabit it. And I tell you, there's nothing more grievous than to see somebody approaching, and know that you're called upon to feed the flock of God, and to feel that you're inhabiting a parched land.

16:10 And there isn't a flower to gather even to say, ain't that pretty? Let alone any food to gather and say, ain't that good food? And oft times it's because the curse of God is upon us for our creature confidence. And the temptation to fall into this snare will increase with your experience as a minister.

16:29 You get to know those lexical aids that are most helpful in opening up the meaning of words. You'll get to know those commentators that are most helpful in enabling you to penetrate into the mind, the mind of the Spirit, and suddenly they begin to be your resting place instead of God the Holy Ghost. And when you do, you do your sermon preparation under the curse of God. Cursed be he that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm.

16:53 Whether that flesh, the Albert, Kylan Dalish, Calvin, Lenski, Hendrickson, you make flesh your arm, and the curse of God is upon you. And the frightening thing is, you may not even know it. And because you become more and more...

17:10 more at home, and more and more skilled in the tools of exegesis, you're actually producing, quote, better sermons from a technical standpoint.

17:19 But they are less and less spiritual ministrations to the hearts of God's people.

17:26 And this danger increases in direct proportion to your experience in handling the Scriptures. And I'm convinced again this is why there are so few men who have kept their freshness to the end of their days. Bonar makes this comment in his Life and Diary. The fact that there are so few men who keep their freshness to the end of their days.

17:48 And I'm convinced this is one of the reasons why. Because there are so few men who maintain a childlike dependence upon the Holy Spirit. They get too smart for their own britches. And if only the Lord could so move upon us as to maintain in us that spirit that we had the first time we had to prepare a sermon when we knew if we were not divinely assisted, we had had it.

18:13 And that just wasn't some kind of a glib, shallow confession. I mean, you knew it down here, inwardly, painfully. And you felt like a whimpering, weaned child in the presence of God. Oh, may God enable you to maintain that spirit.

The Example of Bunyan and Owen: Dependence vs. Learning

18:30 Earnest prayer for the assistance of the Holy Spirit is a constant necessity if we are to be accurate exegetes. That's why you can take a John Bunyan who was totally ignorant of the original language. And he's a far more astute exegete, expositor, and applier of the Word of God than many men who were far more gifted. And so accurate that even an Owen whose learning makes the most learned amongst us here seem like kindergarten children say, I'll give up all my learning to be able to preach like the tinker.

19:04 Now, Owen could not have respected the tinker if he wasn't accurate in his handling the Word of God. And few things get me upset. But when I find some young seminarians, coming up with a little exegetical flaw in a John Bunyan and flaunting it, I say I could take him and bang his head against the wall. I really could.

19:26 Sure, I find some exegetical errors in Bunyan. Why? He just had his English Bible and that version that's woefully inadequate in certain areas. But in the overall emphasis in ministry, Bunyan was a constant stream of refreshing to his generation and to unborn generations.

19:45 Why? Because the Word of God yielded to his fervent prayer and to his childlike dependence upon the Holy Spirit. Likewise, that's what makes Owen so perennially fresh. With all of his classical learning and with all of his knowledge and his confidence in the original languages, what is there that makes Volume 6 and Volume 7 and Volume 3 these great treatises on the inner life, what makes them so fresh and so penetrating?

20:14 I'll tell you. It's not just his knowledge of the original languages. It's his knowledge of the pith and the marrow of the Word of God that only yielded to a man's prayer. A man dependent upon God the Holy Ghost.

20:29 And so I don't want to be tedious. But leaving this, I don't want to leave it. I want you to assume that this statement of the first requisite for accurate exegesis pervades everything else. All right?

20:43 There must be earnest prayer for the assistant. The assistant of the Holy Spirit. His assistant is the spirit of illumination. His assistant is the spirit of guidance.

Diligent Labor of Exegetical Spadework: Context and Word Meaning

20:53 Then, secondly, there must be the diligent labor of exegetical spadework. I don't know what else to call it but that. I want to give you two quotes that have been a great help to me. One is by Albert Barnes, who said, The Bible should be explained not under the influence of a book, not under the influence of a vivid imagination, but under the influence of a heart imbued with a love of truth, and by an understanding discipline to investigate the meaning of words and phrases, and capable of rendering a reason for the interpretation which is proposed.

21:35 Let me give you that again. It's a long sentence, but it's good. The Bible should be explained not under the influence of a vivid imagination, that is, seeing a phrase and all of a sudden thinking a hundred things that that suggests to the mind. No, it's not to be explained under the influence of a vivid imagination, but under the influence of a heart imbued with a love of truth, and by an understanding discipline to investigate the meaning of words and phrases, and capable of rendering a reason for the interpretation which is proposed.

22:12 And then the great Scottish exegete, whom I've come to admire tremendously after working through his two volumes this past year, on the atonement, Smeaton, the Scottish divine, who said, We are to expound by language and not by foregone conclusions. We're to expound by language and not by foregone conclusions. And he, along with Hugh Martin and other of those Scottish divines presently finding them, in their spirit incarnate, as it were, again in Professor Murray, are a beautiful example of what it is to expound by language and not by foregone conclusions.

22:56 Now, this will mean, in detail, breaking down the principle now, that there must be, number one, a careful regard to context, or, to use Professor Murray's term, the universe of discourse, with a book or a large section, background, introduction, and introductory reading will be most helpful. Here, such things as your standard biblical introduction will be of great assistance. Guthrie on the New Testament, the recent work published by InterVarsity, three volumes in one, a young, as a basic primer, an Old Testament introduction. You will find Hendrickson very, very helpful in any of the New Testament books,

23:38 giving you the cream of his arduous study in background material, allowing you to sense what were the particular problems to which the biblical writer was addressing himself, what are the key concepts that are the main threads of thought throughout the book. That kind of background reading, whenever you're preaching through a book of the Bible, or a large section of a book, or given chapters within a book, you must have some sensitivity to the overall setting in which those words, arranged in that particular way, come to us. And of course, what is true with a large section or a book is also true of an individual text.

24:19 We've got to see it in its place of native setting. And now this, I know, just sounds like old hat, it sounds like truism, but it cannot be emphasized too much, because it's only as the individual statements are viewed in their connected statements with their larger setting that we can rightly discern the mind of God in them. So there must be careful regard to context or to the universe of discourse. Secondly, there must be careful attention to the meaning of words.

24:54 Of course, there are two key texts which lay this responsibility upon us. You have 1 Corinthians 2.13, in which the apostle was conscious that he was expressing the thoughts of God in the very words of God. And in that text he says, which things we speak, not in words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Spirit teacheth.

25:20 He says we're conveying things that never could be discovered by unaided reason. God has given them to us as apostles by revelation. And those truths he has given, we are now speaking in the words which the very Spirit himself dictates. And I'm not the least bit ashamed to use the word dictate.

25:44 Now I know the dictation theory is an aberration from the biblical concept of giving due latitude to personality and the rest. I'm fully aware of that. I'm no ignoramus about the great debates of dictation theory. But Paul is saying something here that I don't know how to express in any other way.

26:02 He says, words which the Spirit teacheth. And I don't know any English word that comes close to expressing that, but dictation. Now dictation in terms of Paul's personality, Paul's background, Paul's training. I'm fully aware of all of that.

26:19 But he says the words are the words of God. Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. And if we regard Scripture as the out-breathing of the words of God, then we must pay careful attention to the meaning of words as we would seek to construct our sermons. Now what will help us there?

26:48 And again, some of you seminary students must bear with me, for we're dealing with some folk who haven't had that benefit in background and who will never be full-time teaching elders, but who need help to encourage them in their teaching responsibilities. So I'm going to be conscientious. I'm going to be conscientious of them in my suggestions. It is at this point that your Greek and your Hebrew concordances can be a great help to you.

27:17 See how God has used the words in his own volume of inspired revelation. Before you go to the lexicons, you don't need to know a word of Greek or Hebrew to use them. That's why your most popular ones are called the Englishman's Greek Concordance and the Englishman's Hebrew Concordance. The Englishman who only speaks English, but he wants to know how the Holy Spirit has used these words.

27:44 And for the benefit of some of you not familiar with those volumes, what they do is, instead of giving you the words in a concordance as they appear in the English translation, you have them as they appear in the Hebrew or the Greek text. So they are classified according to their usage by God, not their translation by men. So that, for instance, if you were studying the psalm that I preached from this morning, the nations raged. You would look in the back under nations and you'd find a word that would give you a page.

28:18 It would say, turn the page. And you'd turn there and you'd find, well, here nations, the Hebrew word, is translated heathen half the time and nations the rest of the time. And then you would understand that that Hebrew word is the word to describe in general the hordes of the Gentile nations. And this is how it can be used, likewise with your Englishman's Greek concordance.

28:41 And the helpful thing with this is it lets you know how God himself chose to use that word in his inspired volume. And then, of course, you want to use your lexicons, your dictionaries of the Greek and the Hebrew language, and then you want to use the trusted authorities. Now don't look upon them as popes whose word is final, but if a man has lived in the language, for 30 or 40 years, he will confess that he's begun to understand it. No true linguist will ever say that he's mastered the language.

29:17 He's always studying, always applying himself for greater skill. But then through the years certain men have gained and earned the reputation for being trusted guides concerning the meaning of words. They've approached the scriptures with the bias of faith with which we approach them. They believe the words to be the words of God.

29:39 And here Kylan Dalish will be a great help to you in the Old Testament. In specific books you will find E.J. Young on Isaiah, very helpful in giving the meaning of words.

29:51 And in the New Testament, certain other commentators that I will mention when I come to the arrangement of words who also would fit in this category. And then under this second heading, careful attention to the meaning of words, you must have some exposure to hermeneutics, the principles of interpretation. What is to guide us in our understanding of the words of scripture? Are the words put together as a figure of speech?

30:19 Then they must be interpreted as such. Are they put together in some kind of poetic structure? Well, that will affect our understanding of their meaning. And this is why, again, it is so essential that if a man is to be a teaching elder, somewhere along the line he pick up some basic skills that have to do with words and how to ascertain their proper meaning.

Diligent Labor of Exegetical Spadework: Grammar and Grouping of Ideas

30:45 But then thirdly, there must not only be careful regard to context, careful attention to the meaning of words, but there must be careful attention to the arrangement of words. And of course, that's just another way of saying grammar. Grammar is the arrangement of words. The sense of emphasis found in the original languages, not found in the best of English translations.

31:19 And it is here that the standard grammarians and the proven guides will be of great help to us. In the New Testament, the Expositors Greek Testament, you will find very helpful. Lenski, the Lutheran commentator, very helpful, except where it has to do with water or sovereign grace. And then you will find his Lutheranism leaking through, or dribbling through, I should say.

31:50 He's going to find grace in every drop of water in the New Testament. And he's going to find something other than sovereign election rooted in God's own free choice. He just can't buy it, and so he's going to dance a jig around the passages that obviously, we teach that, but apart from that, Lenski's a great help with the grammar and with picking up the subtle nuances of emphasis in the Greek grammar. And then of course, again, Kylan Dalish in the Old Testament, and Calvin, though again, the exegetical aids at his disposal are not what are at the disposal of modern scholars,

32:34 but he was no dunce when it came to an understanding of the Hebrew and to catching the thrust of the mind of the Spirit of God. Now, I say careful attention to the arrangement of words, to grammar. Now, there's nothing glamorous about this, but it's absolutely essential if we are to penetrate into the mind of God in a given portion of the Word of God. And then in the fourth place, we must pay careful attention to the grouping of ideas.

33:06 And at this point, you often have the embryo of the form of your sermon. Here you've been dealing with words, and phrases in a given setting, and their precise meaning. And as you're doing so, you cannot help but begin to notice that there is a grouping of ideas. And that grouping of ideas will begin to be the form that the sermon will take.

33:34 Often, too, it's at this point that areas of application, inference, deductions, exhortations, begin to flash into the mind as the meaning of the words, the words in a certain relationship, grammar, as they begin to be understood. And you are prayerfully laboring over this. You're not simply doing the job of a linguist. You see, you can take a godless, unconverted linguist who's mastered the Hebrew language and who understands all the nuances and subtle undertones and overtones of the language, and he should be able to give you the precise meaning of any passage from a linguistic standpoint.

34:13 But he's not equipped to preach. He hasn't even entered into the soul of that text, to its spiritual understanding. And that's an element. Anyone who talks about preaching and does include that, as far as I'm concerned, I'm not going to listen to him for two minutes.

34:28 Because you've turned it into a purely naturalistic exercise. And it is more than that, you see. So that as you're dealing with language and grammar, you're dealing with it as a Christian, subject to its message, so that you are having dealings with God in terms of His Word, you're dealing with it as a Christian minister, as a Christian preacher, a Christian teacher, and therefore you're seeing, why, this is what it says to the flock of God. This is how it encourages them.

34:57 This is the doctrine in the text that will feed them, that will give them a new sight of Christ and His glory, a new understanding of His will, a new direction for their own lives. Here is some reproof. You see, your whole intercourse with that text is in the context, first, first of all, as a Christian subject to its message, and as a Christian preacher who is seeking to receive that message with a view to conveying it to others. Now, we do not believe that the Word of God comes to us in the way it did to the prophets, by direct revelation.

35:30 But there is an aspect of the prophetic ministry that I believe enters in to the New Testament expositor. And you'll notice that the prophets again and again said, the Word of the Lord came to me. And, dear brethren, it's when in this spadework of exegesis that that ceases to be just words in the text, and it begins to be the message of God to your own heart, something of the constraint of prophetic utterance begins to enter, and you're in a new ballpark. The Word of the Lord is coming to you.

36:07 There is that grip, there is that inward constraint without which you can't preach. You can stand up and say, that's what the text means, and send people home and sad to say that's what goes on in many pulpits and that passes for preaching. But it is something less than true biblical preaching. And it's at this point that these things will begin to emerge.

Practical Suggestions for Sermon Preparation and Warnings Against Violations

36:29 And what I've done here is to just give some practical suggestions. These are not rules. This is how you must do it. Here are some suggestions that have been helpful to me through the years, and I pass them on for what they're worth.

36:42 The first thing that one must do is to have a study sheet, a worksheet, whatever size. I use old mimeograph sheets or things that are printed on one side trying to conserve paper and be a good ecologist as well as a pastor. And it's on that first sheet that I write down the phrases of the text, such as for this morning. I had each of those individual phrases listed so that there were, what, two or three of them on a nine-by-eleven-and-a-half sheet such as this, how the nations raged, in that much space, the kingdoms were moved, space, maybe one other phrase.

37:22 Just write the phrases down. And then I start doing what I've suggested to you, being sensitive of the context. Having lived in the psalm for some weeks now, there didn't need to be a lot of work done on the context because it's consecutive preaching. You can't be indifferent to the context when you're doing that.

37:39 That's one of the reasons why that discipline is so helpful. But then it was a matter of looking up the words. The nations raged. All right, nations.

37:47 And I did precisely what I shared with you and found that nations is the general word for the heathen. All right, they raged. And then, to my dismay, there were about five main Hebrew words used for raged. And I was going to put a lot more stock on Psalm 2 as a parallel passage, but it's a different concept.

38:07 It's a different Hebrew word for raged. And so I had to find the places where this word was used. Precisely what is God saying? The nations rage.

38:17 Is it what he's saying in Psalm 2? Well, it's not quite the same thing. The words are not synonymous. There is a difference of emphasis.

38:24 And so you write down the passages where the word is used. For those of you that don't have some of these aids that I mentioned, Strong's Concordance is a great help here. You'd look up the word rage and you'd find next to all the words rage a number. And you'd find next to Psalm 46, 7, there's 46, 6.

38:43 The nations raged a certain number. I think it was 1983 in Strong's Concordance. And you'll notice that there were about five or six other numbers. Well, then you begin to find out this is the word that's used here, similar number here, similar here.

39:00 Then you find two or three other passages where this particular word is used. Well, then you look them up. Then you turn to his little mini lexicon at the back for the meaning of that word. Sometimes a hint as to the word.

39:10 Sometimes a hint as to the root out of which it comes. This is just the spade work to understand what did God mean when he moved the psalmist to write the nations raged. Likewise, the next phrase, the kingdoms were moved. And you gather those materials and write down through, working on the meaning of words and the relationship of those words one to another in terms of grammar.

39:35 Now, while doing that, I always keep another sheet of paper to my side that has under this column called Suggested Outlines and Miscellaneous Thoughts. And many times while working on the meaning of the words here, some thoughts will begin to flash. Well, you don't have time to organize them or fit them where they're going to go. You just jot them down here.

39:59 This past Sunday is some of these implications of the history and its proper usage. Those thoughts began to come. And I had a separate sheet and began to flesh those out. And then often suggested outlines, as you're dealing with this, you begin to see something of the inherent form and structure will capture those thoughts while they're there.

40:19 And you may have two or three suggested outlines as you begin to flesh this thing out. Now, that's something that I have found helpful. No one told me to do that. It's something by trial and error that I've worked on through the years.

40:31 It may be helpful to you. If it isn't, find your own method. But I pass this on as a suggestion. We've covered the third, the demanding exercises of giving form and structure to the passage.

40:55 But I think we'll stop here. I've gone for almost 40 minutes. I think we'll cut it off here because there may be a number of questions relative to this. Before we do, I do want to give you a couple of quotes from Broadus.

41:10 And though Broadus is not in vogue now, there are fads in preaching as there are fads in clothes and everything else. And Broadus has got some good stuff. There was a time when you just couldn't be respectable if you didn't read Broadus and pay attention to him. Now you can be quite respectable if you never heard that he lived.

41:33 But Broadus says, and he's worth quoting here, to interpret and apply his text in accordance with his real meaning is one of the preacher's most sacred duties. He stands before the people for the very purpose of teaching and exhorting them out of the word of God. He announces a particular passage of God's word as his text with the distinctly implied understanding that from this his sermon will be drawn, if not always its various thoughts, yet certainly its general subject. If he is not willing to be bound by this understanding, he ought to reject the practice which commits him to it and preach without any text.

42:14 But using a text and undertaking to develop and apply its teaching, he is solemnly bound to represent the text as meaning precisely what it does mean. Now this would seem to be a truism, but it's often and grievously violated. And then he goes on to mention the most obvious violations of this kind of preaching. He says there is first of all misunderstanding the phraseology of the text itself.

42:45 Because there hasn't been a context of careful reckoning with words and grammar, men are preaching from the platform of what the text appears to say, rather than what it does indeed say. The second reason for inaccurate textual preaching, he mentions, is this. Erroneous interpretations arise from disregarding the connection of the text. And then he gives some very classic examples of this.

43:13 I won't quote them for you. You can go ahead and read them yourself. Some of you have gotten the paperback edition of this. And then he mentions the third source of error is improper spiritualizing.

43:27 Now because of dispensationalism and its effect, you will find that the spiritualizing is not done in the New Testament. There is a wooden literalizing of the New Testament, but a fanciful spiritualization of the Old Testament. That's an amazing reversal. I've never been able quite to understand the psychology of that.

43:46 For instance, with regard to prophetic things, they say, always literal, unless it be foolish to adopt that opinion. And so they say, we don't talk about the church as being Zion. We don't talk about the millennium in terms of spiritual realities. We believe the Bible to be interpreted literally.

44:07 And yet it's that same class of interpreters that can find types and spiritual shadows under every blade of grass on Canaan's shore. And every stone in Jordan's banks, you see? Now that's a real danger that must be avoided. Now apparently we're not living in a day when this is as much in vogue as it was in a bygone day.

44:28 I've begun from my own discipline reading the great classic two-volume work with Fairbairn on the typology of Scripture. And he gives a history of spiritualizing throughout the centuries of the church. And it is absolutely unbelievable what some good men have done with the Word of God. And they approach the Bible as though, you know, common people just saw the surface of things, the meaning in the words.

44:54 But real spiritual men, they dug beneath and behind and they came up with the real significance. So when you read in Genesis there was a river and it split into four heads, now the real meaning is this, that the river is virtue. And virtue splits out into the four great cardinal virtues of self-control or some other kind of stupid thing. An unbelievable handling of the Word of God.

Balancing Linguistic Knowledge with Spiritual Assimilation

45:18 Well, of course, this is just total disregard of the principles we've tried to lay before you. Namely, careful attention to the meaning of words and to their intent when God gave them. Well, this has been very general. Handling a subject like this, I confess to you, I feel the subject is so massive.

45:38 Some of you are taking more lengthy courses by men more competent than I to teach you this from a technical standpoint. So I've tried to bring you sort of a practical, workable approach to these things, matters that have proven helpful to me through the years, disciplines that I have found very, very taxing to my flesh. And there are many times when the first three, four hours of sermon preparation is in this area of doing the exegetical spade work and it's just plain hard work. At times it seems so frustrating because you can't seem to arrive at an understanding of what God really meant.

46:18 And then when you've done all your own work and you've checked the most able linguists and you can't get two of them to agree, you say, well, Lord, who am I to make a value judgment? I mean, if you've got men of the competence of Lenski and Hendrickson on two different ends of the spectrum on the precise meaning of a certain passage in relationship to a grammatical concept, in relationship to a grammatical distinction, how can you make an individual value judgment? I mean, these men have much greater confidence in the language than you do. You have a sense of your own failure and a sense of your own inadequacy.

46:55 Well, you see, there comes that time when you've just either got to make a value judgment, you've got to say, I just can't preach from that passage and be honest enough and sell the people the passage could mean this, it could mean that, I'm not sure which it means. If it says this, then that's its message. If it says this, that's its message. In either case, the Bible teaches both truths and you're not teaching positive error.

47:16 You see, that's why a man like Bunyan and a man like Fuller, I was amazed to find this out because I've done a good bit of reading in Fuller, Andrew Fuller, the past couple of years. Neither of them had a workable knowledge of the original languages and yet you will not find any two men that are more safe guides in the Word of God because they breathed the message of the Bible so that they never would go off far from its central message. On the other hand, you have men who are very, very confident in the original language who will become heretics and terribly imbalanced. Why?

47:50 Because, you see, they didn't have that preservative of a spiritual assimilation of the Word of God and in particular of the English Bible. So some of you who have not had the opportunity for exposure to the languages don't feel discouraged. I do not take the position a man cannot be a trusted, able preacher unless he has the languages because that flies into the mind and the face of fact. Don't take any position that flies into the face of fact.

48:16 And when you're ready to write off men like Bunyan and Fuller and say they are not able, competent preachers, then, my friend, you have a job I'd never want to do to prove that statement. Now, generally speaking, a man can be a more accurate expositor if he has some working knowledge of the languages. Therefore, it is desirable and commendable that a man should aspire to a working knowledge of the languages. That I will say without any reservation.

48:46 But don't ever begin to absolutize because God will just make a fool out of you. And he'll raise up someone who can't even speak the King's English straight, let alone know an alpha from an omega. And he'll preach circles around you and he'll bless the people of God and be used in the salvation and upbuilding of the saints of God in such a way that will put us all to shame. And then God will just lap up his sleeve at you and say, I fooled you again.

49:11 Don't put me in a box. God will not be boxed in. Now, that doesn't mean you go back and get careless. If you have the opportunity of exposure to the languages, get all you can, master as much as you can in the time allotted, in the light of other priorities, I'm not despising.

49:31 I'm just being a bit more fluent than most Presbyterian examining committees would be. All right? Yes, sir. How would you recommend maintaining