THS-03-3. Sermon Building

3. Sermon Building

Sometimes a text will disclose its beauty to you if you simply underline its phrases, or clauses, or even its most important words, one by one, and use them as the leading ideas in the outline. Take, for instance, Matthew 13:44 : "The kingdom of heaven is like unto a treasure, hidden in a field, which a man found, and in his joy he goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field." That simple bit of underlining gives you the following interesting result:

Now that statement, in five parts, itself constitutes the main headings of a first-class sermon outline. Or it may be re-arranged. Make the subject "The Kingdom of Heaven," and the outline thus

That is merely an outline, but it asserts some profound truths that any man who has had experience of God could enlarge upon. You will not therefore find it difficult to develop the subject. You may know there is a great deal of discussion as to what exactly the kingdom is. You do not at present need to enter into that, nor be restrained by it. It is safe to say that no one knows all that our Lord had in mind by his various uses of the word Kingdom. But it is also safe to say that the word is applied to all the various aspects of man’s submission to God’s sovereignty--it is always God’s reign in the hearts of men. It is safe to say that here the Teacher was thinking of the gospel, and all that it is to man. Keep the idea of the gospel in your mind, and begin your development of the text. It will help you still if you use the question method. How is the gospel a treasure? All the message of redemption and hope can be discussed there. Why is the value of the gospel hidden to men? Why is it not appreciated? You could say some useful things about that. How may a man find the value of the gospel? The answer to that is within the range of your Christian experience. And will a man surrender everything in the world for Christ and his gospel? Yes, and you can tell why, if you are called to preach. When you have done a little work along that line you have an outline and material sufficient for an instructive sermon.

Take now another text, Hebrews 2:3 a, and underline it:

"How shall we escapeif we neglectso great salvation?" At once you have a simple and effective outline.

With practice you will soon learn to develop ingenuity in handling a text. This one, for instance, might be more effective if you dealt with the main points in the reverse order to that in which they are found in the text. The subject of the text, in a sense, is the great salvation; that naturally comes first. The pertinent question is a sort of application; that would better come last. Hence your arrangement will be:

You will always feel free to expound a text in any order that will discover its meaning and apply its lessons.

We still have only the main outlines. How shall we find the material to talk about? Well, you use your knowledge, and you exercise your imagination, and you go to work. You must work.

Application to Task For years I had on my desk a stimulating bit of advice for a man who is about to prepare a sermon. It was this: Get a piece of cobbler’s wax, put in on your chair, and sit on it." It needs application to the task.

Take then the first point, A Great Salvation. You may ask Salvation from what? Answers immediately spring to your mind: Salvation from the guilt of sin, from the power of sin, from a life of ineffectiveness, from the fear and dread of the tomb. Take the other word in the first main division: Great! How is this salvation great? Albert Barnes’ commentary, written nearly one hundred years ago, but still of very great value to anyone who is learning to preach, answers the question in this way This salvation is great

We are now developing sub-divisions, under our main divisions, and soon we shall need to discuss these sub-divisions. In the meantime we shall note that here is a way to make the sermon grow. When you have a little material on each of these points, and perhaps have given an illustration or two, it will be time to move on to the next main division, because the people will soon be wanting to go home to dinner. The Peril of Neglect! What are the perils of neglect in any department of life, in education, in gardening, in business? You can tell, and you could apply the lesson. Set your ideas out in so many definite points, so that you can discuss them one by one. A Pertinent Question! A preacher once said that he was about to ask a question which he could not answer, and which his hearers could not answer, which angels could not answer, nor the devil, nor even God himself. How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?

I have illustrated at some length this method of outlining a text in order to discover the leading ideas for the main divisions of the sermon. All texts may not be dealt with so readily, but we shall come to other means of dealing with them presently.

Plan No. 2 Let us call this outlining method Plan No. 2.

Another useful method is to take an important word, like faith or grace, or the name of a person, and with the use of a concordance select a number of texts dealing with the subject. Then build up your sermon from the thoughts suggested by the text. Take, for example, the word SIN. Here are some texts, all chosen because they are in a sense definitions of sin.

With five such clear statements as to what sin is, we are able to find a satisfactory outline covering a wide range of discussion on the subject. We may give it the title The Meaning of Sin, and adopt the following main divisions for the sermon:

I need hardly take time here to develop those points. The earlier examples will show how it is done.

Look now at the following texts: John 6:35; John 8:12; John 10:11; John 11:25. You will have noticed that each one contains one of the great assertions of Jesus beginning with "I AM." That is the connecting link between these passages. It will not be a difficult matter to build up an outline, using titles suggested by each text in turn. Let me merely suggest a title for the sermon as a whole--The Sufficiency of Christ. In this chapter we have been dealing chiefly with outlines. Much of the work of development is yet to be done. Not all, however, for when you have achieved a good outline you have already wrought out much of the material of which the sermon will consist.

Plan No. 3 Let us call this Plan No. 3. For Review:

1. For the outline on Hebrews 2:3 a, find points for discussion of the Main Division II., The Peril of Neglect.

2. Write Romans 1:16, underline it as suggested in Plan No. 2, and construct main divisions of an outline, with titles. (That is, do not merely write down the different sentences.)

3. Construct an outline (main divisions only) on The Conditions of Prevailing Prayer. For this, use a concordance and a reference Bible to discover the most helpful texts.