Why I Read My Text 10 Times before Preaching — Paul Emerson — Ep. 198

What is preaching? Uh, why does it matter, and what's its role, um, in the life of Jesus' church?

Yeah, Paul, I guess I've listened to you speak a number of times, and one of the things that has impressed me is both you bring a real seriousness to it and an emphasis on just opening up to Scripture. Uh, just open up with a broad question, um, how do you define preaching? Well, I would define, uh, preaching as, uh, explaining Scripture and applying it to the individual life of the person. It's to be distinguished from a pep talk, though it may provide some of that. It's to be distinguished from merely a springboard off of a verse or a phrase, departing from that never to return.

Uh, it's, uh, explaining what the Scripture says to the understanding of the audience and applying that in life situations. Good. Okay, yeah, so two anchor points. The one is the Scripture. This is what the Scripture says, and then the audience, it's suitable for this audience, and here are the implications. And I think that probably distinguishes us as Anabaptists from the Protestants, generally speaking, there are exceptions, but, uh, the Protestants will explain it, uh, and often explain it well, as far as that's concerned, but they leave the application part to the Holy Spirit. So it's, you know, I'll explain it to you, then it's up to the Holy Spirit to apply it. And I think we would say, uh, it needs to be explained, uh, but then it needs to be applied to the life of the hearer.

And the Holy Spirit should be hovering over that whole process. We're not taking the Holy Spirit out of it. We're just simply saying that the preacher has another obligation beyond merely explaining it. Yeah. Adds a seriousness to the job because it's not just, can I explain what this means, but it's got to be in your heart as well then, too.

The sense of urgency or importance of Scripture, that of, of the message that needs to be conveyed. And so I take it, and you see that as primary for, you know, what we refer to as the sermon, the pulpit, but that's not the only place where this kind of teaching and application happens. So I guess one of my questions is the term preaching. Um, as I understand it, the preaching or proclamation in the New Testament is often very connected to the gospel or good news. Now, sometimes put as something like a herald, um, announcing a message. I don't know, is there something about preaching as that term that's distinctively tied to, uh, in a broad sense, evangelism?

Um, is it different than, um, teaching, prophesying, encouraging, um, other words we have in Scripture for believers? Well, it is definitely connected to evangelism in passages like 1 Corinthians 1, uh, that the gospel is communicated by preaching, the message preached there, and the apostles certainly preach the gospel, uh, in evangelism and church planting.

Uh, but I don't think that it can be limited to that. This whole idea of taking the text of Scripture, reading it, which is not as prevalent as it ought to be, probably, but reading it and then explaining it, which involves some study, but explaining it. Uh, yes, it has elements of teaching.

It may have, uh, elements of prophesying, particularly 1 Corinthians 12 kind of prophesying. Uh, it has a proclamation aspect that doesn't limit, that doesn't limit the person who has kind of a conversational style, style of preaching. That's okay.

Uh, we don't have to preach like an auctioneer necessarily, although that is the style of some, some, and that's okay. But it does need to be presented as the word of God rather than, here are a bunch of options, you pick them, you pick which one. The Scripture needs to be studied by the preacher, uh, to the point that he has a conclusion about what it is saying, and he can communicate that conclusion. While he may allow that there are other views of a particular passage, he's still communicating a conclusion and hopefully pulling his audience along, uh, to that conclusion and the life applications that follow. Pulling his audience along. And so by that, you mean actually, you know, showing the process of understanding, here's the text, here's why I understand it this way, which gets into some of those pieces from the study.

It's not just announcing this is what it means, but showing, showing the process. You can overdo that so that you bury your audience. You've got to be a little careful of that because you, if you're the preacher, you've walked through this thing for a while, hopefully, uh, and so you can assume that they've walked through it and they haven't. So you need to be a little careful how deep you get with the process, but they do need to be brought along. So you need to give reason for why you are, uh, speaking in this way. Yeah. So then, uh, zoomed out in the life of the church, um, and our congregations, you know, devote something usually at the center of the Sunday morning service to preaching of some form, but how does that fit with other components?

We can talk about the Lord's Supper. We can talk about church discipline. We can talk about simply one-on-one discipleship, um, mutual aid, all those things that go with, um, being the body. I don't know. Can you just kind of fit this preaching in, in that picture? Well, I would see, uh, preaching, uh, in on a regular basis as being the pinnacle of a service. In other words, you build up to it and you fade from it. Uh, it's, it's the main, main act, as it were. However, you mentioned things like communion. I would see communion as an object sermon. So it's sort of a sermon all in itself, but we sometimes use it as just an appendix onto a service somehow.

And that, I think, is very improper because I do believe it's an object sermon, and you should be bringing people along to understand that, uh, even though it is somewhat repetitive. It's repetitive for a reason, uh, that we would remember the essentials of that sermon. And that's why we are involved in actually practicing that sermon as congregations.

Uh, so to say that a sermon is all there is to church life is improper, but there may be some sermons that we're not counting as sermons. Yeah, it just reminds me, I don't know if this is the same original language, um, word as when we talk about preaching, but, um, 1 Corinthians, I think it's 1 Corinthians, where the apostle Paul says, as often as you do this, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. You've already said, uh, some of this, but, um, just somebody who has the privilege and responsibility of preaching, perhaps on a regular basis or less frequently, um, what do you want to tell them? Study.

Study the text. I would typically say that you begin that study by reading the text. I don't think I ever preach a text without having read it 10 times, though there's no magic number, but read it over a period of time, not just 10 times one after the other.

Let it, let it sink in and soak. And out of that reading, you will have questions that need to be answered in your study. And then basically preaching, I think, is turning the text loose and letting it, in the power of the Holy Spirit, speak. We can use our own words in explaining it, uh, but we are still handling the holy word of God. There was a very liberal, uh, theologically liberal English preacher of previous generation.

I can't pull up his name at the moment, but he said, uh, working with Scripture, he didn't even believe that Scripture was the word of God, but he said, in working with Scripture and studying Scripture, it's like, uh, wiring in an old house with the mains turned on. You will get zapped from time to time. And I think that we underestimate the power of the Scripture itself applied by the Holy Spirit to the life. And so we need to kind of get out of the way, even though we need to study and explain the Scripture, and we need to stand out, stand back, and get out of the way and let the Holy Spirit apply it to the heart.

But that does not mean that we don't apply it, uh, to the life as, as it's preached. So in terms of study, I'd say that's first, prayer, uh, with that, and then simplify, uh, because if you try to import everything you studied to the congregation, you just lost them, uh, except maybe for a, a few. So we use, we usually give a formula, and it doesn't apply as much now as it would have, uh, 40 years ago, but the formula would be spend 20 minutes studying for every minute you preach.

And that varies, that varies in length depending on who you're talking with. Uh, the reason I say it changed somewhat is with the modern technology, you can do some shortcuts that we old timers couldn't do and don't do many times even today. You're talking about searches and quicker ways of looking things up. I mean, I'm a book person. I'm most comfortable with a semicircle, maybe a couple of rows of semicircle books around my desk, uh, as I study. But you can do that much faster with the modern electronics. And I've gotten so even now that I don't reach for the concordances often as I used to. Uh, Google will find it quicker. And so, uh, if I'm looking for some verse or something.

And so even an old timer like me has bowed to some of that technology. That will, that will change your formula slightly in terms of the amount of preparation time. Preparation time becomes a different kind of preparation time sometimes. Study, prayer, and simplify. The study, reading it 10 times.

Yeah, I like that number, especially for, you know, New Testament stuff that is, can be so tightly packed. Reading through it, does that look the same? I read through it over and over and thinking the same things, or will you do it? Will you switch it up? Maybe one reading is through quickly, maybe one reading is another translation, maybe another reading is, do you read commentaries at the same time? I don't, but I do read commentaries, uh, in addition to that.

I think the, the goal, uh, where you want to end up is a bit where, where they ended up in Nehemiah 8. So they read it, uh, they gave the understanding, uh, they explained it, and they applied it, and you find a revival flowing out of that if you read the context.

Uh, it's those, that's kind of a summary of how it ought to be, I think. So that explanation was to the level of understanding of the people. So if I can switch just a little bit, um, we had recorded an earlier episode about Christian education and Bible schools, and you mentioned you don't want to assume that students coming into Bible school are saved. Is that also something that you very much keep in mind in the pulpit, not wanting to make assumptions about the audience and their relationship with God? I agree that that is true. It is important, uh, that the gospel be proclaimed regularly. I'm not saying every time necessarily, but regularly.

And it's important to call people to the gospel in all areas of life. And so, absolutely. As we're wrapping up, anything else you'd like to say or emphasize? We can get hung up with, with the biblical language issues, but we do need them. And whether the preacher is versatile with the biblical languages may not be as important as to whether or not he has tools where he can, where he can discover what the meaning of the text is.

I spent a little time in seminary when I was a student, and J. Oliver Buzzwell was a faculty member at that time, at that particular school. And the students talked about him. He was an older man by then. And they talked about him as one that handled the language as well. And, uh, it turned out he was preaching at an ordination service nearby. And so several of us students went. And I was told by other fellow students just what would happen. And I had an opportunity to observe it because when we got there, the auditorium was full and they seated us in the choir loft. So I was looking over his shoulder as he preached.

And he did exactly what the students said he would. He brought his Greek New Testament to the pulpit without notes.

He read the passage in English, though there was no English there, translating as he went. And then he explained that text very carefully, not with boring detail, but clearly parsing and explaining what it said. And then he actually did, he did actually apply it to the, uh, to the ordination candidate that night. I would say that's an, an example. We don't have to do that. I can't do that with a Greek New Testament. I can, I can read Greek sort of, but, uh, and understand the grammar, the grammatical issues more or less. But I would put that type of preaching as maybe a goal if a student can really master the language. But it doesn't have to be that way.

You can preach as effectively and accurately based on the study of others who have gone before you. And probably none of us will be like that particular man in handling the text. So let's understand what it means. Let's communicate what it means, and then let's apply it to the life. Thank you for joining us for this episode. We invite you to join our monthly partner program. Monthly partners are key to the financial sustainability of Anabaptist Perspectives. Partners also gain access to bonus content, including our exclusive podcast where we respond to audience questions and comments. Sign up at anabaptistperspectives.org.