You See Dry Bones

The Outline:

Keller gives us several examples of outlines we can use depending on the Scripture and situation. I have chosen to do what is called “Exposing.” I am going to present a problem and allow it to unfold in several stages. Remember, my proposition is “Only Jesus can do the heavy lifting.” The problem I am highlighting in light of the proposition is, we cannot save ourselves no matter how hard we try.   This is  a problem because that is precisely what we often try to do. Here is how my outline sets up:

Only Jesus can do the Heavy Lifting (Galatians 1:6-12)

1. There is only one Gospel which saves us. (vs. 6)
2. Anything else leads to  demise / destruction (vs  7-9)
3. We should strive to please God, not man. (vs 10)
4. The true Gospel comes from the source of our salvation. (vs 11-12)

This is just the skeleton, I will be fleshing this out to great detail offline.

What we want to do after this point is attache our supporting materials. These supporting materials are our allegories and illustrations which help contextualize our sermons to those who are receiving it. We want to “evoke the audiences senses” in our preaching. By making the listening use other senses or feel emotions, we are helping to cement the idea of the sermon in their minds. We are taking what seems lofty and impractical and making it common and practical.

Make sense?

I hope these articles have helped some of you out there who are tasked with writing sermons. If you have questions I would love to try and answer them or point you to those who can answer them. Remember, I ripped most of this off of Tim Keller and I am still learning it myself. Thanks for your time, and please, check back tomorrow when I post the sermon you have witnessed me writing.

-Don-

Here is part four of preaching prep using Tim Keller’s method. For the other posts, please go here.

We want to keep our shaft in mind (see last article) and our preposition throughout these next steps. As a refresher, here they are:

Shaft: Do not believe the troublemakers. The message of the Gospel is, only Jesus can save us.

Proposition: Only Jesus can do the heavy lifting.

What we want to do now is, ask the passage some questions. The answers to these questions should be how a need (addressed in the proposition) is met through Christ. Keller says “why” and “how” are the best questions to ask. In our case, the first question can be “Why does Jesus need to do heavy lifting?” The second question would be “How does Jesus do the heavy lifting?” Let’s answer these questions while making our outline:

Why

1. Because all other methods of salvation are a distortion of truth and leads to destruction. (vs 6-9)
2. Because other gospels seek the approval of man, not God. (vs. 10)
3. Because Christ reveals the Gospel to us on His terms, not ours. (vs 11-12)

How

1. By seeking God’s approval, not mans (vs.10)
2. By knowing and clinging to the Gospel revealed to us by Jesus (vs. 11-12)

To be honest, these outlines should be concise and to the point. Mine may be even a tad shorter than you would like as I will only be preaching this sermon for 3o minutes. But all you will need are two or three points.

Next article we will be arranging the passage into an outline which will be the framework of our preaching.

-Don-

This is the third part of using the Tim Keller preparation method for writing a sermon. For more background, please check the Preaching Prep category. For this series, we are looking at Galatians 1:6-12.

Yesterday we looked at breaking down the passage when writing a sermon. This time, we want to make sure we develop a good shaft, or main idea. Before we get into what I have determined the main idea to be, I want to share some of what I came across in the study of commentaries.

Galatia was a lot like Ohio.

According to the Dictionary of Paul and His Letters (The IVP Bible Dictionary Series), (if you would like to find out a way to get this wonderful book for REALLY cheap, please email me or ask me how in the comments), it has been discovered that the church of Galatia was most likely comprised of farmers and sheep herders. This means the church was full of blue collar workers. Paul uses especially strong language in several points of the book which was probably more common in blue collar areas. He tells us in verses 8 and 9 that one should be cursed for preaching another gospel. By saying “let him be accursed,” Paul is basically saying, “let him rot.” One professor of mine insinuated Paul is basically saying, “let him who teaches another gospel go to hell.” Strong words indeed. These words would not fly as well in a more refined or white collar society, but would carry weight among those where a stronger vocabulary was prominent.

We also learn what the Gospel is has been well established by this time (about 20 years after Christ ascended into heaven). Paul proclaims in verse 8 there is only one Gospel, the one he preached. The news of who Jesus is and what He had done has firm roots and should be taught according to what it is, not what others think it should be. One of the key points to the Gospel is that Jesus did all the work and there is nothing we can do to save ourselves. It was Jesus who died on the Cross, not us. It was Jesus who was buried and rose from the dead. It is Jesus who saves sinners, not you or I. Finally, it is Jesus who is responsible for our salvation, that is, He saves us. We do not save ourselves. The false teaching Paul is confronting is that it is necessary for a man to be circumcised in order to be saved. This teaching is false based on the entire message of Jesus Christ.

The Main Idea.

Looking at the verses and the extra commentaries gives us a lot to work with. I have chosen to make the main point of my sermon thus; Do not believe the troublemakers. The message of the gospel is, only Jesus can save us.

Now, I want to take this shaft and make it into what Keller would call a preposition. This means we should make the shaft something we can communicate to others. Keller says,

In other words, the proposition relates one central truth to the audience.

What we seek to do now is turn our shaft into something palatable to our audience. Mine is “Only Jesus can do the heavy lifting.” Now, everything I write from this point forward will revolve around this point.

Next time, we will be asking the passage a question or two and providing answers in order to establish our outline.

-Don-

Like I stated last week, I am walking my readers through sermon preparation using what I affectionatly call The Tim Keller Method. Last time out, I shared my passage with you (Gal. 1:6-12). This time, we are going to break the passage up into its main parts and give each part a title. Our goal here is to learn the intent of the author Paul, in this case. Below is the Scripture broken down and each part titled:

Beware of the Troublemakers
I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.

May Bad Things Happen to False Teachers
But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.

Pleasing the Most Important
For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.

The Gospel Comes From Christ, not Man
For I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man’s gospel. For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

(Galatians 1:6-12 ESV)

At this point, we also want to recognize “connectors” (like comparisons, contrasts, repetition, cause and effect and explanations). We should find these things and use them to help us understand the main idea of the sermon. If you look above, I changed the colors of the words to the connectors in each section.

On to the Lexical Aids and commentaries!

After we have spent a lot of time examining the passage as is, meaning we have read the passage five to ten times and done the above steps, we can pull out the commentaries and lexical aids. I think it is most brilliant to let the passage speak for itself before we turn to the words other men would have us look to. This allows us to still our minds and let the Holy Spirit work the passage through us. Our goal is to come up with the overall main idea (Keller calls it the shaft) of the sermon. The shaft is what we will be preaching about. Almost the entire sermon will be a reinforcement of the shaft. Keller tells us:

A sermon must be like an arrow, streamlined and clearly driving at a single point, a single message, the theme of the passage.

I will share the shaft with you and some of what I have pulled out of commentaries next post.

-Don-