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Before you are ready to preach a sermon. You must do a deep dive into the scripture.
By a deep dive, I mean you need to know who wrote the book.
You need to know why the book was written.
You need to know when the book was written.
You need to know what was going on when the book was written.
You need to know who the book was written to…
You need to know whether the hearers were among the rich or poor or something in between.
You need to try to read it with the eyes and ears of the people of that time…
You need to figuratively get your hands dirty.
You need to read not just the passage, but at least the chapter before and the chapter after…
You need to read more of the Bible writer so you can put it in the context of the writer’s other writings.
You need to read more of the Bible itself so you can put your passage in the context of the whole Bible.
You need to walk around in the text.
What do you see?
What do you hear?
What do you feel?
What do you taste?
What do you smell?
Yep…I’m talking bout a deep dive…
Now some of us are happy with a shallow wading like you would do in a wading pool.
We just grab a text…
Skim on the surface of the text…
And then we throw a sermon together based on that…
Naw…That ain’t preaching the Word.
Most of your time should be in investigation of what is really going on in the word…
If you are spending more time on how you close..then what the text says…then you are on the wrong track…
If you are spending more time on what Rev So and So had to say….then what the text says…then you are on the wrong track…
If you are spending more time searching through commentaries than what the scripture itself says…then you are on the wrong track…
Read the text first….
Read the text along the way…
Get help in understanding the text…but you don’t get your sermon from the commentary…
We don’t preach commentaries…
We don’t preach bible dictionaries…
We don’t preach the newspaper…
We preach the scripture…
Keep your eyes on the prize my sister and brother preachers.
Now…you do need to understand how to interpret the scripture for preaching. Check out my white paper on that here: https://gumroad.com/products/okfy
Till Tomorrow,
Brother Sherman
P.S. – My homiletic is at http://www.superchargeyoursermons.net
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