A basic failing in much Christian preaching and teaching about the New Testament is not explaining to congregations the rich relationships between what the New Testament authors say and Old Testament texts.
The process of developing a sermon by drawing meaning out of a biblical text (also known as exegesis) does not have to be complicated. Having preached and taught preaching for decades, I’d like to offer nine simple steps (with suggested amounts of time to invest in each) that can take a conscientious preacher (or Bible teacher) from biblical text to message with confidence.
Hidden away in the November 1921 edition of Nazarene Messenger, the official paper of the early Church of the Nazarene in Los Angeles, is an article titled “Qualifications of an Interpreter” written by Olive May Winchester (1879-1947). Winchester was well-qualified to write about what it takes to interpret Scripture.
I found Jesus a seven-minute walk from Wycliffe College. At first, I could not quite recognize him. Lying on a park bench, thickly covered with an old blanket, he was layered with snow. As I sat down on the bench beside him, though, I noticed his feet. The gaping instep wounds gave me pause, and then the crucifixion “aha.”
I often tell my doctoral students that if they have an outside job of more than 10 to 15 hours per week, the chances are that their dissertation will be the worse for it, or that it might not get done at all. Experience seems to confirm this advice. But not always. Besides which, students have to live, provide for their families, pay back loans. That is, having a job is sometimes inevitable for a student, any student. Such is reality, and reality trumps withered faculty advice!
We are a people who have been made right in our relationship with God through the sacrificial life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The path we’ve travelled in being made right is the path of forgiveness and reconciliation; it’s what it means to be Christians. We are loved by God who longs to forgive and be reconciled with us. This marks us indelibly as a forgiven people.
You may be familiar with Rev. John Newton (1725-1807) as the author of the famous hymn, Amazing Grace. What you may not know is that he came to have an important ministry as a spiritual director, primarily through letter writing. Many people wrote to him for advice and he replied giving counsel and direction on a variety of matters, such as grace, temptation, evil, Christian character, vanity, sin, and sorrow.
“Providence” sounds such a heavy word. Portentous. If someone uses it a lot in conversation, we might think of them as self-important and smug, as if they are claiming that God is on their side.
But the first appearance in Scripture of the idea that the word providence conveys is as early as Genesis 22 when Abraham assures Isaac (with trembling voice and faith, I think we may safely assume) that God will see to it. Yet in this situation, it looks as though, if God is not quite against them, then the best that can be said is that He is not making things easy.
Wycliffe College PhD student Charles Meeks reflects on being awarded the Brother Jeffrey Gros Memorial Student Prize.
