Sermons Like Gummy Worms on Mashed Potatoes

[ 5 minutes to read ]

Let no man despise thy youth; but be thou and example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity.
– 1 Timothy 4:12
Where do sermons come from? That may seem an odd question, but those kind are the most fun.

[I] once attended a week long software training class in the sprawling environs north of Atlanta. A place expanding so rapidly that three buildings appeared by lunch time. On the opening morning of the festivities, the instructor dispatched the customary preliminaries and said, “Turn on your computers and open Windows.” Each of us bright-eyed learners had a desktop computer with monitor, keyboard, and mouse on the table directly front of us. At this point in the proceedings, you would think everyone adept and if the class went no further, we should all be pronounced scholars of the first rate. However, a gentleman near 60 in a breezy Hawaiian style shirt, who spoke in an effortless South African accent, asked, “What’s Windows?” He was a nice guy and despite the dulcet tones of his indigenous lilt, I thought to myself, “Oh great!” in an equally effortless Appalachian accent.

This is how it is sometimes for young preachers, who are either young in age or experience. The well-informed lot are going on about vectors and rendered views and such things while you’re thinking, “What’s Windows?” Books and messages on sermonizing often assume a certain level of knowledge and don’t have “for Dummies” in the title. Let’s step back to the basic starting point. Where do sermons come from? Where does one start?

These are the problems

Young preachers have a few different difficulties to deal with in regards to coming up with sermons. Young preachers are not usually preaching with great frequency or regularity. It can be a while between opportunities. If you only study for a sermon when you’ve been asked to preach one, you are going to struggle and flounder. I’m going to give you some help here, but you must persevere to the end.

Young preachers also have a lot of things on their minds to say. These thoughts are as varied as a kid’s plate at the buffet. They grab a little of this and a little of that with no organizing principle or sense of food pairings. Gummy worms make perfect sense with mashed potatoes to such an enthused youth. Because your thoughts are diverse and bouncing around, it can seem like you have more matter for a sermon than what you actually do. You will also be tempted to try to get it all in there because you’re not sure when your next opportunity will be. Instead of preparing a gourmet meal like a chef, you become more of a throw-it-all-in-the-pot cook.

Young preachers also face a problem because of older preachers. You hear a powerful sermon and you want to preach like that. You do your best to preach like that. However, you don’t have any idea how he did that. No matter who that preacher is for you, you are not him and will never be him. As Paul wrote, “But by the grace of God I am what I am” (1 Corinthians 15:10). Each one of us has a unique set of abilities and we can only do with what we have to do with.

How to always be ready

I hope I’m not overselling here, though I do know I’m splitting the infinitive. The aforementioned difficulties also provide opportunities, as is usually the case with difficulties. While preaching infrequently can be problematic, it can also be a blessing as a gift of time. Any pastor who preaches a couple or more times a week can tell you that they are strapped for time when it comes to sermon prep. You want to make good use of that time by studying and developing good habits. You need to distinguish study and sermon preparation in your mind. They are not one and the same thing.

You should be committing yourself to studying the Bible. You should be reading the Bible daily. I believe reading the whole Bible in a year by some plan is invaluable. You should also be studying the Bible where you are reading and thinking in a particular book or passage. Pen and paper are your most valuable tools. If you had no other books beside your Bible, you could still study and preach with pen and paper. John Bunyan has certainly shown us that. He had no education beyond rudimentary education to read and write. He didn’t know any Hebrew or Greek. However, he wrote nearly sixty books of different kinds that show a profound understanding of Scripture and a powerful ability to communicate. Large crowds came to hear him preach. His contemporary, the scholarly John Owen, famously stated that he would trade all his learning if he could only preach like the tinker. An English Bible and pen and paper were indispensable tools to Bunyan and tools with which he built a spiritual legacy the world is still benefiting from over three hundred years later.

You need to study, think, and write. You need to train yourself to look long at a passage until you begin to see it clearly enough that you start asking questions. Why was this word used here? What is the shape of this argument? Why does this narrative include this detail? Why is this repeated throughout the passage? How does this work with a different statement in another passage? How does this fit with the context?

You don’t want to stop with asking questions. You want to train yourself to search the scriptures until you find answers, like the noble Bereans (Acts 17:11). When Jonathan Edwards was not yet twenty years old, he wrote his famous resolutions. This was before he had written any books, before he had preached any famous sermons, and before he had a part in The Great Awakening. Resolution no. 11 is as follows:

Resolved: When I think of any theorem in divinity to be solved, immediately to do what I can towards solving it, if circumstances do not hinder.

Edwards resolved that whenever he encountered a problem in Scripture, or a question he didn’t know the answer to, he would immediately take up the trail and stay on it until he found it. This is sound advice. Obviously, we don’t always have the time to fully answer all questions. Beside that, we will never be able to answer all the questions we come up with. However, you should make a habit of thinking these things through with Bible, pen, and paper. I have found that when we discover a problem or a question we can’t answer at the time, we often find the answer later. That’s one reason why it is good to write it down.

Always have a means of taking notes with you. You never know when a thought or question will come to mind. You might be driving and have no way to look into it immediately. Write it down as soon as you can. Make a digital memo with your phone if you must. At least, you want to be able to come back to it later and don’t assume you will remember all your thoughts at a later time. Even at a young age, I would pursue a train of thought and feel a powerful impression at the time only to fail to recall it later because I didn’t write it down.

If you make this a committed habit, you will not be floundering around about what to preach. You will have material, though you will still have a good bit of work ahead of you to put it into a sermon. The preacher who does this will be growing and deepening in the Word and it will be apparent to those who hear him (1 Timothy 4:15).

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