The preceding article in this series (November, 1980) pointed out that by analyzing a preaching portion of Scripture we discover what is its subject, the basic teaching that covers it like a tent. This subject, then, becomes the main thrust of the sermon, the summarizing core. But we can't preach on the subject, and we'll see why in this article.
First, let's clarify several terms that we often confuse in connection with homiletics. We talk about title, topic, subject, and theme as if they each mean the same thing. Actually, they are very different. The title of a sermon is simply the words we use to identify it and to persuade people to come and listen to it. Of course, it ought to be connected to the sermon content closely enough that people can see the reason for it. If you use a title to draw a crowd and then disappoint them because your sermon doesn't deliver what the title promised, you may deceive people once, but not twice.
Topic and subject can be used inter changeably; they mean basically the same thing—a broad area of truth that arises from the Scripture portion. Examples are "prayer," "sanctification," "faith," "hell," et cetera. From this definition, we can see why it is impossible to preach on a subject: it is too broad for a single sermon, or even many sermons, to encompass.
Suppose someone says to you, "What are you preaching on next week?" You reply, "Prayer." The next question will invariably be: "What about prayer?" You can't preach on prayer in fifty sermons. And that is why you can't preach on a subject. A subject is a broad area of truth far beyond the time limits of a sermon. If you try to preach on prayer in one sermon and attempt to cover when to pray, how to pray, why pray, and what to pray for, you aren't going to say anything of real value. You have to narrow your subject and cut it up into bite-sized pieces so that people can be nourished. In other words, you have to develop only a small portion a theme. A theme is an aspect of truth, a tiny corner of a subject. You can preach on a theme.
One common fault, especially of young preachers, is trying to use too much material and cover too large an area. They are afraid they will run out of something to say before the time is up. But when they stand to preach they dis cover they are a bit more relaxed than they had anticipated, and when twelve o'clock nears they aren't half through their material. They have to begin chop ping and chopping to be finished by noon (because, as you know, the angels leave the sanctuary at twelve o'clock and the saints follow them). By trying to exhaust the material, such preachers merely exhaust themselves and their congregation.
Not only does time limit the amount of material you can adequately deal with in a sermon, so also does the human mind's ability to remember. One homiletics professor said, "You preachers spend all week studying and preparing a sermon. Then when you get up on Sunday morning to preach it you have to have notes in order to remember what to say! But you expect the people, who haven't had the opportunity for all that prior study and who have no notes at all, to go home and remember the entire sermon." The point is that you must limit the truth you want to present until it is so succinct that you can deal with it adequately in your sermon and so clear that your people can carry away with them a sharp image of what you have said.
Choose a theme
The theme, then, is that part of the sermon which establishes its boundaries both by inclusion and exclusion. And its purpose is to narrow the subject into manageable limits. Before he paints a picture, an artist must decide what he will include and what he will exclude. If he is going to paint a bowl of fruit, he won't portray the whole orchard nor the picking, packing, shipping, and merchandising of the fruit. Neither will the preacher try to include everything about his subject in his sermon.
As a limiting device, the theme has certain characteristics: it is brief, it is clear, and it is a phrase. The reason the theme must be a phrase is that it is limiting the subject, and the subject is normally a single word such as faith or prayer. (The subject can be more than one word as illustrated by the example given in the preceding article in this series. The subject of the preaching portion considered there was "church-world relationships.") The theme be comes a phrase because it limits the subject by adding words that modify it. If the subject is "prayer," the theme might become "the benefits of prayer," or "the attitude of prayer," or "the conditions of prayer." In each case the subject is limited. You can't preach about "attitudes in prayer," if your theme is "the benefits of prayer."
Whatever your theme becomes, how ever, it must come from the Scripture portion you have selected. The subject prayer, for example is the broad truth of your Scripture portion. You can't determine the theme of the Scripture portion to be "the conditions of prayer" and then preach on "the benefits of prayer." The Scripture must determine the subject and theme of your sermon.
Define the proposition
Once you have studied the Scripture portion and have determined its subject and theme, you are ready to go to the next step of sermon preparation. This step is so important that even if you never put into practice anything else in these articles, pay attention to this point. Simply put, it is this: Every sermon must have a target, and that target is ex pressed in the proposition.
The major problem with most sermons is that they are not on target. The preacher splatters the congregation with homiletical buckshot in a shotgun approach rather than aiming his sermon right at the heart. The suggestions in this series of articles are designed to help you clarify and define your sermons so that you can use a rifle instead of a shotgun when you preach.
At a church convention several years ago I said to my wife before we went into the hall, "I want you to listen to a certain individual's sermon. I've heard him preach before, and I want your opinion of what he says." So he preached, and we listened. He was a very interesting speaker. He held my interest all the way through and my wife's too. Afterwards, I said, "What did you think?"
"It was a good sermon," she answered. "I enjoyed it."
"What was his point?"
"He didn't have a point," she said. "Do you know how he prepared that sermon?"
"No," I replied. "Do you?"
"Yes. When I was a teen-ager and was asked to speak at a youth meeting, I would look up in a concordance what the Bible said about a certain subject. Then I would make an outline and try to find a text to go with each main division. It didn't always have any point. That is how he prepared his sermon."
It was even worse when the sermon was printed later. The thing that made it interesting was the charisma and dynamics of the speaker himself. In print, its scrapbook organization was evident. Far too often our congregations listen to a miscellany of sacred odds and ends strung together like beads. We may hold the people's interest, but there is no point. They may leave thinking, "That was good; I really enjoyed that," but they forget it almost immediately be cause there was no point to drive home.
When you have finished preaching, the members of your congregation should be able to state very concisely the point you were trying to get across. If they are to do so, your sermon must have a definite aim, a clearly stated proposition.
Put it in one sentence
What is a proposition in homiletical terms? It is a complete sentence that embraces and pulls together the subject and the theme. It is the sermon reduced to a single sentence.
Remember, the subject is usually a single word; the theme is a phrase that limits the subject; and the proposition is a complete sentence that states clearly what you intend to say about the subject.
When an individual writes a dissertation for an academic degree, he must first give his professor and the commit tee a thesis that states what he intends to prove or accomplish. This is so they will have a criterion by which to evaluate his dissertation. He can't begin writing and when finished draw up a summary stating, "Here is what I have done." He must know before he begins what he plans to do. If he didn't he would be wandering about in his research, gathering material everywhere, much of which would be useless.
A sermon must be built the same way. There should be a clear statement of the specific truth that you intend to get across. You must know what your target is. Homiletics is a science, and in ex pository preaching there are certain steps that you must follow once you sit down before your text. You need to ask: "What does this text say? (What is its subject?)" "How much of to fill subject will I preach on? (What is its theme?)" "What is my purpose; what am I aiming at? (What is the proposition?)"
All this you must answer before you start building the sermon. If you don't, not only will you spend a lot of time on random subject materials that are not relevant to the purpose of your sermon but you will never have a clear idea of why you are telling your people what you plan to tell them. And if you don't have a clear idea of the purpose of your sermon, you can be sure that your people will have an even less clear picture when you have finished.
Your congregation has a right to expect a clearly stated purpose for your sermon, one that is not lost sight of from beginning to end, and that carries them step by step to a definite conclusion, packaged for remembering and carrying away with them. The most important thing about your sermon is not the impression that you make on the minds of the people at the moment you are speaking. The important thing is: What can they take home with them and re member that week? When Mr. Jones goes home from church to his wife who had to stay with their sick son, he should be able to tell her, clearly and concisely, what you talked about.
One master pulpiteer said of the proposition: "I find the getting of that sentence the hardest, most exacting, and the most fruitful labor in my study. To compel oneself to fashion that sentence, to dismiss every word that is vague, ragged, or ambiguous, to think oneself through to a form of words that defines a proposition with scrupulous exactness this is surely one of the most vital and essential factors in the making of a sermon. And I do not think any sermon ought to be preached or even written until this sentence has emerged clear and lucid as a cloudless moon."
A timeless truth
As you formulate the proposition, keep in mind that it should reflect a timeless truth and that it should be stated in the present tense. People are not nearly so interested in the past, or even the future, as they are in the present. The proposition should be relevant to human experience. It should not be too long. The clearer and more concise it is, the easier both for you and your hearers to remember it. Like the subject and the theme, the proposition must also arise from the Scripture portion. You should be able to demonstrate its validity from the text it?elf.
If we compare a sermon to a tree the sermon idea is the seed that germinates. The text is the root structure, bearing up the tree and nourishing it. Above ground is the trunk, and from the trunk come branches. The proposition is to the main divisions of the sermon what the trunk is to the branches.
Let's look at all these pieces of the sermon now in an illustration. In the preceding article of this series, we used John 17:6-19 as an example of a Scripture portion. We defined the subject as "church-world relationships," and the theme that limits the subject as "effective church-world relationships." Now the proposition must embody both the subject and the theme in a single, simple sentence that will find its roots in the text. "The church can have an effective relationship with the world." That is the proposition, and once I determine that, it becomes my target, the thing I am going to try to prove in my sermon.
Thus, the main divisions or heads of my sermon, like the branches coming out of a tree, must come out of the preaching portion to prove that proposition. That is their function. They are not simply there to give the preacher something to say in order. They do that, but they accomplish much more. They amplify the proposition. The proposition, then, is the sermon condensed into a single sentence; the main divisions of the body are the proposition expanded into the sermon. Now we can see the flow of a well-constructed sermon. You go to the preaching portion; determine its broad subject and limit that subject with a theme. Then, you combine the subject and the theme in sentence form to formulate the proposition. This gives you a target, and now the main divisions and everything you say in that sermon come flowing out of the preaching portion of Scripture and lead you and your hearers right down the road to your target.
Some preachers wonder whether they should actually state their proposition. Not always, but sometimes you may. If it is constructed so succinctly and concisely that you can use it following your introduction, that is excellent. Even when you do not state it in exact words, it should be so implied that your people are able to recognize it easily because every move you make is going in a certain direction. Unfortunately, we some times feel that we must keep the truth we are driving at concealed until near the end of the sermon and then spring it on the people as a grand climax and surprise. They are surprised, but in the wrong way. They never really get it, because they never knew where they were going in the beginning.
When you turn to developing the main body of your sermon you will find that the really difficult part of the sermon preparation has already been done. The main divisions are right there in the Scripture to amplify the proposition, and you simply have to develop them ac cording to the originality that God has given you. Because we are each unique individuals with differing backgrounds, education, and experiences, we will approach the same passage differently. Two preachers can take the very same Scripture portion and come out with entirely different sermons and each be true to the text. There is that much truth in the Word of God. It's inexhaustible.
In developing the body of the sermon we don't pick our main divisions at random; they are found in the Scripture text. The Word decides what they are. Notice these characteristics of the sermon's main divisions or points: (1) they must accurately mirror the Scripture portion without being artificially im posed upon it; (2) their number is deter mined by the text; (3) they must be explicit in the scripture rather than implied.
Illustration
Now, using our example passage, John 17:6-19, let's see if we can obtain an outline that will amplify our proposition and be faithful to our text. The proposition states: "The church can have an effective relationship with the world." Every proposition will raise a question in the minds of your hearers. The natural question in this case is How? How can the church have an effective relationship with the world? Your scripture and your sermon must answer that question. Can we find an answer to that question in these verses?
Looking through the passage, we find four basic statements in which Christ relates the church (in the person of the apostles) to the world. In verses 6 to 9 He says they came out of the world. In verses 11 to 13 He says that they are in the world. In verses 14 to 17 He says they are not of the world. And in verses 18 and 19 He says that He has sent them back into the world. These, then, are the main divisions that amplify the proposition.
How can the church have an effective relationship with the world? It can do so by first getting out of it totally and breaking completely with its sin. Then it must go right back into the world and live and identify with it. But while the church is in the world it must not be of it. The church is in the world because its Master has sent it into the world on a mission comparable to His own. "Out of it," yet "in it." "Not of it," yet "sent into it." This is how the church can have an effective relationship with the world. A sermon built on this outline will be one that rises naturally from the passage and that leads to a clear target.
In outlining your sermon, keep it simple. You may have an extremely full outline in preparing your sermon, but when you go into the pulpit you need a very simple outline or all that material can become confusing to you. I started out preaching with four pages of outline. The longer I was in the ministry the more pages I used, until I was preaching from twelve pages of outline! I put some sections in green and some in red. Some I put in brackets and some I underlined, until I couldn't see what I was preaching when I looked at all that mass of mate rial.
In your outline, then, keep it simple. People don't think in terms of A's and B's and C's. They think first, second, third. So in your outline make your main divisions Roman numerals and your subheads Arabic numerals. Since your main heads are to arise from your Scripture portion, be sure that you have an undergirding text for each main division.
If you build your sermons in this way from Scripture, with a clear target and a simple outline, you will be well on your way to Biblical preaching without notes.
